Mended Hearts (New Beginnings Series) (5 page)

Gracie nodded. “I know what a shock out of the blue can do to you.” Some memory caused that unnamed emotion to pass over her face again.

“Well, it’s not like you don’t expect that something could happen out there. It’s not a shock in that sense. It’s just that you don’t let yourself think it’s going to.” He seemed to shake off the mood. “Anyway . . . everything’s still attached and I’m getting the help I need. It could be a lot worse. I’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow will bring.”

“That’s really brave of you, Luca.”

He moved closer and stared intently into her eyes, a streetlight glowing down around them. The tiny purple stones dangling on chains from her ears were winking in the soft light. “I showed you mine. Wanna show me your scars?”

She turned her head away and pretended to look down the street. “I can’t,” she choked out.

Sonny stepped back and lightened his tone. “Okay. I’m here, though—for anything. We can talk. I can recommend a grocery store or a laundry mat. I’ll help you find a dentist. We can just hang out if you’re lonely. Whatever.”

Gracie pushed away from the car, and flung her arms around his neck. “Thanks, Luca.”

It happened so suddenly and ended so quickly, he didn’t have time to react. He couldn’t have wrapped his arms around her anyway, he told himself, the way he was leaning on his crutches. It warmed his heart, though, and he smiled down at her.

“Okay, Gracie . . . what do I tell Mathias when I call him tomorrow? That you’re doing great and starting your second job on Monday? And you love your new apartment? Anything else?”

“Oh no . . .
You’re
not going to call him.
I
am—as soon as I get home.” She grinned wickedly.

“He’s about to catch hell, isn’t he?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s going on four o’clock in the morning out there. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow?”

“No, I think I really miss my brother and I need to talk to him
now
,” she said sarcastically.

Sonny snorted, “Please . . . whatever you do . . . don’t tell him I ratted him out. Because I didn’t, you know. You figured it out yourself. I’d appreciate not being thrown under the bus.”

Gracie laughed. “Of course I won’t. Friends
never
throw friends under the bus. And you’ve spent all night on an excruciatingly painful leg convincing me that we’re friends. Right?”

She reached behind her and pulled the car door open, winked at him and slid inside. After he watched her pull out of the lot and drive away, he chuckled and gimped toward his truck to head home. As he hoisted himself up and cramm
ed his injured leg into the cab he realized he’d probably need that pain pill tonight after all.

CHAPTER 4

It was early Sunday afternoon and Gracie was a little bored. She’d finished her laundry on Saturday before she had to be at Savannah’s. Cleaning her tiny apartment took no time at all. She’d finished clipping coupons from the Sunday paper and was glancing over the movie listings. There was nothing worth seeing for the
high price of admission.

She’d had a bit of a guilty twinge since the day before, because she couldn’t work up enough nerve to call and check on Luca. He’d been in obvious pain when she last saw him in the wee hours of Saturday morning—all because of her. Coming out to the bar had been a favor to Mathias. But staying
so late had been a favor to her. It was obvious he’d pushed himself too far and should have been home taking care of his leg. The least she could do was call and check on him. For all she knew he was flat on his back with his knee swollen to the size of a watermelon.

She finally picked up her cell and searched through the contacts for his number. He’d
entered it into her phone on Friday night so she could reach him if she ever needed anything. She took a deep breath and hit the send button.

Luca connected on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Um . . . hey, Luca. It’s me . . . Gracie Laurent.”

His voice
brightened a bit. “Gracie! Hi! Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah! I’m fine. I’m just calling to check on you.
How’s your knee? I know it wasn’t doing very well when we left the other night.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, well . . . I may have pushed it a little hard the last couple of days. But I’m resting it today. Just vegging out on my couch.”

“Oh? You should have called if you needed help with something yesterday. I didn’t have to be at Savannah’s until seven.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I had a birthday party to go to yesterday afternoon.”

Gracie giggled. “Really—a birthday party? Couldn’t miss the beer keg and the strippers, huh?”

Sonny snorted. “Not that kind of birthday party. I’m talking cake and ice cream . . . balloons . . . and about fifteen five-year-olds.”

“Oh, good. I like those kind of parties better.” She smiled. “So do you have a
lot
of five-year-old friends?”

“
It was my XO’s son’s party. I thought I’d go fill in the best I could for him ‘cause he’s still in Afghanistan. It’s hard on the kids when their dads miss these things. I know it’s not the same, but . . .”

“That’s really nice, Luca,” she said softly. “So you’re laid up today, huh?”

“Yep. I guess I haven’t been following doctor’s orders too well and I’m paying for it today. The swelling is really bad. I don’t want to delay starting rehab, so I’d better start taking better care of it. You know, stay off it.”

“Do you want me to bring you carry-out for dinner? Or I could go by the grocery store if you need provisions.”

Sonny laughed. “Are you kidding me? I have so much food here it’s insane. I could start my own humanitarian refugee camp for the Red Cross with all the food I have here. Hey! I know what you can do for me, though . . .”

“Anything you need . . .”

“Come over and help me eat some of this stuff. It’s all home-cooked and really good. The guys’ wives have really outdone themselves. We could have a smorgasbord. I was just perusing the pay-per-view movies and you could keep me company. I’ll let you have first dibs on the leftovers
and
pick the movie.”

“Sounds good, but you’ll rest better without me there.”

“No, I won’t. You’ll be here to police me. Every time I try to get up, you can stop me. And when my ice pack gets too warm, you can switch it out with a fresh one.” He wheedled, “Come, on Gracie, I’ll even let you fix my dinner plate for me and bring me a tray. What do you say?”

