His Private Nurse (4 page)

She just smiled and shifted her weight self-consciously. At the exact same moment, Carlos started to turn away from the bed. The two bumped, and Carlos apologized cheerily, though Merrily felt her face glow red with the knowledge that it was her fault. What was it about Royce Lawler that turned all her fingers to thumbs and her feet to blocks of clay?

As Carlos left the room, Merrily grasped at something
to say to deflect attention from her clumsiness. “I see the IV and morphine pump are gone.”

“He'll be getting a shot of painkiller when we're done here,” the doctor said, threading a strap through the metal loop opposite and carefully tightening it. “And he'll have to continue taking those injections for a while. The anti-inflammatory and antibiotics can be taken by mouth. I'll leave prescriptions at the nurses' station. The leg should be kept dry and elevated as much as possible. I'll see him again in about a week. You'll have to call my office for an appointment.”

Again, it seemed as if the doctor was speaking directly to her, but Merrily dismissed that and said to Royce, “Did you get all that?”

“Got it,” he replied, smiling. Those heavenly blue eyes seemed to be trying to telegraph her a message, but she wasn't receiving.

The doctor finished what he was doing and got up off the stool. “Okay, that about does it. Nurse Gage, would you lift the foot of his bed, please?” Merrily bent to activate that function of the bed. The doctor went on as the other two practitioners left the room. “I suggest you rent a wheelchair for use at home and when you have to be out in public, which you really should keep to a minimum for several more weeks. I'll see to it that your dismissal packet has a list of equipment providers in it.” He peeled off his latex gloves and added, “I'll see you in the morning about six, and you should be ready to go by ten. Takes a few hours to process the paperwork. Any questions?”

He looked first at Royce, then at her. Merrily just looked at Royce, who shook his head and said, “Nope. None I can think of at the moment. Thanks, Doc, for everything.”

The doctor smiled and nodded, then he pointedly ad
dressed Merrily again, saying, “Do me a favor, will you? Keep him away from stairs. I don't want to have to put him back together again.”

Merrily blinked and opened her mouth to reply, but she couldn't think what to say to that, so she simply closed it again and nodded.

The doctor dropped his gloves into the appropriate waste receptacle. “I leave you in capable hands then,” he said, and with that walked out.

Merrily stared at the door as it slowly swung shut behind him. “Well. That was odd.” She turned her attention back to Royce. “He kept talking to me like I'm your personal nurse or something.”

Royce ducked his head sheepishly. “I, um, might have, like, accidentally led him to believe that.”

“What? Why would you do that?”

“Because I'm not supposed to leave here unless I have someone who can take care of me.”

“But you don't,” she immediately deduced.

“Uh, not yet.”

Was this what he wanted to speak to me about? Disappointment skewered her. “Okay, well, I can recommend a couple of reputable agencies.”

He grimaced. “I thought of that already, but I can't stand the idea of some stranger moving into my house with me.”

Merrily nodded sympathetically. “Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a while, with your parents, perhaps?”

His eyes grew wide with mock alarm. “I'd rather stay here, and believe me, I'd sooner jump out of that window over there than do that. Nope, I just see one option.”

“Which is?”

“You.”

She blinked at him. “Me?”

“Look, I know it's an imposition, but I don't trust anyone else.”

“You want
me
to move in with you?” she asked disbelievingly.

“I know it's selfish,” he said, reaching across the bed with his left hand to take hers. She jumped, lightning flashing up her arm. “But I'm desperate,” he went on. “I'll make it well worth your while. Whatever they're paying you here, I'll double it.”

Double? “No, that's not right,” she said distractedly.

“Please, Merrily. I can't get along by myself, and it's a big house, lots of room, beautiful area. Did I say that you're the only one I trust?”

At the moment she couldn't do anything but gape at his handsome face. This beautiful man wanted her to move in with him, at least temporarily. He didn't have to just disappear out of her life, after all. He trusted her.

“I know it's asking a lot,” he said, squeezing her hand, “but Carlos says that because of the nursing shortage you can probably take a leave of absence and come right back here to your job when you're ready.”

