Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance (18 page)

He closed his eyes and tried to remember how she’d looked that day in the gym. The day he’d convinced her to let him deploy. Funny, he could try all day long, but he couldn’t remember how she’d looked. All he kept seeing was her now. Her sparkling green eyes, her soft blond hair.

Her soft hands and gentle touch.

He groaned and glanced at his lap. Guess that mystery was solved. He was rock hard.

Just in time for a knock on the door.

Shit.

Jen stopped outside Shane’s door and wiped her hands on her scrubs. Today he was getting his catheter out—bringing him one step farther on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, she was going to have to be the one to do it … and the task loomed before her like a giant … the thought of anything giant turned her thoughts in a decidedly unprofessional direction. She’d avoided Shane’s room for as long as possible, but now it was time.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about touching him. She’d woken abruptly last night from a dream about him. Bedpans and catheters were not, as a rule, sexy in any way, shape, or form. But in her dream, she’d lowered the sheet that covered his legs to find him aroused. And things had gone further than she’d ever dreamed of going in real life.

The thought of his penis in her hand had nothing at all to do with medicine and everything do to with Shane. She tried to think of it as a simple medical procedure. Except that it wasn’t just any penis. It was
Shane’s
penis she’d be holding. And she was going to have her
real
hands on his
real
flesh as soon as she stopped being a chicken and walked into his room.

She’d intubated him all those weeks ago, and hadn’t had any difficulty then. There was something more intense, more difficult about touching him now. She tried to relax,
but her stomach kept twisting into knots as she walked into his room. Nerves and something else. Something
more
that she was afraid to acknowledge. His expression was tense even as his lips formed a pained half smile. She nodded in greeting as she set the catheter kit down and laid out the equipment. He was a big man, and she needed to get him positioned properly for the procedure. “After this, we’re going to start getting you outside for fresh air and regular exercise. The docs are reviewing your file, but you should be ready to go home in a few more days, tops.” The muscles in his neck were corded tight, and his jaw was set. He turned his face toward the window. She deliberately avoided looking at his lap, but that didn’t stop the heat from crawling across her cheeks. Damn her subconscious for planting that suggestive seed in her mind.

“Are you okay?” He turned toward her, and something in his dark gaze made her breath hitch. He’d looked at her like that once before. Just once, when he’d held her palm to his chest.

She wanted him to touch her again. She could admit that to herself, even if she’d die before saying it out loud. She sighed softly, and her body trembled with awareness of Shane.

“Is this going to hurt?” His words were soft and thick, and they slid across Jen’s skin like warm cream. He cleared his throat.

“It’ll probably hurt for a few days,” she said. “Maybe a little burning. But we’ll manage it. Just like we have been.” Small talk when she was edging dangerously close to a full-blown panic attack? Great. Her cheeks burned hot, and she sucked in a deep breath. She could do this.

Yeah, right.

“Guess this would be a bad time for dick jokes?” he said weakly.

Any words she might have said got stuck in her throat. She tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage. Instead she cleared her throat.

“Okay, so here we go.” She washed her hands in the sink, and refused to look at him as she snapped on first one blue latex glove, then the other.

She could have sworn he groaned as he covered his face with one hand and nodded. She placed a sterile pad on his lap, looking only as much as was necessary to get it into place. She positioned the second sterile pad that would encircle his genitals and unsnapped one side of his hospital gown. He may have started wearing T-shirts yesterday, but pants were still out of the question until … well, until the catheter was out. She pulled back the pad covering his lap, prepared to pull his penis through the opening, clean him, and remove the catheter.

Shane’s body had other ideas.

She cleared her throat and felt her cheeks flame even hotter. He’d been flaccid and barely conscious when she’d inserted the catheter. He was fully erect now.… The medical fact that this probably had nothing to do with her didn’t stop a slow burn of warm heat through her veins. A simple procedure had morphed into something else with so much more.…

His very real erection stood in the room between them, like an unwanted uncle at the family reunion.

“Shit,” he mumbled. His face was bright red. It must have matched hers.

