A Quarter for a Kiss Page 2

  “We’re going to head out,” Tom said to Mitch, “but I wanted to give you a check first. I talked my company into making a small grant.”

  Of course, the way Tom had said it, you’d never know that it was his company, nor his money—nor that he was using “small” as a relative term. Mitch took the folded check without looking at it.

  “Listen, buddy, every bit helps. Thank you so much, and thanks for coming.”

  The two men shook hands, and then Mitch shook my hand as well. We said goodbye, and Tom and I departed, walking silently through the packed parking lot toward our rental car.

  “You were right, Callie,” he said nonchalantly, pressing a button on his key chain to unlock the car. “Giving away the money in person really is kind of fun.”

  I was about to reply when we heard Mitch calling Tom’s name. We turned to see the man running toward us, breathless, his eyes filled with disbelief.

  “I don’t understand,” he gasped, holding up the check. “This is so much. Is it some kind of joke?”

  “No joke, Mitch,” Tom said. “We’re affiliated with the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation. That’s a grant.”

  “A grant?”

  “Yeah, we give them out all the time. Callie, what is it you like to say when you give grants to people?”

  I smiled.

  “Basically,” I said, going into my spiel, “we want you to know that the best way you can say thanks is to take that money and use it to further your mission. The foundation believes strongly in what you’re trying to accomplish, and we just wanted to have some small part in furthering your efforts.”

  To my surprise, Mitch’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Your generosity leaves me speechless,” he said finally. “Won’t you come back inside? Let me tell my wife. She’ll be so excited. Maybe we can get a picture for the newsletter or the website or something.”

  I looked at Tom, but he seemed decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Mitch,” I said, “we really prefer to do this in a discreet manner. Just tell Jill that the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation gives the money with love and with God’s blessings. We’d rather not receive any individual recognition.”

  Bewildered, he looked back down at the check.

  “And you promise this isn’t a joke?” he tried one more time.

  “No joke,” Tom laughed. “I give you my word, buddy. It’s for real.”

  With a final sincere thanks, Mitch turned and headed back to the building. We stood there and watched until he went inside and the door closed behind him.

  On impulse, I turned and threw my arms around Tom’s neck. Startled, after a moment he hugged me back.

  “You are such a good man,” I whispered, feeling absolutely, utterly, and completely in love.

  He laughed, pulling me in tightly for an embrace.

  “Wow,” he replied. “This giving-away-money thing gets better all the time.”

  Knowing the clock was ticking closer toward our flight times, we managed to pull apart and get into the car. He started it up and pulled out of the parking lot, driving toward the airport.

  We were quiet as we went, both lost in our own thoughts. As we wove our way through traffic, I considered our relationship and the long and winding path my life had taken since my husband’s death. This coming summer would mark four years since Bryan was killed, and in one way it seemed like yesterday, and in another it seemed like decades ago. My husband had been my first true love, the sweetheart I had met at 16 and married at 25. We’d had four wonderful years together as husband and wife, but that had all come crashing to an end that fateful day when we went water-skiing and Bryan was hit by a speedboat. The boat’s driver went to prison for manslaughter, but I also went into a sort of prison myself—a self-imposed prison of mourning, of loneliness.

  Only in the last six months had I allowed myself to consider the possibility that there might be life for me beyond my husband’s death. Tom and I had developed a good, strong friendship through our many work-related conversations over the phone, and then, slowly, that friendship had started taking on other dimensions. We finally met in person last fall, when Tom received word that I had been hurt in an investigation and raced halfway around the world to be by my side and make certain I was all right. We had spent a mere 12 hours together—just long enough to begin falling in love—and then we were forced to endure a four-month separation while he went back to Singapore on important business and I healed from my injuries and continued my work with his foundation in the U.S.

  Then three weeks ago, in the very heart of spring, we had been joyously reunited. Showing up in a hot air balloon, Tom had swept me away to a gorgeous vacation spot in the North Carolina mountains, where we planned to stay a week or so and give ourselves the opportunity to see if our relationship really could work face-to-face. What we had found was that we were so compatible, so comfortable, and so suddenly and deeply in love that it was nearly impossible to end our vacation and return to our regular lives.

  Now, however, our time together had come to an end.

  “There’s the car rental return,” Tom said suddenly, pulling me from my thoughts. He followed the signs and turned into the lot, but instead of heading straight to the busy rental return area, he veered over to an empty parking spot nestled behind a big truck. He put the car in park but left the motor running.

  “Maybe we should say our goodbyes here,” he told me, “instead of out in the middle of the busy airport.”

  I nodded, surprised when my eyes suddenly filled with tears. I didn’t want to say goodbye at all. Tom’s cell phone began ringing from his gym bag, but we ignored it.

  “Callie, have I told you that the past three weeks have been the happiest weeks of my life?”

  The ringing stopped. In the quiet of the car, I held on to his hand, looking deeply into his eyes.

  “They have been incredible,” I replied. There were many, many moments we had shared that I would relive in my mind in the coming days. “I don’t know if I have the strength to say goodbye to you or not.”

