by Gina Wilkins
Maybe he would just stay right where he was for a little while, he thought grimly, lowering himself carefully to the floor and letting the waves of pain wash over him.
ANNIE USUALLY CLEANED another house on Friday after leaving Trent’s place, but because her client had canceled that day, she found herself with several free hours. She made a stop by Honoria’s only music store, placed an order for some piano-teaching supplies, then headed home for what she anticipated would be a rare few hours of leisure.
She assumed Trent would have already finished for the day. She certainly hadn’t expected to find him lying facedown on her living-room floor.
“Trent?” She knelt beside him, her heart in her throat. His eyes were closed, his glasses lying on the floor beside him. A sheen of perspiration covered his face, even though the room was cool.
She was relieved when his eyes opened, though the expression in them almost made her gulp. Trent was not happy to have been found this way by her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Muscle spasms in my back. It’s no big deal. It happens sometimes.” His attempt at nonchalance didn’t exactly come off since the sentence ended in a gasp.
“How long have you been lying here?”
“Half an hour, maybe.”
“I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No. My cell phone’s in my pocket. If I’d wanted an ambulance, I’d have called one.”
“Can you stand up?”
“Of course I can stand.” He made an effort to rise, paled, and lowered himself carefully back down. “Just not right now.”
“All right, that’s it—I’m calling for help.”
“No!” He reached out to grab her wrist when she would have risen. For a man who couldn’t even stand, his grip was remarkably strong. “Don’t call anyone.”
“Trent, you need help. Just let me—”
“No.” He swallowed, then added. “Please.”
Apparently he’d swallowed a large amount of pride. Annie groaned, annoyed with herself for letting his plea affect her. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend you aren’t here? Just go about my business and step over you when I want to get to the other side of the room? Toss a throw rug over you, perhaps?”
His eyebrows dipped lower. “I never realized until today that you have such a smart mouth on you,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, well, you would try the patience of a saint. So what are we going to do, Trent?”
“I gave in and took a muscle relaxer a few minutes ago. When it kicks in, I’ll be able to get up and go home.”
“If it’s like any muscle relaxer I’ve ever taken, you won’t be able to drive when it takes effect. You’re already starting to float, aren’t you?”
He made a visible effort to focus on her face. She didn’t know how well he could see without his glasses, but she suspected the glazed look in his eyes had more to do with medication than myopia. “I can handle it,” he muttered.
She shook her head. “Do you ever ask for help, Trent McBride?”
“Do you?” he countered.
He had her there. “At least let me call your brother.”
He shook his head. “He’ll tell Mom, and she’ll freak out and start hovering. She and Dad are planning to leave for a month-long cruise in a few weeks, and I don’t want to give her reason to delay it again. They both need the vacation very badly after everything that’s happened in our family during the past couple of years.”
She didn’t know what had happened in his family, but it was an argument she couldn’t really refute. His concern for his parents obviously outweighed his own discomfort, and she wouldn’t have felt right going against his wishes. Painfully estranged from her own parents, she could only envy the close bonds she’d sensed in the McBride family. She could also identify with Trent’s need to prove himself independent of them.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked more gently. “Would a heating pad help?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t express his gratitude that she’d given up her insistence to call for help, but she saw it in his expression. “Thanks.”
“If I help you, can you make it to the couch?”
“I think so,” he answered cautiously.
“I’ll get the heating pad first. Don’t try to move—I’ll be right back.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he muttered.
She hurried into the bedroom, still half convinced she should be calling an ambulance instead of trying to take care of him herself.
She should have known that Trent wouldn’t follow directions even when he was in terrible pain. She found him struggling to rise when she returned with the heating pad in hand. Making a sound of exasperation, she tossed the pad on the couch and moved to help him.
“You really are mule-headed, aren’t you?” she chided, bracing him with her shoulder. Her reaction to seeing his pallor and the pain in his eyes made her voice sharper than she had intended. “I told you to wait until I got back.”
“If I wanted to be lectured, I’d have called my mother,” he complained, his words slurred because he was forcing them through clenched teeth.
“Something we should probably be doing, anyway,” she retorted, all too aware of his body pressed full-length against hers. She had one arm around his waist, which confirmed her belief that he could stand to gain a few pounds. She could feel heat radiating through his washed-thin denim shirt. She pushed her instinctive feminine reactions to the back of her mind and concentrated on his welfare.
Lowering him to the couch was an ordeal in itself. She blinked back a film of sympathetic tears when a broken gasp escaped him. He was hurting so badly and she felt so helpless.
He barely fit on her secondhand couch. She slipped a throw pillow beneath his head and managed to position the heating pad at the small of his back, where he said the pain was most intense. She retrieved his glasses from the floor and set them on the coffee table within easy reach. “Can I get you anything?” she asked then, hovering beside the couch. “Something to drink? Soda? Hot tea, perhaps?”