Her job was the least of it, actually. She could get another job. Nurses could pretty much write their own tickets these days, which was why Royce was going to have a difficult time finding someone with really good skills to take care of him. No, the job was the not the problem. The problems, plural, were her brothers. Jody would hit the roof if she told him she was moving out even temporarily, and the other two would lay on foot-deep guilt trips. They'd never taken care of themselves a day in their lives. Maybe it was about time they did.

Why shouldn't she do this if she wanted to? They were
all adults. It might do them some good to start acting like it, including her.

“Look,” Royce went on. “I wouldn't even mind if you have company over. I mean, if you have a boyfriend or something…”

“No boyfriend,” Merrily murmured, already working out the logistics of it. She had to call her supervisor right away. No one was going to be happy about the short notice, but it couldn't be helped. Then she had to pack, and it would be best to take everything she might need with her the first time, since any time she returned to the house she'd undoubtedly have to contend with one or all of her brothers. She'd get started tonight while Jody and Kyle slept and Lane was out with his friends.

“Maybe there's someone else then?” she dimly heard Royce ask.

“Hmm? No, not really.”

He squeezed her hand again, and this time heat burned in her chest, creeping up her throat to her face. Professional, she reminded herself. This was purely professional. Nevertheless, her heart was beating like a big bass drum.

“Can you do it?” he asked, gazing at her with those blue, blue eyes.

Could she? Oh, yes. She nodded, afraid she might gush if she spoke.

“Will you?”

Merrily took a deep breath, drawing her composure around her.

“Please,” he added softly. “Merrily, I need you.”

Something inside her melted, and she said the only thing that she'd even thought of saying. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

 

“Are you out of your mind?” Jody demanded.

“It's a job,” Merrily repeated for the third time, shov
ing toiletries into the small suitcase open on her bed. Since her announcement at breakfast all three of her brothers had been in a lather.

“You already have a job at the hospital!” Lane exclaimed.

“I've taken a leave,” she said, returning to the dresser for her hairbrush.

“You can't move out of here!” Lane protested.

“It's only temporary.”

“Who's gonna take care of us in the meantime?” Kyle wanted to know.

Merrily stuffed her nightgown into the bag on top of everything else and closed the lid. “You'll just have to take care of yourselves.”

“You're not going,” Jody insisted angrily. “Mom and Dad—”

“—are off seeing America,” Merrily finished for him, straightening, “and even if they weren't, I'd still be taking this job.”

“I forbid it!”

“Forbid away, but I'm an adult, Jody, and I'll do as I please.”

“But you can't,” Lane whined.

“Why not? You do.”

“That's different.”

She gaped at him, though why she was surprised was beyond her. “It's not different, Lane. It's not at all different, and it's time the three of you came to grips with that fact.”

Jody wagged a finger in her face. “You are my responsibility.”

“Oh, shut up. I'm twenty-six years old. I'm no one's responsibility but my own, and if you want to be respon
sible for something, get a life and be responsible for that.” She grabbed the suitcase by the handle and hauled it off the bed while Jody stood there with his mouth open. For a moment she waited in the hopes that at least one of them would show a glimmer of understanding, but only seconds went by before she realized the folly of that. Taking a deep breath, she moved toward the door. She had hauled the rest of her things out to the car last night, leaving only those things she'd needed to dress this morning and the gown she'd slept in.

“Who's gonna do my shirts?” Lane wanted to know.

“Take 'em to a laundry,” she suggested blandly.

“Who's gonna cook?” Kyle groused.

“There are ten thousand restaurants in San Antonio,” Merrily said with a sigh.

“I wanna know who this guy you're moving in with is,” Jody suddenly demanded.

That finally brought her to a halt. She glanced over her shoulder. “This ‘guy' took a fall down a flight of stairs, dislocated his shoulder and broke his arm. He has compound fractures of the leg, not to mention torn ligaments, a concussion and various contusions. He is helpless and alone, and he offered me twice what I'm making at the hospital.”

Only Kyle had the nerve to block her path, whimpering, “But we already need you.”

She leveled a disgusted look at him and said drolly, “You may be helpless, Kyle, but at least you're not alone.”

