“You’re not going to sleep, are you?” she asks me, her eyes finally resting back on my face.
“Actually, yes, I am.”
She rolls her eyes. “Are you eighty? Come on, it’s only ten.”
“I’m tired.” I don’t want to continue this conversation with her, especially considering I’m flat on my back, which is the most awkward way to talk to someone. At home, I’ve got an adjustable bed I can control with my mouth.
“My room is too quiet.” Nellie squeezes her fists together. “It’s making me nervous.”
“So go down to the bar and have drinks with Doug.”
“And a bunch of i-bankers? No, thanks.” She looks at the television again. “Could I hang out here for a bit? Watch some television?”
“Doesn’t your room have a television?”
“But it’s too quiet in there.”
“It won’t be if you turn on the television.”
Nellie just keeps looking at me, but I don’t get it. This is her first time in Vegas. She’s pretty, she’s single, and the night’s still young. Why doesn’t she want to go out and have a good time? That’s what I’d want to do if I still could. If she could go out, why the hell would she want to hang out here?
Of course, the explanation is staring me in the face: Doug told her she had to check on me. She’s not here to have a good time—she’s being paid to babysit me.
“I’m fine in here, you know,” I say. “I don’t need you.”
“Good for you,” she says. “It doesn’t make my room any less quiet and scary.”
I sigh. Whatever her motivations, I’m not going to win this argument. The easiest thing will just be to let her stay here and watch some TV. I’m not tired, after all. Not after that conversation with my boss.
“Fine,” I say. “You can stay. For an hour.”
She holds up her hand. “I promise. One hour and I’m gone.”
But instead of turning on the television, she just stands there, looking at me. It’s making me self-conscious, and I feel a flush creeping into my cheeks. “What?”
“Can you see the TV?” she asks. “I mean, you’re lying flat.”
“It’s fine,” I mutter. I can’t just sit up like most people can. If I want to sit up, it’s going to take some hands-on help, and Nellie made it clear she’s not interested in being my aide.
“I could help you.” She arches an eyebrow at me. “It’s not a big deal. Really.”
Fine. If she’s willing to help me, yes, I want to sit up. I don’t want to be staring at the ceiling if the TV is on.
“Okay,” I say. “If you grab a couple of pillows, you can put them behind my back and head.”
Fortunately, there are a million pillows in this room. Nellie gathers four of them, then climbs on the bed beside me. She kneels over me, just enough that I can see down her shirt.
No bra. Holy shit. I close my eyes, swallow hard, and try not to focus on her tits. Which are incredible, by the way. God, it’s been a long time since I’ve been close to a beautiful woman’s breasts. Longer since I’ve touched a beautiful woman’s breasts.
If this were five years ago and I were in bed with a woman like Nellie and she was leaning over me like this, I’d be grabbing her and pulling her body against me. The urge to reach out and touch her is almost overpowering. Nellie is incredibly sexy—no two ways about it.
For a split second, I allow myself to fantasize. I imagine those amazing breasts pressed against my chest. I imagine her soft black hair brushing against my face. I imagine her leaning forward and pressing her lips against mine.
“So… what should I do?” she asks, snapping me out of my stupid fantasy. Of course, she’s all business. She’s not leaning over me to tantalize me with a glimpse of her tits or to kiss me. She’s leaning over me because I have no muscles in my upper body and am unable to sit up without her assistance.
I can’t let on how much she’s turning me on right now.
“Put your arms under my shoulder blades and help me lean forward,” I tell her quietly. “Then prop me up with the pillows.”
Nellie leans over me, then slides one of her arms up under my back. She’s really close to me and I can smell strawberries—her shampoo? Christ, she smells good. It’s fucking hard to be this close to her. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I haven’t been physically close like this to women since my injury. Many of my PCAs have been women, after all. But none of them were as young and sexy as Nellie is.
She’s paid to be here. Just don’t forget that, Warner.
Chapter 17
Nellie
My hands are all up in Alex’s business while I’m putting the pillow behind him. He’s wearing the same T-shirt he wore during the day, but he looks different in a T-shirt than he used to. Four years ago, I’d noticed the muscles in his arms and chest even under his dress shirt, but those are all gone now. Yet he’s still incredibly appealing, with those gray eyes and rugged features. The growing stubble on his chin just barely brushes against my cheek as I reach behind him with my short arms, and my body tingles.
There’s no denying it. I find this man incredibly sexy.
Too bad he’s just barely tolerating my presence here. There’s only one thing on his mind and that’s his precious Isabelle. I don’t believe his bullshit story about getting closure for even a second.
I put three pillows behind him so that he’s sitting up at about a forty-five-degree incline. Without him asking, I try to move his arms for him so that they’re at his sides, although his elbows won’t straighten all the way.
“It’s fine,” he tells me. “I’m good. Just leave them.”
“Okay,” I agree.
I settle down on the bed next to him, since I don’t want to mess up Doug’s neatly made blankets. He glances at me curiously but doesn’t protest. It’s not like we’re all that close to each other. We’re at least a foot apart.
“Anything in particular you want to watch?” I ask.
