Love Me Tomorrow (4 page)

Not that Levi suffered under the impression there wasn’t plenty of corruption floating around just underneath the surface these days. The powers-that-be were cleaning up the city one borough at a time, slapping on a fresh coat of paint and charging a small fortune as the price of admission for the privilege to live there. He’d witnessed one or two shady dealings during the time he’d dated Dan and had turned a blind eye—payoffs and the like, greasing the palms of those who could push along permits—stuff like that.

The price of doing business, he’d assumed. Levi sighed, thinking he’d paid a price for his own success as well.

He’d done his best to ignore that longing inside which he’d been attempting to outrun over the last year or so. Even now, Levi tried in vain to ignore that fact, in spite of any accomplishments he’d experienced earlier that evening. It was tempered by the undeniable fact he was lonely—desperately so at times. Valerie had him pegged on that one, even though Levi didn’t believe her recommendations that random sex would truly fix what ailed him. A Band-Aid perhaps, but a solution, sex was not.

He ached for a sort of soul-altering connection to go along with any earth-shattering orgasms. While he was certainly proud of all he’d accomplished, not having anyone special to share it with created a none-too-pleasant stabbing sensation in his chest.

Levi glanced both directions, squinting through the fog, straining to make sure no headlights could be spotted from oncoming traffic before he stepped off the boardwalk and sprinted across the road to his brand new home at 219 Waterfront Drive.

A problem for another day, he told himself, forcing any sadness or regret back down where it belonged while digging through his pockets for his keys. He began to feel the sting from want or need of sleep behind his eyes.

“Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

Chapter Two

Making the sharp turn into Honeymoon Hills, Levi waved at the firemen as he passed the fire engine that was exiting the sprawling park-like subdivision which sat on over a hundred acres. He yawned, placing his triple-espresso-multi-caramel-pumped Starbucks back into the cup holder of the Prius, wishing the caffeine would hurry up and kick in already. As expected, the entire workday had been spent fielding calls and returning messages that had come pouring in since the Cancer benefit the night before.

Located inland, about forty minutes outside the city, Downham Parish was part of the Southwestern borough that had gained popularity in the early 1900s as more people began fleeing the city in an attempt to escape the crime and corruption.

Honeymoon Hills had been developed throughout the 1920s and 30s, architecturally comprised of mostly American bungalows—Craftsmans and Tudors mainly, but there was also a smattering of other styles tossed in to break up the monotony. The homes sat atop lush treed lots featuring soft rolling hills and were now prized and very sought after. Not so much when Levi and Ruby relocated to the area after fleeing Las Vegas back in the early nineties, but a lot had changed over the past twenty years. It was now a popular area for those who desired the best of both worlds, the beauty of Mother Nature combined with homes that had charm and character.

For Levi, moving to Downham Parish had been a welcome change from life in Las Vegas. It was one of those double-edged situations for him. On the one hand he knew Ruby would have never left Nevada had she not been continually plagued with illness and injury following a very serious bout of pneumonia with sepsis which had been further complicated by subsequent heart failure. Ruby had nearly been taken from Levi as a result. He’d been fairly young at the time and he’d been unable to really understand why Ruby’s case had been so life-threatening, but it came on quickly and ravaged her body.

By the time Ruby had been released from the hospital she looked like an entirely different person. The experience had aged her and it was as if Ruby never completely recovered from it. The unfortunate side effect for Levi was becoming well acquainted with that sense of helplessness at a very young age. He couldn’t lay all of that on the pneumonia; he’d gotten little tastes of it throughout his formative years due to his mother’s infamously crazy lifestyle.

Nevertheless, none of that had prepared Levi for the terrifying vulnerability and sense of dread that followed him during the seven days that Ruby had lain in that hospital bed unable to catch her breath. She’d remained in isolation much of the time she spent in the hospital so he wasn’t allowed to see her—couldn’t sit by her bed or hold her hand.

Helpless
.

Turning yet another corner, Levi navigated his way through the winding residential streets, pushing away all those memories which never failed to drag him down into darkness and fear. His foot pressed down on the accelerator and Levi took a deep breath, trying to hold back the anxiety that never completely went away—forever hovering there just underneath the surface of his skin.

Levi had allowed too much time to pass since he’d last checked in on Ruby. They’d talked on the phone, but his mother was notorious for randomly firing the nurses that Levi hired to care for her without informing him—which meant he was required to do random site visits. He tried distracting himself from the nagging fear that something was wrong by concentrating on the views all around him.

Driving past a few of the Tudor style bungalows, Levi smiled, recalling his fascination with that particular type when he was younger. Those homes had seemed the stuff of fairy tales to him as a child—Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and all those dwarves who liked to follow Snow White around. He liked imagining those types of characters resided there, in Honeymoon Hills. He hadn’t been an idiot child or anything, just had a tendency to try and escape reality whenever possible, because fantasy was oftentimes preferable to real life.

The instant Ruby had seen the photograph of the light pink, Streamline Moderne-style bungalow, she decided it belonged to her. She immediately fell in love with the Art Deco influenced architecture, though Levi suspected it had more to do with the pastel pink painted stucco than anything else.

The woman seriously loved the color pink.

Built in 1931, Ruby's bungalow was a rarity in Honeymoon Hills, constructed mainly of concrete and stucco, the curved corners and glass brick provided a sense of motion and all the filtered daylight made the interior feel light and airy. The low, horizontal, streamlined appearance and flat roof with no cornices or eaves made it stand out amongst all the others around it—much in the same way Ruby had always stood out in a crowd.

