I sag, feeling empty after that outburst.

Viktor pipes up, “Aw, girl, don’t look so sad. That fire you just showed? It shows your strength, and it’s real pretty on you.”

Mabel bumps him with a shoulder. “Not the time to flirt with her, old man.”

Viktor winks at Mabel and then smirks at me. “There is never a wrong time to flirt.”

“How about at a funeral?” Hazel deadpans.

Viktor chuckles. “You’d be surprised how a little bit of pleasure can soften the hurt of grief.”

“Ew,” I say, not sure how the conversation got onto this topic.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to say that wasn’t grossly inappropriate, Viktor?” Arielle prompts.

Viktor looks at Arielle in confusion for a moment and then recognition dawns on his face. “Yeah, yeah . . . there is. Back in the day, I was a bit of a politician. Betcha didn’t know that, did you?”

Hazel interrupts with a snarky, “Bet you did more than your fair share of shaking hands and kissing babies.”

Viktor frowns at her before continuing to tell me, “Anyway, there’s a lot of mudslinging in politics. I had to put up with a lot. People talking about me, my wife, even my kids . . . like they knew us up close and personal, which they most certainly did not. Sound familiar?”

I nod. “Yeah. What’d you do?”

“My damn job. Those people elected me to take care of the city, and I wasn’t gonna let some mouthy folks stop me from doing it. But I also wasn’t gonna let people say things about my sweet Agnes. Her kind soul didn’t deserve that. Lord knows, she had enough on her plate taking care of me,” he says wistfully. I swear the women are getting teary-eyed too, likely remembering their long-passed spouses.

“I gave ’em hell, I did. They’d write that I was misusing funds, and I’d invite them all to the budget meeting. They insinuated that Agnes was unhappy with a sour man like me, so we’d go on the town and I’d spin her around the dance floor until she was so dizzy, she couldn’t help but grin. They said I was doing a bad job, and I told them to send in their suggestions.”

Hazel pats Viktor’s hand. “That’s actually real nice. I bet Agnes loved that.”

He lays his hand over Hazel’s and offers a small smile that looks sweet, right up until he says, “You aiming to get spun around the floor yourself? That could be arranged, you know. Arielle . . . I think we need to have a dance.”

“Like a prom!” Mabel shouts in excitement. “We can have a ‘Get Fancy’ day and then dance the night away.”

“As long as we’re done by seven PM. That’s my bedtime,” Bertha adds.

Arielle glares at me as the residents get more and more excited, some of them telling stories of their younger days attending dances. Apparently, Mabel was prom queen. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.

“You see what you’ve started? A prom? Seriously?” Arielle says on a sigh, but I think it’s all for show. She loves her patients, and if they’re excited to get dressed up and sway back and forth a bit, Arielle is for sure going to make it happen.

I shrug but smile. Just a little one, but it feels good. Like even in the middle of chaos and disaster, there can be something good if you look hard enough. And if you can’t see it, you just make it happen yourself.

“I’ll help plan everything,” I assure Arielle.

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” she vows.

That seems to remind Viktor of something else. “Hey, girlie, when’s our checkers rematch? I think I could play on Saturday afternoon around two.”

He makes it sound like his days are full from sunup to sundown and he’s penciling me into his busy schedule.

“Saturday sounds great, Viktor. But let me get this stuff with Noah and this video figured out before we make it a date, ’kay?”

I swear Viktor blushes, but then he remembers himself. “Riley, for a chance at a date with a pretty thing like you, I’ll block out my whole calendar this weekend.”

Hazel yanks her hand back from Viktor, who was still holding it gently. “We’re having breakfast on Sunday, you old rascal!”

“And we’re having dinner on Saturday,” Mabel says.

“Ladies, ladies . . . there’s plenty of Viktor to go around,” he tells them both, looking mighty pleased with himself.

Arielle rolls her eyes. “On that note, we’ll let you get to work. Let me know if I can do anything.”

“I will,” I tell her. “Oh, and Arielle . . . thank you. For everything.”

She smiles, but as she ends the Zoom call, I hear her telling everyone, “No, we cannot play hopscotch in the yard. I don’t care how much fun it was when you were a kid. You’ll break a hip!”

Tags: Lauren Landish Romance
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