“Whatever,” he says. “Ladies’ choice.”
I flick on the TV. It looks like there’s a good number of channels, but nothing is catching my attention. I don’t feel like the news or a cop drama or an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.
“How can you go so fast?” Alex complains.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re clicking too fast. You can’t even tell what you’re passing up.”
“I can tell.”
“In half a second?”
I ignore him, clicking again to the next channel. This is the Food Network. I hold my finger over the button to change the channel, hesitating.
“Leave it,” Alex says. “This is a good show.”
“It is?”
He nods. “So four cooks are competing—two of them are professional chefs and two are home cooks. A panel of judges has to figure out which is which.”
I smile at him. “Sounds a little low brow for your taste.”
“My taste?”
“I don’t know.” I grab a handful of the covers and pull it over my legs. “I figure you only watch fancy stuff like… Masterpiece Theater.”
“Masterpiece Theater?” There’s that smile again, twitching at his lips. “No, I watch all the normal stuff. Game of Thrones. Dead To Me. This is Us. The Umbrella Academy. Chernobyl. Modern Family. Stranger Things. Fleabag. Bojack Horseman. Broad City. Watchmen…”
“Hmm,” I say. “Is there anything you don’t watch?”
“No, I watch just about everything. I think I’m going for the Guinness World Record in television watching.”
“You’ll have to beat me out first.”
“Not a chance.”
“When I was eight years old,” I say, “I was really good at jumping rope, and I thought I could possibly get in the Guinness World Record for consecutive jumps for a person under eighteen.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “So what happened?”
“I wasn’t sure how to go about getting in the book.” I
roll over slightly in bed so that I can look at his profile. “So I wrote a letter to Sir Alec Guinness.”
This time Alex laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh since I saw him at that bar four years ago. I forgot how sexy his laugh was. “I don’t think Sir Alec Guinness has anything to do with the Guinness Book of World Records.”
“You’re kidding!” I roll my eyes. “Look, I was eight years old. How was I supposed to know?”
“So did he write back to you?”
I nod. “He did. Months later. Apologized that he wasn’t affiliated with the world records and wished me luck. But by then, I had moved on to other things.”
“I’ll bet.”
I feel like there’s more I want to say, but now that we’re getting along again, I don’t want to screw it up. So I turn my attention back to the show, which is pretty good. I know people say watching television is a solitary activity, but I have so much more fun watching with other people. And it looks like Alex knows a lot about food and cooking, from the comments he makes about the competitors’ decisions.
“I love cooking competitions,” he says.
“Me too,” I agree. “They’re my favorite.”
“Ditto.”
Ah, we’re finally bonding.
“Are you a good cook?” I ask him.
“Oh, sure,” he says. “I cook gourmet dinners every night. Cordon Bleu, all that shit. You want me to whip up a chocolate soufflé for you tonight?”
Damn it, I was so close… “You know what I mean. I meant…”
“You meant before.” He shuts his gray eyes for a moment, then opens them. “No, I never cooked. Never had time. And it’s one thing to watch and know the techniques, but it’s another to execute them. I was the kind of guy who could burn water.”
“I’m not sure you can actually burn water.”
“No, but you can forget about the pot of boiling water on the stove until all the water boils down and the pot gets scalded and stinks up the whole apartment. That can happen. Trust me.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I’ve done that.”
Alex is quiet for a moment, staring into nothing. “Isabelle’s a really good cook.”
I don’t know what to say. I want to ask him what the deal is with this girl, but I’m not sure it’s my place. Scratch that—I know it’s not my place.
“You seemed like a really good couple,” I finally say. “You know, that night at Charley’s…”
His eyes widen. “You… you remember that?”
“Of course I do!” I raise a hand to slug him in the shoulder but think better of it. Probably better not to punch a disabled guy, even in jest. “You got down on one knee right during my show! I’ll never forget it.”
The tips of his ears turn red. “I didn’t think you recognized me.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You look the same.”
He snorts.
“Okay,” I concede. “Your face looks the same. And anyway, it was really sweet and romantic. I can’t believe you didn’t end up marrying her.”
He’s quiet for a moment. The TV show is still running, but I’m not paying attention. I want to know what he’s thinking. “I got shot that night.”
I suck in a breath. That was not what I expected him to say. “What?”
“Right after we left the bar,” he says softly. “We decided to take a walk to this gelato place Isabelle had heard about. But she didn’t know where it was and we got lost. And… this mugger with a gun came out of nowhere.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God…”
“Isabelle gave him her purse.” He blinks a few times, his eyes bleary. “I handed over my wallet. That should have been it. Except Isabelle is… well, you’ve seen her. She’s gorgeous. And… the guy wanted to…” He drops his head. “I tried to stop him and he shot me. Then the guy ran away while Isabelle called for an ambulance. They never caught him.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “So you saved her life. And she… she dumped you?”
That bitch. How do you dump a guy after he literally saves your life? The age of chivalry is dead—men just don’t do stuff like that anymore. A few months ago, I took a guy I was dating with me to the bar where I was performing and he took off half an hour before my act because he said the neighborhood was “too dangerous to be around late at night.” Spineless jerk.