“No, I’m okay for now. If you have houses to clean or something, feel free to go. I’ll just lie here a few minutes until the medication does its job, then I’ll head home.”
As anxious as he seemed to be for her to leave him to suffer in solitude, Annie had no intention of doing so. Nor did she intend to allow him to drive home. She wasn’t sure how she was going to accomplish that, exactly—whether it would involve calling his brother or simply threatening to do so—but she couldn’t stand back and let him do anything that foolish.
She would, however, refrain from hovering over him. “I have some things to do in the kitchen,” she told him. “Call out if you need me.”
He nodded, avoiding her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t fine, of course. He looked miserable. Hurting, embarrassed, chagrined. As much as she hated leaving him, she knew he wanted privacy. Just to give herself something productive to do, she went into the kitchen and began to make lasagna, her hands busy but her thoughts focused on the man in the other room.
Everything she had heard about Trent McBride during the past couple of months reinforced her belief that he must hate being in this awkward situation. He’d apparently been accustomed to being treated like a local hero. Star athlete in school, extremely popular with the local girls, then on to the Air Force Academy, where he had excelled in his studies. She could imagine how dashing he must have looked in his pilot’s uniform.
It had to be galling for a man like that to be found on the floor, unable to walk even a few steps on his own.
She made herself wait twenty minutes before checking on him. He was asleep when she tiptoed into the living room. The pain medication he had taken must be strong, she thought, studying the hollows beneath his eyes. She wondered if he always carried it with him or if it had been a lucky coincidence that he’d had it today.
Funny how young he looked when he slept, she mused, unable to resist lingering another momen
t. She’d gotten into the habit of thinking of him as older than herself, when they were actually the same age. She realized now that the shallow lines around his eyes and mouth had been etched there by chronic pain. And even though she knew he would hate it, her heart twisted in sympathy.
He stirred restlessly against the throw pillow and she moved swiftly toward the door. She didn’t want him to wake up and find her watching him sleep. But as she returned to the kitchen, it occurred to her that she wouldn’t have minded standing there watching him a while longer.
4
TRENT WOKE disoriented, groggy and still uncomfortable enough that he concentrated first on the pain, then on his surroundings. He grimaced when he realized where he was and remembered how he’d gotten there.
It humiliated him that Annie had found him sprawled on her floor, utterly incapacitated. After his arrogant assurances to her that morning, his unreliable back had chosen the worst possible time to fail him. Now he had to face her again, see the pity in her eyes, resign himself to having Annie—like everyone else—treat him as an invalid from here on.
Which only went to show how foolish he’d been to start imagining that Annie needed his help. He’d rather liked believing he had something worthwhile to offer her, even if only physical labor. Lately he’d even found himself wondering if maybe he should ask her out sometime, just to see if she might be interested in something besides his skill with power tools. Not that he’d been thinking long term, or anything, he assured himself quickly. He just thought maybe they could keep each other company occasionally. But that seemed unlikely, now that she’d seen him at his worst. Even if she agreed, he wouldn’t know if she’d accepted his invitation because she liked him, or because she felt sorry for him—something he simply wouldn’t tolerate.
Their arrangement had been pretty good while it had lasted, he thought glumly, but it was over now. She wouldn’t want him doing any more repairs for fear that he might hurt himself, and he would be damned if he let her work for him without accepting his help in return.
Moving very carefully, he slid his legs off the side of the couch and pushed himself upright. His back muscles clenched in protest, but he ignored them, rising slowly but relatively steadily to his feet. Sliding his glasses onto his nose, he remembered that Annie had said she would be in the kitchen. The tantalizing aromas coming from that direction let him know she’d been busy. Bracing himself for cloying sympathy, he made his way stiffly toward the kitchen.
Annie was sitting at the table, a glass of iced tea beside her, an open paperback in her hands. She looked up when he entered. Her eyes widened, then narrowed assessingly. “You look a little better,” she said, her voice surprisingly matter-of-fact.
“Yeah. Better.” Marginally, but he would take what he could get.
“Are you hungry? It’s almost two o’clock and I don’t suppose you’ve eaten since breakfast.”
He hadn’t eaten breakfast, actually. Just coffee. He was surprised to realize that he was hungry.
“I made lasagna,” she said when he hesitated. “I was just about to have some, myself. Why don’t you join me?”
Lasagna just happened to be one of his favorite foods. He might as well join her for lunch since she was offering and he saw no evidence of the pity he had dreaded. He’d consider it a farewell meal, of sorts. “Sounds good. Thanks.”
She set her book aside and motioned him toward the rickety-looking wooden chair across the table—the only other seat available in the small kitchen. “What would you like to drink? I have tea, cola, juice…”
He chose the tea, then sank slowly into the chair. It rocked a little when he sat in it. Some wood glue and putty would reinforce it, he thought automatically. Next time he was here, he would…
He brought himself up short, reminding himself there probably wouldn’t be a next time.
