Chapter One
I walked into work and found myself in another world.
Emma Shore whisked aside curtains on a twelve-foot-tall wall made entirely of glass. The shock of sudden, blinding beauty disoriented her momentarily. The sun reflected brilliantly off an azure, beckoning Lake Michigan and filtered through a grove of white-trunked birches lining the water. Leaves fluttered like green-gold coins, fracturing the light in her dazed eyes. White spray flew into the air when a wave hit the black, jagged breakers in the distance.
The design of the house in which she stood was revolutionary, at least in Emma’s limited experience. The mansion cascaded down the bluff to the sealike great lake, each layer of the house a stepping stone to the next, one level’s roof the above story’s magnificent terrace filled with picturesque outdoor seating and colorful pots of flowers. On the lowest level near the lake, a clear blue swimming pool tempted someone to pierce its serene surface.
Paradise. Out there it was, anyway.
She turned. Golden-green dappled light transformed the formerly shrouded, luxurious bedroom. Unfortunately, the other occupant of the room, Mrs. Shaw, appeared all the more disapproving in the sunlight. The rest of Emma’s fellow nurses and nursing assistants from New Horizon Hospice were already familiar with this assignment, having been at the Breakers for several weeks. Emma was the new girl on the block and bound to make a few missteps.
Apparently, she’d just made her first.
She studied the elegant, thin older woman with the blond bob, dressed in tailored chic as she crossed the suite. The woman had introduced herself a few minutes ago as Michael Montand’s personal domestic assistant, whatever that meant. Emma’s supervisor had labeled Mrs. Shaw more concisely the housekeeper. Apparently, even a housekeeper of the Montand caliber could pass as an aging supermodel. Whatever her title, Mrs. Shaw had clearly decided Emma was trouble. Emma’s reassuring smile as she walked to the empty bed was meant to quiet the other woman’s anxiety. Emma was a nurse and a patient advocate, not a rebel. It wasn’t her fault if the family or staff of her patients sometimes couldn’t discern the difference.
“This is a sickroom,” Mrs. Shaw said over the concerto playing softly on the stereo. “The way you’re acting with all this sunlight and music, and having Mrs. Montand showered, you’d think you expected her to go to a party tonight.”
“The sick appreciate beauty as much as the living. Usually more so.”
“She’s not sick. She’s dying.”
“Not yet,” Emma stated unequivocally, ignoring Mrs. Shaw’s shocked, outraged expression at her confident tone. She was a hospice nurse, true, but she’d also had her fair share of experience with death—much more than an average twenty-three-year-old. No. Her patient’s time wasn’t just yet.
“The doctors say—”
“I know what the doctors say,” Emma interrupted, trying to control the edge to her tone. She glanced toward the adjoining bathroom and lowered her voice to just above a whisper, hoping Mrs. Shaw would do the same. Her patient was on the other side of that door. “I just mean that in my professional opinion, the end isn’t imminent. Not today. Not tomorrow.” She resumed making the bed briskly. “Cristina said she loved classical music when I interviewed her earlier, so I turned on the stereo. Who doesn’t appreciate being clean? As for the drapes, has she complained of being bothered by sunlight before?” she asked, ignoring Mrs. Shaw’s glare when she used her patient’s first name. Cristina had given her permission to use it just an hour ago, and that was good enough for Emma.
“You speak boldly for someone so young,” Mrs. Shaw said, her frowning face disappearing for a happy moment as Emma snapped the blanket into the air, blocking her vision of the woman.
“Has Mrs. Montand said she disliked having the curtains open?” Emma repeated quietly, bending to tuck in the blanket.
“I’ve never heard her say one way or another, but she’s never had the opportunity to express her opinion. Mr. Montand has asked us to keep the curtains closed since Mrs. Montand returned to the Breakers to . . .”
Die.
Emma filled in the unsaid word in her head when Mrs. Shaw faded off. It never ceased to surprise her how people usually said the word so flippantly in everyday life, but refused to utter it when death hovered in the vicinity. Maybe they thought death would notice, and take them instead.
“We’ll see how Cristina responds to the view when she comes back from her shower. It’s easy enough to pull the curtains again. Cristina might find the sunlight refreshing,” Emma finished the conversation with a friendly but firm tone.
When she heard the squeak of the wheelchair and muffled voices in the distance, she hastened across the room. She knocked and opened the bathroom door, stepping just over the threshold to assist Margie, the nursing assistant. Emma had been impressed by the sheer size of the bathroom, not to mention how it’d been sleekly updated to accommodate all of Cristina’s disabilities. From what she’d understood, Montand had outfitted the suite for Cristina just months ago when he’d learned she’d been terminally diagnosed and was living alone and friendless in the city on a fixed income.
“Ah, a shower did you good, I see,” Emma said when Margie paused the wheelchair. Cristina Montand smiled thinly up at Emma from where she sat.
“It was better than sex. Certainly at this stage in my life, anyway,” Cristina said in a husky, Italian-accented voice.