“I am not helpless,” he said, lifting his chin. “I have a college education.”

Merrily rolled her eyes. “So do I.” She began moving toward the door again. “I suggest you hire a housekeeper,
but first get your lazy, college-educated butt out of my way.”

To her surprise he hopped aside. Without so much as a backward glance, she carried the suitcase through the door and out of the house. To freedom.

“Y
ou'll follow us?” Royce asked through the rear window of the SUV, knowing perfectly well that was the arrangement they'd made.

Merrily nodded and waved as she walked toward the employee parking lot, his paperwork tucked neatly beneath one arm. He rolled up the rear window and put his back to it, his injured leg propped on the seat. As the vehicle moved away, Royce put his head back and closed his eyes, disgusted with himself on several levels.

For one thing, just riding in a wheelchair down to meet Dale, who had retrieved his SUV from the house in order to pick him up in comfort, had his heart pounding as if he'd hopped down from the third floor on his one good leg all by himself. For another, he'd just robbed the hospital of a very fine nurse, and he knew that he'd done it for reasons that went far beyond the obvious medical need. The very idea of having Merrily Gage under his
own roof, alone with him for weeks, had conjured the sort of dreams that disturbed a man's sleep. And if that were not enough, at the root of it all was the poor exercise of judgment that had initially landed him in this predicament.

It helped a little to know that he'd already determined to hire Merrily away from the hospital even before she'd shown up in his hospital room wearing neatly cuffed little shorts that made her legs seem as long as she was tall and a top that left no doubt about the maturity of her form. Her breasts were small but high and firm. Their natural shape had been lovingly rendered by that clinging knit top with straps so tiny that she could not have possibly been wearing a bra. She had struck him then as the most natural beauty he'd ever seen. And he wanted her.

Merrily Gage was no girl: she was a woman. Suddenly the possibilities of having her in his employ seemed highly enticing, though pursuing even a semipermanent relationship with Merrily or any other woman was out of the question. He couldn't deny that he wanted her, so he half hoped that by the time he was physically able to act upon his desires, Merrily would be gone. Hell, he should've hired some gargoyle to move in with him and tend to his needs, but he couldn't be unhappy that Merrily had agreed to help him. His self-disgust didn't reach that far apparently. For the first time he wondered if he might be the selfish monster Pamela had always claimed he was.

 

Merrily stopped her car and gaped. “Wow.”

The sandstone house sprawling across the hilltop awed her. The circular drive, arched car shelter and landscaped yard in front were impressive. Tall, arched, leaded-glass windows, the many hips of the copper roof and three soaring chimneys lent an unexpected grandeur to the rolling
natural beauty of the setting. Obviously, Royce Lawler was no pauper.

Slowly she started the car forward again and followed the SUV. As she parked behind it under the drive-through, Dale got out and unloaded the wheelchair from the back of the SUV. Merrily went immediately to Royce's side. He had opened the rear door and twisted around in his seat so that his legs were outside of the vehicle, and he was trying to slide down to stand on his left foot. Merrily quickly ducked under his left arm and slid an arm about his waist, trying to ignore the jolt of heated awareness that accompanied the contact. With Dale balancing his immobile right arm and her supporting the rest of his weight as much as possible, Royce eased out of the vehicle, turned and sat down heavily in the wheelchair. Merrily adjusted the footrests, extending the right to support his injured leg, while Dale unlocked the front double doors and pushed them open.

Moving behind the chair, she grasped the handles and turned Royce toward the house. Royce tilted his head back to look up at her, and though white-lipped, he smiled.

“I cannot tell you how good it is to be home again.”

“I can imagine,” she replied. With such a home, she would never want to leave.

She pushed him into the house, looking around her avidly. The floor of the wide entry hall was inlaid with stone. To the right, one could step up into a large, open dining room furnished with a long plank table and ladder-back chairs with padded seats upholstered in faded denim. Over the table hung an impressive rectangular fixture made of rusty wrought iron, and a large stone fireplace took up one entire wall.