  Tom reached up and smoothed a loose lock of hair behind my ear. Such tenderness was in his gaze that I thought it might break my heart.

  “Callie, I have something for you,” he whispered. He started to reach into his pocket, and I swallowed hard, wondering what it could be. Then his phone began to ring again.

  “You better see who it is,” I said, sighing. “It might be important.”

  By the time he got the phone out from his gym bag, the call had been disconnected. Tom was pressing buttons, trying to see who had called, when my phone started ringing from my purse. I dug it out, surprised to see that the number on my screen matched the number that had just called his.

  “Hello?” I asked somewhat hesitantly.

  “Callie?” a woman’s voice cried from very far away. “Is that you?”

  “This is Callie,” I answered. “Who is this?”

  “This is Stella,” the voice said. “Stella Gold.”

  I put my hand over the phone and mouthed to Tom, It’s Eli’s wife.

  Eli Gold was my mentor, a friend of Tom’s, and the person responsible for bringing the two of us together.

  “Stella?” I asked, trying to picture a woman I didn’t know very well at the other end of the line. I had met her the day she married my dear friend Eli, but she and I had not really spoken since, except for those times when I called their house and she had been the one to answer the phone. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, Callie, I’m so glad I finally reached you. I need you. I need your help. I need Tom Bennett, also, if you know how to reach him.”

  “What is it?” I asked, my heart surging.

  “It’s Eli,” she sobbed. “He’s in the hospital.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “Callie, he’s been shot.”

  Two

  Eli had asked for both of us to come. So while Tom dealt with returning the rental car, I went straight to the airline ticketing counter and mad
e the necessary changes to our flights. Because Stella and Eli lived in Cocoa Beach, Florida, we would fly into Orlando and then rent another car and drive east to the coast. According to Stella, Eli was in the hospital in Cape Canaveral and about to go to the operating room.

  The best I could do was a connection through Atlanta that would get us to Orlando around midnight. We probably had another hour’s drive from there to the hospital, so once everything had been arranged, I called Stella back and told her to expect us between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M. It was going to be a long night.

  Tom and I met back at security, and then we filed through and found our gate. Mostly, I was operating on autopilot, somewhat in shock. The flight to Atlanta seemed to take forever, and the connection from there on to Orlando felt like an eternity. Despite the comforts of first class, my mind was filled with so many emotions I had to remind myself several times to breathe.

  Tom and I had barely said two words to each other on the first flight, though once the second plane took off out of Atlanta, he reached for my hand and asked me if I was okay, if I wanted to talk.

  “No, and no,” I said softly, giving his hand a quick squeeze before pulling mine away. How could I begin to explain all of the confusion that was swirling in my brain?

  Eli had been shot, caught in the chest by a sniper’s bullet, and now he lay in the hospital teetering between life and death. I leaned away from Tom and rested my head against the seat, my heart pounding as strongly as it had since we first received Stella’s phone call. I was relieved that Tom didn’t press me to talk but simply took out his laptop and turned his attention to the screen.

  Don’t die, Eli! my mind shouted. I knew I should be praying, but I was paralyzed with shock and fear, too numb to do anything but hold in my sobs and keep from screaming.

  Eli was like a father to me, and the thought of him dying was difficult enough. But for him to have been senselessly shot in some random act of violence was so horrifying that it defied explanation. I closed my eyes, unable to stop the image of him walking down the street toward Stella and then suddenly falling down, his chest struck with the bullet that nicked his right lung and tore through his liver. She’d said the sound was far away, like an echo without an origination, and when Eli first fell to the ground she had merely thought he’d tripped. But then she ran to him and saw blood on his shirt and knew that something was terribly wrong.

  According to Stella, she had been so consumed with getting help for her bleeding husband that it hadn’t even occurred to her until later that she might’ve been in danger too. But the sniper had not shot at anyone else.

  Now she was at the hospital, waiting as Eli went through surgery. The last thing Eli had said to her before he lost consciousness was that he needed to talk to Tom right away and that he needed me as well. Stella wasn’t sure what that meant, but Eli had been so adamant that she had attempted to reach the two of us before she called anyone else, even her own children. As we flew through the nighttime sky, we were left to wonder why Eli had asked for us—and if the violence perpetrated against him had been random or deliberate.

  I opened my eyes and glanced at Tom’s computer screen. He was composing an e-mail to his office staff, telling them he wouldn’t be flying home tonight as planned. Not wanting to be nosy, I caught the words “unexpected emergency” and “will be in touch” before turning my head away. I realized I didn’t know much about Tom’s relationship with Eli or how or when they first met. I knew only that they were friends and that they shared a great mutual respect for each other. Eli was the original connection between me and Tom, the person who first recognized the fact that a man who wanted to give away some of his millions could do worse than employ a woman who held a private investigator’s license and a law degree with a specialty in the nonprofit sector. Eli had coordinated the entire employment process, putting Tom in touch with me so that he could offer me the job of director of research for the new J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation and then convincing me to take the job Tom was offering.

