Chapter Two

Bart watched Maisie in her hospital bed in the emergency room from the edge of the privacy curtain. He was allowed inside, but he refused to sit down. How could he sit with that antsy woman sitting straight up in the hospital bed?

Under the harsh lights of the emergency waiting room, Maisie had woken up in a big way. She wouldn’t even pull a blanket over her knees. Instead, she clicked her tongue and rubbed her fingers together with her left hand in a motion that was almost a snap. The doctor on hand had decided that she only needed an x-ray of her head to see if she’d broken any bones in her temple. If she hadn’t, he would release her immediately. She had already been taken for the x-ray and now she and Bart were waiting for the doctor to return with the results.

Maisie seemed surprised when Bart said he wanted to stay to make sure she was alright. After all, he did his best to make himself useful. That meant he was behaving like an errand boy who fetched her a can of pop and refreshed her ice pack.

Her gaze was all over him, observing his hands in his pockets and how he kept trying to lean against a wall, but since there wasn’t one, he had a few near misses with the curtain separating her from the patient in the next bed. He hoped he wasn’t having one of those moments where there was a huge gap between what he thought he looked like and what he actually looked like. He thought he looked too good to be true, but maybe he actually looked like a creep who was only helping her because he was afraid she’d press charges.

With the most unmistakable head-wave, she motioned for Bart to take the chair next to her bed.

Bart was happy to oblige and immediately took the chair, leaning toward her so he could hear her without her having to shout in the middle of the night in the emergency room of a hospital.

“Can you take me through what happened outside the restaurant again?” she asked quietly, though her eyes showed a sharpness that hadn’t been there before.

He was pleased to have something to talk about and took her through it with his best air of casual efficiency. It worked on most women… Well, it worked on most people.

When he was finished, she lay back on her pillows. “I have to thank you for staying. Obviously, it was not your fault that I got pegged in the head while walking through the bar. You weren’t even the one to pick me up on accident. You’ve been wonderful, but would you mind stepping out while I talk to the doctor?” Here, she blushed artfully.

The blush was so perfect that Bart agreed to what was expected of him without a sideways glance. However, the doctor hadn’t arrived yet, so they sat in silence.

Finally, Maisie broke it. “Tell me about yourself, Bart. I’m bored.”

“I’m a banker. I work all over the world, but this is my home base. What do you do?”

“Nothing. I’m looking for a job.”

“You look very well dressed for someone who’s unemployed,” he said playfully, looking down and appraisingly at her clothes. “What did you do before you dumped your boy?”

“Oh, I was an assistant at a veterinary clinic, but I decided to stop doing that when I moved here. I don’t really want to work with animals anymore.”

That caught Bart’s attention. He had just been thinking about animals and their human counterparts.

“Why?” he asked curiously.

“I… lost my stomach for it,” she said, sounding as traumatized as any war vet.

That struck him as very interesting. He compared people to animals for his amusement while she held animals when they died. No wonder she wasn’t an animal when he looked at her. She was somewhere beyond that.

He left it alone and pressed for different details. “Do you have any idea what you want to do instead?”

“I want to work close to my house. I’ve been applying for jobs within walking distance. I have a couple of interviews on Monday. Do you think my head will look okay by then? I’d hate to go with a big ugly bruise on my forehead.”

“Let's hope so,” he said brightly.

At that moment, the doctor came in and Bart ducked out as promised. As he walked the empty hospital halls, he thought about the cute way Maisie acted. He was so charmed that he forgot all about what the doctor was likely to report.

Half an hour later, Maisie met him at the front door.

“I’m fine,” she said with a bright smile. “No broken bones in my head, which is always a good sign. Why do you have a limo?”

“I usually don't. This weekend was my cousin’s wedding and I hired a few to haul around my masses of relatives. Although I do hire the same company and get the same driver whenever I have to escort more than three people around, so I know Klein pretty well. We have done a few very long rides together.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Am I keeping you from a wedding party?” Maisie asked in alarm.

“No,” he lied, before telling the truth. “The wedding was this afternoon. I just kept the limo on hand until the end of the day.”

“But…” Maisie sputtered in alarm. “Whatever consequences there were going to be for the driver for picking up the wrong girl, they could never have been pinned on you. None of this is your problem.”

Bart chuckled softly. “Who said it was?” He implied that he wanted to be there, giving her a look that the trouble he took for her was well worth it.

She gave him a cautionary glance in reply.

The limo pulled up to the curb just as they emerged from the hospital and Bart helped Maisie inside. After he joined her, she gave Klein her address and they started rolling out of the U-shaped driveway.

When they arrived at her house, Bart thought something must be wrong. They must be in the wrong place. He double-checked the numbers and the street name before he got out of the back of the limo and helped Maisie to her feet.

