Her Favorite Temptation (17 page)

He was an idiot for agreeing in the first place. That much was blatantly clear to him as he swung his legs to the edge of the bed. No matter which way he turned now, he faced humiliation.

His lip curled into a self-directed sneer as he rose. Seriously, sometimes his own bleating made him sick.

Who was he kidding? He wasn’t about to ditch Leah or the therapy. He needed it—and her—too much. More important, the prospect of telling her how he felt—that he was wildly, deeply, passionately in love with her, therefore couldn’t bear to humiliate himself in front of her—was not an option.

For her sake, he could never do that.

So. The matter was decided. He would take his medicine like a good boy, and resign himself to becoming a feeble, flailing half-man in Leah’s eyes.

She was unpacking a box at the table when he entered the kitchen, showered, dressed and resigned to his fate. She looked up, a smile on her lips.

“Good morning. Did you sleep okay? I hope you don’t mind me setting up here. It seemed like the natural place.”

She’d pulled her hair into a high ponytail, her face free of makeup. She looked young and focused and utterly gorgeous and he had to replay her words so he could respond appropriately.

“Whatever is easiest for you.”

“We can start the therapy after breakfast, if you like. Give you one last chance to eat a meal with your good hand.”

He stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I should have explained. As well as the exercises and drills we’ll be doing, you’ll be preparing your meals with your right hand, doing laundry, that sort of thing. Basically anything you’d normally do, so you’re forced to not favor the weak hand.”

He nodded his understanding, even though he was inwardly recoiling from a vision of himself floundering through making a sandwich with only his bad hand. He would look ridiculous, to say the least. Like a bumbling idiot.

Grinding his molars together, he collected a box of breakfast cereal from the pantry. Obviously, he’d missed a few of the finer details of C.I.M.T. in his reading.

Awesome.

He wondered what other surprises she had in store for him.

“I had a nice night last night. Your family is really funny.” Leah continued to lay out supplies—plastic cups, what looked like a bag of marbles, a box of dominoes.

“Yeah.” He shook cereal into a bowl, even though eating was the last thing he felt like doing. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a rock. It’s so quiet here. I think I’d be late for work every day if I didn’t have traffic noise to wake me up.”

“The birds start up pretty early, don’t worry. You’ll probably be missing the traffic soon. You want some?” He indicated the cereal box.

“I had toast already, thanks.”

Somehow he managed to keep up his side of the conversation as he ate his breakfast, even though dread knotted his stomach.

This was crunch time. The first step in his journey from viable lover to helpless patient in Leah’s eyes.

“Okay, we ready to get into this?” Leah asked as he rinsed his bowl at the sink.

“Sure.” His feet felt as heavy as lead as he walked to the table. The urge to blurt that he’d had a change of heart gripped him, tightening his throat. Maybe he could justify himself without telling her everything. Maybe he could tell her he felt uncomfortable about her not accepting any wages for her time, or that he’d rather wait and fly to the U.S. to attend one of the live-in clinics. Maybe he could—

“First things first.” She placed a padded white mitt in front of him. “This will be your constant companion for the next two weeks. It’s designed so you can take it on and off yourself. If you give me your hand, I’ll show you how to fasten it.”

Wordless, he held out his good left hand and watched as Leah slipped the mitt on, tightening a hook and loop fastener around his wrist. The mitt was padded enough to make it impossible for him to perform tasks with his good hand.

She talked him through the day’s structure next, explaining how they would be working on a range of different tasks, each of them challenging his dexterity and hand strength in various ways. Some tasks would be timed, and he would be encouraged to improve on his achievements each round. But first they needed to set up a motor log to record any changes in his hand strength or agility.

Together they assessed his right hand, assigning each movement a range from one to five and recording the numbers in a notebook. When they’d finished, Leah passed him a bowl of marbles and a plastic cup.

“You ready for this?” she asked, her gaze steady on his.

He fought to hold her eye, aware that his heart was pounding and that his palms were growing sweaty.

Why had he voluntarily put his head in this noose? What madness had possessed him when he’d accepted her offer? For a moment he felt dizzy with desperation and frustration and regret.

“Let’s go,” he managed to say, somehow forcing the words past the tightness in his throat.

“You have thirty seconds to get as many marbles in the cup as possible. We’ll do ten sets over half an hour, trying to improve each time.”

He eyed the marbles, painfully conscious that they would be hard to separate from each other and even harder to grip with his affected hand. He was going to fumble. He was going to fail more times than he succeeded. He was going to look like a fool. As predicted.

Leah touched his arm to get his attention. “It’s supposed to be hard, Will. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. But it will get better.”

He nodded, his focus once again shifting to the bowl of marbles.

“All right.” She called up the timer function on her phone. “And...go.”

