job of staying on top of the pain. Take my advice and don’t let it get out of control. You need to swallow two pills every four hours.”
“No. No more pills.”
Estelle stepped back and placed her hands on her ample hips. “Oh, you are just gonna be a joy to work with, aren’t you?”
“Look, lady, I’m not a junkie. I don’t like being out of it and I don’t want any more pills. I can tough it out with aspirin.”
Estelle and his pretty neighbor shared a look, then the home-care nurse shrugged. “You want to be in misery, knock yourself out, sugar. We’ll see how big and tough you feel in the morning after the pain has kept you up all night.”
“What do you need me to do?” Lisa Connors asked.
“Just make sure you stick close enough to pick up the pieces. You sleeping over?”
“Oh, no!”
Did she have to protest so vehemently? he wondered, annoyed for some strange reason.
“I live in the house just next door,” she went on. “His landlady and I rigged up a system so I can hear what’s happening over here even when I’m at home. It’s just a baby monitor, really, but our houses are so close that it works just fine. All he has to do is call out and I can be here in a second.”
“A baby monitor?” He couldn’t keep his disgust out of his voice. As if he needed something else to make him feel helpless and infantile.
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Sorry. It was the best we could come up with on short notice, without installing a whole intercom system.”
“It’s a little invasive, don’t you think? What if I don’t want you spying on me twenty-four hours a day?”
Estelle snorted. “Then you should have stayed in the hospital where you belong, at least for a few more days.”
Since he couldn’t come up with any response to that, he opted to keep his mouth shut.
Into the silence Lisa Connors spoke again. “Once you can get along a little better on your own, we won’t need to keep the monitor turned on. I have to admit, I feel more comfortable knowing I can keep tabs on you. What if you fell while you were trying to transfer to the wheelchair for a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom? I wouldn’t have any way of knowing you needed me until the morning.”
“That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?”
“No. It would be my problem. I was hired to take care of you and I intend to do that. It’s either the baby monitor or my girls and I can sleep in your spare bedroom for the next few nights. Which would you prefer?”
Definitely not the spare bedroom idea. The whole reason he fought so hard to come home was for privacy. He had lived alone since he moved out of his dad’s place in Las Vegas for college. He was a solitary man, and that’s just the way he liked things.
Besides, pain pills or not, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep a bit knowing this woman, with her violet scent and her big blue eyes, was just in the next room.
When he didn’t answer, Lisa Connors smiled. “Not in the mood for a sleepover? I’ll confess, I prefer my own bed, too. So the baby monitor can stay?”
“I guess,” he muttered. He hated the idea but this was another battle he couldn’t quite summon the energy to fight.
“Good,” Estelle said briskly. “Now I’m gonna leave my pager number. Lisa, you check those vitals every four hours or so. You notice any bleeding or anything that might indicate circulation trouble, one of you needs to give me a buzz right away. Doesn’t matter which one. Otherwise I’ll check in with you tomorrow, cowboy. Don’t you go out dancing, now, you hear me?”
“Ha-ha,” he muttered. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”
Estelle’s raspy chuckle hung in the air behind her for several moments after she left, leaving him alone with Lisa Connors.
“Are you hungry?” she asked after a moment. “You didn’t eat lunch. I can heat up some soup for you or make a sandwich if you feel up to some solids.”
Nothing sounded appealing to him but he knew one of the reasons that single pain pill had knocked him for a loop was his lack of appetite. He needed to keep food in his stomach, whether it sounded good to him or not.
“A sandwich would work.”
“Ham and cheese okay?”
He nodded.
“It will just take me a minute to throw something together. If you’d like to watch TV, I’ve hooked the remote to a cord tethered to the side of the bed there so you can always find it and there are some magazines here, too. I wasn’t sure of your interests but I picked up several that my…my husband used to enjoy reading.”
He only looked at her, but suddenly she colored up like a sugar maple leaf in October. Odd for such a dark-haired woman to show color so clearly. He hadn’t met too many women in his lifetime who could actually blush but the few he had met had been blond.
What had her so edgy? Maybe she didn’t like this situation any better than he did. It was an interesting thought. He knew if he were in her shoes, he sure wouldn’t enjoy baby-sitting a grumpy stranger for a few weeks.
For some reason the thought that she might actually be as uncomfortable with this as he was made him feel a little better about the whole thing.
After a quick peek into the living room to check on the girls, still engrossed in one of their favorite videos, Allie hurried to the kitchen. She closed the door and blew out the breath she’d been holding, then pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach.
What was it about Gage McKinnon that sent her hormones into a tailspin? The man was lethal. Even stiff and bad-tempered from the pain, he had a raw, masculine appeal.
A wounded, grumpy soldier. He was obviously miserable and in considerable pain but he was standing firm on not taking the narcotics his doctors prescribed. She had a feeling despite Estelle Montgomery’s predictions to the contrary, he wasn’t going to bend on his objections to the drugs. He seemed mulish and hardheaded enough to stick with his convictions.
She couldn’t really blame him for that, Allie thought as she buttered bread for his sandwich. A few times in her life she’d had to take pain medication and she had despised that out-of-control feeling.
He wasn’t going to be an easy patient. Despite the sudden conviction, she had to admit that all her nurturing instincts kicked in whenever she saw him lying so dark and masculine on that bed. She wanted to take care of him. To smooth down that lock of hair mussed by sleep and adjust his pillows and distract him from the pain.
Something in his eyes called to her. He seemed lonely, somehow. Lost. As if he’d been wandering alone for a long time and needed somewhere safe and warm to rest for a while….
She heard her own thoughts and rolled her eyes. Right. The man was a tough, hardened FBI agent. Maybe she was projecting her own problems onto him.
What was the matter with her? She had a job to do here and it didn’t include mooning over her patient. This was a good opportunity to make a little extra cash to add to her precious escape fund and she couldn’t blow it just because Gage McKinnon left her all soft and tingly.
She would do her job and do it well, Allie chided herself sternly. She would make the poor man as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. That didn’t include letting him unsettle her.
Keeping a tight rein on her thoughts, she finished fixing the sandwich and arranged it on a plate along with some carrot sticks and potato chips. After she added a glass of milk and one of the low-sugar oatmeal cookies she had made earlier in the day, she carried the tray down the hall to his bedroom.
She paused in the doorway when she spied her daughters standing by Gage McKinnon’s bed, Gaby in