“Oh, Lordy,” said Troy, “here we go again.”

In the midst of the laughter and hugs and congratulations, a nurse came in and had to knock on the door to get their attention. “I thought you’d want to know,” she said with a smile. “I just got a call from upstairs. Your sister’s awake. You can go see her now, if you want to.”

Mirabella was heading for the door before the nurse had even finished, but Summer stopped her with a firm but gentle hand on her arm. “Jake’s been waiting all night-he wouldn’t even leave her to go get something to eat. I think we should let him have some time with her first. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right.” Mirabella sighed. But it was a happy sigh, and after a moment she turned and put her arms around her tall, slender sister, and hugged her.


Eve opened her eyes in the hospital’s perpetual twilight and knew at once that she wasn’t alone…

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she said in a slurred voice to the man who sat beside her on the bed, with her hand gently sandwiched in his. His answering chuckle was like music, the sweetest she’d ever heard.

“How are you feeling?” His voice was cracked and guttural, and in a way, that was sweet music, too.

She drew a careful breath. “I don’t know. How am I feeling? Glad to be alive, I guess. Glad you’re here. Otherwise I feel bloody awful, if you wanna know the truth.” She licked her lips. “This was a whole lot more fun when it was make-believe.”

Jake leaned over to pick up a plastic water cup from the bedside stand. “That make-believe probably saved your life,” he said gruffly as he guided the straw-and it was the bendy kind-to her lips. “I guess if you’re going to be in a car wreck, it doesn’t hurt to be wearing a cervical collar.”

She started to laugh, then winced. “Ooh! Is that ironic, or what?”

“Ironic…” said Jake. “Yeah.” He shifted his gaze to the heavy blue contraption that encased her right leg from her hip to her toes. “Broken legs mend.”

“Broken leg…is that what I have?”

“Uh-huh…and some bruised ribs, a few scrapes. Oh-and a concussion-a real one, this time. But not too bad.”

“What about…?” Her voice was soft, and not too steady.

And it was Jake’s turn to draw a careful breath. “Rick’s dead. Sergei wasn’t hurt too badly. They patched him up, and he’s in jail where he belongs.”

“And… Sonny? Did you get him?”

His laugh was the old kind, a breathy snort. “Talk about irony-the guy crawled out of the wreck and walked away without a scratch. They found him this morning, about a mile from the crash. He’d ditched the disk…”

“Oh, no!”

He reached for her hand and gathered it once more into both of his. Above them his eyes were obsidian, bright and hard. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it. And even if we don’t, Sergei’s decided he’d like to avoid his friends in the Russian Mafia, if at all possible. He’s singing like a bird. Probably end up in Witness Protection. Cisneros will die in prison-guaranteed.”

“So,” Eve whispered after a moment, “it really is…over?”

“Yeah, it’s really over.”

“I mean, is it over…for you?”

He leaned over and gently, carefully kissed her lips. His breath warmed them as he said in a shaken growl, “I’m on my way to being whole and healthy… if you still want me.”

“I want you.” She sounded fragile, almost childlike. “Any way.”

“Are you sure? God knows, I’m no saint.”

“Who in the world wants a saint?” And the rasp of his whiskers on her cheek was the sweetest caress she’d ever known.

After a few minutes, though, she drew back from him, wiping her eyes. “It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Is everyone-”

“They’re all here. Oh, Lord-” and he snapped his fingers and closed his eyes in chagrin “-I forgot to tell you. Charly had her baby-a little girl. Your sisters are probably with her right now, but they’ll be in here as soon as they know you’re awake. Your family’s bringing Christmas here, to you and Charly. Riley and Jimmy Joe were heading back to get all the presents.”

Eve closed her eyes and gave a prolonged sniff. “Your present…” she whispered after a pause. “I guess I’m not going to get to give it to you. I was working on it when…everything happened. I didn’t get a chance to finish it.”

“Oh, hell…”

“No, it was kind of special, actually. I’d had my boss send copies of the master tapes to Summer-you know, of that piece on blues musicians? I was making a special cut for you…”

“You can give it to me later,” he whispered, both touched and stricken. Because he had nothing at all to give her.