Annie set a well-filled plate of lasagna and steamed vegetables in front of him, along with a glass of iced tea. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, this is fine. Um…do you always eat this well for lunch?”
She chuckled as she settled across the table with her own plate. “Hardly. I usually just have a sandwich or a liquid-meal replacement. But I had a couple of cancellations today, so I’m free until five, which is when I clean your father and brother’s offices.”
“So you made lasagna.”
Her smile turned wry. “It gave me something to do besides hover over you and worry.”
Taking a bite, he silently approved her choice. “There was no reason for you to worry about me.”
“Of course. What was I thinking? I come home all the time to find men lying on my floor grimacing in pain. I realize now I shouldn’t have given it even a second thought.”
He wondered why he’d once thought of Annie as a meek little doormat. Apparently she had made it a point to hide the fact that there was an acerbic sense of irony hidden behind her delicate fragility. Since he couldn’t think of an appropriate response, he took another bite of the delicious lasagna to avoid having to answer.
They ate a few minutes in silence and then Annie spoke again. “I assume you injured your back in the plane crash?”
He nodded, not surprised that she’d heard about the accident.
“Are you being treated for it?”
He lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’ve had a couple of operations, but there’s not much more that can be done.”
“What about therapy? Exercises?”
Focusing fiercely on his plate, he muttered, “I’ve been given some exercises, but they don’t help much.”
“Why do I suspect you don’t do them as faithfully as you should?”
Now she sounded like his mother. He gave her a look, then reached for his tea.
Propping her chin on one hand, she studied him openly, making him self-conscious. “What?” he asked.
“I was just remembering the first time I met you. I’d heard the whispers around town and I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
He scowled. “I hope you’ve learned that you can’t believe everything you hear in this town. People around here have made a sport out of gossiping about the McBrides. It’s been going on since my great-grandfather’s day.”
“So I’ve been told. One of my clients is Martha Godwin.”
His scowl deepened. “She’s the worst of the bunch. What did she tell you about me?”
“Only that you were in a terrible accident that left you with serious injuries. She probably would have embellished, but I don’t encourage gossip about my clients.”
“Good policy,” he muttered, stabbing his fork into a tender baby carrot.
“From what little she did say about you, I half expected to find you in a wheelchair. Missing a few limbs at the least.”
“I sat in a wheelchair for almost four months after the crash. I didn’t care for it.”
She chuckled. “I don’t imagine that you did.”
He still hated the thought of her picturing him as an invalid—even though he had to admit she wasn’t treating him like one. “I’ve been on my feet for months. I’ve been left with a trick back and limited peripheral vision, but I get by just fine.”
She glanced at his glasses. “So that’s why you didn’t see me sitting at Jamie’s table the other day. I wondered.”
He pushed his near-empty plate away as he remembered his surprise at finding her in his sister-in-law’s kitchen. Knowing she had been watching him while he was unaware of her presence had made him extremely uncomfortable. Now she knew everything about him, he thought in resignation. Now would come the pity.
“You were lucky, weren’t you?” she startled him by asking instead.
He stared at her in disbelief. “Lucky?” That was one word he hadn’t associated with himself since the accident.
Her eyebrows rose. “Of course. You survived an airplane crash. You’re still in one piece, you’re able to do beautiful woodworking and you have a wonderful, loving family.
You’re still prettier than any man has a right to be. All in all, I would say you’re very lucky.”
Who was this woman? he asked himself, dismayed to feel his cheeks warm in response to being called “pretty.” His meek, shy little housekeeper had turned into someone he didn’t know at all.
“Now,” she continued, pushing her plate away, “do you want to stay here and rest for another couple of hours or do you want me to take you home?”
“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself home.”
“I would be willing to bet the medication you took has a warning not to drive or operate heavy machinery after taking it.”
He shrugged. He was still floating a little, but he felt capable of driving the short distance home. At least the spasms in his back had dulled to a steady ache rather than the stabbing pains from earlier. “I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be silly, Trent. You can hardly move and you’re high on pills. What kind of friend would I be if I let you drive in this condition?”
He hadn’t realized she considered herself a friend of any kind. As far as he knew, they were merely acquaintances. At least, that was what he’d been trying to convince himself of during the past few weeks, even though he was aware that he’d spent entirely too much of that time thinking about her. Wondering about her. Picturing her pretty face and slender body in his mind. And he definitely liked the sound of his name on her lips.
“How would your cousin, the police chief, feel about you driving under the influence?” she added.
“Wade isn’t my cousin. He’s married to my cousin Emily.”
“Would the family connection keep him from giving you a ticket if you get pulled over?”
“No,” he admitted dryly. “He’d be more likely to handcuff me. But I won’t be pulled over. I’m okay to drive.”
She frowned at him. “I can’t force you to stay, of course, or to let me take you home. But if you’re determined to drive, I’ll follow you, just to make sure you get there safely.”
“That isn’t…”
“Trent—just stop arguing, will you? You’re giving me a headache.”