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He struggled to remove the splint, avoiding her gaze. “Once since last week.”
She jotted the note and tamped down her frustration. “You might want to try at least once a day. Twice or three times would be better.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have the energy. By the time I get up in the morning, try to clean up, then get dressed, I’ve wasted half the damned day, and all I want to do is take a nap.”
Little did he know, Brooke could relate to that. If she had a particularly rough asthma attack, her weakness sometimes slowed her to a snail’s pace.
“Okay. Now let’s get down to business.” She looked toward the mound cluttering the sink. How could she run water if she couldn’t find the faucet? How could she heat water if she couldn’t find a clean pot to boil the packs? Heaven help her, she would have to wash dishes, or at least try to clear some of them away. Her mother would be so proud.
Without speaking, Brooke rose and began stacking some glasses to one side of the sink until she had a makeshift fortress teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Finally she made enough room to draw some water. Now, to find some kind of soap.
Bending down, she retrieved a half-full bottle of dishwashing liquid from the cabinet underneath and squirted a few drops into the sink. She washed the pot with the least dried on food, filled it with water, dropped the pack in, then set it on the gas stove to heat.
While waiting for the water to boil, she went back to the sink and the Mt. Everest mess. After remarkably finding a clean towel and rag in the drawer, she dove into the task of dishwashing, her back to him while he waited at the table.
The silence was almost as stifling as the unpleasant odor wafting from the dirty dishes. She struggled for something to say to break the awkwardness. “Looks like you’ve gotten to know every pizza deliveryman in the county. Pepperoni or the works?” She smiled over one shoulder and found him staring at her, his blue eyes sharp and intense.
“Neither. Just the plain stuff for me.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Why?”
“It’s that whole doctor persona. I’ve always believed that most medical men have a predilection for the exotic. You know, fast cars. Faster women.”
“That’s the problem with stereotypes. People get too bogged down in them.”
She rimmed one glass with the cloth, over and over, until it squeaked. “So that’s not the case with you?”
“Depends. Which one are you referring to? Cars, pizza or women?”
Boy, oh, boy, did she want to know about the latter. Why, she couldn’t say. But she did. “All of the above.”
“I like my old truck, which on a warm day can actually top fifty-five if I get a running start. I like my pizza with double cheese and sometimes sausage. And what was that last one?” he asked, amusement in his tone.
“Women.”
A chuckle rumbled low in his chest, lifting Brooke’s spirits a notch. “I like to know that they don’t have to have a running start to reach the speed limit, and covered in cheese is just fine by me.”
My goodness. The doctor had a sense of humor. And she had a bad case of pleasant chills. “Well, those are certainly impeccable standards.”
“What about you? What are your requirements in a man?”
“A man?” She sounded as though she didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“Yeah. What’s your boyfriend like?”
She released a sharp humorless laugh. “Nonexistent.”
“I’m surprised. Seems to me a woman as attractive as you would have a significant other.”
The glass she’d been washing for a ridiculous amount of time slipped from her grasp and fell back into the sink, sending a fountain of water onto the front of her lab coat. She ignored the dampness but couldn’t seem to ignore his compliment or her pulse’s pitter-patter rhythm. Yet she had to if she wanted to keep her head on straight. “Nope, no significant other. I don’t really have the inclination at this point in my career.” Or the strength of will to investigate that possibility. Not after her one terrible experience with a man who’d used her, then discarded as easily as she’d just discarded the trash in Jared Granger’s kitchen.
“Your career is the most important thing to you.” He posed it as a straightforward statement of fact, not a question.
“Yes, you could say that. One day I plan to start my own clinic.”
The chair creaked behind her, indicating he shifted in his seat. “So you have it all mapped out, huh? How long it will take to reach this goal, then the next, until it all comes together. Then the next thing you know, everything’s on course, just the way you planned it, not believing for a minute it can all come apart at the seams in a matter of moments.”
Setting the last of the glasses aside, she faced him, knowing he spoke of his own life as much as he spoke of hers. “Sure. But I guess nothing’s guaranteed, right?”
“Yeah. And that’s a damned bitter pill to swallow.”
The familiar pain slid across his taut features once again. Brooke held on tightly to a thin rein of control. She couldn’t keep playing into the sympathy. She needed to stay focused. Remain objective.
