glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten-thirty. Surely her friends hadn’t come home this early on a Friday night.
She picked up the receiver.
“Drahy!”
“Great-Gramma, what are you doing up? It’s way past your bedtime.”
“Pfft. At my age there is no such thing as bedtime. You fall asleep when you’re tried; you wake up when you’re ready. Besides, Old Blue Eyes has the colic. He ate your father’s bib overalls, metal snaps and all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about Frank Sinatra.”
“He’ll be all right. What I’m worried about is you.”
“Me?”
“Don’t play coy, drahy. Five weeks ago you called me. Great-Gramma, you say, I’ve been hit by the thunderbolt. Then nothing. No call. No letter. You don’t even email your mother. What’s wrong?”
Lacy toyed with her braid. “Well, I don’t think Bennett’s been struck by the thunderbolt. Can this thing be one-sided, Great-Gramma?”
“No. Absolutely not. He’s holding back for some reason. When did you see him last?”
“Well...” Lacy began.
“Tell me everything.”
It was easy to unburden herself to her understanding grandmother. She told her everything before adding, “It’s hopeless. How can I make him fall in love with me when I can’t even be near him?”
“You’re saying he will be coming back to your apartment tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” Great-Gramma commented, her voice changing in pitch. Lacy recognized that curious note. Great-Gramma was up to something.
“Hmm, what?”
“Just interesting to know. That’s all.”
“What are you planning?”
“Me? Planning? I don’t know what you mean. I’m a little ninety-two-year-old lady. What can I plan?”
“I’m not falling for that,” Lacy said. “You’re as sly as a fox.”
“Goodnight, drahy. Frank Sinatra is calling me.”
And then the line went dead. Puzzled, Lacy stared at the phone for a moment before switching it off.
Ten minutes later two staccato knocks sounded on the front door.
“Come in,” Lacy called from her position on the couch.
The door swung open, and Bennett stepped inside. Immediately, her eyes were drawn to his face like a magnet.
“Hi,” he whispered, pushing a strand of hair from his forehead as he closed the door. “How are you feeling?”
“The ankle aches a bit.”
Actually, it ached a lot, but she didn’t want to be a crybaby. And, truth be told, the pain seemed to evaporate whenever he was near, her mind occupied with cataloging his virtues instead of dwelling on the ankle, which now resembled a lump of pasty yeast dough.
Bennett crossed the room carrying a white paper sack with an apothecary logo emblazoned on the side. He sat on the floor beside her and pulled two bottles from the bag.
“These should fix you right up. This one is to reduce the swelling, the other is for pain.” He tried twisting the lid from the bottle of painkillers. It wouldn’t budge. He smiled sheepishly. “Damn childproof caps.”
“Push down on the lid with your palm and turn at the same time,” Lacy advised.
“Guess it’s true what they say. Nurses know more about day-to-day patient care than doctors.”
“Doctors have bigger problems than opening pill bottles.” Lacy tried not to giggle as he continued to battle the stubborn cap.
“Blast it all,” Bennett muttered a few minutes later when he still hadn’t wrenched the wretched thing free.
“Would you like me to try?” Lacy reached out to lay a hand on his wrist.
“No, no. I’ll subdue it.”
The pressure of her hand on his must have flustered him—or at least she hoped that’s what had happened—because the harder he struggled, the more stubbornly the plastic cap held.
Finally, exasperated but not ready to admit masculine defeat, he stuck the cap in his mouth.
He looked so completely incongruous, this serious-minded heart surgeon gnawing on a plastic prescription bottle, that Lacy began to laugh.
“You tink dis is funny?” he mouthed around the cap, sounding all the world like a movie mafioso with a mouthful of cannoli.
She nodded.
His eyes twinkled. He growled low in his throat and attacked the bottle with renewed vigor.
“If you jerk your teeth out,” Lacy managed to wheeze between gales of laughter, “I won’t be able to drive you to the dentist.”
“At weast we got pwenty of pain pills,” he replied.
“If we ever get the thing opened.”
“I never gib up,” he informed her.
Bottle cap planted firmly between his back teeth, Bennett gave a finally twist, and the bottle broke free.
“Yes,” he gloated, removing the cap from his mouth and thrusting both hands over his head in a gesture of jubilant victory.
Men, Lacy thought with a bemused shake of her head.
Triumphantly, he doled out two pills. One from each bottle. A blue one for swelling, a white one for pain.