His Private Nurse (8 page)

“Hey, boys, come on in.”

They did just that, and as they chose seats around the room—Mark and Vincent on the couch, Waldren in the arm chair, and Cooper on the edge of the window seat that overlooked the side yard—Royce couldn't keep the smile off his face.

“Okay, so why the hell aren't you working?”

“We came to check on you,” Vincent said.

“Damn, boss,” Cooper piped up, “you look like a gang of motorcycle bandits done danced on you with their boots.”

“Hell, I think he looks good,” Waldren put in quickly, “all things considered.”

“Gee, thanks,” Royce said facetiously. “All things considered.”

Mark just shook his head. “So how are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Would anyone like a glass of iced tea?” Merrily asked, and all four men looked past Royce and riveted their gazes on her.

Cooper hopped off the window seat as if that were a
place a man didn't want to be caught sitting. “Now that would be extremely fine,” he said.

“I'll bring a pitcher,” she said. “Sweet or not?”

“Sweet,” they all said in unison.

Royce watched their faces as she moved away, and as those eyes turned back to him, he could see the unspoken questions in them. “For the record,” he stated flatly, “she is not as young as she looks.”

“She looks plenty old enough to me,” Cooper observed with interest.

“Down, boy,” Royce said, trying to sound nonchalant. “She's half a dozen years older than you.”

“So? Maybe she likes younger men.”

“Maybe she likes boys, you mean,” Royce retorted.

“She is a pretty little thing,” Waldren observed.

“Again, for the record,” Royce stated flatly, “I hired Merrily for her nursing skills, not her pretty face.”

“The pretty face doesn't hurt, though, does it?” Mark said.

Royce couldn't deny it. “Not a bit,” he replied drolly. The sharp clinking and tinkling of glass from the kitchen made him smile. “The woman can hear a compliment all the way across the house.”

They all laughed, then his ever-conscientious superintendent changed the subject to business. That occupied them until Merrily returned, some time later, with five tall glasses and a pitcher of iced tea.

Royce felt a certain amount of gall at first about the fact that his business seemed to be humming along nicely without him. As he began asking questions, however, previously positive reports began to yield some problems that only he could resolve. Mark got out a small notebook and a pencil as Royce made decisions and suggestions and issued orders.

The tea disappeared, and Merrily returned to replace the empty pitcher with a full one, plus a plate of sandwiches. The men wiped those out almost by rote, hands reaching and mouths munching even as they discussed specifics of business. When the sandwiches were gone, she brought a big bowl of salted nuts. Royce tilted and swayed to look around her as she moved silently among them. When she dropped a pill into his palm, he swallowed it without thought and continued the conversation.

Finally concern focused on a certain construction problem that Mark and Waldren had been unable to solve. Some differences in the descriptions of the problem prompted Royce to try to remember where he could find the plans for that particular job. Just as Merrily arrived to sweep away the now empty nut bowl, he recalled exactly where those plans were.

“Darlin', I'm sorry to have to ask you, but do you think you could go into my office and find a set of blueprints for us? They're marked ‘Jensen 14-C' and ought to be third from the top in the stack on the chair to the right of the desk as you come in the door.” It was only as he waited for her reply that he realized everyone was staring at him, including Merrily. He couldn't for the life of him think why, unless his directions had been too vague or were seen as too great an imposition. “I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. You shouldn't have any real trouble finding them. They're in a stack of plans on a chair at the right end of my desk. You're looking for one marked ‘Jensen 14-C.' Okay?”

She dropped her gaze and said, “O-okay,” before scurrying out of the room.

He looked around to find Cooper frowning, Waldren smiling sheepishly and Vincent trading a significant glance with Mark. “What?” he demanded sharply.

Mark just pressed his lips together and shook his head. Vincent cleared his throat and looked away, and Waldren studied a tiny hole in his jeans with the concentration of an archeologist. Cooper, however, folded his arms, flopped back onto the window seat and snorted unhappily.

“All you had to say was she's taken.”

“Huh?”

“Shut up, Coop,” Mark ordered mildly.

“But—”

“Shut up, Coop,” Waldren repeated, and Cooper clamped his mouth closed as if he was trapping flies.

Vincent cleared his throat and sat forward on the edge of his seat. “How long you think before you'll be back on the job, boss?”

Royce bullied his mind around that corner and formulated a reply. “Oh, uh, don't know, really. One more week and I can trade this ski slope on my shoulder for a regular cast on my arm and a pair of crutches. I get the last of the stitches out of my leg on Friday, but how long it'll be before the doc says I'm fit for associating with the likes of y'all I don't know.”

“Well, don't rush it,” Mark advised seriously.