She couldn’t do this with him erect, even though she knew it was medically possible. She couldn’t
touch
him. Not like this. Not with her dream pounding through her
brain in time with the beat of her heart. She cleared her throat again and wondered why it was suddenly so hard to swallow.

“We have a couple of options. We can wait. I can get some ice water, or you can, um, thump it a couple of times to make it stop.”

“Can’t you just get it over with?” The sheer horror on his face was almost enough to make her laugh. But the urge to touch him consumed every ounce of her willpower.

She nodded and bit both lips, hoping the pain would distract her from the desire singing in her blood. He covered his face again as she reached for him.

Heat pulsed through the thin material of her gloves. His erection was solid and heavy and her hand only covered a portion of him.

In her dream, she had slid her bare hand down his erection in a slow stroke. Liquid heat rushed between her thighs even as she stomped on the fantasy and focused on the task, ahem, at hand.

She’d never had so much trouble removing a catheter in her life. She drained the sterile fluid that kept the catheter in place. Then she peeled the tape from his abdomen that had secured the tube. She finally pulled the tube free and covered his lap. His erection forced the sterile cloth into a tent.

Jen left him to adjust his clothes. She didn’t think she’d be able to do that right now without torturing them both. She needed to put space between them before she burst into flames.

There was a medical explanation for his body’s reaction. It had nothing to do with her.

But a whisper of promise slid behind her as she left his room.

What if it did?

Jen needed coffee. Her shift ended in exactly three minutes and she needed to escape. The floor. The patient in room twenty-six. And more importantly, the patient’s penis. She flushed as she ordered her coffee and tried to think of anything that didn’t involve Shane’s dick. Five hours had passed since the “incident” and still she flushed at the barest thought of it.

She looked up as the hospital’s main door swung open. Nicole smiled and leaned against the kiosk’s tiny counter while Jen dumped sugar and creamer into her coffee. Her smile was positively wicked and Jen groaned, bracing. She couldn’t know. Could she?

“I hear Shane had a small erection problem.”

Jen muffled a horrified laugh, releasing some of the tension that was wound up inside of her. “How did you hear about that?”

“Vic caught Shane thumping it earlier today.”

Jen closed her eyes as her face flamed hot again. She hadn’t found the courage to go back into his room for the rest of her shift, and the idea that Carponti had caught Shane thumping it
hours later
meant … she didn’t really want to think about what that might have meant. Maybe he was just an easily aroused kind of guy. “Can we not have this conversation here?” Jen asked as she tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Can’t think of a better place to have this conversation. Except maybe a locker
room.” Nicole sighed and rubbed her forehead with her index finger, as though she was trying to relieve a headache, her words lighter than her mood. “Okay, so there’s a reason I’m here that has nothing to do with Shane’s penis.”

“Nikki, what’s wrong?” Any lingering worry or anxiety faded in the face of her friend’s very real struggle to get the words out.

Nicole cleared her throat after a long moment. “So, Vic has all these pills, right? He has like six different bottles of pain pills, two sleeping pills, and one or two for anxiety or something. All kinds of good stuff.”

She followed Nicole outside toward the stone benches and away from the crowded tables. Jen stirred her coffee in silence, her own problems seeming distant and trivial as her friend spoke. Nicole searched the ceiling for the rest of her words.

“I sometimes catch him lining up his bottles and mumbling to himself. I can’t keep track of everything he’s supposed to take because he won’t let his doc give me any kind of schedule.”

“And you need to know what he should be taking to keep him from messing up a dose?”

“Bingo.” Nicole’s eyes lit up like Jen just told her the meaning of life. “Can I bring you a list of everything so you can help me figure it out?”

“You don’t have any idea what he takes or when?”

Nicole shook her head. “No. He doesn’t really bring it up, so other than what’s on the bottles, I’m kind of in the dark.”

“Why won’t he tell you?”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it. Seriously, I mean. He’ll crack jokes all day long,
but when I try asking about the meds, he just makes another joke and changes the subject.”

“So you have no idea what he takes on a daily basis.” Worry slid around Jen’s heart and squeezed.

“No.”

