Chapter 6

Every morning and evening a nurse came to assist her with showering and dressing and one of the reasons Belle was very eager for her ribs to heal so that she could take care of herself again was the fact that she simply couldn't stand the woman.

The nurse was in her mid-forties, had the vigor of a truck and the expression of a pitbull, with her harsh face and severe hairstyle.
Sometimes Belle felt it would be less painful to shower and get dressed at her own pace, because the rough way the nurse helped her and hurried her along only seemed to aggravate her injuries.

On top of that, the woman appeared to be highly disapproving of the fact that she was staying with the Golds for the time being, pursing her lips at every mention of the man.

On this particular morning she was toweling her bruised, left side dry and Belle tried not to wince as the material of the towel rubbled harshly against the tender skin.

Getting into her undergarments was getting a little bit easier with every day that passed and Belle felt confident that she would soon be able to dress herself without getting tangled up into her clothing.
Blushing slightly she remembered the incident a couple of days ago were Rowan had to assist her with getting out of her spaghetti strap top. She hadn't meant to flash him like that, but pulling a top over her head with three cracked ribs had proven to be too much of an effort.

She knew he had looked at her and she couldn't blame him. Any healthy, warm-blooded male in his situation would have, she just wished there had been something for him to look at instead of mostly bruised, black and blue skin.
He'd been a perfect gentleman the entire time and had appeared so concerned over her bruises that she just wanted to hug the worry away from his face.

"How much longer will you be staying her?" the nurse asked in a clipped tone of voice, dumping the towels into the hamper.

"For another two weeks," Belle replied. Her recovery was coming on gradually, but sometimes she wondered if she'd be recovered enough by the time the three weeks Dr. Whale had stipulated had come to an end.
She would have to be, she decided firmly. She couldn't impose on Rowan and Bae for much longer.

The nurse gave a disapproving snort and Belle found that she lacked the self control to let it slide.
"Do you have a problem with that?" she asked archly.

"You obviously don't know Mr. Gold very well if you're considering staying with him for such a long time," the nurse replied.

"I know him well enough to know that he's been incredibly kind and generous by offering me to recover at his home," Belle shot back.

"Well, you're new in town and there's a lot you don't know about Mr. Gold," the nurse answered coldly. "I feel that it is my duty to warn you about him."

"Warn me?" Belle repeated exasperated. "Whatever for?"

"Mr. Gold is not all considered to be a pleasant sort of man," the nurse told him. "He and his son keep to themselves, he's unfriendly and shrewd and he owns half the town."

"I'm aware he's a landlord," Belle answered. "As for the rest, I know him as a kind man and I like him a lot."

"If you know he's a landlord, you should know that he is a ruthless one. He goes around town every month to personally collect the rent. Every month!"

"Well, I assume the rent is due every month," Belle replied dryly. "People can hardly be put out about that."

"He doesn't offer extensions," the nurse continued. "If you can't pay your rent he turns you out. He doesn't accept any excuses. Two months ago he put the Boyd family out of their home and forced them to move to a cheaper apartment with their baby. Sean's car had broken down and he needed the money to pay for repairs, but Gold turned him out anyway."

"Why didn't he pay his rent first and waited a month for his car to get fixed?" Belle asked flummoxed. Especially with a kid in the mix you'd think anyone would ensure that the rent was paid before anything else.

"Sean drives a vintage pick-up truck," the nurse explained like she was talking to a particular slow toddler. "He loves that car, it's like his baby… but Gold wouldn't hear of it."

Rowan Gold wouldn't give an extension to a man who was stupid enough to put a car above the welfare of his baby.
Belle suddenly realized that nothing in the world had ever made more sense.

"Ashley was very upset!" the nurse continued. "She had to move all of her belongings with a baby in tow."
Considering the fact that her husband choose to maintain a very expensive car aside from providing for his family, Rowan had probably done the woman a huge favor by arranging for them to move into a far more affordable home.

"Look, when you rent a place, you know you have to pay rent every month," she tried to argue logically. "Mr. Gold can't keep his business afloat if he keeps giving extensions. He has a son to look after too."

"That man is completely unreasonable!" the nurse argued back. "He always refuses to give extensions."

"Yes, well, how is giving out extensions fair to the other tenants anyway?" Belle answered, becoming increasingly more annoyed with the other woman. "Everyone needs to pay their rent, what if Mr. Gold starts deciding that someone can skip a month? They'll all be demanding extensions the next month! This way at least everybody knows what their obligations are."

The nurse paused for a few moments before turning to her next set of grievances with renewed energy.

"You do know Mr. Gold is divorced, don't you?" she asked, her tone of voice indicating this was a highly shocking bit of information.

"Well, I didn't assume he grew Bae in a greenhouse, so yes, I do know he's divorced," Belle retorted.

"And doesn't it bother you that his ex-wife thought him to be such a horrible person that she decided to leave him?" the nurse asked triumphantly.