She retrieved the hot pack, wrapped it in another dish towel and applied it to his hand before going back to the dishes. She finished her chores while the allotted twenty minutes passed, enough time for the heat to relax his tendons, and all the excuse she needed to get back to the business at hand—helping him put his life back on track.
“Did washing my dirty dishes give you some kind of thrill?” he asked as she took his hand into hers to begin the therapy.
She stared up at him, surprised to find amusement in his eyes. “Nope, just dishpan hands. Why?”
“You were whistling, like you really enjoyed it.”
If the truth were known, it had given her a little boost. Because of her mother’s penchant for cleaning on a weekly basis to prevent aggravating Brooke’s asthma, she rarely did anything in the way of housekeeping, and she kind of liked the independence of not having someone standing over her shoulder, telling her she wasn’t doing it right. Not that she’d reveal that to the physician. She didn’t want him to erroneously assume that cleaning up after him would be a common occurrence. She hadn’t enjoyed it that much. And it wasn’t in her job description, either.
“Believe me, Dr. Granger,” she said, “I’ll send you a bill for my KP duties.”
“No problem.”
She looked up from working his fingers and met his compelling blue eyes once again. “How much do you think I should charge?”
“Whatever’s fair.”
“How much do you charge for, let’s say, a quadruple bypass?”
He smiled again, but only part way. “Are you making a comparison here?”
“I think it’s only fair, don’t you? It took me over a half hour to consult with your dishes.”
“At least they didn’t talk back. And they sure as hell can’t sue you if you happen to break one.”
Another glimpse of wry humor. “Good point,” she said, pleased by the fact that his tension over her presence had seemed to ease. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same for his stiff, injured fingers, especially his pointer finger. She had her suspicions what the problem could be.
She curled her own fingers into his palm. “Can you grip my hand?”
With his brows drawn down in concentration, he moved his appendages somewhat. Not much, but enough to heighten Brooke’s optimism. And heighten her awareness of the size of his hand. Hers looked small resting in the well of his large palm. Vulnerable. She could imagine how skilled his hand once was, in various undertakings that had nothing to do with surgery.
“Great,” she said, pulling her hand away, pushing the questionable thoughts from her brain. “You need to really tackle the home therapy more often. Your second digit is the worst, and I’d hate to think you might develop a contracture.”
He frowned. “You really think that’s going to happen?”
“Hopefully not, but that’s why you need to really work hard so we can prevent that from happening.”
“I’ll try.”
At least that was some semblance of a commitment, Brooke decided.
After Brooke finished the treatment, she checked the clock again. More than an hour had passed, and she was beat.
“All done here,” she said after putting away her equipment. “Guess I’d better go.”
“One other thing,” he said. “A favor, really.” He looked as if it was costing him a lot to ask.
“What favor?”
“I’m having trouble doing some things. Personal things.”
Whoa, Nelly. Brooke wasn’t at all sure what he meant by that, or if she even wanted to know. Or did she? “What kinds of things?”
He rubbed his bearded chin. “Shaving, for one.”
A doctor who performed open-heart surgery on a regular basis had just admitted that he had trouble using a razor. The old sympathy bug bit into Brooke once again. She tried to resist its sting. “Have you thought about hiring an occupational therapist or maybe a home healthcare aide?”
“I don’t want to involve anyone else.”
She could understand that he wanted to maintain as much privacy as possible, but where did she fit into this picture? “I’m not sure I can help you.”
“I assume you know something about OT.”
“Yes. Some.”
“Then I don’t see why you can’t do it. I’ll make sure you receive extra pay for your time. We could make it a private arrangement.”
It wasn’t the money that concerned Brooke, not that she couldn’t use the extra funds. The fact that she would be even more deeply involved in his recovery, his life, bothered her on some level she didn’t care to explore at the moment.
Her mind catalogued all the pros and cons. The pros won out. She was going to do it. Help him with personal things. And of course, administer therapy.
“Okay, I can help you shave. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
His expression suddenly turned serious. “First, there’s something I need to say.”
Brooke braced for a demand, a warning, something in his tone that would help her regain her emotional bearings.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” he said. “It’s been a long time since…” He studied the table before looking up again. “Not many people would be willing to do this for me. I appreciate it.”
