by Liz Talley
Maddie had followed Darin’s dictates rather than her list.
And that could mean disaster.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GRANT TOOK A bottle of beer to bed with him. It was his second-best chance to actually get some sleep, since the thing that would help the most—sex—wasn’t going to happen for another five days.
He was counting.
And he knew that the past week could not be repeated.
Toasting the thought, he sat up in bed, in the dark, the sheet over his bottom half.
He was going to get up in the morning. Take his brother for the first of many diving excursions. And then go to a Bishop Landscaping job for the rest of the weekend. He’d keep Darin so busy he didn’t have time to think about Maddie, let alone talk to her.
There had to be a way to maintain Darin’s new zest for life without everything getting completely out of control.
He drank from the bottle.
Grant was up for the challenge. He could handle his brother, tend to him, all by himself.
Except for the therapy, of course. Darin had regained about a quarter of the use of his left hand and arm. They had a way to go before he could pull the plug on The Lemonade Stand completely.
Another second, another sip.
As for the landscaping, he’d committed to keeping up the place indefinitely. And he would. He’d just have to rein himself in on any extra projects, or hire a part-time kid to help him out.
He sipped. Yeah, that was a plan.
He’d hire a kid that the management of The Lemonade Stand approved of.
The thought was good enough to seal with another sip from his bottle.
Or not. Onetime sex with Lynn wasn’t going to work. He already knew that.
The knock on his door almost made him miss his mouth as he lifted the bottle to it. Darin didn’t wait for a response. Grant’s door opened and his brother was silhouetted from the light down the hall.
“You’re in the dark.” His brother, still dressed in the jeans and black pullover he’d put on after therapy, stood looking at him from the doorway.
“I know. It’s nighttime. I’m going to sleep.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sitting up.”
Grant was tired. Exhausted, really. And wasn’t sure if he was facing man or boy as his brother stood there.
“I’m on my way to sleep.”
“You can’t sleep with a bottle in your hand.”
He wasn’t putting it down yet. Not even to prove a point.
“I have to talk to you,” Darin said, not moving from his stance by the door.
“Can’t it wait until morning?”
“No.”
The unequivocal answer got his attention. “Okay, what’s up?”
“I would like you to turn on the light.”
With an inward grumble, he reached up to the bedside lamp and did as his brother requested, blinking against the brightness the low voltage bulb shot into the room.
He’d preferred the darkness, and the thoughts of having sex with Lynn while he poured beer down his throat.
But life wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about maintaining control of what was.
“What’s up?” he asked Darin, hearing another date request coming on. One he was planning to sidestep until after diving the next morning. At which time, if the fates smiled at him, the date request would be pushed to the back of Darin’s mind. And then slide, unnoticed, into the ether that had taken over the better part of his brother’s brain.
Walking farther into the room, Darin stopped at the bedside, standing over Grant. His expression was serious, alert, and Grant had to swallow. Hard. Had to fight a memory of Darin coming into his room to tell him that the court had placed him in Darin’s custody. To let him know how much he was loved and wanted. And to ask Grant to treat his wife with the same respect with which he treated him.
He had. Always. A day didn’t go by that he still didn’t miss his sister-in-law.
“I want to get married.”
The bottle of beer slid down his hand to rest in his lap, his hand atop the mouthpiece. He picked it up again. Put it to his mouth. Emptied it.
“Drinking is not the answer, Grant.”
More words from the past—and he didn’t have an answer. He’d give Darin the world if he could. Give him anything and everything he asked.
But he couldn’t let his brother be a husband.
“It’s a little early to be thinking about marriage,” he said, his tired mind scrambling and coming up empty. “You’ve only known her a few weeks.”
“We’re together every day but one, which is Sunday, and that’s enough time to know I want to marry her. Mom said she knew the night she met Dad that she was going to marry him.”
Reaching for his robe at the end of the bed, Grant slid from beneath the sheet and covered himself, then grabbed a pair of basketball shorts hanging on a hook on his bathroom door.
When he turned around, Darin was seated on the edge of Grant’s unmade bed, toying with a loose thread on his pant leg.
Grant had no plan. He wasn’t prepared for this. There was no literature written—not that he’d found at any rate and he’d been through pretty much everything out there—on how to tell your big brother that he was too damaged to have a wife.
“Can we talk about this in the morning, bro?”
When Darin looked up, Grant’s heart sank. His eyes were filled with tears and determination. Passion and fear. “No, Grant, I want to talk about this now.”
Something else hit him. “Have you already asked her?”
“No. I’m not stupid, Grant. I know I can’t just propose. Maddie and I can’t live alone.”
Grant took a seat next to his brother. “But you’ve talked to her about it, haven’t you?” He’d softened his voice, feeling his brother’s pain more than his own frustration in that moment.