Talk turned to the catalog of his injuries, but no one, thankfully, asked how it had happened. Apparently, whatever Dale had told them right after the fall had been enough to satisfy them on that point. The tea pitcher was empty again by the time Merrily returned with the plans. As she swept the tray away and collected the glasses, he rolled out the thick sheaf of papers on the too-small table and studied them until he found what he was looking for. Mark and Waldren huddled around, explaining why the execution could not match the design, and Cooper wandered over to put in his two cents' worth. Surprisingly, Cooper came up with the solution.

“Lookee here,” he said, tapping the drawing with his blunt forefinger. “Why don't we just cut this off at a forty-five-degree angle and brace it from this direction. Plaster it over and no one'll ever be the wiser.”

“Except the inspector,” Waldren noted dryly.

“I don't think that'll be a problem,” Mark said consideringly. “What d'you think, boss?”

Royce looked up at Cooper and drawled, “I think this punk just might turn out to be worth the price of his lunch.” He rolled up the plans. “Okay, boys, here's how we handle it. I'll call the architect and get him to rubber stamp a change in the plans. Mark, you handle the inspector, and, Waldren, you speak to the homeowner, soft sell the change, tut-tut about the cost of it, then let them know we'll swallow it.”

“What about me?” Cooper wanted to know.

“You,” Royce said, “watch your step and come payday you just might find a little extra kick in your pocket.”

“Oo-ee, I feel me a hot time coming on in the old town this weekend!”

“Cooper,” Vincent said, “in your case, a hot time is a bad sunburn.”

They all laughed, even Cooper. Then Royce looked up at them, moving his gaze from one to the other. “Glad y'all came by, boys.”

“The men have all been concerned for you,” Vincent confided.

“Well, you tell them I appreciate it,” Royce said, “and not to worry. I'll be fit as ever soon.”

As they started filing out, Waldren said, “Yeah, and we'll be telling 'em you're in good hands, too—mighty sweet little hands, at that.”

Cooper fell in behind the big man, muttering, “Now don't that beat all. Take a tumble down a killer flight of
stairs and come up in a sweet spot with a little doll like that.”

Royce scowled, and Vincent immediately scampered after the others, hobbling slightly on his arthritic knee. Mark dropped a hand on his shoulder, and Royce tilted back his head in surprise.

“You did call her darlin', you know.”

Royce felt like someone had planted a fist in his belly. “I did?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Royce tried to think of an excuse, but none formed. “Well,” he said.

Mark just smiled. “Yeah. That's kinda what I thought.” Then he winked. “You take care, now, and don't worry about a thing. We got the business in hand.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks,” Royce mumbled as the man walked away, but he was thinking just one word that went around and around inside his head, a damning litany that was going to haunt him for some time to come.

Darlin'. Darlin'.

Darlin' Merrily.

“Y
ou sure you aren't keeping anything back?” Royce asked, speaking into the telephone receiver. “Because I'm completely able to answer your questions or troubleshoot some problem.” He broke off for a moment and nodded. “Okay, Mark. Well, you know how to reach me. Sure. No problem.” With a sigh he broke the connection and dropped the receiver into the cradle.

Merrily cleared her throat, and his head instantly tilted back.

“Pill time? Too early for dinner.”

She winced inwardly at that. Perhaps she'd kept her distance a little too assiduously if he now assumed she would only approach him if it was time for meals or pills. She'd kept her distance even as she'd realized that he was bored to tears. Now that the cast on his shoulder had been removed, he enjoyed a bit more ease of motion, but the broken arm still had to be protected with a bulky cast.
And while the incisions on his leg had healed nicely, he was not yet ready for a walking cast. So far he was limited to using the crutches for little more than rising and hopping a few steps. He hated the wheelchair, hated even to sit in it, but it remained his most viable means of getting around, but moving around outside of the immediate area required her assistance. She had unintentionally trapped him in this room, comfortable as it was.

Folding her hands at her waist, she said lightly, “I was going to berate you for the condition of your office, but instead I think I'll just suggest that you try to do something about it.”

“My office?” he said uncertainly.

She waved a hand. “It's none of my business, of course, but frankly when I went in there the other day I was shocked at the mess.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“If I were you,” she went on, “I'd use this down time to clean off my desk and get rid of those stacks of paper that are everywhere.”

“Down time,” he echoed. “As opposed to lolling around at my leisure.”

She folded her arms. “You're not the leisurely sort.”

“I was beginning to think you hadn't noticed.”

“I was beginning to think you'd decided to sit here and sulk from now on.”

“Touché.”

She gave him a mock curtsy. “So how about it? Ready to do some work.”

“Why not?” He began struggling up out of the recliner. Knowing that he preferred to do this himself, she stood back and watched as he maneuvered himself into the wheelchair and turned it toward the breakfast room. He rolled resolutely forward, accepting her help only when
they came to the ramp. Pushing the office door wide, he wheeled the chair into the room and stopped.

