Appropriate, Wolf thought with a bemused smile.
“I need a hug,” she told him. Her eyes looked bruised and world-weary. “Or maybe an orgasm to help me forget this night,” she added when he pulled her into his arms. “Is there such a thing as a hugasm?”
“Oh, darlin’.” He kissed the top of her head, loving the feel of her snuggled tight against his heart. Loving the smell of coconut oil and sea air in her hair. “Sex isn’t the answer.”
She pushed back to frown at him.
“Sex is thequestion,” he clarified with a wiggled of his eyebrows. “Andyesis the answer. Always.”
She laughed and then looked at him in wonder. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make me laugh even when laughter should be impossible.”
“You know what Charlie Chaplin said, ‘A day without laughter is a day wasted.’”
She narrowed her eyes. “Just because I said that fortune cookie thing comes in handy, doesn’t mean you should push it.”
He opened his mouth to say something self-deprecating and witty, but she silenced him with a kiss.
Chapter 34
5:56 AM…
Chrissy sat beside her mother’s bed.
Well, it wasn’t hermother’sbed. It was the hospital bed the hospice workers had set up in the middle of Chrissy’s living room.
She’d dragged one of the rocking chairs in from the front porch since it was easy to get it close to the bed. Plus, the gentle rocking motion was soothing as she stared lovingly at the woman who had given her life.
Josephine was a shadow of her former self. Her once thick hair was long gone. Her Sophia Vergara figure had wasted away to nothing but skin and bones. Her tan, vibrant skin was sallow and sunken in around her features.
The smell of ointments and unguents and antiseptic hung heavy in the air, with the more pervasive odor of sickness swimming beneath it all.
Cancer was such an indignity. Worse, it was a damned thief. It had robbed Josephine of her health. Of her lucidity. And very soon it would rob her of her life.
Chrissy swallowed the tears that burned in the back of her throat when her mother stirred. And even though the face that turned to her no longer looked anything like her mother’s pretty visage, it was still the face of the one and only person who had loved Chrissy her entire life. And it was agony to watch that face scrunch up in pain. To see those hairless eyebrows pucker. To witness the tears that slipped down those hollow cheeks.
“Mom?” She gently touched her mother’s bony hand. “Do you want me to call the nurse for more pain meds?”
The home healthcare workers had originally been coming by only during the day. But for the last couple of days, they were working in shifts so someone was always there with Josephine.
They hadn’t said so, but their heightened vigilance told Chrissy they all knew it could happen at any moment.
Nurse Danielle was the one on duty now. But the sweet, soft-spoken woman had stepped onto the porch to call home and check on her kids. And yet, Chrissy knew all it would take would be a look from her and Danielle would rush in to help Josephine settle.
“The worst feeling in the world is being abandoned by someone you love.” Her mother’s voice was raspy. But her blue eyes—eyes she’d given to her only daughter—were surprisingly clear.
The lump in Chrissy’s throat was a permanent fixture these days. But she managed to speak around it. “You’re not abandoning me, Mom. You’re being taken from me. There’s a difference.”
“No.” Josephine shook her head and it caused the stocking cap to shift on her bald scalp. Chrissy automatically adjusted it. Josephine got so cold now. It took three blankets and winter-weight pajamas to keep her warm. “I don’t mean you and me, baby girl. I mean Jake.”
Chrissy frowned. Josephine rarely spoke about her first husband, Chrissy’s father. Jake Szarek had been a singer/songwriter who never could seem to gain much of a following, but who still played the circuit of festivals and bars as if he had.
He’d left Chrissy and Josephine when Chrissy was two years old, and had sent birthday cards up until Chrissy’s sixth birthday. But she had no recollection of the man. If not for the handful of photos showing him holding her as a baby, she would doubt his existence.
“My biggest mistake was believing him when he said he’d stay,” Josephine sobbed softly. “When he said his love for me was larger than his dream of making it big.”