“We’ve talked about being together every day, making dinner and eating together like we do at Lynn’s. And about sleeping in the same bed and talking that way instead of in different beds and being on the phone.”
He and Lynn had skipped the talking-in-bed part of the plan and gone straight to talking about sex.
But this wasn’t about him and Lynn.
“She needs me, Grant.”
Or was it that Darin needed to be needed? And if so, there was nothing wrong with that.
“And you can be there for her, as a friend,” Grant said gently. “We don’t lie to each other, right?”
“Right.”
“So as much as I want to tell you we’ll find a way to work this out, I can’t do that.”
“Can, too.” Darin’s chin stiffened, jutting out as he said, “You aren’t trying.”
“I’m not trying because I can’t get past the fact that I cannot possibly take care of Maddie, not like I take care of you.”
“I’ll take care of her.”
“What if she has female issues that she doesn’t understand or needs help with?” He was pulling at straws and he knew it, but he had to help Darin see, to nip this in the bud now before it flowered into a hellish mess.
“I know all about them. I was married before, remember?”
“She can’t stay alone all day. And she definitely can’t come with us on job sites.”
He had all he could handle with one handicapped family member. He couldn’t take on two. No matter how much he loved his brother.
Could he?
Was he actually considering this asinine idea?
No. He was not.
“We could take her to The Lemonade Stand in the morning and pick her up on our way home at night. I can give her half of my closet. My clothes don’t fill it up, anyway. And she can
borrow my computer and watch my television and use my soap.”
“Who would budget your money?”
Darin looked over at him, frowning. “You, of course.”
“Maddie lives by lists. Who’d make out her lists?”
“Nuh-uh, Grant. Maddie doesn’t live by lists. Lynn does. Maddie just has to follow the list to watch Kara. At Maddie’s house there aren’t any lists.”
Darin had been to Maddie’s house? After all their careful supervision?
“When were you in her house?”
“I don’t know.” Darin shrugged. “One time.”
“Can you remember anything about the time?”
It was a question he regularly asked his brother because Darin had no sense of time beyond being able to count days on a calendar.
“No.”
“Did you have your stitches then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I looked at my leg.”
“What about your arm? Do you remember if you did anything with your left arm?”
Darin wrinkled his nose. His brow furrowed. And then his eyes opened wide. “Yes, I remember right now that I tried to hold the door open for her as we were leaving but my arm wouldn’t move and the door hit her and I was afraid she was going to cry, but she laughed instead. And later she told me that she hoped that therapy worked because it made her sad that I couldn’t use my arm. That’s when I first really wanted her to be my friend. When she looked at me like that and said that.”
All of which put Darin in Maddie’s home the first week they’d been at the Stand.
Before anyone was specifically keeping an eye on them.
“Have you been back since?”
“No.”
“You don’t... You guys don’t...”
“Don’t what, Grant?”
“Have you kissed Maddie?”
“A man doesn’t kiss and tell, Grant.”
“I’m your brother. It’s okay to tell me.”
Darin studied him, as though weighing his options. “Yes, I did kiss her. And she tasted good and we both liked it. A lot. And we want to get married. And I farted, too, and she laughed. And then she farted and I laughed. I want to live with her forever. It would make me very happy, Grant.”
“You do realize this is a huge decision, right?”
“Yes. And you don’t think I can make it, do you?” Darin’s gaze was clear for a moment. And then it clouded over.
“What I think is that it’s too big a decision for me to make tonight,” he told his brother.
“But you aren’t saying no.”
“I’m not saying yes, either.”
“But you aren’t saying no.”
He had to go to bed. Darin needed to go to bed, too. They were going diving in the morning.
“No, I’m not saying no.”
Darin jumped off the bed so fast he almost fell and had to catch himself on the nightstand, knocking over the empty beer bottle. “Gee, thanks, Grant. Okay, good night,” he said. And strode from the room.
Presumably to call his intended.
Reminding himself that intentions didn’t mean anything without action, Grant picked up the empty beer bottle, set it back on the nightstand and went to bed.
* * *
OH, GOD, GRANT, where are you?
Walking outside on the grounds, and then on to the public sections of The Lemonade Stand, Lynn looked everywhere for Grant’s truck Saturday morning. He was always there by eight on weekends. To get in a full day’s work so he could be free to work on his paying design projects during the week. Grant was a workaholic. Dependable. A do-what-you-say-you’re-going-to-do type of guy.
And she couldn’t find his truck anywhere.
Let alone find him.
Darin’s therapy was due to start in half an hour. Neither brother would let him skip it.
She just had to remain calm.
Kara was tied up for the morning in a specially designed developmental-play class that a child life specialist was giving to the toddlers in the private day care. There could be thirty or more living at the Stand at any given time. At the moment, there were only six.