Emma grinned, glad to hear the wry humor in her patient’s voice. The exotic accent suited her appearance and personality, somehow. Cancer was claiming her too young. Emma knew from the medical chart that Cristina was sixty-two. She had clearly once been a beauty. The wasting of the flesh combined with a slight swelling and discoloration due to an increasingly failing liver and kidneys couldn’t entirely disguise the classic cheekbones and a swanlike neck.
“I’ve made your bed up nice and fresh and opened the curtains, but say the word and I’ll close them again if you’re tired,” Emma said.
“Mr. Montand has given explicit instructions to leave the curtains closed,” Margie said anxiously. Emma was puzzling out the nursing assistant’s tense declaration, when the phone rang shrilly in the bedroom. Emma glanced around and saw Mrs. Shaw hasten to pick it up. The housekeeper looked at Emma, an ugly, triumphant expression spreading on her face as she listened to whoever was on the other end.
“Yes, I told her you wouldn’t want them opened, but she seems to think she knows best. Yes, I’ll see to it immediately,” Mrs. Shaw said. Emma glanced uneasily at one of several surveillance cameras installed in the large suite. Had the enigmatic owner of the Breakers, Michael Montand, been the one to call?
Mrs. Shaw hung up the phone and marched over to the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows. She drew the drapes closed with a sweeping gesture, shrouding the room once again in darkness. Emma had her answer. Surely the nasty woman wouldn’t be so smug if she hadn’t been given permission to behave so dictatorially by her boss.
“What is that cagna doing here?” Cristina asked angrily when she saw Mrs. Shaw pass the door. Emma didn’t speak Italian, but she had a pretty good idea that calling someone a cagna wasn’t a compliment.
“This is his home. I do what he asks me to do.” Mrs. Shaw cast one last glare in Emma and Cristina’s general vicinity and exited the suite.
Emma exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “She’s gone,” she told Cristina quietly as she stepped aside so that Margie could push Cristina into the bedroom. “Do you want the drapes opened?”
Was it fear or anger or wistfulness she saw flicker across her patient’s lined face at the question? Emma couldn’t be sure, but one thing was for certain.
This family had some serious secrets.
“My stepson is the owner of the Breakers, and I’m dependent upon his charity. His father and the courts have made that crystal clear. I’ll live by his rules,” Cristina replied flatly.
“Nevertheless, the choice is yours,” Emma assured.
“I’m very tired after my shower,” Cristina said after a pause.
“Say no more,” Emma said calmly.
Cristina gave a regretful glance at the drawn curtains after Margie and she had transferred her to the bed from her wheelchair.
“I caught a glimpse of the sunlight from there in the bathroom. Was it a very beautiful day?” Cristina asked Emma in a gravelly voice when Margie left the room.
“One of those days where the sunlight hits the water and is absorbed by the air, and you feel like it’s a living thing, it’s so brilliant.”
Cristina smiled. “I remember days like those on the Riviera, days reserved for the young and healthy,” Cristina said as Emma straightened the bedding around her frail form.
“A day like today is as much yours as anyone’s.”
Disease hadn’t entirely erased the slicing quality of Cristina’s smile. “Only someone young and beautiful would be so foolish as to think that.”
Emma arched her eyebrows at the thrust but didn’t respond. Cristina had an edge to her, there was no doubt about it. Emma figured if she was in as much pain as Cristina was as cancer slowly ate away at her flesh and pride, she might be a tad testy too.
She had recognized Cristina’s forceful character during their initial meeting earlier in the day. “You’re not going to preach to me, are you?” Cristina had queried archly at that meeting.
“Preach to you?” Emma had asked, taken aback.
“About heaven and hell and all the good things I’ve got ahead of me whenever this gives out in a few weeks or days or hours if I repent.” She’d glanced scornfully at her wasted body. “Your predecessor tried to, and that’s why she’s gone.”
“I’ve never liked being preached to,” Emma replied. “I don’t do anything to anyone else that I wouldn’t like being done to me.”
“That sounds like a religious answer,” was Cristina’s reply.
“No. It’s a common sense one.”
That had earned her a small, appreciative grin, but Emma was aware that she was still on trial. She might be for the remainder of her patient’s life. She’d grown used to the jury being hung on many occasions before.
* * *
“Mrs. Shaw certainly has her opinions, doesn’t she?” Emma said quietly to Margie a while later. They sat in a luxurious living room off the bedroom, Emma doing some paperwork while Margie sipped a Diet Coke. Margie worked a regular eight-to-five shift, while the registered nurses had been hired to provide twenty-four-hour care for Cristina. Emma covered the three-to-eleven shift, Monday through Friday. It would be a change of pace to have a regular weekday schedule. Margie had paused to chat with her for a few minutes before she left for the day.
“Mrs. Shaw is the devil’s minion. How else is she supposed to act?” Margie asked, shrugging.
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