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Darin had been different, strangely upset, not predictably upset, all through lunch. Over such an apparently simple thing.
Maybe because in the past seventeen years he’d had very little contact with strangers, other than medical personnel. He knew Luke well, and now Craig. Maura was like family to him.
And that was all.
Grant didn’t have time to think on it any further at the moment.
After lunch, his lawn mower had run out of gas—a stupid lapse of paying attention on his part because he’d been distracted by Darin’s distress over a woman he hardly knew—and he’d had to walk the two blocks to his fuel source, load up and walk back.
And he’d spent the entire time looking for any sign of the beautiful nurse who’d taken up residence in his subconscious and who tortured him with fantastic odysseys every night in his dreams.
Waking up wasn’t quite as great as it used to be.
And then later, when he was wheeling a load of debris to the trailer, the star of his nighttime fantasies called just as he was contemplating a particularly athletic move she’d made in his dreams the night before. He’d actually been trying to figure out if there was a way to actually physically do what his mind had conjured up. So when he heard her voice on the phone he got instantly hard.
Which embarrassed the shit out of him.
“Your brother asked me to call you.” Her words stopped him in his tracks. Literally. Wheelbarrow balanced in the grasp of one hand he stood in the middle of the front commons, his phone to his ear.
“You’re with Darin? What’s wrong?” He shouldn’t have gone back to work. He’d known Darin was agitated over the morning’s incident with Maddie’s little girl.
His brother had as little experience with children as Grant did. Maybe that was it.
“He’s fine.” Lynn’s tone was reassuring. “I’m taking him to my house.”
Oh. Well, he wasn’t entirely displeased by the knowledge. A little jealous, maybe. He’d been wanting to know which place was hers for over a week, and Darin was just going to stroll right on over with her.
“Why?” He asked the question that hadn’t occurred to him immediately. It should have.
“He dropped a weight during therapy. It hit his shin and broke the skin. Angelica called me.” Her tone was reticent.
“Why would his therapist call you because of a little broken skin?”
“It wasn’t actually a little.” Lynn’s reply didn’t surprise him as much as it might have. “I had to stitch it.”
Wheeling the barrow with one hand because he had to get the thing over to the trailer and get his ass over to his brother, he said, “How many stitches?”
“Eight. He’ll need to have them for a week to ten days.”
“Let me talk to him.”
There was a pause on the line. He heard rustling, her voice murmuring something unintelligible in the background. And then she was talking to him again. “He’s shaking his head.”
Grant pushed faster, swerving as the unwieldy cart almost tipped over. He knew better than to wheel a barrow with one hand.
He also knew better than to run out of gas or fantasize about any one woman.
“You still there?” Lynn’s tone had softened.
“Yeah. My brother doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“He knows you aren’t going to be pleased.”
“Because he had an accident? That’s ridiculous. Darin knows me better than that.”
What, he was some kind of ogre caregiver now?
He thought about what she’d told him about the incident. “How did a three-pound weight cause that much damage?” he asked now, getting away from his own issues and back with the program.
“It was a twenty-pound weight.”
“What? Are you kidding me? He’s progressed from three to twenty pounds in a few days?” That inch of arm movement must have been the beginning…
Relief flooded him.
“No. Angelica handed him the three-pound weight, which he was supposed to be holding while she got a warm compress. He put it down and picked up a twenty-pound weight.”
“Attempted to pick it up.” He heard Darin’s voice in the background.
“He managed to get it off the rack, but immediately dropped it.”