Belle had plenty of opinions about Milah, but she decided not to voice them.

"Did it ever occur to you that leaving him was her loss?" she asked instead.

The nurse snorted derisively. "I hardly doubt that. She accused him from threatening her after she got away from him. That man is rotten to the core."

Rowan had told her all about the weekend he'd spend frantically looking for his son, for any sign of life from either Milah or Jones, only to discover that the pair had simply been too indifferent too inform him of their travel plans.
She doubted if the nurse knew this though and she wasn't about to betray any of the things he had told her in confidence.

Instead she decided to put an end to the conversation.
"We're not going to agree on this," she stated calmly. "But I think a lot of people refuse to see what a wonderful man he is. You're so busy resenting him for the fact that you have to pay him rent that you've made him into some sort of monster.

I may not have known him for a very long time, but you don't know him at all!"

"Fine," the nurse replied in an affronted tone of voice, lifting her hands. "If that's how you feel, I'll wash my hand off you. You're going to find out what kind of man he truly is, mark my words.

Unless of course…" her lips turned into a suspicious smirk as she pondered for a moment. "Unless you've decided he's a good way to raise your status…"

"What?" Belle exclaimed despite herself.

"Just so you know, you won't be the first and the man hasn't as much as looked at another woman since his wife left him. So whatever you're trying to accomplish by… this…" the nurse waved her hand around the guest room, "you're not going to succeed."

The thought that she could only be interested in Rowan for his money was too ridiculous for words and Belle was thoroughly fed up with the other woman.

"I can assure you, I have no ulterior interest in Mr. Gold except for his friendship," Belle replied coolly. "And I'd like to get dressed now, as I'm sure you have other clients to visit."

The nurse made no further comments, just yanked her dress over her head with a little more force than strictly necessary and Belle gritted her teeth, not wanting to give the other woman the satisfaction.

When she finally left, she breathed a sign of relief, determined to call the hospital and ask for a different nurse for the evening.

With his heart pounding and his hands shaking, Gold made his way into his bedroom and closed the door behind him before sinking down on his bed, Belle's words still ringing in his ears.

' … he's been incredibly kind and generous…

…a lot of people refuse to see what a wonderful man he is…

… I may not have know him for a very long time, but you don't know him at all!'

When he had passed Belle's door and heard the nurse mention she felt she ought to warn her against him, he had inadvertently stopped in his tracks, anger already starting to well up inside him, until he'd heard Belle's rebuke.

She had defended him. She had defended his personality, his dealings as a landlord and countered the backslash his divorce had stirred in the small-town community of Storybrooke.

And not only had she defended him, she got him. She understood why he moved the Boyd family into another apartment instead of granting an extension, knowing that if he gave in now, they'd be begging for an extension every other month.

His reputation in Storybooke had been set a long time ago, around the time he started to rent out his first property and established himself as a diligent, but very strict and uncompromising landlord for exactly the same reasons Belle had pointed out to the nurse.
In the twenty-five years or so he had kept a rental business he could count the times he had allowed his tenant an extension on the fingers of one hand. There had been a garage owner once who had lost everything the night his shop burned to the ground and there had been a couple with a five year old daughter suffering from acute leukemia that suddenly found themselves drowning in medical bills. These were clearly cases if circumstances beyond anyone's control. But more often than not, a request for an extension showed poor planning on the tenant's side or the foolish believe that paying rent was somehow optional. It didn't pay off to grant extensions in those occasions, but generally only created a bigger problem for all the parties involved.

He knew this policy made him disliked throughout the town, but he had never bothered to be upset about it.
Milah had hated it, claiming she would never be able to have any sort of social life when her husband was generally perceived to be such a bastard, but her complaints had left him virtually cold.

However, when the nurse had started to list the reasons why Belle should feel apprehensive of him, his stomach had churned with dread and he had to fight the impulse to march into the guest room and demanded that the atrocious woman left straight away.
He'd been sure that by the time the nurse was finished tearing apart his character, Belle would loathe him as much as the rest of the town did.

Instead she had jumped to his defense at the first unfavorable thing the woman has said about him and her words and more specifically the passionate, indignant tone of her voice left his insides shaking.

It had been years since he had truly had anyone on his side, someone who stood by him and didn't slander him behind his back.

For three years he'd been forced to sit in a court room and listen to his ex-wife telling the judge what a deplorable specimen of a man he was, going on in great detail and with a good dose of exaggeration about every single one of his nasty habits, his temper, his pettiness and generally all the things about himself he wished to keep hidden and than some more completely unfounded accusations on top of that.

Belle's words of praise and confidence in his character were still resonating inside his head and he was unprepared for how much her words moved him.

He wasn't used to being liked, being trusted, hadn't been by anyone for longer than he cared to remember.
There had been a great deal of truth in her words; people resented him for having to pay him rent and for him not being particularly accommodating about it.

He was the town monster and he had reveled in that role for years. It made conducting business infinitely less difficult and he had never cared for a social life anyway.