He’d thought about it-what to give Eve for Christmas. Thought about it so hard, it had kept him awake nights. First, he’d think about that pearl choker Cisneros had given her, and then he’d think about what Birdie had told him about the gift not being important as long as it came from the right person. Then he’d wonder what in the world made him think he was the right person…for her?

The truth was, they were day and night-she was brightness, sunshine, warmth, laughter, gaiety, fresh air; he was dark and moody a lot of the time. Often he worked in an atmosphere of secrecy and danger. He didn’t smile nearly enough-all his friends said so. What made him think someone as rare and beautiful as Eve Waskowitz could ever be happy…with him? He’d tried and tried to think of just the right gift to give her, just to prove he could make her happy. But each idea he’d come up with, he’d discarded.

Now here it was, Christmas morning. Heartsick, he opened his mouth to tell her the truth-that he had nothing whatsoever to give her. But before he could say a word, she gasped, “Jake-”

Thinking she was in pain, he bent over her, heart pounding. Her face was turned toward the window, where the sun, breaking through clouds, had just touched the frozen land with gold.

“Oh, Jake…look.” There, outside the window, a spider’s web left from summer sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight… a web woven of diamonds. “Did you ever see anything so beautiful?”

But his throat had closed. How could he answer her? He needed just one more miracle.

And he got it He laughed out loud, and in a voice vibrant with unheralded joy and sudden understanding, said, “Hey, Waskowitz, what do you think? I ordered it just for you. Merry Christmas…”

She stared at him, eyes bright with tears and dawning wonder. And then she smiled with such radiance, it all but stopped his breath, as she murmured, “Oh Jake, it’s perfect, the most wonderful gift you could possibly have given me.”

He kissed her tear-wet and trembling lips, and with infinite care, stretched himself alongside her in her hospital bed. They lay together, holding hands and watching the jeweled spider’s web dance and sparkle in the morning breeze, until Mirabella and Summer and the rest of the family came to join them.

Epilogue

Eve’s second wedding took place in early spring, in the gardens on the estate of her sister and brother-in-law, Summer and Riley Grogan. It was a most untraditional wedding, in many ways.

For one thing, the bride was on crutches, and wore a bulky blue cast on her right leg.

“But that’s tradition,” Mirabella pointed out. “It’s something blue.”

Yes, and her dress was borrowed-from her sister Summer-Eve having declared that she’d spent enough on her first wedding gown to finance the economy of a small Third World country. And yes, she did wear something old-a pearl necklace, not a three-strand choker of perfectly matched pearls with a diamond clasp, but a modest single strand Jake’s father had given to his mother on their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

As for something new…

Well, there was her new family, of course-Jake’s mother and father, his sister Rhonda and her fireman husband, Ted, and their two well-behaved little boys, who had escaped a late-March snowstorm in the northeast to come and tell her with their smiles and hugs how happy they were to welcome her as a part of Jake’s family. And there were new friends, too-Birdie Poole and his wife, Margie, and their kids, as proud and pleased as if they’d engineered the whole thing.

And the tiny being growing deep inside her was new, but for the time being it was her secret…hers and Jake’s. It would be the last secret in the Waskowitz family, Eve vowed.

The Sisters Waskowitz. Eve was certain no bride had ever had a more unconventional trio of bridesmaids: Bella and Charly, both juggling babies, burp cloths spread over their shoulders, and Summer visibly pregnant. And then there was Helen the flower girl, in her Marvin the Martian sneakers, and the Chihuahua, Beatle, dancing like a pixie around their feet.

And here was Jake, his somber dark eyes gazing into hers with so much love, it almost took her breath away. As a blues harmonica played hauntingly, they pledged to each other from their hearts the vows they’d written together, based in part on something Jake had told her that Birdie had once said to him.

“… To always take care of each other… to be to each other a mate, a partner and best friend… and to never let a day go by without letting you know how much I love you…”

Could any wedding, Eve wondered, be more perfect? More right…for her? This was her family, the people she loved more than life, and who loved her, as she was, with all her faults.

It was a day filled with sunshine and flowers and bursting with new life and promise, a day so lovely, it made her heart ache and tears spring to her eyes. For a moment, just a moment, she felt a twinge of the old sadness.

But then Jake looked into her eyes and squeezed her hand and smiled his rare and wonderful smile, and she knew that now he would be there to share it with her. That the “wild lonelies” were gone forever.