“This is where you live?”

“Yes,” she said with a placid smile.

The house she had directed him to was one of those odd houses that was between two large buildings. It had once been on a street with lots of houses, but those other houses had been bought as a parcel and torn down to make room for bigger buildings. Her house was the only one left on the block.

A high wooden fence surrounded it. Maisie stood in front of the gate and fiddled with her phone. It was past one in the morning, but she was oddly giddy. “Would you like to see my garden?” she offered with a smile.

Bart nodded. He would have gone with her into a port-a-potty if she had asked him to with that smile on her face.

She pressed a button on her phone and Bart saw lights turn on through the slats in the fence.

Inside, he was surrounded by the most charming space. What she showed him was everything a lady’s garden should be. The grass was green and springy. There were stepping stones arranged like checks on a chess board. She had a topiary in the shape of a knight like it had just stepped off the board. Tiny fairy lights lit the climbing plants on the fence whereas strings of patio lights dangled from the pagoda. Roses bloomed everywhere and bleeding hearts fell.

He was immediately enchanted.

“Shall I send away my driver?” Bart asked, approaching her swing. It was covered in pillows and large enough for him to lounge on. “I’ll just sleep here.”

Maisie’s face fell. “I think I just wanted to show it to someone because I haven’t lived here long enough to make friends. I don’t think I wanted to show you specifically, so please don’t read anything into it.”

At that moment, Bart’s brain caught on fire. What was she saying? It sounded like she was saying something that meant that she didn’t see him as a potential lover. He suffered from a moment of indecision where he wasn’t sure if he should stalk over to her like the hungry wolf he was, or if he should sprawl himself out on her swing, and simply refuse to leave.

At that moment, she opened the gate for him and said pleasantly, “It’s late. Thank you so much for taking me to the hospital, taking care of me there, and bringing me home. You’ve been lovely, but I need to go inside.”

Bart might have protested. He might have whined and complained about being thrown out so quickly, but the angle at which Maisie was standing changed his mind. A light shone directly on the bump on her head. Whatever he thought about her, him, and the night with fairy lights, she wasn’t well. He needed to be sensitive.

“Of course,” he said, coming toward her with an easy gait. “May I have your number, so I can text you tomorrow to make sure you’re alright?”

Maisie nodded and gave him her number.

He sent her a sample text and after seeing her receive it he wished her a good night and slipped out the gate. He waved as she closed it behind her and disappeared from view.

Instead of sitting in the back of the limo, Bart got in the front with Klein. “Okay, take me home and then you’re finished for the evening.”

“You mean for the middle of the night?” Klein replied brazenly. “I should be pissed at you for having me work so many extra hours, but I’m so thankful you smoothed that over. She’s not even mad that I accidentally picked her up from the restaurant, is she?”

“No, I don’t think she’s mad. I think she needed help and we were there to help her. Besides, I’m completely enamored with her. Did you see her? Of course, you saw her. She’s perfect.”

Klein took his hand away from the steering wheel to rest his elbow by the window and cover his mouth with his hand. Was he attempting to disguise a chuckle?

“What?” Bart asked.

“Nothing. I’ve just seen you with a few other women who you thought were perfect. I mean, I don’t mind it when you fall into the two-week love cycle. I get a bit of business and it’s nicer to work for you because you’re not rowdy and neither are the women you like. It’s just a little sad to see them all mascara-stained and miserable the last time I drive them.”

“It’s not my fault that happens,” Bart asserted. “I tried to be in love with them and it didn’t work. Sometimes I even wonder what the heck love is and why I can never find it. I like them. I find them loveable. I get to know them. They get to know me and it turns out that everything was an act. I was acting so I could get the girl and they were acting in a way they hoped would please me. It’s a big pointless display of ego clashing against ego. She wants to be desirable so badly that she can’t say what she really thinks and my ego will be crushed if she won’t let me win her over.”

“You’re just as bad as your brother. If you know that’s the cycle, why don’t you break it?” Klein injected.

“How?”

“Don’t play the game in the same way. Why don’t you just tell her what you want from her up front without the act? Just say what you want.”

Bart rolled his eyes. “That would never work. You have to dance carefully if you want to get a decent woman.”

“The goal isn’t to win this particular woman. The goal is to cut through the lies and just tell her the truth. If she likes the truth, she’ll like you.”

Bart scoffed and didn’t answer. He was thinking about his lone wolf status and how he liked semi-solitude more than he wanted to be paired up with any of the women he knew. They were like models. They had to be shown off.

Who did he have to show them off to?

His family? His brother? Who would try to take any woman he thought was attractive. His sister? Who had children of her own and only liked cackling over his choices.

The dating carousel was best when he didn’t have to make a decision to get off and the ride didn’t have to stop.