with you nurses and the eternal we?”
“Ignore him,” Axel advised as he pushed the wheelchair past her into the house. He pulled a fat, oversized envelope from beneath his arm and handed it to her. “He’s been bitching since I picked him up in Cheyenne. Here’re his meds.”
Courtney took the envelope and looked inside at the various prescription bottles it contained. She’d already reviewed a copy of her new patient’s medical chart. It had been faxed to her yesterday after Axel had called her out of the blue to ask if she was interested in taking on a home health care patient.
She’d done similar work before. Just not when the patient in question was living under her roof. But the money he’d said the patient would pay had been enough to get her interest, and in a hurry.
It was only after she’d agreed and had asked how he knew the patient that she’d learned who her new roomie was going to be.
There was no earthly way, at that point, that Courtney would have been able to back out without explaining to her cousin why. And she had no intention of sharing those particular details.
So, she’d squelched her reservations and reviewed the file when it arrived. Even though she was trained for objectivity, she’d been horrified at the injuries that Mason had sustained. She also hadn’t been able to help wondering how on earth he’d been hurt, but that particular information had not been in his chart.
Which meant it was probably work related.
She was ridiculously familiar with the hush-hush aura surrounding the company that Mason worked for, because it was the same company that many of her relatives had worked for. Or still did.
Of course she wasn’t supposed to know much about Hollins-Winword. But she wasn’t an idiot. She had ears that worked perfectly well. The first time she’d heard the name, she’d been a schoolgirl. As she’d gotten older, she’d discerned more.
And then when Ryan went missing …
She broke off the thought. It was pointless reliving the misery of believing her big brother was dead, because he was home now. Safe and sound, miraculously enough a newlywed with a family of his own.
She followed Axel and Mason into the house and nudged the door closed behind her as she studied the labels on the prescription bottles. Various industrial-strength antibiotics and vitamins and minerals. When she got to the last bottle, though, she frowned a little.
She’d read in Mason’s file that he refused to take prescription-strength pain medication, yet that’s exactly what she was looking at.
There was nothing in his file about drug allergies, so—if he was anything like the men in her family—it was probably more likely some macho belief that real men didn’t need anything to take the edge off their pain, even if it was only for a few days.
She dropped the narcotic back in the envelope and stepped around Mason’s protruding leg cast. She set the envelope on the square dining room table near the arch separating the great room from the kitchen and turned toward the men. “Your room is at the end of the hall.” Meeting Mason’s gaze only made her skin want to flush, so she focused on the few stray, silver strands glimmering among the dark brown hair that sprang back thick and straight from his forehead. “The bathroom is next to it. You are able to manage with crutches, aren’t you?”
“It’s not pretty, but yeah.” He sounded marginally less cranky than before, and Courtney couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for the man.
No matter what had transpired between them that Valentine’s night, the man was recovering from several serious injuries. He had matching long, blue casts on his right arm and his left leg. She also knew that he’d suffered several bruised ribs. He was in pain and, for now, was having to depend on someone else to help him with basic functions from bathing to eating. Of course he was cranky.
Anyone would be.
She looked at her cousin. “Why don’t you bring in the rest of his things, and I’ll get Mason settled in bed.” She could feel heat climbing her neck at that. She didn’t bother waiting for Axel to respond but moved next to him and nudged his hands away from the wheelchair so she could push it herself.
Last night, before she’d gone on duty at the hospital, she’d rearranged some of the furniture in her living area to accommodate Mason. Her experience with him told her that he wasn’t the least bit clumsy. But Mason was a big man and, clumsy or not, he had a cast covering one leg from foot to thigh. That, combined with the cast on his opposing arm, meant he’d need all the space he could maneuver in, whether by wheelchair or by crutches.
The wheels on the chair squeaked slightly against the reclaimed-wood, planked floor as she pushed him down the hall, hesitating only briefly when they passed the bathroom. “Tub with a shower,” she told him in the most neutral nurse’s voice she could muster.
“Don’t tease me. Only thing I get these days is a wet washcloth.”
She felt heat in her throat again as she turned his chair slightly and carefully pushed him into the spare bedroom. “Sorry. I imagine a real shower is something you’re looking forward to.”
He made a grunting sound in reply.
After angling the chair alongside the bed, she moved around it. She’d already pulled the covers back, and the pillows were stacked up against the wrought-iron headboard. There was also an old recliner from her parents that Ryan had muscled into one corner of the room.
She stopped in front of Mason. He was wearing a white T-shirt that strained at his shoulders and a pair of gray sweatpants with one leg split up the side to accommodate the cast. His toes below the cast were bare, and he had on a scuffed tennis shoe on his other foot.
And he still managed to make her mouth water. Which was not what a nurse should be thinking about her patient, she reminded herself. “Ready to get out of the chair?”
He looked no more enthusiastic than she felt. “You’re not strong enough to lift me.”
“Not if you were dead weight,” she allowed. “But you’re not. So which do you prefer? Bed or chair?”
He didn’t look at her. “Bed.”
Which he probably took as some admission of weakness. Coming from a family of strong individuals, that, too, was something with which she had plenty of familiarity. “All right.” Before she could let her misgivings get in the way, she locked the wheels and removed the arm of the wheelchair. Then she bent her knees close to his and grasped him loosely around the waist, leaving room for him to brace his good leg beneath him as she lifted. “Ready?”
He gave another grunt, putting out his uninjured hand against the mattress, so he could add his own leverage. “Just do it.”
She tightened her arms, lifting with her legs, and held back her own grunt as she took his weight for the brief moment before he got his leg beneath him. Then he was out of the chair, pivoting more or less smoothly until he landed on the bed, sitting.
She held on to him only long enough to be certain that he wasn’t going to tip over, before she straightened. Her stomach was quivering nervously, but the sight of his pale face and tight lips took precedence. “I know,” she murmured. “Not very pleasant. But it’ll get better.”
His expression shifted from pain to pained. “I don’t need coddling.”
She gave him the kind of stern look she’d learned from her grandmother. Gloria was retired now, but she’d been a nurse, and it was in that capacity that she’d met Courtney’s grandfather, Squire Clay. And she’d had plenty of years since then to refine that stern look and pass it on to her granddaughters. “Believe me,” she assured him, “you won’t get coddling from me. Now, do you want to sit there on the side of the bed or lean back?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she reached down for his casted leg.
But his hands brushed against hers as he did the same, and she had