Читать книгу Medical Romance July 2016 Books 1-6 - Lynne Marshall, Amalie Berlin - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTHE TIME BETWEEN Liam leaving and the time that Grace had managed to make it to the theater swelled to the point that now, despite the fact that she’d not arrived for forty-five minutes after Liam had, she wedged herself through the crowds enough to catch sight of him still working the carpet.
Granted, he wasn’t running up and down the length of it, but he did move from one side to the other, shaking hands, taking pictures, signing anything that people thrust at him.
Shopper Tom, or as she called him now, Tom, had come barging into Liam’s suite about three minutes after Liam and his crew had left, then had insisted on making Grace try on clothes to figure out what gave the best fit. Were these shoes the right size? Did these slacks ride too high at the hem to wear with the heels he’d picked up for her to pair them with?
Did she even know how to walk in heels?
What about this color?
How did she like blouses to hang—did she prefer a very close fit that showcased her figure or did she want to go for the old Hollywood style with flowing material?
Did she even know how to put her hair up in anything but a ponytail?
By the time she’d managed to usher him out of the suite she’d had a scalp-stretching bun forced on her, as well as more than half the clothes that he’d brought with him.
This nonsense was going to last two days. Two days. Not twenty. In two days, she’d be back home and in her own clothes, she wouldn’t have to blend in with Liam’s Group. She could wear what she wanted. She didn’t need five pairs of slacks. She didn’t need blazers and blouses, and why in God’s name had Liam included accessories and shoes for every outfit?
Grace flexed her toes up and then gave them a wiggle in the strappy sandals she’d still managed to succumb to wearing with the suit—aka the last thing she’d agreed to try on. She didn’t blend in. The crowd dressed casually. She looked like she’d come straight from closing down a tenement for the poor and disenfranchised. Or, actually, she probably looked like she was trying too hard to look important.
While Liam looked tired. And in pain.
And like he needed to be knocked out, since that apparently was the only way she was going to get him to behave and actually take some time to heal.
Anyone who watched him right now would likely come to the same conclusion. He tried, bless his little idiotic heart, but his limp was still there. Pain had a way of overriding willpower and concentration. It also distracted from a person’s ability to judge anything accurately, like how well he was doing pretending it didn’t hurt.
By the time he made it to the double doors and out of her vision, Grace’s irritation had turned to worry and her head ached from the way her brows refused to un-pinch.
No matter where she stood in the crowd, she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him now. The only thing she could pray for was that Miles, the assistant who hated her, would keep an eye on him and not let him overdo things.
As if that would happen. It’d mean going along with her demands, and if she’d picked up anything from him this afternoon it was that his last priority was pleasing her. Liam wanted to keep going, and Miles would facilitate that, regardless of whether or not it was best for Liam.
With a growing sense of dread she turned to push her way back through the crowds. They were sticking around to be there and see those shining people they’d come to see on their exit back out of the theater. One trip, two chances to catch sight of them, no matter if they had to stand waiting two or more hours in between.
Not Grace.
Let Miles help keep him on his feet. The trouble with having no control over a situation? No matter how much she told herself that he’d be fine, that he was an adult and could make his own decisions, she still worried about him all the way to the street to catch a taxi. And likely would continue to worry for the remainder of the night, while she sorted out only the clothes she’d wear in the next two days and lumped the rest together to be messengered back tomorrow.
But at least that would give her something to do besides fret.
* * *
Two hours later, Grace dragged the crutches out from beneath the cream-colored sofa. She’d intended on doing so when Liam hobbled in the door of the massive suite she’d been pacing since the ten minutes it had taken her to sort the clothes out.
But, amazingly, he’d called and asked her to bring them down to the back entrance.
She couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Passing her bag of supplies, she grabbed it for the splint and implements stashed inside, just in case it was a bad thing.
A short ride down, and she hurried to the back entrance.
A small part of her wanted to believe this request for the crutches was a positive thing. That he had decided that he should do what she wanted, and had given up on whatever macho idiocy that had him feigning invincibility.
When she stepped out the back, the limo was waiting. He hadn’t even hobbled inside without them.
Liam sat sideways at the opened back door, pale and slouching, his tie undone and his shirt half-unbuttoned.
“Good grief, you look horrible.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, glancing down.