“Okay, you need to find out. I can’t tell you anything without knowing what he’s currently taking. So you’re going to have to make him tell you.”

Nicole pushed a hard breath through her pursed lips. “I was afraid of that.”

“You really think he’ll give you grief if you insist on knowing?” Never in a million years would Jen have thought that Nicole would have a hard time talking to her husband about anything.

“No. I think he’ll make a damn joke and dodge the question and I won’t be any closer to finding out. Hell, at this rate, I’m lucky I know when his physical therapy appointments are.”

“Everyone processes trauma differently. The fact that he’s making jokes is pretty normal for him, right?” Nicole nodded. “Maybe it’s his way of coping in the short term, and that’s okay. But he’ll have to deal with it eventually.”

Jen had heard almost the exact same words from Laura once. Her friend had practically stripped her bare and forced her to look in the mirror. Jen didn’t look at her scar often, but when she did, she still felt the same revulsion she’d experienced that first time. And the second time. And the third.

She hated it, but she’d decided early on that she didn’t want to have more surgery to fix it. It was part of who she was now and she couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—change that. Just
because she’d made that decision, though, didn’t mean she was completely at peace with it.

“I’ll try to figure out what he’s taking, and when. Can I call you when I think I’ve got it?” Nicole asked.

If Shane knew about Nicole’s concerns, he’d worry, too. But maybe Carponti had talked to him about all of this. She’d have to figure out how to bring it up without alarming him unnecessarily.

“Thanks so much.” Nicole surprised her with a quick, energetic hug. “By the way, Vic asked me to suggest that you bathe Shane more often.”

“Will you stop?” Heat flushed down her neck, but Jen couldn’t help laughing. “Shane’s hygiene is not an issue.”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what my husband was referring to,” Nicole said dryly.

“Are you done?”

“Almost.” Nicole stood and offered a hand to pull Jen up. “Look, I’m going to completely butt in where you haven’t asked me to so here goes. I think Shane is one of the best men I know.” She breathed deeply. “Now I’m done. And I’m leaving before you throw something at me.”

Jen took a deep gulp of coffee after Nicole left. The possibility that Shane
might
feel something for her teased at the edge of her memory.

If it
was
something more, she knew that a man like Shane wouldn’t be content with what she was comfortable giving. He’d tear down all of her barriers. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. And she couldn’t stand the thought that if he did strip her bare, he might look at her differently when he saw the whole picture.

The idea of his pity curdled in her belly.

* * *

“You’re sure Osterman’s going to be in PT today?” Shane asked, eyeing the wheelchair that sat near the foot of his bed.

“Yes, I’m sure. Now get in the damn chair,” Carponti said.

“Give me a hand.”

“Nice.” Carponti narrowed his eyes and flipped Shane the middle finger. “Real mature.” He broke out laughing. “Took you long enough to start giving me shit. ’Bout damn time. Come on.”

Carponti moved to the side of the bed and slid his arm beneath Shane’s shoulders. It was damned difficult to get him from the bed to the chair without jarring his legs, but somehow they managed.

“Grab me a sheet, will you?” Shane asked. He looked down at the metal pins and frames that lined his flesh. His legs jutted straight out in front of him. He held his breath and turned his head, looking anywhere but at the freak show that were his legs.

For once, Carponti didn’t argue. Instead he snapped the sheet over Shane and let it drift down until it hid his legs.

“Let’s go find Osterman. Maybe you can knock some sense into him,” Carponti said as he pushed the automatic door button.

Shane struggled to maneuver the wheelchair out of the room and the automatic door swung closed before he’d made it three feet. He’d never questioned why every door in the hospital was automatic before, but right now, it irritated the hell out of him.

“Man you suck. How hard can it be to drive one of these things?” Carponti
mumbled behind him.

“It’s not as easy as it looks, dickhead.”

“You’ve never sucked so bad at something. This is awesome.” Carponti palmed the automatic door button a second time and pushed Shane through. Faster than Shane was comfortable going, but he wasn’t about to argue. Carponti was liable to push him into a wall just for laughs. “I’ve got to take pictures and send them to the boys in Iraq. They’ll get a kick out of this.”