Frowning in concentration, he moved his hand to the bowl, forming a pincer with his thumb and first two fingers and attempting to pluck a marble from the bowl. It took him three tries before he successfully picked up a marble. He immediately transferred it to the cup. Self-conscious heat flowed up his chest and into his face, prickling beneath his armpits. This was a task any two-year-old could accomplish, and yet he struggled.

And Leah had a front-row seat.

He fumbled his next attempt, his gaze flicking across to where she sat. God only knew what she was thinking.

That he was far, far worse than she’d thought? That it was nothing short of pathetic to see a grown man struggle to complete such a simple task? That he was a sad shadow of his former self?

By the time the thirty seconds was up, he’d transferred a grand total of only seven marbles. He could barely force himself to meet her eye.

“Excellent. That’s our baseline. Let’s see how much we can improve on that,” she said, making a mark on her notepad.

He stared at her, astonished that she could sound remotely pleased with his paltry achievement. She looked at him, eyebrows slightly raised in question.

There wasn’t a hint of condescension in either her expression or her voice. No pity, no regret. She was completely sincere.

It hit him then that he was the one making a deal out of all of this, turning it into something it wasn’t. Leah was here to do the work that needed to be done. Because she believed in him. Because she cared for him.

She wasn’t judging him.

She wasn’t embarrassed for or by him.

She wasn’t fazed by his fumbling. At all.

A different sort of heat rushed over him then, and he bowed his head as it hit him how profoundly, stunningly lucky he was. In the midst of all the shit he’d been dealing with, he’d found this amazing, generous woman.

“Will.”

He heard the sound of her chair moving, then her arms were around him, her cheek resting on his head.

“It’s okay,” she said.

And he suddenly knew that it
was
okay, that despite all his darkest fears, this process was not going to destroy him in her eyes. Or his own. It was work, pure and simple, and it had to be done, and they would do it. Together.

He remembered what his mother had said last night, about his injury not making a difference if Leah loved him. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the notion without rejecting it out of hand. Allowed himself to imagine a future with Leah at his side, a future where he didn’t need to be perfect and whole. For a moment it danced before him, as enticing and miraculous as a mirage. Then Leah pulled away from their embrace, sitting back on her heels, and he looked into her eyes and was reminded of how truly exceptional she was.

One of a kind. Sweet and clever and sexy.

He wanted to be worthy of her. He wanted to be her match.

He made a promise to himself then and there. He would work from dusk to dawn these next two weeks, he would do everything required and more. He would sweat, he would toil, he would bow his head and take everything that came his way. Then, when he and Leah had filled in the last entry in his motor log, he would take stock of the situation—of his progress—and decide if it was enough. If he could stand to let her walk away without asking whether she wanted to be a part of what might come next.

A part of his future, whatever it might look like.

The knot in his belly loosened as his decision settled over him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just freaked out for a moment there.”

She smiled slightly, head tilted to one side as she considered him. Then she nodded as though satisfied with what she saw, and rose.

“Let’s take it from the top. And let’s aim for eight this time around.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

L
EAH
CONCENTRATED
ON
the timer as Will made his second attempt at the marble exercise. Witnessing his embarrassment, his self-consciousness, and not saying a word was one of the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. But talking about the situation, drawing attention to it, wasn’t going to make it any easier. She knew that instinctively, on a purely gut level. Will needed to make his own peace with the situation, in his own way. Her job was to get out of the way and let him get on with it.

Accordingly, she called out when the time was up, noting the seven marbles he’d again transferred to the cup, encouraging him to better it with his next pass. And he did, lifting his haul from seven to eight and finally to ten by the end of the half hour.

“Fantastic. That’s a 42 percent increase, by the way,” she said.

Will’s smile was small, but it was there. She explained the next task to him—buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt—and slowly the morning disappeared as they worked through the program. She could see he was wearying toward the end, and she couldn’t help wondering if maybe they should have waited another week to give him a little more time to get over his post-surgical fatigue.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she pushed her notepad aside.

“Honestly? Absolutely beat,” he admitted.

There was a rueful twist to his mouth, but she was glad he’d been honest with her.

“Let’s eat, then maybe you should have a rest before we roll into the afternoon,” she said.

Will glanced toward the kitchen, and she knew he was wondering what in hell he would be able to prepare with only his weak hand. Well, they were both about to discover that.

“Won’t know until we try,” she said, answering his unspoken question.

He nodded, and together they inspected the fridge. He decided on soup and toast, a smart option since there was a pot of chicken noodle soup his sister had prepared, which meant Will would simply have to reheat it and butter some toast.

She busied herself at the sink as he worked, allowing him to set his own pace, feeling his frustration as his body refused to obey him. He managed to serve up two portions of soup, however, transferring them to the microwave one by one. She stepped in to take them out, worried that third-degree burns would not be a good addition to his roll call of injuries, then he tackled the toast.

