Belated Kiss Read online

  Belated Kiss

  An Applebottom Matchmaker Society Novella

  Abby Tyler

  Contents

  1. T-bone

  2. Ruth

  3. T-bone

  4. Ruth

  5. T-bone

  6. Ruth

  7. T-bone

  8. Ruth

  9. T-bone

  10. Ruth

  11. T-bone

  12. Ruth

  13. T-bone

  14. Ruth

  15. T-bone

  16. Ruth

  17. T-bone

  18. Ruth

  19. T-bone

  20. Ruth

  Epilogue

  Gertrude & Maude’s Cherry-Orange Pie

  About Abby Tyler

  Summary

  The cantankerous mayor of a small Missouri town changes his curmudgeonly ways at the birth of his first grandbaby, catching the eye of a widowed maternity nurse.

  Copyright © 2020 by Abby Tyler. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  * * *

  AbbyTyler

  PO Box 160116

  Austin, TX 78716

  www.abbytyler.com

  * * *

  Edition 1.2

  T-bone

  Nobody in Applebottom knew T-bone’s real name.

  Not the friends he drank coffee with every Tuesday morning.

  Not even the townsfolk who’d elected him mayor. The ballot simply read T-bone.

  But things were about to change.

  It wasn’t that he planned to get friendly with the citizens of his community after all this time. Or that he was going to confess his history.

  It was more than that.

  Applebottom had just increased its population by one.

  A baby girl.

  And this wee one would know him by a name he never thought would be his lot.

  Grandpa.

  His son Luke called from the hospital, saying Savannah had gone into labor early that morning.

  T-bone stared at the bathroom mirror and didn’t see a man worthy of a granddaughter.

  So on his way to the hospital, he stopped by Arnold’s barbershop. The old man made plenty of smart remarks as he buzzed off T-bone’s long twisty hair and trimmed down the wiry salt-and-pepper beard that ended in a knot.

  But when Arnold was done, he’d stood back with a harrumph, which was unlike him. “You’re a changed man,” he said. “You should get some clothes to match.”

  Despite doing the opposite of the advice he was given for most of his life, T-bone dropped by a store in Branson. He left his leather vest and black jeans in the trash bin and put on khakis and a white button-down. He slid on a pair of brown loafers and left the heavy black boots on the floorboard of his truck.

  He was ready.

  When he arrived at room 506, Luke opened the door, then took a step back. “Dad?”

  “You don’t recognize your old man?”

  “No. I mean yes.” Luke rubbed his hand over his own unshaven chin, his bloodshot eyes looking T-bone up and down.

  T-bone had to laugh. “You’re a little worse for wear.”

  Luke nodded. “It’s been a day.”

  His wife Savannah lay back against a dozen white pillows, dark circles under her eyes. When she saw him, she sat straight up. “T-bone?”

  But he’d already caught sight of the baby.

  A nurse in pink scrubs fussed with tiny feet, kicking up a storm as the woman slid them into pajama legs so small, they could fit his finger.

  His chest warmed over and an unfamiliar pain pricked his eyes.

  She bundled the baby in a blanket and turned to him. “You must be Grandpa. Ready to meet your granddaughter?”

  T-bone didn’t know how to hold anything so small and tender, but the woman easily shifted his elbow and laid the baby there. The infant weighed no more than a bit of fluff.

  “She’ll sleep now,” the nurse said, so close T-bone caught a whiff of her shampoo. “You want to sit with her?”

  Her merry brown eyes met his. The lines around them told him she wasn’t much younger than him, even if her hair was the color of chestnuts, twisted up in a clip. Something sparked in him, as unfamiliar as the feeling of the babe. Warm. Comforting. Like home, not that he’d known much of that.

  She led him to a rocking chair in the corner.

  “Aren’t you a picture?” the nurse said. “Handsome Grandpa. Sweet baby.”

  Handsome. Harrumph. No one had called him that for nearly two decades.

  Maybe it was all the changes that day. His hair. The clothes. This perfect child. The woman’s compliment. But T-bone cleared his throat.

  It was time to say his name.

  He was half afraid lightning might strike, or a chasm would open up and swallow him. But he said it anyway.

  “I’m Theodore.”

  Savannah let out a little gasp, but the nurse smiled down at him. T-bone liked the way her eyes crinkled. Laugh lines. She had plenty of ‘em. His face was a roadmap of hard living.

  “Nice to meet you, Theodore,” she said. “I’m Ruth. One of my favorite parts of this job is placing a first grandchild in the arms of a doting grandfather.”

  She bent down to shift the baby’s head by T-bone’s chest. “Looks like she’s a perfect fit.”

  In that moment of nearness, Ruth sent him more off balance than the baby, who lay quiet and snoozing in his arms.

  She moved to the bed to adjust Savannah’s pillows. “Try to nurse her when she wakes. If you run into trouble, let us know, and we’ll help with the latch.”