His look led hers and that overwhelming urge to shake him reared up again. “Oh, God, Liam. Did you try to chew through this tape?”
“It’s cutting off circulation, which I would have thought would make it hurt less. But it doesn’t!”
She propped the crutches against the side of the limo and dropped to her knees, glad she’d brought the bag. It took only a moment to locate her gauze scissors and she slipped the safety end under the tape to cut through what he’d managed to make impossible to remove any other way.
“Did you tape it like a puzzle on purpose?”
“Yes, actually. I taped it like a puzzle on purpose because that’s the way you get the best support without cutting off circulation. Unless you hobble around on a badly sprained ankle despite medical advice, make it swell up and cut off circulation anyway.”
Pitting edema. It had swollen so much that the scissors left a groove down his leg as she cut and tugged the tape away. “If you just keep going around and around with tape, it gets far too constricting. I taped it specifically to support an inverse sprain.”
He grunted in response, but that sound became a low, pained hiss as she got the last of the wrapping off and blood rushed back into the skin.
It hurt when the blood got back into the area too.
She tilted her head to try and see the damage, but the low lighting didn’t make that possible. Examination would have to wait. “Let me get the splint on.”
“No!” He couldn’t snatch his foot back from it, but he did lift it. “I’ll use the crutches and hold my foot up. I won’t put any weight on it. Just don’t touch it until we’re back upstairs.”
“You don’t mind if anyone sees it?”
“We’ll go fast.”
Grace shrugged, grabbed the debris and stuffed it into the hands of one of his assistants, handed the bag to another, and rose to help him up on the crutches. “Don’t go fast. Go slowly. I’ve never seen anyone else come out this way, have you? It’ll be fine.”
Once inside, the light let her see just how pale he was. He almost looked like he’d been dusted with white powder, like an extra at King Louis IX’s court.
She wouldn’t nag. Wouldn’t yell at him. She’d just get him upstairs, tie him up and refuse to let him go to New York tomorrow. Yeah, that was a plan.
The look he gave her as he leaned against the inside of the elevator let her know that her yelling wouldn’t do any good anyway. He had the look of a man who’d been converted. In fact, the labored breathing and shaky hands said he’d probably have asked her for a wheelchair if there had been one in the suite.
By the time they got him upstairs, whatever civil facade he’d been putting up crumbled and no sooner had the door closed than he was announcing, “Everyone out. I need space.”
Miles and crew turned right around, Hailey dropping the bag she’d carried by the door on the way back out.
What did that mean for her? Should she go?
Grace stepped back and gestured to the bar. “I’ve got ice waiting. Do you want me to help you get situated before I go?”
“You stay,” he muttered, and continued through to the bedroom, which was elevated by a few deeply carpeted steps.
With the way he shook, Grace didn’t trust him to navigate the steps on his own and scrambled along with him, hands at his back, ready to grab and lower him to the floor if he started to go.
“Stop. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re shaking hard enough for it to measure on the Richter scale. And you were using your foot for balance when it was splinted or wrapped. Now you’re just a walking tripod. And I know how to control falls. I do it all the time. So shut up and take the steps. I’m not going anywhere. Be glad I don’t have you by the belt. Yet.”
He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked over his shoulder, “Your hovering is going to make me fall. Step off. If I fall, I fall. I’ll roll the other way and protect my foot.”
“No.” She turned his head to face forward. “Looking back compromises balance. Move it, or I am going to do a fireman’s lift and carry you up there, if for no other reason than to prove to you I’m not a delicate flower who can’t help you.”
“I’m just doing this to save your fool back. We can’t both be laid up.” Liam shook his head but took the steps as directed. Despite the bone-deep shaking in his frame, he got up them with ease and went to flop on the end of the bed. “You want to help me? Take off my pants.”
* * *
Grace stopped in her tracks, her hands going to her hips as she regarded him. However pained and cranky he felt right now paled to the irate tilt of her head as she looked down at him. “Your hands work fine. Take off your own pants.”
He unfastened them and then looked up at her, giving his best pitiful but harmless look. “Come on, Gracie. Don’t make me stand up again. All I want to do is kick back, take some flavor of painkiller, eat, and sleep. And maybe ice it once it stops throbbing...”
“Fine. If you’re going to play imbecile, I’ll help you with your pants.”
“Don’t you mean invalid?”
