Kiss Your Prince Charming

Again her heart squeezed tight at the thought of Greg injured, and she quickly grabbed the phone book and searched for the hospital’s number. Once she dialed and was stuck waiting for someone to answer, her gaze peered outside.

Her kitchen window overlooked his kitchen window. The distance between houses was a mere fifty yards, but the economic chasm between them might as well have been miles. Her rental house mimicked most structures in the respectable-turned-shabby neighborhood. Greg’s elegant Victorian house, though, was the exception, and stood out like a treasured castle with its manicured lawn and wrought-iron balconies and gleaming casement windows. Why he lived alone in the big old white elephant, Rachel hadn’t yet figured out—but over the last couple years, she’d spent countless hours in that house. They’d had dinner in his kitchen two nights ago. Cripes, she’d shared a cup of coffee with him just that morning.

Finally someone at the hospital answered. “Hello, this is Rachel Martin. I’m inquiring about a patient—Greg Stoner—I believe he was brought in this afternoon after a car accident...” Swiftly she crossed her fingers. “Oh, yes, of course I’m a relative. That’s exactly why I’m asking—I just heard about the accident, and I’m his sister—”

The lie slipped out smoother than butter. Thankfully Leo had mentioned the hospital’s unwillingness to give out patient information to anyone who wasn’t kin. Greg had kin—retired parents in Arizona, a brother working for some company in Japan—but there was no one Rachel knew how to contact. If she wanted immediate answers on Greg’s condition, she had to find some way to get them on her own.

And the fib worked—at least claiming to be his sister successfully got her transferred to another hospital floor. But then she was put on hold. And then transferred to yet another floor. One could interpret all this monkeying around as great news, she told herself. If they were moving him around, he was obviously alive, right? And he couldn’t be in too bad a shape or he’d be immobilized in ICU. Yet her fingernails drummed a worried rhythm on the old yellow linoleum counter.

It seemed like she was stuck on hold for hours this time. A dozen memories of the lumbering, gentle giant flashed through her mind. She’d met Greg two years before, the day she’d moved into the neighborhood. He’d stopped by to welcome his new next-door neighbor. She’d nearly bitten his head off.

It hadn’t been exactly her best day. Mark had just announced that he’d discovered “true love” with the bimbo. Rachel knew nothing about divorces then, had no idea you weren’t supposed to leave the marital home—or the savings accounts—unarmed and undefended. She’d never lived anywhere but her hometown of Madison, but she’d impulsively taken off for Milwaukee because it seemed best. She didn’t want to live in the same town as the cheating creep, and had craved a distance from her overprotective family, as well. This house was the cheapest rent she could find, at a time when even cheap was too expensive for her. She had no job, no money, an ego in shreds and a life in shambles. She never planned to trust another man as long as she lived.

She’d never planned on trusting Greg, either. But tarnation. He’d given her absolutely no choice.

“Ms. Martin?”

Finally a live body answered at the other end of the receiver, but the call proved worthless. Greg was still “undergoing tests.” His condition was labeled “serious.” No one would say exactly what his injuries were, or when he’d be settled down in a room and okayed for visitors.

Rachel heard out all the hospital rules, hung up, jammed the ice cream in the freezer and then simply hurled out of the house again for her car. Never mind their rules. Never mind anyone’s rules. Greg had put her pieces back together when she thought she was too broken to mend. It wasn’t his fault that he was one of the Enemy Species with that unfortunate Y chromosome. He was still the best friend she’d ever had—and nobody was going to stop her from seeing him.

Naturally St. John’s was one of the oldest hospitals in the city, which naturally meant it was way downtown, which naturally meant she had no idea how to get there. She knew where to shop, how to locate the art and entertainment centers, could find Rudy’s—the die-cast company where she worked as an engineering secretary—in her sleep. But Milwaukee’s industrial section was a tangle of tanneries and foundries, railroads and shipping canals. Roasting hops from the downtown breweries added an alien, bitter smell to the humid night air. Rachel never had reason to become familiar with these inner-city neighborhoods—nor would she be driving them alone in the dark if she had a choice. Tonight, of course, she had no choice, but fear of getting lost only made her more anxious, and her tummy was already roiling with nerves.

By the time she was parked and galloping through the hospital’s entrance doors, though, that problem was forgotten and another one nipping on her mind. If anyone questioned her claim about being Greg’s sister, Rachel figured no one was going to believe her lie. Obviously lots of siblings looked dissimilar, but man, she and Greg were drastic opposites in physical appearance.