A stack of file boxes blocked his way in one direction and a heap of rolled plans in another. Once he could have stepped over the blueprints or turned sideways to slide around the boxes. Now he could only wait for her to step around him and begin shoving the boxes out of the way. While she did that, he propped both elbows on the arms of his wheelchair and looked around.

“I didn't realize it was quite this bad. I'm usually in and out of here in a matter of minutes, sometimes several times a day, and most of the time I can find what I'm looking for.”

“Most the time?” she asked with a roll of her eyes. “Most of the time wouldn't cut it in my profession.”

“I imagine not.”

“What do you want to do first?”

He looked around again, seeming uncertain. “Well, I guess I could start filing some of my correspondence, but I can't reach the top drawers of the cabinets without the crutches.”

“I'll be right back,” she said, and hurried from the room, having cleared a path to the desk.

 

Royce looked around him once more, dismayed by what he now saw. Why hadn't he realized how hopelessly cluttered, chaotic and inefficient his private domain had become? How long had it been since he'd done more than whisk in and out of here, clawing his way through the piles to find what he needed at the moment? Well, it was time to get organized.

Using both his left hand and foot, he maneuvered the wheelchair behind the desk, managed to push the high-backed leather desk chair out of the way and got his ex
tended right leg into the desk well. Reaching for the stack of papers nearest to him, he began going through them. To his disgust, much of it was trash. The wastebasket, unfortunately, stood out of reach against the wall, where he had apparently shoved it sometime earlier. He crumpled the advertisement for building supplies in his hand and dropped it to the floor.

By the time Merrily returned to prop the crutches on the corner of the desk, he had accumulated quite a pile. Without a word, she moved the wastebasket to his side and began picking up the wads of paper and placing them in it. Next she moved to the desk and began shifting irregular stacks of papers to spots on the desktop within his reach. She was in the process of gathering up a particularly tall stack when the telephone rang. Steadying the stack of documents with one hand, she reached for her pocket, but he had left the portable telephone in its re-charger in the den. He dropped the paper he was holding and reached for the desktop model at his right elbow.

“Hello.”

After a brief pause a brusque voice demanded, “Where's Merrily?”

Irritation shot through Royce. “Right here. Who is this?”

“Her brother, that's who. You tell her I want to talk to her.”

Royce fought the urge to hang up on the arrogant, demanding brat. Instead he tamped down his anger and shoved the telephone at Merrily, who perched on the edge of his desk and timidly lifted the corded phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

Whatever that brother of hers said, it stiffened her face and made her swivel away from Royce and lower her voice.

“We've been over and over this.”

After a moment she said quite calmly, “I am an adult. You can't tell me what to do. None of you can.”

A few seconds later she sighed and replied to something that had been said on the other end, “Then wash your underwear, for pity's sake! It's not my fault the housekeeper you hired has quit.”

Fully exasperated now, Royce reached around her and plucked the phone out of her hand.

“What do you think you're doing?” he demanded into the mouthpiece.

“Who is this?” the man on the other end squawked.

“Royce Lawler. Who is this, and I want a name?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

“Lane Gage.”

Merrily hissed at him and reached for the phone as if to take it back from him, but he switched it to the other side, catching it between his shoulder and ear and motioned her away with his good hand.

“How old are you, Lane?” he demanded sternly.

“Huh?”

“I thought all of Merrily's brothers were older than her.”

“Yeah. So?”

Merrily slid off the desk, tentatively poised and seemingly as uncertain as her brother sounded, anxiety on her face.

“So I'm repeating my original question,” Royce stated reasonably, and then his voice rose. “What the hell do you think you're doing? Merrily isn't your personal maid. She's a professional doing a job—for which, I might add, I am paying her handsomely. You want to whine, you do it on your own time, but don't you dare call your sister
here and badger her like this again. Be a man, for Pete's sake.” With that, he hung up the phone.

Merrily's glare hit him like a laser beam. “How dare you?”

His jaw dropped. “How dare
I?
That whiny little jerk was after you to come wash his underwear!”

“He's my brother!”

Suddenly all his pique at her spoiled brother shifted to her. “I don't care who he is. He ought to have more pride than to call up his baby sister and demand she come home and launder his underwear! And you ought to have more pride than to let him.”

“Maybe so,” she conceded angrily, “but it's still my personal business, and you have no right to interfere!”

“Well, excuse the hell out of me. I thought
I
was paying your salary!”

“You haven't
bought
me!” she retorted, and he wondered why the devil she hadn't displayed that much backbone when talking to her brother.

“I haven't demanded you wash my shorts, either!”

