“No. She’s tall, but not six feet. Probably about a head shorter than me. Compact and slim, but not so much skinny as athletic. She’s...”
He wasn’t going to stop. Next thing he would be trying to describe her curves or ask her cup size, which would just bring that stupid trench-coat situation back to his mind. This was worse than just giving the fool her sizes. “Please, Liam.” She tried his name again.
“I’ll snap a photo of her and send it to you when we get to the hotel.”
“For goodness’ sake, stop!” Exasperated, she turned to look at him, holding out her hand for the phone. “Stop and I will text her my sizes.”
“Him.”
“Him! Whatever!” She held out her hand for his phone, her voice rising with her blood pressure. “I will text him my sizes if it will get you off this and get your foot up on that seat. Every minute it is down on the floor like that, it’s swelling more. You know that, right, Superman?”
“Text coming,” he said into the phone. “And the picture in a little bit. If you can have them at the hotel in the morning, we’re leaving for New York at seven.” He hung up before handing her the phone and turning to prop his foot up, as she’d all but shrieked at him.
Good thing she wasn’t interested in seducing him. There was probably a reason that the low, velvety voice analogous with seduction was the opposite of a shriek.
A minute later, she double-checked the details she’d sent to Shopper Tom, as he was known to Liam’s phone. If he picked clothing she hated, she’d wear it the one time and then find someone at work who wanted the clothes. They were temporary, just like this assignment.
The thought failed to comfort her, and she returned her attention to the window, thrusting the phone at him and settling back into her not-speaking routine. She couldn’t display her freak-out voice if she wasn’t talking.
* * *
In order to maintain security, and probably so Liam wouldn’t be seen traveling with a woman whose shirt announced her position as physical therapist, the limo had gone around to the rear, private entrance of the hotel, where his group had met them.
Now, with him limping down the marble hallway in front of her—which no doubt led to the supremely classy yet neutral color-schemed heaven on the top floor—there was no room to doubt how bad an idea it was for him to be on the carpet tonight.
His three assistants bustled along with him, informing him how they’d set up the interviews. More walking, him making rounds to meet with reporters in different areas of the suite...
“That’s not going to work,” Grace cut in, and three sets of eyes turned to her. Liam’s didn’t, but his people had no idea she’d been complaining about him walking on it for at least ninety-seven percent of the time since she’d seen him. Mostly because it was a bad idea, and partly because she couldn’t complain about what she really wanted to complain about...
“What would you like us to do?” Liam asked, stopping at a nondescript elevator and pressing the call button. Maybe he came this way all the time?
“One, you need to be off your feet as much as possible if you’re going to have any hope of getting through the red carpet tonight. Two, you said you don’t want this advertised. Which? You’re limping like you’ve just suffered a back-alley amputation and are walking on a bloody stump.”
He smiled at her description and then nodded to his people. “She’s right. I don’t want to walk any more than I absolutely have to.”
Despite the smile he’d put on, there was a white ring around his mouth and his forehead glistened, though it was far from hot outside. Concealed pain. Ridiculous that he was so driven to conceal it.
But at least he wasn’t arguing.
Their elevator stopped again at the very top of the hotel. “A suite, I’m guessing?”
“The whole floor.” Liam nodded.
Naturally.
“Okay.” The door opened to a tiny room with an ornate fancy door. One of the assistants handled the lock.
“Here.” She thrust the rather large bag of medical supplies to the closest assistant, a pretty, petite thing who made Grace feel the antithesis of her name, and didn’t pause to see if she could bear the weight.
“I’m helping you, Liam,” Grace said, in what she hoped was a tone that brooked no argument. Even if she had to come back for the bag, she wouldn’t have the thing smacking into him and upsetting his already precarious balance. A second later and she had his arm over her shoulders and her own around his waist, “If you have the whole floor, no one is going to see me helping.”
A nod and he leaned, letting her take some of his weight, confirming how much his leg was hurting. As they made it into the suite, she began issuing instructions.
“We’re going to need crushed ice, and find one of the rooms to set up and have the press people come here instead. We need a table, a chair, long tablecloth...and a footstool that can be hidden behind the fabric.”
“Two chairs,” the man at her left said, probably taking notes the way he rattled off her requests.
She turned Liam toward the closest comfortable-looking chair and kept arguing. “One chair. The reporter is going to stand. Or sit across the room. Or away from the table. Or levitate. I don’t care. If they’re at the table, they might bump his ankle or crash their feet into the stool. We don’t want them getting curious for any reason and looking, right?”
“Right,” Liam confirmed, nodding to a different chair to indicate his seat of choice.
A moment later, she had freed herself from the heat and natural cologne of his body to deposit him in the chair, his foot propped up on a table with a cushion padding the heel. “This will have to do until we get the other set up.”
“Grace?”
She stopped and turned to look at him.
“Thank you. I suddenly feel like my brain isn’t functioning at full power.”
“When did you last take medication for pain?”
“I took something this morning.”
“Any reason you can’t take anti-inflammatories? Any kidney problems?”
He shook his head.
“Good. They’ll help more, reduce swelling. I am also going to...” She paused and directed her attention back to the one remaining assistant. “Get some food up here. Also, the room you set up in should be close to a bathroom.”
“Why?” Liam’s question came from behind her.
“Because you’re going to take a diuretic, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
“And you don’t want to have to walk a bunch to get to and from it.” Having tasks to occupy herself with helped. Top of the list now: water. She detoured to the bar and came back with a fresh, cool bottle of water and, after she’d rifled through the work bag the woman had lugged in, fished out a few blister packs with the medicine Dr. Rothsberg had agreed to. “Take this. And this.”
“What’s that?”
“Potassium. If you take this diuretic, it will flush the potassium from your body. So you take it with potassium.” At least he was still with it enough to ask the right questions and not just blindly take any medicine handed to him.
“The other? The pain medicine, it’s not narcotic, right? Not the anti-inflammatory mixed with something you get with a prescription?”
There was a sound in his voice that made her stop and look at him, like a pinch or something else causing