Grand Passion

someone from the hospital staff to deal with you.”
    Dennison gave her one last bewildered glare, and then he turned around and stomped out of the room.
    An acute silence descended.
    “I want to go home,” Max said.

    Cleo awoke at dawn the next morning. It wasn't the gray, wet light of the new day that had brought her up out of her slumbers. It was the knowledge that Max was not in bed beside her.
    Worried, Cleo sat up abruptly. “Max?”
    There was no sign of him. Cleo glanced across the attic room and saw that his crutches were missing. She frowned. Max was still getting accustomed to using the crutches. She didn't like the idea of his navigating the stairs without her assistance.
    She heard the floorboard squeak on the other side of the door just as she was about to push aside the covers and go in search of the invalid.
    The attic door opened softly, and Max maneuvered himself cautiously into the room. He was wearing a pair of trousers and nothing else. Andromeda had opened the seam on the left pant leg to accommodate the bandage on Max's thigh.
    Max concentrated intently, his attention on the floor as he angled the crutches into position. The stem of a white rose was clenched between his teeth.
    Cleo stared at the rose, a great joy welling up inside her. Red for seduction; white for love .
    “Max?” she breathed, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing.
    Max looked up quickly. “You're supposed to be asleep,” he mumbled around the rose stem.
    Cleo smiled brilliantly. She recalled the last chapter of her book very clearly. The man in the mirror, freed at last, had awakened the narrator with a single white rose. Seduction had been transformed into love.
    “I'd rather be awake for this, if you don't mind,” Cleo whispered.
    Max started across the room. His eyes never left Cleo. “I don't mind.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, Cleo saw something yellow. She glanced down and noticed that Sammy had left Lucky Ducky lying on the floor after paying a visit to Max's bedside last night.
    Cleo's eyes widened in alarm as she saw Max's right crutch come down on top of the toy.
    “Max, look out .”
    It was too late. The crutch skittered off the rounded edges of the rubber duck and went out from under Max.
    “Hell.” Max made a valiant effort to steady himself with the left crutch, but it was hopeless.
    Max unclenched his teeth from around the stem of the rose and let it fall.
    “That damned duck,” Max said as he crashed to the floor.
    With a cry of dismay, Cleo leaped out of bed and rushed to his side. “Are you all right? Max, Max, speak to me.”
    Flat on his back, Max glared at her. “Everything's just ducky.”
    “Do you think your stitches have come undone?” Cleo bent over his bandaged thigh. “Maybe we should get you to the clinic.”
    “Forget the leg. Cleo, I love you.”
    Cleo's hand rested on his leg. Tears misted her eyes. “I'm so glad.”
    She threw herself down on top of him, careful not to hurt his injured thigh. Max's arms closed tightly around her, holding her close.
    “I should have known right from the start,” Max said into Cleo's hair.
    “It's not your fault you didn't recognize love when you found it,” Cleo said against his chest. “You haven't had enough of it to know it when you see it.”
    “I know it now,” Max said, his voice laced with raw wonder. He abruptly went very still.
    “Max?” Cleo raised her head and looked down at him in concern. “Are you sure you're all right?”
    Max started to smile. “Look up, Cleo.”
    “At what?”
    “At Jason's seascapes.”
    Cleo craned her head and stared up at the two seascapes hanging on the wall. “What about them?”
    “There's something strange about the frames. I never noticed it when I looked at the pictures before, but from this perspective you can see that the frames are too wide.” Max levered himself up into a sitting position and reached for one of the fallen crutches.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Help me get one of those things off the wall.”
    “I'll handle it.” Cleo got to her feet and hefted one of the seascapes. She took it down off the wall and carried it across the room to the bed.
    Max made his way over to the desk, opened one of the drawers, and removed the screwdriver he had bought at the Harmony Cove hardware store. “Ben was right. You never know when you're going to need a good screwdriver.”
    Max crossed the room to the bed, sat down beside the seascape, and went to work on the