  When Ruth was gone, T-bone only had eyes for the baby. The nubby little nose. The eyelashes flush against pillowed cheeks.

  A granddaughter. He understood now why they were grand. He felt invincible, like he could fend off a pack of wolves if he had to protect her.

  Luke dragged over a plastic chair to sit near him. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she, Dad?”

  “She’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.” He didn’t miss when Luke stole a glance at Savannah.

  T-bone’s voice almost came out gruff, but he tempered it to avoid waking the child. “What?”

  Luke fiddled with the baby’s blanket. “We found it interesting that you told that pretty nurse your name. Don’t think I’ve ever heard you speak it out loud.”

  “I didn’t even know it,” Savannah said. “Luke always said you’d say it when it was time.”

  “This wee angel deserved to hear it,” he grumbled. “Now let her sleep.”

  T-bone rocked the little girl for the better part of an hour before she finally woke. She let out a mewling cry that nearly broke T-bone’s heart, so he passed the baby to Luke, who handed her to Savannah.

  “Dad, why don’t you head down to the cafeteria? You could probably use some lunch, and I know I could. Maybe a burger or whatever looks like it won’t kill us.”

  T-bone gave them a quick nod. “Done. Anything for you, Savannah?”

  She shook her head, adjusting the baby in her lap. “They bring me trays, and I’m not up for eating even that yet.” She tilted her head. “Should we call you Theodore now, or still T-bone?”

  Luke clapped T-bone on the back. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to call him Pops.”

  “Sounds ‘bout right,” T-bone said.

  So now he was Pop
s.

  Ruth

  Ruth spent the morning checking on one laboring mom after the other. She’d been a nurse for thirty years, nine of them in maternity.

  She’d seen plenty of grandfathers come through, most of them with their doting wives, elated at the new addition to their families.

  But something about this particular one was getting her.

  Freshly shaved and trimmed, sharp and neat. Crisp clothes that looked straight out of a magazine. It wasn’t usual for the older men of Branson, Missouri, to show up at the hospital looking like that.

  And no wife. The couple had labored through the wee hours, just the two of them. Ruth got the idea that there must not be much family between them. When the little one had arrived, there had been tears over the young woman’s mother, who Ruth gathered had died decades ago.

  “Ruth?” Henrietta, the charge nurse, waved her hand in front of Ruth’s face. “Can you catch 537?”

  And back around she went. She popped her head in the room, where a mom who’d had her fourth baby yesterday was sitting on the bed, trying to manage a toddler and a four-year-old while the baby cried in its plastic crib.

  The mother’s droopy eyes telegraphed her exhaustion. She’d been through seven hours of labor. “I could use a hand. I think the baby’s wet.”

  Dad wasn’t in the room. Ruth washed her hands at the sink and quickly showed the oldest how to fold a paper towel into a fan. While the girl tried it on her own, she passed the completed one to the toddler and stood to check the baby.

  “Thank you,” the woman said. “I might be getting too old for this.”

  “You had a hard night. Will Dad be back?”

  “He took Braden to school.”

  Ruth glanced at the clock. It was coming on noon. He should have been back hours ago.

  She turned to the baby and quickly changed out the soiled diaper. “You’re scheduled for checkout this afternoon, I believe.”

  “Probably so. I don’t think we’ve filled out the papers.” She leaned back against the pillow.

  “Would you like me to take the baby to the nursery for a while?” Ruth asked. “Let you catch a little break.”

  The mother shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Frank will be back soon.”

  “I’ll send in someone to help you with the forms then.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Ruth straightened the bed and tidied the floor. Nursing was about more than medical things, especially in maternity. Sometimes she felt eighty percent of her job was keeping spirits up when labor got long, or exhaustion set in, or fear of being a new parent took over. She’d worked oncology before, and she was pretty certain more emotional breakdowns occurred at the beginning of lives than at the end.

  But she loved it either way. Her switch had been more about where she was in her own life than the job. When her husband Harold died, she found oncology too much to bear. Every grief forced her to revisit her own, and her dramatic weight loss, puffy eyes, and susceptibility to every illness that came her way told her that she had to make a change for her own well being.

  Henrietta had invited her to move to maternity, and Ruth had spent a year in training to be ready.

  She never felt lonely on the labor ward. Families came in and came out. And the hard work helped her sleep in her empty house. Her grown daughter Christina, who lived thousands of miles away, seemed more at ease knowing Ruth was among the babies. Beginnings, not ends.

  And today, she’d met Theodore.

  He’d held his newborn granddaughter like she was made of magic. When her eyes had met his, something moved inside her, something she never thought she’d feel again.

  Now she had to decide what to do about it.

  T-bone

  As T-bone passed the nursing station, he spotted Ruth. He swore her expression got bright when she saw him.

  “The brand-new grandpa,” she said. “Headed home already?”