Twice as many babies. And more than twenty five-and-overs living at The Lemonade Stand.
Still no Grant.
Five minutes before Darin’s therapy was due to begin, their truck finally pulled into the back parking lot closest to the secure entrance to the complex, and Darin got out, slamming his door and, without saying goodbye to his brother or seeming to notice Lynn, stomped off in the direction of the therapy room.
“What’s up with him?” she asked Grant. Just seeing him and looking into those brown eyes settled her nerves.
“He said he wanted to start diving again. I took him diving.”
“And it didn’t go well? Because of his arm?”
“It went very well, in spite of his arm.”
He locked the truck, the epitome of hot in his tight jeans and black Bishop Landscaping polo shirt.
“He seemed upset.”
He didn’t ask why she was there.
Or seem to notice that she’d put on makeup with her favorite pair of black scrubs. She’d thought about leaving her hair down, too, but it just wasn’t practical.
“I just signed him up for a diving class he used to teach.”
“Does he know the teacher?”
“No. It’s a kid who was probably in grade school the last time Darin did any real diving. He’s mad because the class meets four nights a week. Right after therapy.”
Her confusion cleared.
And so did some more of her tension.
“I’m guessing he talked to you, then.”
Maddie had hit her with the news first thing that morning.
“Oh, he talked to me all right.” Clipping his keys onto his belt loop, Grant started toward the locked garage where the landscaping equipment was stored. She walked beside him.
And wanted him to want her. Even then.
“I told Maddie that they couldn’t possibly marry,” she said, having to walk fast to keep up. “I told her that you’d have to sign paperwork giving Darin permission to marry and that you’d never do that.”
His silence was not encouraging. On any level.
They passed through open common ground and turned a corner before they reached the garage. Pulling his keys from his belt loop, Grant unlocked the door and strode inside. Lynn waited for him outside, wondering what she’d done to piss him off.
His hand shot out, grabbed her wrist, and she was inside the garage and in his arms before she’d had time for another thought.
Grant’s lips seemed to devour hers. His tongue moved with hers as though they belonged together, as though they were meant to be together.
She clung to him. She hated the need that prompted her, but she gripped him hard anyway. Maybe even hurting him in her need to hang on.
Breathing wasn’t easy, but it didn’t seem necessary, either.
When she finally had a chance to gasp some air, her nose and lungs filled with the scent of gasoline, grass particles and machinery.
She kissed him again, her arms locked around his neck, wanting to hold him to her permanently.
The word permeated her fogged brain, and Lynn’s hands fell away.
She backed up. “Wow. Um, I guess...”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I guess.”
His eyes finished the sentence. And her entire body tingled.
Whatever doubts she’d harbored about their plan to have sex diminished. Wednesday was coming. And when it did, they’d be naked. He was going to be inside her.
How in the hell was she going to wait that long?
And how was it ever going to be enough?
She watched him gather supplies. And she needed so much more than sex. Though the distraction was incredibly welcome.
“I, uh, guess you told Darin he couldn’t marry Maddie.”
“Nope.”
She straightened, folding her arms, and remembered Darin’s request for a date. Grant hadn’t been able to tell his big brother no then, either. “You didn’t tell him yes, did you?”
Turning, one foot on the zero-gravity mower, he looked at her. “I tried to point out that he was not in any shape to marry. He had an answer for everything.”
“What answer could he possibly have for the fact that they can’t even live alone?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“He expects me to do for the both of them exactly what I do for him. I’m already doing it. So it stands to reason that I could just expand my duties a bit and—”
“You can’t do that.” He was practically killing himself as it was. Hell, he was a thirty-eight-year-old man who had to schedule an hour of sex more than a week in advance.
Grant’s silence didn’t tell it to her straight.
“Are you considering it?”
“I told him I would.”
“Are you?”
“At this point, I’ve done everything I can to avoid thinking about it.”
She didn’t blame him. How did you give your whole life to raising your older brother, invest every part of yourself into maintaining and preserving his well-being, encouraging him to push himself and try everything he wanted to try to get the most out of life, and then tell him he couldn’t have what he wanted most because he was handicapped.
She moved closer. He took her hand, resting it on his upraised thigh. All she wanted to do was pull him into her arms and promise him that they’d get through this together. That he wasn’t alone and it would be okay.
“I was hoping I’d distract him,” Grant said, his voice low, dejected. “The diving lessons... I thought I was doing a good thing.”
“Clearly, he didn’t.”
“All he cared about was that they were going to interfere with his only chance to spend time with Maddie. I thought he’d lost the ability to be single focused. Maybe it’s just that after he lost Shelley, he didn’t care enough anymore. And now, with Maddie...”