The formal living room opened on the left. Plank floors, this time a step down, were scattered with tanned cowhide
rugs and comfortable leather couches. Glass-topped occasional tables of the same wrought iron as the overhead fixtures stood at convenient intervals. Some supported small works of art, bronze sculptures and clay pots. Others held lamps with pierced tin shades. The center wall was composed of a massive double-sided fireplace, through which she caught glimpses of denim sofas in another room.

Farther down the central hall, a pair of steps led up to another hallway on the right. A ramp had been placed here to facilitate the wheelchair. On the left, another ramp had been installed over two steps that led down into a large den with bleached plank walls and floors. A recliner that matched the denim couches had been arranged in front of a large television screen recessed into the wall. At the very end of the entry hall and on the same level was another eating area and presumably the kitchen. The entire back wall of the house seemed to consist of enormous plates of glass and overlooked an expanse of terraced decks, a slope of forested ground and, far beyond, the city of San Antonio.

“Our Nurse Gage is suitably impressed, I see,” Dale commented dryly, and Merrily promptly snapped her mouth shut, aware only then that she was gaping like an untutored child. “Royce believes that a builder's home ought to reflect the very best of his work.”

“Then I'd say he builds some magnificent homes.”

“You will notice that the house itself is designed and constructed so it contains many steps but no flight of stairs,” Dale told her.

Merrily furrowed her brow in confusion. “But I thought he fell down a flight of stairs here at home.”

Dale pointed toward the deck beyond the glass wall at the back of the house. “It's outside. A very long, steep
flight of stairs that leads down to the back driveway. That's where he fell.”

“Hel-lo,” Royce said irritably. “In case it's escaped your notice, I'm sitting right here. Stop talking about me like I'm not.”

Dale grinned and said to Merrily, “Obviously, the patient needs a nap. Let me help you get the chair up the ramp, then I'll show you where to stash this character.”

“I can do it,” Merrily insisted, knowing that she would have to manage on her own sooner or later.

“I'm not helpless you know,” Royce muttered, seizing one wheel of the chair with his left hand and awkwardly turning the chair toward the ramp. He had no hope of getting that chair up that incline, though, and they all knew it. Merrily, however, waited until he had the chair lined up and aimed forward, then set her legs and pushed with her body until they were on level floor again.

Two doors opened off this level. As they passed them, Royce waved a hand to his left and said, “Through there is the powder room, cloak closet, linen storage and laundry room. That's my office there on the right. Up ahead on the next level and overlooking the back of the house are the children's rooms.”

Merrily hoped her shock did not communicate itself through her voice. “I wasn't aware that you have children,” she said, after pushing the chair up the second ramp.

“Two,” Royce answered. “My son, Cory, is five, and my daughter, Tammy, is nine. They live with their mother.” That subject seemed to be closed, as he gestured to the right. “These two rooms are for guests. Take your pick. Each has its own bath.”

The third and final ramp led to a type of landing and a double door, which Dale hurried ahead to open. By the
time Merrily got the chair into the master bedroom, her arms were trembling. Grateful to have a rest, she looked around. The room was huge and contained a sitting area and fireplace, as well as large leaded-glass windows. A door opened onto a bathroom of equally large proportion with similar windows. Another was closed, and she assumed that it led into a closet. A king-size bed with a heavy wrought iron headboard occupied the wall opposite the fireplace. Matching tables with matching lamps flanked it, with a third positioned in front of the window between two side chairs. A rocking chair stood in front of the fireplace, and colorful rugs had been placed strategically over the plank floors. The smooth walls had been painted and stippled to resemble old leather. A wall cabinet stood open, revealing an entertainment center. Bookcases contained not only many books but a number of framed photographs and several small objects of great interest to Merrily. One looked like a lumpy dog sculpted of plaster and colored with crayon.

She had no time to investigate, however, as her patient was showing signs of extreme stress. “Let's get you undressed and into bed.”

He was wearing a pair of jeans split up one side all the way to the thigh and a T-shirt with one sleeve and most of that side cut out, as well as a single bedroom slipper. The fact that he didn't argue with her was indicative of his state.

“Dale,” Royce said wearily, “would you get a pair of gym shorts out of the dressing room? It's the third large drawer down. And get my robe out of the closet.”

