Chapter Thirteen
S he had to stay. She’d given Sage her word. So why when she heard the truth come out of her mouth did she feel…happy? As though she’d been given permission to do something she’d wanted to do but wasn’t allowed to do?
Allowed by who?
While the quickly presenting impressions could be worth pursuing, Iris didn’t have a chance to do so. Watching the expressions rapidly crossing Scott’s face—reading nothing that even remotely resembled her level of well-being under the circumstances—she rushed to minimize any negative effects on the friendship she and Scott were working to preserve.
“However…”
The one word got his immediate attention. Holding his gaze, she leaned forward slowly to buy herself time to come up with the rest of that sentence.
“I understand where you’re coming from in terms of reclaiming your personal autonomy.” Good. She liked it.
Most particularly when, chin jutting, he nodded. And waited.
She had a few seconds to solve the problem. Put herself in his shoes. And found it…not all that much of a challenge to do. She knew him.
Suddenly, words started flowing.
“And I understand Sage’s need to be here.” She went with what she was getting. Trusting something more than her mind to guide her.
Something she hadn’t done in a very long time.
“You can say you’re just fine with the pain, but Sage senses how much you’re suffering.” His twin had told her so. Saying it was a twin thing.
What neither of them knew was that she totally got it.
“Sage has never had a high enough tolerance for pain to deal with me.”
“I think it’s more that she feels your pain with a soft tender heart, while you process in a completely different lobe.” The words came from deep inside. With a knowledge that couldn’t be denied. Ivy had been the more right-brained of the two of them. Living almost entirely by her heart. Iris had had her deep-heart moments but had done most of her initial processing with a more left-brained approach. Together, they’d been the perfect pair to face the seemingly devastating challenges life had handed them. Together. Until they hadn’t been.
Her stream of consciousness ended abruptly. Returning her to current life. And the man who was looking at her oddly. As though she knew things others didn’t get.
The twin vow, made in the womb, before thought existed.
She’d said too much. Too much. Too much. Panic hit. Her gaze couldn’t seem to break away from Scott’s. Too much .
He wasn’t saying anything. She took a breath. And it was like some kind of special knowledge emanated from those blue eyes of his. Without seeing her secret. Somehow those eyes went from posing a threat, to calming her.
“Regardless…” she continued, as though she hadn’t lost all train of thought. Was miraculously able to jump back, to be where she was. A nudge from Ivy. “Your sister has one foot on the plane already. Which means we have to do what we can to tame your pain as much as possible. The way I see it, we have two challenges there. The physical pain, and the more personal sense of emotional discomfort.”
His lips pursed, jutted forward. Acknowledgment of her point?
Or an attempt to stifle an order for her to get out?
Before he lost that possible battle, she rushed forward. “So I stay. I continue to oversee the tasks that are critical to your fastest physical healing. Icing. Compression. Meds. And cooking.” She paused. And when he didn’t grunt or bark out a refusal, she said, “You take over all the personal hygiene needs. As soon as your chairs arrive.”
Wheel and shower. He’d already taken over. She got that. Understood why, too.
And waited to see how badly he was taking her proposal. She wasn’t going to back down. And knew that, ultimately, he’d find a way to compromise enough that she didn’t call his sister. Didn’t mean she was looking forward to the mental battle that was likely coming to get them there.
“I have to sleep in the spare room.” The words were unequivocal. “Bed’s lower. Joel and I did the dry run.”
The two men had already started on Scott’s excruciating physical therapy before she’d left. Which meant the rest had come after. When his pain would be at its worst. He’d been that determined to get rid of her.
For their friendship’s sake.
The idea came to her. Didn’t leave.
She accepted its presence.
“You’ll have to sleep in my bed.” His tone was unequivocal.
No. Uh-uh. Just not a good plan. Everything in her stood strong on that one. The strong shaking of her head was testament to that fact.
“I can’t take looking at the chair and seeing it as your bedroom.”
So she’d sleep on the floor, if she had to. She had a blow-up mattress.
“Nor can I have you in a space that isn’t behind a closed door.”
Iris saw the loss coming her way. Saw the sense, heard the raw honesty, in his words.
Had to take back the upper hand enough to have her own control in the situation. “That’s settled then,” she said, abruptly ending his opportunity for discussion. “I’m staying.”
She was standing by the time the words were out. Slinging her satchel over her shoulder, she said, “Works out fine. The master bath will give me more privacy.” And left him sitting there.
* * *
Scott was about bursting with a need to pee by the time his chair arrived. But with his senses returning, there’d been no way he’d been going to have Iris standing outside the door while he took care of his business. He cringed every time he thought about the things she’d already witnessed.
Placated himself with the idea that he hadn’t been himself. He’d been patient number one. Not Scott Martin.
