get the car to the parking garage down the street after that.
He jumped out of the car and ran around to open the passenger door. “Okay, I know you’re still feeling weak and weird, so I’m going to hold you up in case your legs feel wobbly.”
Her eyes blinked up at him and she nodded. He reached into the car to place his hands around her waist, pretty much lifting her out of the seat—which wasn’t easy, considering she couldn’t help much and he was worried about jostling her arm. Not that he needed to be concerned that he’d hurt her. It was covered in a cast and an elastic cover and would stay totally numb from the nerve-block for at least twelve hours.
“You’re doing great,” he said as she walked slowly beside him to the front doors of the building, keeping his arm wrapped around her waist to keep her steady.
Thank God he’d had the foresight to get her keys before they got out of the car. It would have been a serious juggling match trying to get them out of the pocket of the jacket he’d draped over her shoulders without her falling down right there on the concrete steps.
Once they were in the building, maneuvering her to her apartment wasn’t difficult. He’d only been there once—the day he’d brought the dogs over to live with her after she’d moved out—but he remembered exactly where it was. Had often pictured her there when he was lying in bed at night. Wondering how she was doing. Wishing he was a different kind of man. Wishing things could have gone differently for them. Wishing she hadn’t stubbornly refused any money from him so she could live in a bigger place. He had hoped she was happier now, even as the thought of her being happy with someone else tore him up inside.
The moment he unlocked her door he heard the dogs running across the hardwood floor. Worried that Hudson might accidentally knock her over in her current wobbly state, he turned her sideways and put his body in between them as a buffer, reaching to scratch the dog’s head.
“Sit, Hudson. That’s a good dog. Good boy.”
It tugged at his heart that the dog obviously remembered him, whining and thrashing his tail back and forth so hard his hind end went along with it. Yorkie leaped up and down on his short legs, too, equally excited to see him.
Damn it. Letting down Jillian had been the worst, but the dogs’ happy greeting reminded him he’d let them down, too. She’d wanted them to have dogs and he’d gone along with it. Had wanted her to be happy. Wanted to know what it would be like to live a completely different kind of life from the one he’d grown up in. To love someone who loved you back and have a family that was always there for one another.
Instead he’d turned out to be a bad husband and bad dog dad, incapable of giving any of them what they needed. Thank God they hadn’t had children for him to hurt, too. He’d failed at being there for his mother the way he should have been, and he had failed at being there for Jillian.
That dismal reality had shown him that the focus of his life had to be only on what he was good at—and that was surgery and business and building his bank account and portfolio. Lonely, maybe, but at least he wouldn’t hurt the people he loved. He believed providing for them financially, for their future, was the best way to show his love.
Jillian hadn’t agreed.
“Sit. Sit, you two.”
He held up his hand to signal that he meant it, the way the dog trainers had shown him and Jill when they’d first gotten the puppies. Jillian tripping over the excited animals on their way to the sofa would not be good, and he was both glad and surprised that they actually did as he told them to.
“Jill, we’re going to walk to the sofa. I’ll be holding on to you, so try not to trip over Yorkie if he jumps around again.”
“Okay. I’m not as unsteady as you think I am.”
“That’s good. But I’ll hold on to you anyway.”
Because the feel of her body in his arms felt better than anything had in a long time, even as the ache of his failures burned in his chest.
He eased her down on to the sofa. “You feel like sitting for a while? Or do you want to lie down in bed?”
“I feel okay. Just groggy. But I want to wake up, not go to sleep. Once I’m feeling more alert you can head on home. Or back to work, probably.”
“I don’t have any surgeries or patients to see this afternoon. And I canceled a meeting I had scheduled, so I’m all yours.”
Or he had been once.
But for today, at least, he had this chance to be there for Jillian in a way he hadn’t during their marriage, although at the same time he somehow needed to keep a cool head and an emotional distance. Except looking at her now, with her arm in its huge cast, her hair all messy and her expression a little vulnerable, he wanted to scoop her into his arms, sit on that sofa and hold her close. Kiss her face and stroke her hair until she relaxed against him.
Bad idea for both of them.
He cleared his throat. “You hungry? How about a little soup and toast, or something like that?”
“Maybe in a little bit. I’ll just sit here for now. Why don’t you take the dogs out? Their leashes are in that basket by the front door.”
“Okay. Come on, you goofs.”
Wagging tails and little leaps from Yorkie had him smiling despite the weight he felt in his chest at being here. At the memories of him and Jill during happy times together. He’d never expected to be a dog person, but he had loved spending time with them. Loved seeing how much Jill enjoyed them. In some ways that seemed like a long time ago, and in other ways it seemed like yesterday that they’d lived together and loved one another until it had all imploded.
Heaving a sigh, he took the dogs outside. They were better behaved on their walk than he remembered them being as puppies, and he had time to ponder how it was going to work out, him helping Jill. He was pretty confident that she’d be okay on her own most of the time, so long as he saw her every morning and evening and took care of the dogs until her sister showed up.
Problem was her apartment was a long way from work, while his was just a couple blocks away from the surgery center. Somehow he’d have to find extra hours in the day, or look for someone to walk the dogs.
The animals were panting by the time they got back to Jill’s door, and he pulled her key from his pocket and tried to open the door quietly, in case she was sleeping—then wondered why he’d bothered when both dogs leaped into the room, making all kinds of racket on the wood floor.
Her eyes were closed when he looked across the room at her, but her lids lifted and she sent him a surprisingly sweet smile. Probably because the drugs hadn’t worn off enough for her to remember that she didn’t like him much anymore.
“Seems like you just left. Were the dogs good?”
“Really good. You’ve done a nice job training them.”
“Don’t think I can take a lot of credit. They just needed to mature a little bit. But they still have their moments, believe me.”
“Moments like when they get upset at other dogs and get tangled up and make you fall and break your wrist?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
Her lips curved even more, into the kind of laughing smile he’d fallen for like a ton of bricks when they’d first met, and it felt good to smile back.
He stepped closer and crouched down in front of her. “How you feeling?”
“Arm feels like someone attached a log to me. Can’t feel it at all yet. Sometimes I forget and lean down, then it swings out and I have to grab it back. I know you always tell patients that’s what it’ll feel like, but I’ve gotta tell you... Much as it makes me want to laugh when I lose control of it, it feels super-weird.”
“It’ll be numb like that for at least another eight or nine hours.