Merrily sighed and sank back down onto the edge of the desk, all the fight seeming to go out of her. “You don't understand,” she said miserably. “It's just that I'm the only girl and the youngest and they all still think of me as a child. Basically they're just trying to protect me.”

“By insisting you come home and do the laundry?” he asked skeptically. “Come on, Merrily. Enough with the excuses. No professional housemaid would put up with that kind of whining helplessness. They want you home taking care of them, and they're playing on your relationship to get it. This isn't about you. It's about them and how convenient it is for them to have you around.”

“It's more than that,” she insisted weakly.

Exasperated, Royce just stared at her for a moment, but
then he realized what he was seeing and his indignation turned to regret and compassion. Of course she wanted to believe that her brothers demanded she come home from love of her, just as he wanted to believe that his kids loved him no matter what venom their mother poured into their ears. He would not be the one to suggest otherwise.

“Darn right,” he said, taking her hand in his and pulling her closer. When her pretty face came within easy reach, he skimmed his fingertips down her cheek. “They know as well as I do what a sweet, capable, caring woman you are, and they want to be certain you aren't taken advantage of, but you're perfectly correct that you aren't a child. You deserve respect, and you have every right to order your world as you see fit. Don't let them bully and control you, not even if it's because they love you.”

She chuckled softly. “Haven't you learned yet that I don't let anyone bully me? I may not scream and demand and stomp my foot, but I don't give in when I know I'm right, either.”

He smiled wryly. Scream and demand and stomp. Merrily didn't even have an inkling as to what extremes a truly demanding, unreasonable woman might go. His mother didn't scream or stomp, but she had beat him to a pulp with her demands, seared him with her coldness, cut him out of her heart as cleanly and dispassionately as any surgeon removing a tumor. Pamela, on the other hand, was just plain crazy. Screaming and demanding and stomping represented the barest tip of the iceberg when it came to that woman's conduct. Merrily couldn't be more different. He saw that with almost painful clarity.

“Darlin', do you have any idea how rare and precious you are?”

“Am I?”

Those soft, mossy-green eyes glowed with a warmth
that reached right into his chest and squeezed his heart. Unfortunately, it also sent blood surging straight down to his groin. Sighing helplessly, he shoved his fingers into the thick hair at the back of her head, wishing he could let out that ubiquitous ponytail and watch the glossy golden-brown locks tumble sleekly about her face and shoulders.

“You must know that you are. You must.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and somehow their mouths met, softly at first and then with a deepening ardor over which he seemed to own no control whatsoever. With her simply standing there, bent at the waist, her hands bracketing his head and her mouth pressed to his, the contact ought to have felt slight, minimal, but instead it was as if they melted into each other, blending in some indefinable manner that was new but at the same time wholly natural to him.

Suddenly, in a terrible flash of insight that left him completely bereft, he knew that he'd found a woman unlike any he'd ever known, one who touched something deep inside him. These past couple of weeks living in this house with her, even with this new distance between them, he'd come to know her pretty well. She woke as many intimate needs in him as she tended, but she was as far out of his reach as if he was still married, and she always would be, because Merrily deserved far better than he could give her: a crazy ex-wife, two traumatized kids, a life of constant strife and worry and, yes, even fear, for he shuddered to think what Pamela might do to any woman he came to treasure. Aching with hopelessness, he broke the kiss by bowing his head.

For a moment she stood just as she was, her forehead pressed to his, her hands on his face. Then she straightened a little. “Royce?”

He shook his head, but he didn't look at her. He didn't dare look at her. “I won't do this. It isn't good. It is isn't fair.”

“I understand,” she said sadly. “You don't care for me.”

“I do care for you.”

“But not like…
that.
”

He looked up then, to find her standing straight, her spine rigid, arms folded protectively beneath her breasts. How could she doubt her attractiveness?

“Of course like that,” he snapped, angry all over again, this time with everyone and everything. “Haven't you looked in the mirror lately? If you did, you'd understand why I care like
that
too much.”

“I…I don't understand.”

“For pity's sake, Merrily, I want to make love to you! Do you understand that?” He put his hand to his head, regret filling him, so much regret. “You're driving me crazy! I don't want to hurt you, but I can't make you any promises, let alone keep them. All I can do is try to keep my hands off you! Do you understand that, Merrily? If you do, you'll get out of here. Now!”

She whirled and ran. The wastebasket toppled over and spilled its contents. A box of files slid to the floor from atop another. For once Royce did not smile at her clumsiness. How could he when everything he'd ever wanted for himself had just fled him? If she was smart, she'd keep on running.

 

“I give up,” Dale said, holding aloft two large paper bags emblazoned with the logo and slogan of a certain Chinese restaurant.