Alex smiles wryly. “Why do you assume she broke up with me?”
My mouth falls open. “Um…”
“No, you were right.” He does that half-shrug. “She ended it. But in her defense, the first few months, when things were touch and go, she never left my side. She was great. But then when they were sure I would live and that I was permanently paralyzed, I stopped being grateful for having survived and started to be pissed off about my situation. I was an asshole to her.”
“You? An asshole? I don’t believe it.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Hey, I let you watch TV in my room. I’m being nice.”
“Oh yes, you’re lovely.”
“Anyway.” He rolls his eyes. “That stuff with Isabelle is in the past. I fucked up and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Right.” I nod. “Except you’re here at her wedding, for some reason.”
“Is that so wrong?”
“Yes, it is.” I catch his eyes, and he looks away. “Nobody goes to their ex-fiancée’s wedding. That’s a super weird thing to do. Doug has no idea why you wanted to go and neither do I.”
“I want to get closure.”
“Bullshit.”
Alex is quiet, his lips pressed together. Finally, he lets out a sigh. “Fine, you want to know why I wanted to come to this wedding?”
“Yes, obviously!”
The tips of his ears turn red again. “I want to stop Isabelle from getting married.”
“Whoa…” It’s not what I expected him to say. But I can see from his face this isn’t another bullshit reason. He means it. “You want to stop the wedding? Seriously? Do people really do that in real life?”
“The guy she’s marrying is awful.” He frowns, a deep crease forming between his brows. “She wouldn’t be with him if I hadn’t treated her so badly at the end. She’ll be miserable with him. He’s already cheating on her. I can’t… I don’t want her to wreck her life.”
“Right…” I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. “Couldn’t you have called her up on the phone and told her all that?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Isabelle’s been out of the states for the last month and the connection is always shitty and… well, it’s not the sort of thing you say on the phone. I need to tell her to her face.”
I study his expression. I remember the way he talked about his girlfriend that night at Charley’s before he proposed. Nothing has changed. “You’re still in love with her.”
He lowers his eyes and lets out a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
My heart sinks a little. I don’t know why, but it does. I barely know the guy. What do I care if he’s still in love with his ex?
“Do you want to get her back?” I ask.
“Nellie.” His voice breaks on the word. “I’m not delusional.”
I want to tell him how sexy he still is and that Isabelle would be crazy if she didn’t think so. But he’d probably think I’m being patronizing. “So what’s your plan?”
“Plan?”
I roll my eyes. “You want to talk Isabelle out of marrying this loser. Are you meeting her tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Did you send her an email or text to let her know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Well, why not?”
He smiles sheepishly. “I don’t know. I figured I’m better off catching her by surprise.”
“Look,” I say. “I’ll help you with Isabelle. It sounds like you need it. But you have to send her an email. Like, now. Because the girl’s getting married, so she’s not going to have tons of free time.”
&nb
sp; He seems to consider this. “Well, her fiancé is at the conference with Doug tomorrow. So maybe that would be the best time…”
“Maybe suggest lunch?”
“No,” he says firmly. “Not lunch. I don’t want her to…”
He gets that distant, troubled look in his gray eyes again. It’s the eating thing, I guess. That’s got to be rough on him that he can’t feed himself. Although after four years, he probably needs to get the hell over it already.
“So coffee?” I suggest.
“Yeah. Coffee.” He casts down his gaze at his phone on the nightstand. “Hey, Siri. Compose email. To Isabelle Legere.”
Isabelle Legere. Even her name is beautiful.
“Hi Isabelle,” he dictates. He glances at me self-consciously, then continues, “New paragraph. Do you want to grab coffee tomorrow afternoon sometime. Question mark. New paragraph. Best comma Alex.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. I nod, and he says, “Send email.”
I smile at him. “There. Aren’t you lucky I’m here?”
“That’s debatable,” he mumbles, but he’s smiling. He lets out a yawn. “Anyway, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to turn in. It’s been a long day.”
“Okay.” I look at him, propped up on the bed. “You want me to take the pillows out?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
I remove the three pillows I put under him to help him sit up. I help him get adjusted in the bed. A lock of his hair falls onto his forehead as his body shifts, and I nearly brush it away. Nearly. Alex is hot, but he’s got issues on top of his issues. For starters, he’s still so in love with his ex that he flew across the country to stop her wedding. Also, it’s clear he’s not entirely adjusted to his pretty severe disability, and it might be years before he is.
But I still think he’s one of the hottest guys I’ve ever met. I wish I could stop thinking so, but I can’t.
Chapter 18
Alex
I have to hand it to Doug. He stumbled home at two in the morning, but he still managed to wake up again at seven to help me get ready in the morning. We opted to skip the shower this morning, but between my stretches, swapping out my catheter, my bowel program, dressing me, brushing my teeth, and shaving me, it’s still an extensive process. He’s got to be at his conference by nine o’clock (-ish), so needless to say our day has to start very early.
My Ex's Wedding: A Fake Boyfriend Romance Page 10