He was a hefty six foot three; she was five foot four—in heels. He had to tilt the scales past two hundred and fifty pounds, where she only weighed one hundred and ten if she wore a winter coat and clunky shoes. She was small-boned; he was a natural defensive end. Their personal styles were even more night and day. Greg often claimed that she looked like a younger Meg Ryan. That wasn’t true—he was just being a sweetie—but she did have the blondish hair and blue eyes, and people had been annoyingly labeling her as girl-next-door “cute” since she was six. Greg.. well. There was nothing wrong with his looks—nothing—but he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who cared about his appearance. His jet-black hair was whacked off in a dorky style; his glasses were usually broken, and his clothes looked like something twenty years out of date—and lacked all claim to taste even then.

Still, as she started asking questions at the hospital’s front desk, no one seemed inclined to challenge her claim to be a relative. Possibly it helped that she looked so pitiful, with her limp hair straggling to her shoulders and her wilted suit and the run in her stocking. Who’d go out in public looking so wasted if they didn’t have to? Cripes, she hadn’t even stopped to put on lipstick. But it wasn’t as if Greg would ever care or notice what she looked like. The only thing that mattered was finding him.

Questions eventually led her up one set of elevators, then down a mile-long hall, where she searched for room 315. Her spirits lifted just knowing he’d been settled in a regular room. At least he wasn’t in surgery or worse. Maybe he was just a little battered up, she tried to reassure herself.

Only, her heart stopped when she poked her head through the doorway of room 315. The room looked like a clone of all the others—a mutated melon color, linoleum too ugly to wear out, inescapable antiseptic smells. It wasn’t that bad. It was just the usual two-bed hospital room...and only the far bed by the window was occupied.

But the occupant in that bed was a long, long way from just “a little battered up.”

She would never have recognized Greg at all, if it weren’t for a glimpse of jet-black hair and the lumberjack shape under the sheets. She tiptoed closer with her heart in her throat. Bandages completely covered his face, except for a narrow strip around his eyes. He was connected to tubes all over the place. There was some kind of contraption affecting his jaw and neck. His left arm was raised on a pillow and immobilized in a splint.

“Hey.”

Rachel almost jumped when she heard his voice. He was lying so still that she feared he was unconscious. But the kindest blue eyes in the universe had suddenly opened to half slits and looked drug-dazed. His normally strong tenor was barely a cracked, strained whisper.

“Hey, back.” She plastered on her cheeriest smile and touched his right hand. She was afraid to touch anything else. She didn’t want him to know how frightening he looked. “You can go right back to sleep, Stoner. I’m only going to stay a minute. I just had to know for sure how you were. And I’m not positive you should even be trying to talk—”

He motioned to the constraining bandages affecting his jaw. “I can talk—because nothing hurts. They just dosed me up with morphine. But I can’t seem to speak any louder or clearer than this mumbling...and I guess I’ll be eating dinner out of a straw for a while. Don’t look so scared, Rach. Everything’s mendable. I’ll be fine.”

Rachel wanted that promise in blood from a doctor. “This is a heck of a way to get time off work, you lazy slug.”

“You know me. Any excuse to loll around.”

Yeah, she knew him. He lumbered around with his glasses askew and a chronic distracted air, looking like the stereotype of a bumbling, absentminded professor. But it was so easy to misjudge Greg based on his appearance. The neighbors all camped out on his doorstep whenever there was a community problem, because he was just one of those people who quietly stepped up and took charge.

She’d learned that—firsthand—the day she moved in. Unfortunately there was no denying that she’d been a mortifying disaster that afternoon. The thing was, she’d married Mark with the foolish, naive idea that marriage was forever, and discovering his relationship with the bimbo had emotionally leveled her. She’d taken off with a wild hodgepodge of belongings. A lamp, but no table to put it on. A mattress, but no bed. Her grandma’s sacred red-velvet antique love seat, but no silverware. A few dishes, but nothing she could boil water in. Greg had asked if he could help her carry things. She’d snarled out a no.

He’d chosen to ignore her and simply started toting things in, making trip after trip for no thanks. Eventually it became obvious—even to her—that a puppy could have packed better than she had. For all the stuff she’d mounded together, she lacked even the basics to get through a single day. She didn’t have a broom, didn’t have a spoon. And when she realized that she’d been so stupid as to even forget shoes—plenty of clothes, but no shoes beyond the pair on her feet—she’d plunked down on the porch steps and cried. Greg had plunked next to her and doled out tissue, as if coping with a rude, fruitcake neighbor having an out-of-control crying jag was nothing unusual in his day.