It was cold by the time he’d finished, the butter thick in parts, the bread gouged in others. But Will had made it, and he’d learned the important lesson that his “bad” hand was more capable than he’d assumed.

They went onto the deck to eat, talking about her new training course and the weather and his sisters. Afterward, she stood aside while he rinsed the dishes and set them in the dishwasher.

“I need a bloody merit badge after all that,” he said, eyeing the dishwasher with satisfaction.

“You need some rest more. Bed or couch?” she asked.

He glanced into the living room. “Couch. For some reason it feels marginally less like I should be collecting an old-age pension.”

She followed him, passing him a throw blanket and watching as he stretched out on one side of the sofa.

“You should join me,” he said, gesturing toward the other leg of the sectional sofa.

Her first impulse was to say no, to keep her distance. But then she reminded herself that she had only two weeks with Will. “Sure,” she said lightly. “I could do with a nana nap.”

“I think we’ll refer to it as a catnap in future, if you don’t mind, Dr. Mathews,” he said, very dryly.

“Catnap. Got it.”

There was a second blanket draped over the back of the couch and she grabbed it before moving some cushions out of the way so she could stretch out.

“I’m pretty sure the last time I did this in the middle of the day was when I was in kindergarten after story time,” Will said as she settled onto the couch.

Their feet were almost touching at the corner, and when she rolled onto her side she was staring across the diagonal at Will, and he at her.

“This feels more like a sleepover. I think you’re supposed to have a flashlight so you can make creepy faces while you tell me scary stories,” she said.

“Funny, but scary stories have never been on the agenda during my sleepovers.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. Even tired, Will was incorrigible.

“Go to sleep, you shameless flirt.”

She closed her own eyes, then opened them again when she felt the nudge of Will’s feet against hers.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” he said, smiling sleepily.

She closed her eyes again, aware of a warm tide of happiness rising inside her. No matter what else happened, this moment, right now, was perfect.

It was good to be here with Will, and she was incredibly grateful and humbled that he trusted her enough to make himself so vulnerable with her. His trust, his faith, was a gift, and helping the man she loved reclaim his life was a privilege she would treasure for years to come.

If all that meant she was opening herself up to a whole world of hurt in the near future, well, so be it. Holding that truth tight to her chest, she let herself drift into sleep.

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
THREE
days passed slowly, measured out in thirty-minute intervals, sometimes timed by Leah’s phone, other times by the number of repetitions Will achieved of a particular task.

As she had warned him up front, many of the exercises he repeated were frustratingly dull, and there was more than one occasion when he felt his temper beginning to fray. Each and every time, Leah accepted his snappy comeback or acerbic comment with perfect calm, waiting until he’d come down off his frustration before taking a small, playful dig at him and inevitably making him laugh.

She knew how to push his buttons, how to appeal to his sense of the absurd and strip away his pride so he could laugh at himself. She knew how to put his world back into perspective with a look or a quip or an observation.

She was a wonder. And he fell harder for her every day, finding new things to admire and adore about her with every hour. Like the fact that she always, without exception, cut the crusts off her bread, be it in the form of a sandwich or toast, and that she could recite the periodic table of elements backward and forward, and that sometimes when she laughed the tip of her nose wiggled.

He loved her crazy, wild hair and her willowy body and her laugh and the way she sometimes understood that he didn’t want to talk. He loved that she’d never seen a single Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and that she didn’t understand why so many women loved shopping, and that she would rather eat a bar of chocolate than go to a fancy restaurant.

As he woke on the fourth day of his therapy, he brooded over all of the above and more as he heard Leah moving around the house, adding yet more things to his list of things to love about her—the sound of her footfall in the hall, the scent of her perfume drifting through the house, the high, off-key singing with which she greeted the day.

Honestly, he’d heard cats mate with more harmony, but it didn’t stop him from grinning as he threw back the covers.

He showered as quickly as he could, then dried off and reached for the now-loathed mitt. It had quickly lost its pristine whiteness, and he suspected it would need a damned good wash by the time this was all over, but it was a necessary evil and one that he wouldn’t let himself shirk.

It took much, much longer to dress using only his bad hand, and he was feeling hot and more than a little hungry by the time he found Leah in the kitchen. She was reading the back of a box of something, frowning slightly, a spatula in her other hand.

“Morning. I thought we could have pancakes for breakfast, but I can’t work out how to halve the recipe. How on earth to you halve an egg?”

“You don’t. You make a full batch and eat so much you feel sick. Don’t you know anything?”

“Clearly not. Clearly this is yet another area where my education has been severely limited.”

“Let’s fix that, shall we?”

She wore a knee-length denim skirt today, a rarity for her in his experience, and her slender, shapely calves were pale and bare.