“Nope, I’m pretty sure I meant imbecile. I went to the theater. Even with your limp it shouldn’t have taken more than five minutes to make it the length of that stupid carpet, but I didn’t leave here for forty-five minutes because Tom came by with clothes and made me try them on.”
She hooked her fingers in the belt and tugged as he lifted with his good leg. He fell back on his elbows and watched her toss the trousers over her shoulder as she knelt to get a look at his foot. God, that thing hurt. If she touched it, he might cry like a baby. Maybe then she’d give him a little sympathy rather than her anger.
“Liam Jefferson Carter! What did you do?”
Uh-oh. The middle name had come out. She wasn’t even going to pretend not to be furious.
One cool hand cupped his calf and lifted, contrasting with the fire in her eyes. “You know, I was thinking we might switch you to heat—ice is usually only for the first forty-eight hours after the injury, but it’s worse now. That’s why it hurts more, that’s why it swelled despite the tape. Might as well be a new injury.”
“I know,” he muttered. “I’d actually say it hurts more right now than it did when I fell. So, congratulations, you were right. But you know I wasn’t doing this just to be a pain in your butt. I have to, Grace. That’s what this life is, if you’re lucky enough to get this high, then your whole life is schedules and obligations, and when I sign a contract to do a movie I also sign on for the promotional aspects at the time of opening. It’s contractual.”
“And is it also contractual that you go in there without any support? You could have done this a lot better with crutches, Liam. Then you would still have met your obligations.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Tell me why. Tell me exactly why, because...”
He lay back fully on the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if that would dispel his headache. The whole night had taken him to the end of his tether, so if she didn’t get off this, he might kick her out with the others. Then he could sleep and let tomorrow worry about itself.
“Liam.”
“I don’t need a lecture. If you’re going to keep after this, then you maybe should just go to the other room. Or your own room.”
“We didn’t get me my own room. I’ve been here all the time.” She straightened and leaned over the bed, looking down at him.
He couldn’t deal with this right now. “Then we’ll get you a room.”
Just when he was about to scoot up the bed to reach the phone, she touched his face and stopped him.
That warmth again. She slid her hand to cup his cheek and his frustration all but left. And with it his ability to care whether or not he should enjoy her touch. It comforted him. It meant she still cared, and this wasn’t just a job. She cared about him. And it felt good, he felt better.
Closing his eyes, he tilted his head into her hand and held it there with his own hand.
“Liam?”
“Shh. Just wait...” he said, not opening his eyes, just letting the warm strength of her hand soak into him.
Her thumb stroked his cheekbone in a soothing arc. “Tell me why it’s so important. I need to understand this if we’re going to keep working together. Because right now I know you’re frustrated and in pain, and it isn’t just hard to see you hurting yourself like this, it makes me feel ill. If you want me to stay, tell me why you have to do this.”
He wanted her to stay. Hell, he wanted her to stay right there. Or maybe put his head in her lap and stroke his weary brow. That would be nice.
But staying was actually important for more reasons than his hedonist tendencies.
It wouldn’t matter if he gave her what she’d asked for. This was Grace, not someone who’d use the information against him.
“I’m starting another project in a few weeks—a part I’ve been dying for—and I don’t want the producers to think that I am going to slow down production. It was between me and one other, right down to the wire, and they went my way. If I show up limping around now, they’re going to reverse course.” He opened his eyes and looked into hers, and then slid her hand from his cheek to his chest but kept holding it there. “We haven’t even signed the contracts yet. It’s all verbal agreements until there’s a signature on the dotted line. And even then sometimes contracts can be broken.”
“What’s so special about this part?”
“It’s a book...” With her hand in his and her eyes fixed on him, he could tell her why. Maybe not everything, just give her an idea. “Sit here with me.” He patted the bed and transferred her hand to his other one so she could sit.
When she had, and turned her hand over to wrap her fingers around the edge of his palm in return, he took a breath to steel himself.
“Don’t laugh.”
She shook her head, squeezed his hand.
“Do you remember, well, your parents would just come home with little gifts sometimes?”
She nodded, still not speaking.
“The book was the first time...I’d been hanging out at your house pretty much every day for about six weeks, and then one night they came home from work and had stopped at a bookstore. Lucy got you some book you’d wanted—I don’t remember what it was—but then she reached into the bag and pulled out two copies of another book, handed one to me and one to Nick.”