  I owed Eli everything, not only for introducing me to Tom and for my wonderful job, but also for the years he spent training me to be a detective and for his continued guidance and friendship now that he was retired and married and living in Cocoa Beach. It made me physically sick to think of the sniper in Florida who had positioned himself in some secluded spot so that he could shoot our beloved Eli.

  “Callie, you’re trembling,” Tom said, his arm pressed against mine.

  I shook my head in denial, but he closed his laptop, put it away, and turned toward me.

  “You might not want to talk,” he said in a soft voice, “but why don't we take a moment to pray?”

  Gathering my hands in his, he bowed his head and whispered a long, soothing prayer, asking for protection and peace and healing. About halfway through, I began to calm down, and by the end I knew that whatever happened, the Lord had His hand on Eli—and on us as well.

  “Please don’t shut me out,” he said, handing me a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “Talk to me, Callie.”

  “It’s just hard,” I admitted. “I’m scared. I don’t want someone else I love to die.”

  “He’ll be out of surgery by the time we get there,” he said. “You’ll be able to talk to him yourself and see that he’s going to be okay.”

  “I hope so, Tom.” Tears threatened to fill my eyes again, but I blinked them away and sat up straight when I saw the flight attendant approaching.

  She asked if we would like anything to drink and we both asked for coffee, knowing we would probably be up the rest of the night. Thinking of what this sudden trip did to my own schedule, I took out my laptop, signed up for in-flight internet, and e-mailed Harriet to let her know what was going on. Then I e-mailed Lindsey, my dog-sitter. This was the third extension in three weeks with her, and I was hoping she would be flexible again, as she usually was. I thought of my little Maltese, Sal, and felt a twinge of guilt. One of these days I was going to come home and Sal wasn’t even going to remember me.

  The rest of the flight was uneventful. Looking around, I realized that the first-class cabin was empty except for one woman who sat in the front row. I could see only the side of her carefully coifed hair and her left hand, which sat on the arm rest, a diamond ring the size of a small country on her fourth finger. I glanced down at my own hand, at my wedding ring, the simple gold band Bryan had slipped onto my finger the day we were married. I had promised to love him until death, and then I had been forced to fulfill that promise far too quickly.

  Eli had never made any promises to me like that, except that he would always be there for me. Now it was my turn to be there for him. I could only hope that whatever he needed me to do, I was up to the challenge. Certainly, I was willing to move heaven and earth to keep him safe and make him whole again.

  We arrived at the Orlando airport right on schedule, and then we claimed our bags and found our rental car. Tom drove as I navigated, the Florida roads dark and flat and straight all the way to Cape Canaveral. When we reached the hospital parking lot, I thanked Tom for being such a calm and reassuring presence in this difficult time.

  “I know how much you love Eli,” he said simply, choosing a parking spot. “I’m just glad I was here to help.”

  “What about you?” I asked as we got out of the car and walked quickly toward the building. “You care about him too.”

  Tom held the door for me and we went inside. At the information desk, we were directed to intensive care.

  “I respect Eli and I like him very much,” Tom said. “But he and I don’t have the history you two share.”

  I thought about that history as we took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Eli had simply been a friend of my father’s when he gave me a summer job the year I was 16. Little did I know, that summer job would help determine the course of my life, and Eli would eventually become one of my very best friends. I worked for him for nine years, until the day I graduated from law school.

  We reached
intensive care and asked at the desk if we could see him. We were told he was still in surgery, but the nurse pointed us toward the waiting room and said his wife would be in there.

  At first I didn’t recognize Stella. She was the only person in the room, a tiny blonde woman asleep in a chair in a corner, wearing a costume made entirely of faux fur. From her toes to her neck, she was fuzzy and brown, with a lighter brown furry circle at her tummy. I tried to reconcile that with the woman I had seen on her wedding day, wearing an expensive rose-colored silk suit.

  “Stella?”

  She sat up and then jumped up, racing over to grip me in a fierce, furry hug.

  “Callie, Tom, I’m so glad you came!”

  Then she burst into tears. I put my arm around her and guided her back to the chairs, where we sat.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “They were able to repair the damage to his lung, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Right now he’s still unconscious and hooked up to a bunch of machines.”

  “Are you here by yourself?” Tom asked.

  “Yes. My sons said they’d come tomorrow. I can’t reach my daughter—she’s been traveling.”

  Tom and I glanced at each other, and I wondered if he knew Stella’s three children. I had had the pleasure, if you could call it that, of meeting them at the wedding. All three seemed petty and spoiled and suspicious of the man who had stolen their mother’s heart. Stella was quite wealthy, and I think they saw Eli not as a companion for their mom in her golden years but as a threat to the nest egg that she was supposed to leave to them someday.

  “It was all so fast,” she said tearfully. “Today—well, yesterday, I guess—was hug day at the home, and I—”

  “Hug day?” I interrupted.

  She gestured toward the seat across from us, and I turned to see a large teddy bear head and two furry paws sitting there, matches for the costume Stella was wearing.

  “Every Friday afternoon I go to the local nursing home dressed as a teddy bear and give out hugs,” she explained. “It’s my ministry.”