  “I’m picking up some food from the cafeteria.” He hesitated. He hadn’t made small talk with an unfamiliar woman in a decade.

  “If you can wait a couple of minutes, I’ll walk you down and steer you in the right direction. Some of that food shouldn’t go anywhere near your mouth.”

  A younger woman sitting behind the desk said, “No lie.”

  T-bone managed a gruff laugh. “That sounds helpful.”

  “I don’t get much time. Not enough to actually sit. But I can take a quick walk downstairs.”

  T-bone settled in one of the chairs across from the desk. Ruth leaned over the counter as she scrolled through screens on a tablet.

  T-bone didn’t know many nurses personally. None lived in Applebottom proper, and despite many acts of pure knuckleheadedness in his youth, he’d never seen the inside of a hospital until today.

  His solitary life meant he didn’t have ailing family to visit. No woman all these years meant he hadn’t sat bedside for one of them either.

  His mama had run off when he was an infant, leaving him with an aunt who’d sent him to his father when T-bone turned out to be a hellion by age eight. His dad was a truck driver, so T-bone more or less raised himself. That man had keeled over when T-bone was twenty-five.

  It was a rough past, but it was all he had. He bore no ill will toward anyone who had a part in it.

  He didn’t realize he was sitting with his head down until he spotted two blue tennis shoes, scuffed at the toe. He lifted his head.

  “Nothing like a new baby to make a man contemplate his life,” Ruth said.

  How did she know?

  They walked the hall, and he was grateful for her light chatter about nursing and the number of babies born that week. They stepped into an elevator, and Ruth pushed the button.

  “You got kids of your own?” he asked.

  “Just one. Christina. She lives in California, working as a teacher’s aide while she tries to set up a glass studio. Married. No kids yet. You’ve got a jump on me.” Her elbow brushed him lightly in the ribs, and his heart made an unexpected stutter at the contact.

  “Luke’s my only kid,” he said. He thought about admitting they’d only met three years ago, but that was probably too much this soon.

  “He treats his wife right,” Ruth said. “You raised him well.”

  T-bone was saved from having to respond to that by the swoosh of the elevator door.

  The cafeteria was bright and cheerful, one wall all glass. A fair number of people milled around with trays. Most looked exhausted or pained. He figured most were here on grim business. He was lucky.

  Ruth pointed out the counter along the back. “That’s your hot-meal line. Today’s special is meatloaf, which sounds like it would be good, but trust me, it’s not. On the side wall, you have what’s probably your best choice, pizza and calzones. You can take what they’ve got, or you can ask them to make you something fresh. I reckon a hot pizza might go over well upstairs, don’t you think?”

  “It would.”

  She faced him, the window light shining on her brown hair, making it glisten with bits of red and silver. “I’m going to grab a salad and head back up,” Ruth said. “It was nice talking with you.”

  Soon they would part. He’d see her again when she checked on Savannah, but then he would have an audience.

  “I enjoyed it, too.” He hesitated. Life was about taking risks. He’d done that this morning, asking Arnold to cut away ten years’ worth of personality. Then spilling his name. What was one more?

  “I don’t guess you usually take old guys like me down to the cafeteria.”

  She bit her lip at that, looking as youthful as a woman of twenty. Something in his heart hammered so intensely he thought he might end up on a stretcher himself.

  “Caught me,” she said. “I don’t. It seemed like maybe you didn’t have a wife at home, or else she’d be here.”

  “Never married.”

  Ruth’s eyebrows drew together. “You never married Luke’s mother?”

  Well, there i
t was. Might as well get it over with. “She left me when she was pregnant and never told me about the baby. Luke found me when he was grown.”

  The way her expression froze told him to let her go. She was a traditional woman, and he was not for her. Generally speaking, he wasn’t right for much of anybody. That’s why he kept to himself at the RV park. “Thanks for the look-around. I liked the company.” He turned away.

  “Hey,” Ruth said, brushing a hand against his sleeve. “Everybody has a story. I’d like to hear yours. Would you like to meet on the boardwalk after my shift? Around six?”

  He gave her a quick nod, his throat too seized up to answer.

  “I’ll put my number in your phone.” She extended her hand for it.

  He tugged it from his pocket and handed it over, watching her as she peered at it and typed in her information.

  She must’ve been married at some point. Widowed, most likely. Possibly divorced. The pink scrubs were crisp and like new. Everything about Ruth was perfectly in place, other than the scuff on her shoes. That little detail helped him think that maybe it wasn’t too crazy for her to take an interest in an old codger like him.

  But it didn’t matter what he thought. Because when Ruth returned his phone to him with a gentle smile, it was practically a done deal.

  Theodore M. Davis had himself a date.

  Ruth

  Well, that was quite the impulse she’d just had.

  Ruth raced home after her shift, wishing she’d told Theodore seven instead. She barely had time to run a brush through her hair and put on a skirt before jumping back in her car to head to the boardwalk.