Iris oversaw the chair’s unloading, delivery into the house and making it to the couch. And then, true to her word, left the room to head back to the kitchen, where she was working on dinner. Baking some of his salmon. Putting together a salad that used broccoli and cranberries, based on her questions to him regarding his current preferences. After three years of conversation and a plethora of shared meals on the beach, she pretty much knew his likes and dislikes.
She’d left the brake on for him. And gritting his teeth against the pain, he actually took a mite of pleasure in doing for himself. Most particularly after he made it back to the couch without losing the contents of his stomach due to pain.
The mind-numbing shards of electric shock shooting through him weren’t quite as unbearable as they had been the day before. That was what he focused on. What mattered. He’d made it through the worst of it. With success.
Thoughts of his victory over failure enshrined him with strength.
So much so that when he awoke from an hour’s nap, and heard Iris speaking softly to Morgan and Angel, ushering them outside to the beach, he lifted himself into his chair for a second go-round. Heading to his own bathroom. To go again. But also to collect the personal items he was going to need over the next few days. A razor for one. He just wasn’t a few-days’-growth type of guy. No matter how fashionable the look.
The task posed some hardships. Requiring him to stand on one leg with only the support of the counter. But that wasn’t what almost did him in.
It was the sight of Iris’s toiletries laid out neatly on his granite countertop, as though she was sharing his most intimate space with him, that hit him with the jolt that had him falling back into his chair.
A jolt to the groin so powerful he went from nothing to everything in a split second.
Morgan’s sudden bark rent through him. Her looking-for-him tone. The one she used whenever he came home.
The three females sharing his space were back. Sweeping his things into his lap, to cover evidence that Iris absolutely could not see, Scott swung his chair around so quickly his left foot caught on the door. And he cried out.
“Ahh…” He cut off the sound of his agony abruptly, but not soon enough.
“Scott?” Iris was right behind the sound of her voice. Her expression as worried as she’d sounded.
He scowled. “I’m fine,” he told her. And then glared at her. “Collecting my things, which definitely falls under personal business.”
After giving him a careful once-over, she turned her back and walked out.
Without another word.
A smart woman.
True to her word.
And he was no longer even a tiny bit hard.
Giving him a very welcome revelation.
The surfing had worked. Even if he still harbored some very temporary hots for his friend, his injuries were most definitely going to prevent him from acting on them.
Which would give Sage and Gray time to get home. Built-in chaperones. Reminders to Scott and Iris of who they were and what they did and did not want. To return them to the roles they’d always played in each other’s life.
He’d most definitely done the right thing, taking on South Beach.
Thanks to the father who’d been so hard on him, instilling in him the abhorrence of failure.
A sense that he had to pull from within himself, give all he had to that which he was best at, and accept nothing less than success from himself.
Turned out, the old man had been right.
Where there was a will, there was a way.
And he most definitely had the will to be Iris’s friend for life.
Which meant, the hots had to go.
* * *
He was everywhere. Beneath her. On top of her. Inside her.
Even up her nose.
All she had to do was breathe to be enveloped by his essence. So she did. Long deep breaths. And it worked every time.
Iris moved, wanting to slide her arms around him…and rose to full consciousness instead. On the softest sheets. Her own sheets. She’d brought them with her. Had purchased her own king-size bed after Scott had raved about his one day on the beach. He’d said he slept better because no matter how much he moved, there was space to accommodate him.
Having been a restless sleeper ever since the accident, Iris had been willing to give his theory a try.
It hadn’t worked. She’d felt more alone than ever on the massive mattress. But she’d spent the money, so she’d kept the bed. Had adopted Angel to help her sleep, at Dale’s suggestion. And had solved both of her problems. Having the little collie around really did settle some of the demons that raged inside her in the blackness of night, but the girl helped fill up the spare mattress space, too.
As her thoughts traveled further from the nonsense she’d awoken to, Iris reached outside the covers for Angel. To get back in sync with herself.
And caught another whiff. Scott.
From the comforter. She’d exchanged his sheets for hers, but had failed to consider the icing on the cake.
Forbidden icing, no matter how strong the temptation was to let her relaxed, half-asleep self slide back into a place where she could make love to Scott one more time.
In a bed. With enough time to touch every inch of him. To feel his hands on parts of her no one ever touched.
Just to get it done and him out of her system.
An idea that sounded plausible, and almost smart, as she lay in the quiet dark of three in the morning, filled with his presence. Right until Angel, probably sensing Iris’s imminent slide into a bad place, woke, and climbed up on Iris’s belly, flattening herself out, wagging her tail and jamming her nose into Iris’s chin.
The mistress was awake, so the dog thought it appropriate to communicate her need to go out. Their regular morning routine. After which, Angel got to eat, which was what she really wanted. The bathroom-going thing was just the way to get breakfast.