She smiled, buoyed by his gratitude. “You’re welcome. So do you want to try the shaving tonight?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind.” He rubbed a hand over his almost full beard. “I thought it would be easy to do with my left hand, but it’s weird how you take things for granted, like how you need fingers to lift your nose up to get to your upper lip.”
“To be honest, I’ve never thought about it.” She stood. “You want to do it here or in the bathroom?”
His smile came slowly, a hint of devilment in his crystalline eyes. “Where do you like to do it?”
Brooke’s face heated to desert proportions. Had he really sounded that suggestive? Or was she simply imagining the innuendo? “Depends. How small is your bathroom?”
“Not nearly big enough, unless we stand up. I might have a hard time maneuvering with my bum leg.” His eyes sparkled in the overhead light, full of mischief and something else. Surely not desire, Brooke thought.
Another image filtered into Brooke’s brain, this one much more vivid. A vision of heated kisses, his hands on her, his mouth on her…
Obviously her libido had suddenly commandeered her brain.
Get a grip, Brooke. “I think that since you’re fairly tall, in order for me to show you how to hold the razor, you should be sitting, and I should be standing. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, so we’re back to shaving again.”
“I don’t think we ever really left. Did we?” She cringed at the question, as if she were baiting him to admit that for a moment he was considering other things, too.
“I don’t know about you,” he said with a wicked smile, “but I just took a mental trip that didn’t have a damn thing to do with personal hygiene.”
Surely he wasn’t already suffering from transference, that pesky condition where a patient thought himself in love with his therapist. No, she didn’t think so. Besides, this had more to do with lust, not love, although that wasn’t totally out of the ordinary, either. He was simply trying to validate himself as a man. Needing some confirmation was understandable. And for heaven’s sake, she’d only touched his hand up to this point. But she was about to touch his face. Much more intimate, and not a repulsive idea at all.
Stiffening her frame, she forced herself into business mode. “You just stay where you are. We can do it…shave you in here.” She looked around the room. “I’ll need an outlet for your razor.”
“I don’t use an electric razor. I prefer a blade.”
Wonderful. “Maybe you should reconsider, at least until your hand’s better.”
“I like using the real thing, so you’re not going to get me to bend on this one. Besides, most women prefer a closer shave. Less whisker burn. Don’t you?”
He was doing it again, making her feel all hot and bothered. And those darned scenarios that kept popping into her brain. The man had more pull than a Supreme Court judge. No wonder he was also known as the Stud of Surgery. “Okay, we’ll work around it. Where are some scissors? I need to cut off the excess fur before we bring out the razor.”
“In the bathroom drawer,” he said, pointing toward the hallway leading from the living room. “First door on the right. Shaving cream’s in the medicine cabinet along with the razor.”
Making her way down the hardwood hallway floor, Brooke came to the small bathroom. It, too, was cluttered with towels and discarded rags piled in the corner.
She rummaged through the organized drawer and found the scissors with little trouble. The mirrored medicine cabinet was much the same, everything lined up in neat rows like multicolored perennials in an immaculate garden. Obviously he’d had some order in his life at one time.
She opened the linen closet behind her. It was bare. No towels, no washcloths. He must be recycling, but for how long? She couldn’t tolerate the thought of many weeks worth of used towels. Only one option remained. She’d have to do laundry. Her mother would be doubly proud.
Gathering up a load of towels in her arms, the shaving cream, razor and scissors tucked in her lab coat pocket, Brooke headed back into the kitchen. “I thought I’d throw a load of towels in—” She halted in midstride and midsentence when she came upon the doctor, sitting at the table, sans shirt.
Her gaze roamed over his bared chest covered by a spattering of golden hair. A well-defined road map to a prime physique. His belly was flat, revealing a nice six-pack of muscle, and she wondered how the heck he’d been lifting weights with one bad hand and a broken leg.
Of course, it probably came naturally for him, as it did for many men. Not that Brooke had seen all that many men who looked like Jared Granger. Not even close.
He seemed unaffected by Brooke’s perusal, and she prayed her mouth was shut. “Where’s the washer?” she asked, when what she really wanted to know was where her good sense had fled.
He pointed to a louvered door to his right. “In there.”