Hard not to think about what she was wearing underneath, or how silky smooth her thighs had felt beneath his hands that one crazy night...

“We need milk, eggs and a frying pan,” he said, heading for the fridge and away from temptation.

Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt as though there was more strength in his hand as he fed his fingers through the handle on the milk jug, and he tested his theory by attempting to tighten his grip as he transferred it to the counter. There was a small but noticeable sense of the plastic biting into his hand, and he smiled to himself.

A tiny win, but still significant. And definitely encouraging.

“What’s so funny?” Leah asked.

“Apart from the fact that you want to halve an egg?”

“I have openly admitted I am cooking-challenged. But feel free to take a cheap shot,” she said, opening her arms wide in invitation.

He let his gaze skim her breasts—a moment of pure self-indulgence—before picking up the box of pancake mix.

“All my shots are handcrafted and custom-made to order, thank you very much,” he said. “And I strongly resent any implication to the contrary.”

The witticisms continued as he mixed the batter, both of them laughing at the hash he made of cracking the egg with his right hand. Leah picked eggshell out of the mix, then he set the frying pan on the stove and added a generous dollop of butter.

“I know that as a former cardiothoracic specialist I should abhor all things buttery, but my God, that looks good,” Leah said, hovering at his elbow with a longing expression on her face.

“Gotta make pancakes with butter. It’s mandatory.”

“Noted for future reference.”

He poured the batter, watching like an eagle for bubbles to form, indicating it was ready to be flipped. Leah offered him the spatula when the first bubbles appeared, but he waved her off.

“Watch and learn, baby.”

He curled his hand around the handle, frowning as he worked to get a good grip, desperately hoping he’d be able to live up to his own cocky bravado. He gave the pan a shake, watching with satisfaction as the pancake slid across the non-stick surface.

“And here we go,” he said, flicking his wrist and flipping the pancake into the air.

In theory, he’d used just enough force to cause the pancake to rise and flip before dropping safely into the pan. In practice, his dodgy hand and trying-too-hard tension sent the pancake flying.

Leah gave a stifled laugh, and he turned to discover the pancake had landed on her shoulder.

“Quick, get the maple syrup before it goes cold,” she said.

Then she started laughing, and so did he, the whole world forgotten as they gave in to a moment of pure silliness and release. Her face was creased with laughter, her eyes filled with tears, her shoulders shuddering. He suspected he looked similarly manic and out of control, and didn’t give a toss.

“God, I love you,” he said impulsively.

She blinked, the smile freezing on her face. Something dark and painful flickered behind her eyes and she turned away.

“I should get a plate for this....”

He stared at her back as she walked away, telling himself to let the moment die a natural death, to let her think that he’d simply made the comment off the cuff, a throwaway line that meant nothing. They still had ten days of therapy to go, after all. He still had no idea what the outcome would be, even if the initial signs were promising.

Yet he couldn’t wait another second to tell Leah how he felt.

He’d been in limbo, his life on hold, for months, and he was sick of it. He wanted Leah, wanted to tell her that he loved her, and he wanted to do it now, even if it was a mistake.

He was sick of rationing hope and hedging his bets. Sick of being tentative and uncertain.

If she didn’t love him...he would deal with it. If it made things awkward, he would fix it. Somehow. But he had to know.

He
needed
to know.

“Leah...” He went after her, catching her elbow with his bad hand.

She swung around, her beautiful eyes wary.

“Not so long ago, we agreed that whatever happened between us should only ever be about one night,” he began.

She blinked, and he realized he’d caught her off guard, that despite her wariness, she really had dismissed his comment as off the cuff and meaningless. In which case, what he was about to say might be a little more shocking to her than he’d anticipated.

But he wasn’t about to back off now.

He held her gaze, wanting her to see how sincere he was. How important this was to him. “What I’m wondering is if you’d be willing to reconsider that decision.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know I’m not exactly Prince Charming material right now. Zipper-head, gimpy hand and all the rest.” There was a tremor in his voice and he cleared his throat. “The thing is, I seem to have fallen in love with you, Leah Mathews. Bad timing, I know. But there it is. And I really need to know if there might be a chance that maybe you feel the same way about me.”

Leah’s face was ashen, her eyes huge. Then, to his everlasting horror, she burst into tears.

* * *

L
EAH
TRIED
TO
hold back the avalanche of relief and joy crashing through her, but Will’s words, the look in his eyes, the way his voice quavered with emotion, were so far beyond anything she’d ever allowed herself to hope for that she was powerless to stop the tears from pouring down her face. Her throat closed over with emotion, her shoulders hunching as she cried with the intensity of someone who’d received the shock of a lifetime.

A good shock, but still.

“Leah.”

Will pulled her into his arms, his body tense against hers. She understood that it was her turn to talk, her turn to reassure him, but she couldn’t seem to get her mouth and vocal cords to work.