It was difficult enough ignoring her attraction for him, without thinking that he still carried some for her, too.
“What, um, what do you like to eat?”
His eyebrow peaked.
“For lunch,” she added doggedly.
“There’s nothing that I don’t much like.”
She moistened her lips. “You’re not exactly helping me here, Mason. If I came in here with brussels sprouts, would you be loving them?”
His expression suddenly lightened, and a faint smile toyed around his surprisingly lush lower lip. “Honey, as long as I don’t have to cook ‘em, I’ll be damn happy to eat ‘em.”
She exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Spoken like most men,” she said wryly and headed out of the bedroom, taking the wheelchair with her.
She didn’t breathe again, though, until she reached the privacy of the kitchen, and once she did, it took considerable effort not to collapse on a chair and just sit there.
But she hadn’t been exaggerating to Mason. She did have to get to work soon.
Just because her bank account was going to be dancing a jig before this was all over and Mason went on his way in a few months, didn’t mean that she didn’t have to earn her regular wages.
She folded the chair and stowed it in a closet, then moved past the ladder-back chairs surrounding the kitchen table that was tucked into the small bay overlooking her backyard, and pulled open the refrigerator door. Until recently, she’d never made much effort at cooking for herself. She’d never had to. It was always so easy just to drop by her folks’ place, or one of her other relatives’, and grab a bite when she was looking for some home-cooked food.
But things were changing. Takeout and scavenged meals weren’t going to do. So, after she’d moved into the house, she’d begun making an effort, and now her refrigerator was well stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. She had a chicken casserole that she’d made the day before, as well as sliced pot roast, and she chose the thick, sliced beef to make two sandwiches for Mason. She added a sliced apple, a glass of water and a thick wedge of peach pie that she couldn’t take credit for since Ryan had brought it over.
Not giving herself a moment to dither over the meal—and dither she would, if she allowed it—she arranged everything on a sturdy wooden tray and carried it back to the bedroom, stopping only long enough to grab up the envelope with his meds and tuck it under her arm.
She breezed into the bedroom, her footsteps hesitating when she found him with his nose in a book, a pair of black-rimmed glasses perched almost incongruously on his aquiline nose.
Why she found the sight so particularly touching, she couldn’t say. But she did. Which just meant that she had to push a brisk tone past the tightness in her chest. “I have soda or iced tea, if you want something to drink other than water.” She tossed the envelope on the foot of the bed and grabbed the well-used folding lap table that she’d already had on hand and deftly set it over his lap, sliding the tray on top of it. “Or beer,” she added, remembering that had been his preference before. “Though, you really shouldn’t have alcohol right now.”
She glanced at him, waiting, and found him watching her, his glasses and book set aside. “What?” she asked.
“How’d you do that without spilling the water?”
Surprised, she looked down at the lap tray and meal. “Practice,” she said simply. “So … what do you want to drink besides water?”
His gaze passed her to land on the envelope lying near his foot. His lips tightened a little and he looked back at the meal. “Water’s all I need.” His jaw slid slightly to one side, then centered again. “Thank you. This looks good. I was half-afraid you’d be bringing in brussels sprouts.”
She smiled slightly. “Behave yourself and I won’t have to.” She picked up the envelope and poured the bottles out into her hand. “When was your last dose of antibiotics?”
He didn’t look up from the food. “Before I left Connecticut.”
Which meant too many hours. She set all but two of the bottles on the nightstand, where they’d be in easy reach for him, and poured out his doses, setting them on the tray. “You missed a dose.”
“I’ll live.”
“What’s your pain like?”
He bit off a huge corner of thick-sliced bread and tender beef and shrugged.
Macho men.
“On a scale of one to five,” she prodded. “Five being the worst.”
“Twelve,” he muttered around his mouthful.
She wasn’t particularly surprised. She could practically see his discomfort oozing out of his pores. “Good thing you’re eating,” she said and popped the lid off his painkillers. “It’ll help keep your stomach settled with this stuff.”
He lifted his hand, stopping her before she could drop one on her palm. “Throw the damn things down the toilet. I don’t need ‘em.”
She gave him a look. “Twelve?”
His gaze slid over hers, then away. “Fine.” His voice was short. “I don’t want them.”
“It’s not a sign of weakness to need—”
“I said no.”
She slowly put the cap back on the bottle, sensing that this was about something other than macho posturing. And, judging by the way he was holding himself even more stiffly than before, that he didn’t want her prying.
Which told her more than words could have said, anyway.
“Fair enough.” She set the bottle next to the others. “But you don’t have a choice about those,” she said firmly. She pointed to the two pills next to his plate. “If you want your bones to heal, you’ve got to beat back that infection once and for all.” She headed to the doorway. “I’ll go get Plato.”
Mason watched Courtney stride out of the room.
It was a helluva thing that he was almost more interested in the damn pill bottle within arm’s reach than he was in watching the particularly enjoyable sight of her shapely form moving underneath the thin pink fabric of her scrubs.
He swallowed the last of the first sandwich, leaned his head back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Too easily, the night they’d spent together came to life in his mind.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again.
Since the moment he’d thrown McDougal’s daughter, Lari, to safety, he’d been in hell.
Coming to Weaver was just one more layer of it.
There was no future for Courtney with him, and she was the kind of woman who deserved futures. She was young and beautiful and caring and came from a strong, close family.
He was past young, scarred on the inside as well as the out, and the only family he knew—or who mattered to him—was the family of Hollins-Winword.
It was a fact of life that was easy enough to remember when he was a continent or two away from her.
But sprawled across a bed under her roof?
That was an entirely different matter.
“Plato, come meet Mason.”
He heard her voice before her footsteps and then she reappeared in the doorway with a gigantic Saint Bernard at her side.
“You didn’t get a dog.” Mason eyed the shaggy beast. “You got a damn horse.”
She grinned, bringing a surprising impishness to her oval face, and tucked her long, golden hair behind her