Until Belle.

Having her see him as a nothing more than a tyrant to be feared, avoided and scorned was too painful a thought to bear.
But knowing that she had faith in him, that she thought there was good in him, even going as far as to say that he was a 'wonderful' man was equally terrifying.

He didn't have a good track-record of holding on to people he cared about. His mother he had never known, his father had abandoned him, after years of neglectful upbringing, at the age of ten into the care of two aunts.
They at least had cared about him, but by then he had already been wary and distrusting.

When he'd been a young man, just barely out of his adolescence, there had been an ambitious, strong-willed girl he'd been absolutely infatuated with and for a while he had believed that he was going to build a future with her. But she too had moved on to greener pastures, leaving him behind disillusioned and broken-hearted.

Then Milah had happened and now, twenty years later he was still putting himself together from that ordeal.

Bae was only a boy now, but the idea that he would one day discover that his father was just an unimpressive, cowardly pretender with nothing more to his name than a large bank account and some designer suits was already fueling his worst nightmares.

He was fifty years old, had a ruined leg and a kid in tow… his changes of holding on to someone, especially one as lovely as Belle had never been smaller.

That afternoon Bae roped Belle into watching Toy Story III with him. Since he had been watching fragments of the movie for three months straight most of the entertainment value was lost on him, but he installed himself at the dining room table with his laptop and some correspondence, intending to get some work done, but ending up glancing over at the couch every other minute.

Bae was sprawled across the couch, limbs scattered everywhere and Gold wondered incredulously how such a position could ever be comfortable.
Belle was curled up, her knees tucked underneath her and leaning into the cushions so she wouldn't put pressure on the bruises on her left side.

Quickly he averted his eyes and tried to focus his attention on the letter from the city council in front of him, but it was to no avail.
The image of her perfect porcelain skin, the soft curves of her body and her sweet scent burst into his memory.

She was the loveliest, most beautiful woman he had ever met and the more he got to know her, the more he began to yearn for her.
For days he had tried to tell himself that he was in love with the idea of a loving, caring wife and a gentle, nurturing mother for Bae, but after this morning he realized how badly he'd been fooling himself. He wasn't in love with an idea, he was in love with her. He didn't want an imaginary perfect woman, he wanted Belle.

Cursing himself he started to type an email, his fingers almost pressing through the keys with the force he was using. He had no business looking. He had no business being infatuated with an unattainable woman half his age.
He had to stop being a fool.

He lasted for all of five minutes and than he looked up again, only to find that Bae had snuggled up against her and that Belle had wrapped her right arm around him.
His restless six-year-old had gone quiet, his head resting on Belle's shoulder as he watched the movie with heavy-lidded eyes.

He knew that Bae would be happy if Belle were to live with them permanently. His son had never indicated that he missed his mother, but it was obvious that he enjoyed having Belle around immensely. He was happier and more outgoing than he'd been since he got him back from Milah and it only deepened his feeling of dejection.

Belle was perfect in every way and just having her stay with them would make both Bae and himself so happy.
But he wouldn't be able to return the favor and within a short time she'd grow to be desperately unhappy, just like Milah had. She'd leave him and loathe him as much as Milah did now.

Perhaps lucky for him, Belle wasn't romantically interested in him at all. She had made that perfectly clear to the nurse that morning when she said all she wanted from him was friendship.

She probably had suitors lined up. She hadn't been in Storybooke, but she must have caught someone attention.

Someone beside him must have noticed how wonderful she was. Once she had recovered from her injuries it would take next to no time before some handsome, athletic young man asked her out on her date and she'd happily agree, not thinking twice about the old, limping grump she had lived with for a few weeks.

And the sooner he got that into his thick head, the better.

When he looked up again, his hands froze above the keyboard and a rush of emotion washed over his as she took in the sight in front of him.

Belle and Bae had both fallen asleep on the couch, Belle on her back, her arm draped next to her head and Bae cuddled against her.

The warm feeling settled in the pit of his stomach, burning and aching there as he watched them, tears threatening his eyes.

Without making a sound he rose to his feet and made his way over to the couch, careful not to let his cane click on the floor.

His son was out like a light, his face flushed and his dark hair a mess of unruly curls. Belle was smiling softly in her sleep and she looked so serene and so beautiful that for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

The three of them would make a wonderful family and as he reached out to pull the afghan from the back of the couch and drape it over them, he allowed himself to dream for a few seconds longer.

But by the time he had tucked the blanket around them his resolve had grown firm enough. Belle was a guest in his house. He had promised to take care of her while she healed from the injuries she had sustained saving his son's life.

She trusted him and he would sooner cut himself than betray her trust. He wouldn't compromise her. He wouldn't cause her a moment of discomfort. If he told her of his feelings and she rejected him things would become so awkward she'd feel obliged to move to Blue Fern Sanatorium after all.

He had promised her a safe and comfortable place to recuperate and Rowan Gold never broke his word.

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