“Mom liked to do that—still does that, actually. Now they’re making that book into a movie and you want to be in it?”
She didn’t get it, but he could see in her eyes that she was trying to.
He might be able to explain, but he couldn’t do it while looking at her. Letting his gaze fall to where their hands joined in his lap, he tried again.
“It was the first time anyone ever gave me a gift for no reason. Birthday and Christmas presents were real hit-and-miss with my folks, depending on what they’d done with their money that week. It wasn’t really about the book. I was just included, like I was an extra son who’d sprung up and was automatically accepted. So...it was the first time I had any idea of what it was like to be in a family.”
When he looked back at her, her eyes were damp and she was silent, clearly working through what he’d told her, and the implications of it all.
“Plus, it’s outside my usual roles, so it’s kind of a big deal career-wise that I have this part, Gracie.”
Lifting her free hand, she swiped her eyes quickly and nodded. “Okay.” Accepted. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but understand something for me?”
He turned just a little to look at her better but kept her hand in his.
“It doesn’t just anger me that you’re causing yourself more pain, but I’ll try to ignore that as much as I can. I’ll help you do what you need, but please take pity on me, and make all these things you have to do as easy on yourself as you can. No unnecessary walking. Put your foot up anytime you can.”
“Come with me to the premieres tomorrow.” He said the words before he’d really thought about the urge. But the desire was real. He hadn’t been at his best on the carpet tonight, and not just because of the ankle. He’d also kept wondering what she was doing. Just how angry she was with him.
“I thought that my coming with you to the premieres was what this was all about?”
“No,” he said, letting go of her hand so he could move around her and his foot was propped up on the bed beside her. “Come as my date.”
She opened her mouth to say no, and he held up a hand, energy coming from some unknown source to give his words some urgency. “Every time I’ve gone solo to a premiere or event, I end up doing way more walking around. Come with me. Be my date. Keep me with you and I won’t do as much walking.”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a gown or anything.”
“Tom can fix it.”
“It’s late, he’d have to do some night shopping or very early morning. We’re leaving at seven, right?”
“Yes, but he can do a lot from the plane. He’s got numbers for both coasts. We’ll go to New York and then take a short flight down and back from Virginia. He can have prospective gowns waiting for you. And whatever you need to help get you ready.”
She didn’t look convinced. The furrow in her brows could be doubt or worry. What would make her come around?
“You can be my walking stick. So I can lean against you a little and not put weight on my bad leg when we’re not walking.”
Her frown deepened. “Will you use a cane?”
“If I have you, I don’t need...” Her look stopped him. “I’ll carry a cane if Tom can find me something that could look like an accessory. And then I can use it if I need to.”
The frown stuck and he caught her hand again, looking for any way to make it sound plausible. “You know, the movie is a historical. Gentlemen used canes. Maybe I could play it as a nod to the movie and theme.”
“You just thought of that now?” Shaking her head, she pulled her hand free. “Where’s your phone? I need to call Tom if we’re going to do this.”
He pulled off his jacket and handed it to her. “Inside breast pocket.”
She hung the jacket on the back of a chair and retrieved the trousers she’d thrown on the floor. “Scoot up to the head of the bed. I’m going to talk to Miles about the travel stuff and call Tom. You order dinner—the phone is on the table.”
He could do those things. Scooting up hurt, but he could do it.
She walked to the door, dialing as she went.
When he’d asked her to help him out, it had never occurred to him that she’d have to do so much for him, but it was like a godsend, having her here.
He hadn’t thought about telling her about the project earlier. He knew it was silly and sentimental—there could never be resolution with all the dark parts of his childhood, even if the role felt like giving a gift to the child he’d been. A kind of resolution. His parents were dead and gone, so there couldn’t be any peace from that corner, but David and Lucy had been the only real parental figures in his life.
And Grace...he could make things right with her. He could make their tentative friendship a real friendship again. Talk it out. Maybe it was time to talk it out now that she’d grown comfortable enough to yell at him. That had to be some kind of sign.
He just had to think about what to say, make sure that he planned it out and didn’t do anything to make things worse between them.
Tomorrow. He’d think about it tomorrow. Tonight he’d eat, do whatever she told him to do, and tomorrow, when some of the pain had abated...
