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“Lovely? Are you kidding? I spent what felt like hours scrubbing every spot and stain out of my uniforms, doing load after load of laundry, then polishing my work shoes. We ran errands all afternoon Saturday and spent Sunday morning at church. Yesterday afternoon while you wrote my brother a lovey-dovey letter, I baked cookies and bread, and then we made the casseroles we can warm up this week instead of having to cook every night. What, exactly, was lovely about any of that?”
Cindy grinned. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, did we?”
“No!” Grace said tersely, feeling her shoulders bunch with tension and inch upward toward her ears. She relaxed them and tried to let go of the residual anger from her encounter with Levi Gibson that had put her in such a grumpy mood. If she didn’t release it, she’d be in a snit all day, which wouldn’t bode well for her or anyone else.
She released a sigh and glanced at her friend. “I’m sorry. It’s just …” Grace had no idea how to explain what she was feeling when she couldn’t begin to understand it herself.
Instead of trying, she turned up the radio as the Carpenters sang about rainy days and Mondays. She could relate as big drops of rain began falling from the sky, marring the dust on her windshield.
The windshield wipers could hardly keep up with the deluge as she turned them on high, wishing she’d made time to wash her car over the weekend. When she reached the hospital, she drove close to the door of the administration building and stopped.
“No use in both of us getting all wet. Have a great day,” she said to her friend and waved her inside, then drove over to the staff parking area. She wished she had an umbrella with her, but the need for one was so infrequent this time of year she’d taken it out along with the ice scraper she used in the winter and stored them in the trunk. By the time she dug it out, she’d be soaked through. Good thing she had a spare uniform inside.
With one last glance around the car to see if she had anything she could use to reach the door without getting drenched, she grabbed her purse and lunch, hopped out of the car, and gasped as the cold rain pinged off her skin. She’d only taken a step when the rain suddenly stopped.
More accurately, the rain had been blocked by an umbrella that appeared above her head. She looked up into the face of none other than the man who had tormented her thoughts all weekend.
“Sergeant Gibson?” she asked, wondering if he’d come back to further insult her. If that were the case, he surely wouldn’t be holding an umbrella so solicitously over her to keep off the rain.
“Morning, ma’am.” He nodded at her, not quite grinning, but certainly not as sour-faced as he’d been when he’d stormed out of the office on Friday. “Let’s get you inside.”
Grace certainly wasn’t going to argue with him. Not when his presence meant she wouldn’t be completely drenched by the time she reached the door.
With long, hurried steps, they raced to the hospital’s main entrance. Levi paused just outside the door. “Would you mind waiting a minute, Nurse Marshall?”
“I’ll wait in the lobby,” she said, wondering what he intended. Rather than stand outside in the cool, damp air watching him, she stepped into the lobby and checked to make sure her stockings and shoes looked presentable. A quick wipe with a tissue remedied the few splotches on her shoes. She straightened in time to see Levi sprinting through the rain with a vase of flowers.
His cowboy hat had kept his head dry, but Grace was sure she could wring water out of his shirt when he stepped inside. A vision of him shirtless made warmth sear her cheeks as he walked over to her and held out the vase.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to her.
She stared at the vase brimming with fragrant lilacs, white tulips, and pink peonies. The arrangement was stunning, but she had no idea why he’d bring it to her.
Hesitantly, she reached out for the vase. “What’s this?”
“An apology,” he said, removing his hat as she took the vase from him.
She held the vase against her mid-section, longing to bury her nose in the divine lilacs. She’d always loved the scent of them when they bloomed in the spring. On their dairy farm, they had several old bushes that bloomed along the back fence. She’d missed them since she’d moved to Boise. The only chance she got to smell flowers now was while walking in the park, or when one of her fellow nurses received them as a gift.
“An apology?” she asked, giving the cute cowboy a curious glance.
“For Friday. I was rude, and I’m sorry. It wasn’t anything you did,” he admitted, appearing both nervous and repentant.
She ignored the way he’d shoved his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans to hide his injury. His right hand clenched his hat, as though he was anxious. Uncertain.
“Do you really think I’m too young, incompetent, and impertinent to be a nurse?” she asked, keeping her expression unreadable, but she shifted her posture, cocking one hip defiantly.
A slow grin spread across his face as he watched her, appearing to keenly observe her every move. His head shook from side to side. “No, ma’am. I think you are more than qualified to do your job, and you were not impertinent. I’m truly sorry for the way I behaved when I was here. The way I acted was unnecessary and unkind, and it bugged me all weekend that I’d been that way with you. Truly, I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven,” Grace said, grinning at him and surrendering to her need to sniff the blooms. She closed her eyes to better savor the fragrance, then opened them to find Levi watching her. “I love lilacs.”
His grin broadened. “We have a bunch of them at the farm just starting to bloom. The tulips were on the north side of the house, or they’d likely be gone for the season.”
“It’s a magnificent bouquet. Do you need the vase back?” she asked.
“No. Ma has dozens of them. She gets the credit for arranging the flowers, though. She said to tell you that she did a better job of raising me than you might have previously considered and to please not hold my behavior against her.”
“I did have a few thoughts about that this weekend.” Grace smiled and hugged the vase a little tighter. “I do thank you, Sergeant Gibson, for these lovely blooms, but I should get to work.”