Any other night, Iris would have told Angel it was too early. To lie down.
Scott was on the other side of the wall. Would he hear her?
A man who lived alone wouldn’t be used to hearing a voice in his home. The anomaly could wake him.
She’d iced him an hour before.
Which was probably what had brought on the whole adverse-to-her-ultimate-happiness thought process to begin with. It had been her first care visit with him in bed.
He’d been in pain. In the moment, she’d made it worse. And skedaddled as soon as it was done. His discomfort and her concern for him far overshadowing more shallow thoughts.
Until her psyche knew she was out and had run away from home. Getting her into trouble.
Throwing off her covers as that last thought made her groan over its melodrama, Iris picked up Angel. Probably best that she take a trip outside with Angel. Recalibrate her emotional equilibrium.
With the miniature collie resting half on her arm and half against her body, Iris tiptoed barefoot toward the bedroom door. Maybe the cool air outside would wake her fully enough that she could find peaceful rest when she went back to bed, rather than active sleep. If she got a little chilled outside in just her pajama pants and T-shirt, all the better.
She turned the knob slowly, swung the wood open inches at a time. Making certain that she didn’t wake Scott. Lord knew he didn’t need any more awareness of her disruptive presence in his home.
Making it to the living room without a sound, she glanced back once, toward the spare bedroom door. Scott had asked that she leave it open to make it easier for him to wheel to the bathroom in the hall. And there was clearly no light coming from the room.
Breathing a sigh of relief, hoping the man was getting some real rest, she made a quick beeline for the kitchen before Morgan got a whiff of them up and about.
She didn’t dare turn on any lights. Wouldn’t need them once she got out back and her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
With help from the moon’s beaconing glow.
Keeping her eyes pinned on her goal, the back door, she rounded the half wall separating the dining area from the kitchen, and…pain shot through her foot.
“Ouch!” she let out before she could stop herself. Followed by an immediate, harshly whispered “Damn” as Angel moved against her, licking her nose.
Her toe hurt like hell. She’d stubbed it against…
“Scott?”
She’d walked into the wheel of his chair.
“My leg,” he said, his tone threadbare. Barely there.
Filled with instant alarm, Iris flipped on the overhead light, set Angel down and was kneeling at the raised footrest on the left side of his chair, ready to pull up the leg of his pajama pants when he said, “I forgot Morgan’s bed.”
Her gaze flew to his face. Noticed the whiteness. Fearing he was incoherent, she searched his gaze. Saw pain there. A ton of it. But full lucidity, too.
Before he swallowed hard and closed his eyes. As he had most of day two. When the pain had been almost more than he could bear…
She remembered the dog bed in the corner of Scott’s room. She’d thought it extraneous. Figured it for something Morgan used when Scott was gone all day.
“She sleeps in it at night,” she guessed. Hoping he’d open up his eyes.
His one bob nod felt like a victory, but not enough to quell the fresh wave of worry sluicing through her. Nor did it tell her what he was doing in the kitchen. There were no other dog beds there. Just the one. In the room she was using.
She had to figure out what they were dealing with. Using both hands to gently fold up the loose-fitting cotton covering Scott’s leg, she took one roll up at a time.
“She can’t jump…up and down…from the bed.”
“I know,” she said, halfway to his knee.
“She was pacing…whining… I lifted her up…”
She started in on what would be the last roll. Could feel the bandage against the backs of her fingers.
Wet. Oh God . Moving more quickly, she got the material out of the way, exposing the bandage that Joel had changed for Scott earlier in the day.
“She was trying to get to me…” She barely heard the words, didn’t even try to make sense of him lifting the short-legged corgi and Morgan trying to get to him at the same time, as a fresh wave of fear swept over her.
Wet and bright red.
Heart pounding, Iris grabbed a compression bandage from the medical supplies on the kitchen table. “This is probably going to hurt like hell,” she said but didn’t pause as she swiftly and tightly wrapped from below the blood-soaked bandage to inches above it.
Then, grabbing her purse and keys from the same table, she pulled a quilted vest off the coat hooks inside the laundry room door and shrugged into it one arm at a time while she pushed the chair with the other. Taking heart from the fact that Scott was able to walk his hanging, healthy right foot along with it.
He’d lost a lot of blood. Beyond that, she had no idea what they were facing. She just knew that she could get him to the hospital more rapidly herself than calling for an ambulance and waiting for it to get down to Ocean Breeze.
Her mind pumping with clear, immediate action items, she left the chair for the seconds it took her to grab a blanket off the couch and throw it over Scott’s lap. Almost cried when she saw his hand close over it, holding it in place.
And telling the girls to stay, she lowered the chair down the step to Scott’s garage and headed for her car.
Parked right next to his.
And prayed.