“Pretty much,” he muttered. “I told him you were helping me.”
“Yep. That’s what the physical therapist is supposed to do.”
Zing.
She submerged his leg to mid-calf in the deep bath, and though it was plenty hot she didn’t leave him soaking, just shook out one towel and as soon as his leg was out she wrapped the towel around it. And then another, and another.
Soon she had it completely encased, and nodded at the lever on the side of the chair. “Put the foot up now. I’m going to put you on a twenty-minute timer, and then we’ll get you out of it.”
“Is it going to turn hard?”
“Somewhat.”
“So how do we...get out of it without causing pain after it gets hard?”
* * *
Grace stood up and went to wheel the bath away from him. Something she’d been asking herself for days. How do we get out of this without causing pain?
He had been referring to the wax, presumably, but it didn’t feel that way. They’d now resorted to talking in code, because no one could say what they really meant. Which was just...great.
“It’ll feel good for a while.” The whole while, without a doubt. “You probably won’t want to come out of it by the time it’s done.” That she was less certain of, at least if they were talking in code. If he was just talking about the wax, her problems were actually far less significant than she figured them to be. He got much less sexy if she also made him an idiot in her mind.
“I don’t doubt that at all,” he said, his words so quiet she might have missed them if she weren’t so primed and tuned in to him.
Definitely talking in code.
She rolled her stool back, needing to make the room a little bigger...because all she really wanted to do was stand up and beg him to kiss her again. “I suppose it’s about risks. What you’re afraid of and what you’re willing to risk.”
Risks. She shouldn’t be the one who had to take all the risks. Was that what this would require? It hadn’t seemed that way in the limo because that had been Liam’s doing. For once. He’d been the one reaching for her. And then he’d laughed off the very idea of them being together. She couldn’t even wish he wasn’t so close to her family, because she knew now exactly how much his time with them had meant to him, and how it had probably saved his life.
“Well, you shaved my leg before, so that should help.”
Was he still talking in code?
“Right. Not going to rip hair out.” She twisted to snatch her phone off the counter and turned it on, checked texts and messages, then stashed it in her pocket. “I’ll be careful, Liam. I have no desire to hurt you.”
“Me either,” he said, both hands lifting to rub over his face.
“You want me to leave you alone to soak in it?”
He dropped his hands heavily in his lap, finally looking her in the eye.
She saw regret there, matching what his voice told her. But Grace knew how terrible her instincts were with regard to this man. “All right.”
A quick detour and she retrieved a remote control to give to him, pointing out a sticker on the back with the Wi-Fi password on it. “For your amusement in the meanwhile. I’ll be back in twenty, and we’ll roll the wax off and check your range of motion, then go through the exercises you’re to do today and tomorrow. I don’t need to see you tomorrow, but I will check in. And you can call if you have trouble. It’s only a few gentle exercises today and tomorrow, mostly just about keeping the joint working without interfering with the healing. I’ll go over the instructions when I get back. And bring in a package prepared for you to take with you with a moist heat pack and sheet with exercises in little pictures.”
Liam took what she handed him and let it drop to his lap. “Thanks, Grace. I...I owe you.”
“No, you don’t. You pay me to do this, just like all the double time you’re being billed for travel and round-the-clock care.”
She wanted more, she knew that now, but she had absolutely no idea how to go about turning this mess into something more. Or even if she should try. The only thing she knew she had to do was try to keep things going, get through this, and see what happened.
That’s what she always did.
Since her accident the only risks she’d taken had been with regard to Liam. All the rest of her life was Safety First. But in his presence? She kept throwing caution to the wind. Which should probably tell her something.
She stepped out of the room, set the timer on her phone, and headed back to the office. If he was going to be in therapy for the next two weeks, she should probably invest in some kind of wall padding or helmet for all the beating her head against the wall she’d no doubt be doing.
Once in the office, she closed the door and called her brother back.
She loved Nick. She really did. She knew he wanted the best for her, and he probably felt compelled to protect her.
But she was a big girl, and it was past time he figured that out.
* * *
Grace had RSVP’d Freya Rothsberg and Zack Carlton’s wedding weeks ago. She even had a dress and new strappy sandals picked out. What she didn’t have was a date.
Today she’d begun to feel the pressure of that. She’d blame Liam. How in the world was she supposed to find a date for a wedding when she had movie stars in her eyes?
The problem with having stupid squishy feelings for a celebrity patient was not just knowing that she shouldn’t—ethics got involved because he was her patient. She could hold out and feign something professional for the few hours a week that they spent on his rehab, which should have made things easier, but it hadn’t.
But the ethics mattered to the clinic, even in their case where their history was so deep and complicated that it made the ethics question reach new depths of murkiness.
This morning’s early visit would involve time in the water to get him walking in a near-weightless environment.
Which meant it was time for her to change into her bathing suit.
Normally, she’d use the one-piece that came with shorts and really concealed her assets. But due to a series of phone meetings today Liam was coming in a good two hours before they usually started seeing patients.
And she was going to make the most out of that situation because, murky ethics or not, she did want more from him. She just had to start laying the groundwork now even if she couldn’t act on it while he was her patient, and also because her grand gestures to seduce the man had never seemed to work out the way she’d envisioned.
She was going to wear her black bikini, the one she kept for swimming when no one else was in the pool. The one she’d been wearing that first day when he’d stumbled over her.
Because in the four days since she’d seen him, Grace had come to some realizations.
She could deal with humiliation, but she couldn’t handle not knowing what it would be like to be with him.
Liam got under her skin more than anyone ever had, and if that never happened again, she’d regret not experiencing it.
Yes, anything to do with him made her completely unable to predict how it was going to go—she couldn’t make a safe play because she didn’t know what was safe when it came to Liam. Not trying and going another five, or fifteen, or fifty years wondering what if? Or living with the humiliation she’d become so accustomed to if he turned her down?
Knowing he wanted her made that at least easier to stomach.
It wasn’t a