As Dale went off to do as instructed, Royce pointed Merrily toward the bath. “You'll find a pair of scissors in the cabinet opposite the mirror. Should be the top drawer.”

She went readily into the other room, fascinated by the luxury she saw there and what it said to her about Royce Lawler. Through a batwing door to her left, she glimpsed a huge, jetted tub of hammered copper and an equally impressive shower built of curving glass block. To her right was an area of cabinetry with double sinks back to back, mirrors above each, a built-in dressing table with chair and lighted mirror, and a wall of cabinets containing a pair of doors above a set of wide, shallow drawers, the top one of which came to about her shoulders. Between the dressing table and drawers, the dressing room door stood open, revealing walls lined with more drawers and two closet doors. A bench sat in the middle of the floor. As she watched, Dale extracted a pair of shorts from an open drawer, which he then closed before walking into the closet.

She had known, of course, that Royce Lawler was well out of her league. His family was among the most prominent in San Antonio, after all. This place proved that he was a man of rare good taste with the money to indulge himself in the very best. Obviously he would never be seriously interested in a completely average woman like her. As she opened the well-organized drawer and extracted the scissors, she told herself that knowing this fact liberated her from any foolish dreams. Now she could concentrate on her work and enjoy this rare moment of freedom from her family obligations in these surprisingly sumptuous surroundings.

 

When Royce instructed Merrily to literally cut the jeans from his body, he did so because exhaustion and pain simply precluded that he get out of them the same way he'd gotten into them. She worked without comment, cutting through the heavy denim fabric while he sat passively
and Dale turned down the bed after returning to the room with a pair of loose, gray knit shorts and his Texas orange bathrobe. He wore nothing beneath those jeans but skin and could only feel grateful when she finished her job and turned away, allowing Dale to help him out of the mutilated T-shirt. She returned a moment later to drape the robe over his shoulders. Then she wisely stayed behind him as he rose, allowing the ruined jeans to fall to the floor at his feet, or rather foot, as he couldn't put the right one on the floor, let alone stand on it.

One of the things he liked best about her, he decided, as the robe slid down to shield his nakedness from her view, was the thoughtful, somehow wise manner in which she allowed him as much dignity as possible in dealing with his current disability. Once he sank down into the chair again, Dale whisked away the ruined jeans and worked the shorts up his legs.

Royce struggled once more to a standing position, only to discover that he had reached the end of his strength. Swaying dangerously, he reached back to catch himself on the arm of the wheelchair and found warm flesh. Merrily stepped up under his arm and steadied him while Dale quickly pulled the shorts up around his waist inside the robe. Any other time, Royce would have burned with embarrassment. Just then, however, his injuries were exacting too great a toll to leave him strength even for humiliation.

He turned blindly toward the bed, Merrily on one side, Dale on the other, and somehow managed to hop the short distance to it. They turned him and eased him down to a sitting position. Then, pivoting on his hips and with Merrily carefully lifting his injured right leg, he lay back with a groaning sigh. His own bed. Heaven. Exhaustion clutched him, but his eyes managed to find Dale.

“Will you get her settled?”

“Sure thing, old buddy.”

Royce smiled. He could always depend on Dale, but as his eyes drifted closed, an alarming picture branded itself on his brain, his best friend and confidant sliding an arm familiarly around the shoulders of his own personal angel.

 

Dale placed the two large, mismatched bags in the center of the large, airy room and straightened. “What do you think?”

Merrily dropped the two smaller bags on the bed and glanced around her, smiling. The four-poster bed was high and wide, its pale wood gleaming. A matching dresser stood across the room between the bath and closet doors. The single bedside table matched a larger table that stood before a deep shuttered window flanked by two small wing chairs. A rustic armoire, she had already discovered, contained a small television and CD system. She stood on thick, soft Berber carpet. The generous bath attached to this room was white-tiled, bright and pristine. Her own room at home was small and shabby by comparison.

“This is some house.”

Dale chuckled. “Yeah, well, what would you expect from the city's finest home builder? Honestly, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until you see the pool under that massive deck out there.”