Home Free - Fern Michaels [73]
“I guess you were meant to be a reporter even back then,” Gus said, lowering himself to one of the chairs by the fireplace.
Maggie laughed. “Yeah. You want some wine or a beer?”
“I’m a beer kind of guy, Maggie. And I like drinking it right out of the bottle, and the brand doesn’t matter. Smells good in here.”
“I need to tell you right up front, Gus, I am not much of a cook. I throw stuff in a Crock-Pot, cook it for hours, and hope for the best. We’re having stew. Kind of goes with the weather outside. You know, comfort food. Be back in a minute with the beer.”
Gus leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He hoped the pain in his back and legs would abate a little so he could enjoy the evening. He looked from the fire to the beautiful tree and made that wish. Either he was dreaming, crazy, or he was out for the count, because the minute he made his wish, he felt like he could get up and dance a jig. “Thank you, God,” he whispered.
Maggie was as good as her word. She was back in a minute with two bottles of beer. She handed one to Gus and then curled up at his feet by the fire.
“We should make a toast. How about to Santa coming down the chimney, pants smoking, and we douse him with our beer?” Gus said, clinking his bottle against Maggie’s.
Maggie laughed so hard she almost choked. “That’ll work.”
“Before we get off on the wrong foot again, and I’m willing to take the blame for speaking out of turn, let’s talk about your last visit to the hospital. I don’t want anything hanging over our heads if you and I decide to go forward with . . . with whatever is happening between us.”
Maggie bit down on her bottom lip. The rubber was about to meet the road. “Yeah, okay.”
“Let me go first. Then if you want to say something, feel free to interrupt me.”
Maggie nodded as she stared into the fire.
“I’ve been at Walter Reed since June. I met the president in person in August. That’s just background. I had a lot of nurses, both male and female, and the females were always trying to take my mind off my pain, my body, and what I was undergoing. They were wonderful to me. The ladies would jab at me when they thought I was slacking and say things like they were going to sic the vigilantes on me. When I didn’t know what they were talking about, they enlightened me.
“A lot of them had theories, and they weren’t shy about presenting them. One feisty grandma type had this theory that the Post was somehow involved with the ladies. Your paper always seemed to have a jump on what they were doing, and you had the banner headline when the ladies solved something. Which led the feisty nurse to come to that conclusion. I didn’t think much about it back then, but I put it all together the other day, when you went flying out of the hospital and didn’t return my calls.
“I deduced, because I am a clever kind of guy, that you and the vigilantes were on a first-name basis, and you have a loyalty to them. What I want you to know, Maggie, is, I don’t care. I hope you are friends with them, and I respect your loyalty to them as a group. Maybe someday you will be comfortable enough with me to let me be part of that, but if not, I’m okay with that, too. I know how to compartmentalize, just as you do. Any questions so far?”
Maggie shook her head.
“I have tons of time to do nothing but think. I even try to shift my mind to other things when they’re trying to twist me into a pretzel. Sometimes, I think I have pretzel logic, but at least it’s logic of some kind.”
Maggie turned from the fire and stared up at Gus. Her expression told Gus he needed to do a little more explaining.
“I understand now why you wanted to know about those money guys who were at Camp David. I did my own little survey at the rehab ward by asking the guys and some of the women what, if anything, would make them give up their own Thanksgiving dinner with their families, and they all said pretty much the same thing, something earth-shattering. Even then, that didn’t satisfy me, so I turned to my laptop, the Internet, and Google. I have to say I didn’t come