Looking at his white-bandaged face now made her feel fierce and angry. He’d been there for her so many times. She wanted to shoot whoever had done this to him, strangle them with her bare hands, do something. Not just because she owed him, but because she loved the big lug. “Are they giving you enough pain juice in those tubes?” she asked lightly.

“Too much. My head’s in la la land. You don’t have to stand there, Rach, sit...”

“I’ll sit. For a minute. But I can’t believe you need company for long. And I should probably confess that I’m not supposed to be here. I lied and told them I was your sister, so don’t blow my cover, okay?”

“Okay, sis.”

She wanted to chuckle. Even with the strange, strained sound of his voice, she could hear the hint of his dry humor. Through blizzards and power outages and crises, she’d never heard Greg lose his sense of humor. “I want to ask you how the accident happened, but I’m not still convinced that you should be talking. I don’t understand exactly what kind of bandage contraption they’ve got around your jaw, but if it hurts you to talk—”

“It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. Like I said, I’m in poppy heaven. I just can’t open my mouth very far. I think they wired my jaw, but I was really out of it a few hours ago and I’m honestly not sure exactly what anyone was doing to me in the E.R.”

She scooched a chair closer. “So you think your jaw’s broken. Your arm, too?”

“Yeah, for sure on the arm. They just haven’t set it yet. It was too swollen. The bone guy’s supposed to come back and take a look still tonight.... Rachel?”

“What?” His sudden hesitation, the way he said her name, made her quickly surge forward with alarm. “What can I do? Do you want water? The nurse?”

“No. I’d just feel better to get this said—you may not recognize me when this is over. There was a plastic surgeon in here earlier, too. He was pretty frank about the injuries to my face. He made out like they’ll be rebuilding from scratch. Could be my days of being a handsome hunk are over.”

Rachel felt her heart clamp in a painful fist. She wanted to say the right thing, whatever would help him most, but she just didn’t know what that was. Although the gauzy bandages completely concealed his expression, she could see those steady blue eyes searching hers. And he was joking about the “handsome hunk.” Once Greg had wryly described himself as a fade-in-the-woodwork kind of guy. He was a comptroller, so it wasn’t like he needed to be a GQ fashion plate. And since he chose the geeky haircut and dated clothes and never seemed concerned about the extra thirty pounds, Rachel had just assumed that looks didn’t matter to him. Once she’d come to love him as a friend, she never thought about his physical appearance one way or another.

But she did now. This was way, way different. Maybe Greg didn’t have a vain bone in his body, but facing a drastic change in appearance was still a terribly unnerving thing to cope with. If he had to deal with scars, that was more disturbing yet. Although they’d never been the touchy-feely kind of friends, again she reached for his hand and loosely laced her fingers with his. “You know, if you get a new face, you could be even more drop-dead handsome than you are now.”

“Well, hell. You think that’s possible?”

She grinned. “Hopefully not, because I’m not sure I could survive living next door to that big ego, Stoner. With any luck, they’ll let you keep a few scars, though. I don’t know what it is about scars, but they either seem to appeal to a girl’s pirate or bad-boy biker fantasy. You’ll probably have to beat the women off with a stick.”

“Not that. Not a fate worse than death. And how come I had to reach the vast age of thirty-two before I heard this interesting fact of life? Maybe you’d better explain some more about that biker fantasy—”

There was a hint of devil in his eyes, enough to make her chuckle. “Forget it. Women only tell those fantasies on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know anything else from me—particularly since I couldn’t care less what you look like one way or another—but now you’ve got me thinking about this. Hey. You get a whole new face out of this deal? Where do I sign up?”

“Sheesh. Bite your tongue. You’re cuter than Meg Ryan now. No way you ever need to touch that face.”

“If you feel good enough to flirt, you can’t be too bad off, Stoner. But we have to get serious, because any second now some nurse is bound to walk in and kick me out. I’m trying to think of what you need done.” Rachel foraged in her purse for her checkbook—since she didn’t have a pad of paper—and a pen. “All right. Now you know I have a key to your house, so I can do the obvious stuff—close the windows, take care of perishables in the fridge, get your mail—”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“Don’t be a goose. Look at all the stuff you did for me over the last two years.” She ripped off a deposit slip, clicked on her pen and started to make a to-do list.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t know a screwdriver from a hammer two years ago. But...if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate your calling my work. Monica.”

Monica Kaufman was the CEO where Greg worked as a comptroller, Rachel already knew. “Sure thing. And how about your parents? I don’t know if you can make a long-distance call from a hospital room like this. You want me to call them?”