Turning onto Euclid Street, Levi frowned, seeing a squad car coming toward him from the opposite direction. A wave of nausea came over him, and he punched the gas as he maneuvered the car up the slight incline. His heart nearly stopped as he rounded the top of the small hill only to spot an ambulance parked in Ruby’s driveway. He flung open the driver’s side door before bringing the car to a tire-screeching halt on the street in front of Ruby’s house. Cursing under his breath, Levi fumbled with the seat belt release which prevented him from exiting the car quickly enough.

Within seconds he was flying up the sidewalk that led to her front door which was standing wide open. He eyed the busted lock while sprinting through the front door, doing his best to keep the ever-growing panic boiling inside from taking him over completely. Levi stepped into the small foyer unsure what to do or where to go for a split second before racing past his old bedroom and poking his head into Ruby's to find no one was in there.

“Momma!” he called out, rushing back out to the foyer and past the dining room. It wasn’t until he rounded the corner into the small kitchen that Levi spotted the paramedics standing in the living area at the back of the house.

His heart sank as the two men looked his direction.

“Mom?”

“She’s okay, sir,” one of the men said, making eye contact with him, further reassuring Levi that all was well. Or as well as they could be considering there was an ambulance parked outside the house.

Levi nodded, acknowledging he’d heard the man while scooching past him so he could get to Ruby.

She pulled the oxygen mask from her face and rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, darling, just had a dizzy spell.”

She placed the mask back over her mouth and nose and took several deep breaths. Levi shut his eyes, trying to calm his nerves, only to feel Ruby grab his hand and give it a squeeze of reassurance.

He could hear the paramedics talking in low voices behind him and Levi struggled to listen as they discussed that the chief complaint was pain noted from the contusion in the temporal area of the skull from where Ruby had fallen and bumped her head on the floor.

“Are you bleeding anywhere?” Levi asked Ruby, who shook her head that she was not.

Levi went back to eavesdropping long enough to hear that her breathing had begun to normalize but her lungs sounded wheezy, bilaterally.

No big surprise there
.

Her pulse was also strong, but seemed to be a little fast and her blood pressure was slightly elevated.

“But that is a normal reaction to the stress of all this, isn’t it?” Levi asked, finally tearing his gaze away from his mother in order to turn around and face them.

The second EMT looked at Levi and for a moment, Levi thought he might be having a cardiac event all his own. The oddest sensation came over him, one he’d never experienced before and he immediately felt a light layer of sweat flush across the surface of his skin.

He smiled through the light-headed, slightly intoxicated feeling.

The paramedic eyed him somewhat suspiciously which registered that whatever was happening to Levi was evident to those around him. Since the EMT decided not to mention it, Levi saw no reason he shouldn’t breeze right on past the tingles and mild case of nausea that continued to plague him.

“Hey…there, you.” Levi smiled weakly while inappropriately staring into the bluest pair of eyes the world had no doubt ever known. They were arresting, those eyes—even the deepest, most crystal clear tropical waters of the Caribbean suffered in comparison.

Watching intently as the man came back around the coffee table and crouched down next to Ruby, Levi inventoried his dark, black hair and sexy stubble-covered masculine jawline which were softened by the warm smile as the man stared up at Levi from the floor where he knelt, attending to Ruby.

Levi felt it, like a fist in the gut.

“Say, you okay?” the guy asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“So-
whoa
-kay,” Levi muttered, taking note that Ruby had also picked up on the fact something was up with her baby boy. “Though insulting me by noting my inadequate allure seems slightly uncalled for."

The guy’s forehead crinkled up, visibly confused for a few moments before the dimples and perfect leading man smile spread across his face. “My apologies, sir. I wasn’t referencing your physique so much as the slightly pained expression you were exhibiting.”

Levi sat down on the other side of Ruby and did his level best to concentrate on the man’s condescending tone as it irritated Levi and counteracted the dream-like spell he’d been under since laying eyes on him.

“What the hell happened here?” Levi began looking around for the nurse he was over-paying to watch after his mother. “And where the hell is Carrie?”

“Carrie?” Sexy, blue-eyes asked. “I’m Jake by the way… this is my partner, Craig.”

“There was no one else here when we arrived on the scene,” Craig said from behind him.

“Mom, where is your nurse?” He was staring at Jake again, but managed to tear his gaze away from the hypnotizing twin pools of mind-numbing sexiness long enough to turn his attention back to his mother. “She’s supposed to have a nurse. I’m certainly still paying for a nurse.”

Ruby plastered on her best, wide-eyed, innocent-of-any-wrong-doing expression and shrugged, clutching the mask to her mouth as if her very existence now depended upon each gulp of life-giving oxygen.

“You have got to stop firing the nurses I hire, Mom. Eventually we’ll have run through all the nurses in the world and then where will we be?”

Ruby scowled, pulling the mask away. “This one prayed constantly, it was annoying and she refused to stop doing it when I asked her to.”

Levi sighed, brushing a few strands of her platinum-dyed blonde hair off her forehead. He was trying to count to ten so he didn’t come off like a monster-child by yelling at Ruby in front of complete strangers. He was also attempting to keep his focus on his mother and avoid getting lost in Paramedic Jake’s dangerous Bermuda Triangle-like gaze once again.

“I asked nicely,” Ruby muttered, “but she completely ignored me.”

“I’m sure you did, Momma.” Levi looked at Jake, but focused on his forehead. “Is she really all right?”

“She has a nasty bump on her head from where she fell and though she was conscious when we arrived on the scene, she was disoriented. She now appears to be lucid—doesn’t seem to have any trouble communicating, either.” Jake winked at Ruby.

“Every time I said a curse word the woman would bow her head and pray,” Ruby said, as if to further justify Nurse Carrie’s dismissal.

Levi scowled at her. “She must have been praying a lot.”

Jake and his partner both started chuckling when Ruby reached up and smacked Levi in the arm. He straightened out the hem of her floor length pink silk nightgown and tucked in the throw currently covering her legs.