“Well . . . the switching out the ice pack part is really tempting. But how can I say no to the extreme privilege of bringing you a dinner tray?”

“Ple-e-e-ase?”

“Oh, alright!” Gracie laughed.

Sonny gave her directions to his place and she hung up. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She had on old shorts and a tank top. Maybe she should change, but she didn’t want him to think she was trying to impress him, because she really wasn’t. She decided the shorts would be fine, but changed into a pink baby doll t-shirt. There . . . still really casual, but not too grubby.

Gracie
pulled a liter of lemonade and one of Diet Coke out of her ‘fridge on the way out the door. Luca didn’t seem the type to stock diet drinks in his refrigerator. She grabbed her handbag and keys and headed out.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Twenty minutes later, she was walking up the steps to the apartment building. An older woman with an impossible shade of red hair was just coming out the front door. She smiled at Gracie and nodded toward the bottles cradled in her arms.

“I haven’t seen you here before, but you must be one of the wives. Luca’s is the first door on the left at the top of the stairs.”

“Um . . .” Gracie didn’t want to mislead her, but she didn’t know what to say. Turns out it didn’t matter, because the magenta—red seemed too mild a word—haired woman had kept going, and was already up the sidewalk.

Gracie went up the stairs and found his door. It was cracked open, but she knocked anyway.

“Come on in, Gracie,” he called.

She pushed the door open and entered his living room. Sure enough, he was propped up on the soft leather sectional sofa that took up
a huge amount of space in the room. There was a low square black coffee table in the center, with the sectional forming a U around three sides of it. He had a really nice flat-screen TV mounted on the wall opposite the sofa.

“Hey!” he said brightly.

“Hi,” she answered “Some red-haired lady sent me on up.”

“
Mrs. Farraday—my landlady. Please forgive the mess.” He was stretched out in a plain white t-shirt and gray cotton shorts. He had the brace off his knee, but it was covered by a bandage and an ice pack. She could see garish scars and angry bruises shooting out around the bandage. The swelling was so bad it seemed the skin should be split wide open. His leg was discolored from thigh to ankle, and there were countless smaller wounds on that leg, as well as some on the other. She guessed those were shrapnel wounds from the RPG.

“Wow . . .” She looked from his leg, up to his eyes. “Luca . . .” she choked out. Now she could see
for herself how badly he’d been injured.

“Hey . . . don’t do that,” he said as he saw her eyes tear up. “It looks a lot worse than it is.” He stretched
his arm out toward a blanket thrown across the back of the sofa and dragged it toward him.

“No, don’t cover up. It’s just a little shocking to see it
for the first time. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

She briskly set her
handbag and bottles on the coffee table and pulled the scattered newspaper off the sofa and stacked it tidily on the table. She took the blanket from him and folded it neatly over the back of the sofa again.

“There. What mess?” she asked.

Sonny grinned at her. “Brought your own drinks, huh?” he asked nodding toward the bottles on the table. “You probably think all I have here is beer.”

“No, but I didn’t think you were the diet soda type.”

“You’d be right about that.”

“What can I get you, Luca?”

He nodded toward the glass next to him. “Nothing. I’m drinking iced tea. If you want some, there’s a pitcher in the ‘fridge. You can put your stuff in there too . . . if you can find room.”

When she opened his refrigerator, she could see what he meant. It was stuffed full of plastic storage containers and foil-wrapped packages. Wow! She found a space big enough for her bottles in the door
, grabbed a clean glass resting in the drain board, and poured a glass of soda over ice.

When she closed the refrigerator doors she notice
d several photos attached to them. She stopped to study them. There was one of a group of men, in battle dress uniform, all cradling assault rifles against their chests. They looked like they’d been ridden hard and put away wet. She studied their faces and found Luca—second from the left—looking nothing like she’d ever seen him look before. That must be his “warrior face.” It was a fearsome thing to see, but they all were wearing that expression. She studied the background and it looked like the most desolate, depressing place she could imagine. She wondered if it was Afghanistan or Iraq—maybe somewhere like Somalia. God knew there were a lot of desolate places in the world.

The next photo was taken on a beach at night,
near a fire pit. It was Luca and two other men. All three were grinning at the camera, their arms slung around each other. She looked from this photo to the first one and recognized one of them as one of the other scary guys cradling his rifle.

The third photo was the most touching. It was a wedding picture. Luca looked gorgeous in his dress whites standing with a man—the groom—who was in both
of the other photos. That man looked over the moon, with the beautiful bride in ivory silk tucked under his arm. She had a tight grip on the groom, but was laughing up into Luca’s face, as if he’d just said something that caught her off-guard. Gracie could tell the three of them were very close and were enjoying sharing a special day.

Sonny called out, “Did you get lost?”

She leaned around the corner to look at him. “Sorry! I was just looking at your photo gallery here. I guess you caught me snooping.”

“Oh.”

She pulled the photos off the ‘fridge and brought them over to lean against the back of the couch near him. She held one of them up. “Who are the bride and groom?” she asked.

“That’s my best friend, Trace McKenna, and his wife, Meg. They got married last fall.”

“She’s beautiful. So’s he.”

Sonny laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell him you said that. That’ll go over big. But he’ll be the first to tell you that
she
is. Meg’s a professional dancer. She used to perform all over the world, but it got to be too much, I think. She’s the head of the contemporary dance program at the San Diego Dance Institute.” He chuckled. “I can say that and understand what it means now. I’ve learned a little about dance since Meg came around.”