tried to keep her tone level, normal. “Best guess, around eight.”
He grimaced and covered his eyes with his hand. “I trust you’ll still be on duty then.”
“Until ten,” she confirmed.
He said, “Good.”
Good. She tried very hard not to let that please her in any personal fashion.
“I’ll, um, be in later to perform the preop.”
He let his hand fall to his side. “Sure. Better you than Nurse Disjointer.”
Merrily ducked her head to hide her smile as she fled the room.
Katherine Lawler lifted her patrician chin and sniffed, silver hair swinging against her nape. “All I said is that it’s a pity he can’t sue himself.”
“That’s what’s wrong with this country!” Marvin, her husband and Royce’s father, proclaimed. “Everyone’s sue happy. Let the blasted insurance pay for it. That’s what it’s for. Not that it isn’t his own fault. He built the damned stairs.”
Royce groaned, wondering desperately where Merrily was with that pizza. He hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her since he’d returned to his room nearly an hour ago. The piteous sound elicited not a glimmer from his parents.
“You sued your own partners,” Katherine pointed out.
“That was different! I had to get an accurate accounting, didn’t I?”
“You already had an accurate accounting.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
The door opened, and to Royce’s immense relief, his angel swept into the room, carrying two small pizza boxes and a brown paper sack.
“Finally!” he exclaimed on a long sigh, relaxing at last.
Her soft, muted-green gaze skidded right past him. Smiling at his parents, she left the pizza and sack on the bedside table. Briskly, she lifted the head of his bed and moved to the sink to moisten a cloth with antibacterial solution so he could clean his hand, saying, “Your postop exam was fine, so you get to eat now.”
“It’s about time,” he said, though in truth he wasn’t nearly as hungry as he thought he would be. He chalked it up to the drugs that were keeping him comfortable. He’d had a much easier time coming out from under the anesthesia this time, fortunately.
“Excuse me,” Merrily said sweetly to his parents, wheeling the lap table into place. “These little rooms get awfully crowded. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind standing in the corner over there. Just in case. He’s a little awkward with one hand.”
It was all the excuse his parents needed to beat a hasty retreat. Royce could’ve kissed her. Again.
“We’ll let you enjoy your dinner in peace,” his father pronounced, lifting a hand toward his mother.
Katherine kissed the air next to Royce’s cheek and instructed in her long-suffering tone, “Try not to hurt yourself again.”
Then they both went out the door without so much as a glance for Merrily. Glad as he was to see them go, Royce frowned. The least they could have done was spare a word of thanks for the only person around here who actually made him feel better.
“Who do I speak to about getting you a raise?” he asked, closing his eyes in gratitude. “Your timing is perfect. I was contemplating a heart attack in order to get them out of here, but I’m not that good an actor.”
Merrily chortled and dug change from her shirt pocket, dropping it into the drawer of the bedside table. “The look on your face said it all. Who were they, anyway?”
“My parents.”
Her eyebrows shot up, slender, winged things with a hint of gold in their gentle brown coloring. “I guess I should have recognized them, their photos are in the paper so often.”
“Ah, you’ve made that connection, have you?”
“Who hasn’t? Listen, I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he quipped wryly.
“I meant, I wouldn’t have chased them away if I’d realized they were your parents.”
“I use the term loosely,” he said. “They’re no fonder of me than I am of them. Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t chase them away with a pitchfork if they didn’t want to go. Now, where’s my pizza?”
She checked the first box, closed it again and set it aside. “Here it is.” She opened the box and arranged it on the adjustable table in front of him, then opened the sack. Plunking napkins down in front of him with one hand, she reached into the bag with the other and extracted a small cardboard triangle containing the cheesecake he’d been dreaming about since he’d first thought of it hours earlier. She set that aside and carefully lifted out first one and then another foam cup with plastic lids. Next she removed two straws, peeled one and pushed it into the hole in the top of the lid on one of the drinks. Sliding the large cup close to the pizza box, she picked up the other cup and reached for her own pizza. A moment ago he’d have given his house, his dream house, for a few minutes of solitary peace. Now the idea of eating alone, of being alone, seemed singularly unpalatable.
“You’re not going?” he said disapprovingly, catching her wrist in his one good hand. He realized as his fingers closed around her delicate, finely boned wrist that he wasn’t trying to detain her so much as he was looking for that jolt, that flash of carnal recognition that he’d felt before, when he’d stuffed the twenty-dollar bill into her pocket and discovered the unexpected bounty of her breast beneath the loose coat. It flashed through him, right up his arm to the center of his chest and straight down to his groin. It jolted the cup right out of her hand and sent it spilling across his clean, dry floor.
With a small cry, she leaped back, dismay shaping her pretty little mouth into a plump O. Royce craned his neck to glimpse the pale liquid spreading across the glossy tile, then he smiled at her, moved by a mischievous imp whose presence he hadn’t felt in far too long and said, “Be glad to share.”
But she just shook her head and ran out of the room. With a sigh Royce closed the lid on his pizza. Somehow it didn’t look nearly so inviting without Nurse Merrily Gage there to share it.
Chapter Three
“Lane, would it kill you to actually put your dirty clothes into the hamper?” Merrily asked, exasperated.
Her brother peered at her through the steam generated by the long, hot shower he’d gotten out of minutes before. “What difference does it make?”
Merrily stuffed the clothes into the hamper and straightened, brushing her ponytail off one shoulder. “It would save me the effort of picking them up.”
He shrugged and went back to combing his hair. “When you sort the laundry you’re gonna pile it on the bathroom floor, anyway.”
“That’s beside the point.”
Ignoring her, he tossed aside his comb and hitched up his jeans, admiring his bare chest in the mirror. “Hey, you ironed that red shirt of mine yet?”
“I haven’t had time.”
“Merrily, I’m going out tonight.”
“Wear another shirt.”
“I don’t wanna wear another shirt. That’s my chick-magnet shirt.”
“Then iron it yourself.”
“Yeah, right. You know I can’t iron.”
“Maybe it’s time you learned.”
He chucked her under the chin and grinned down into her upturned face. “Baby sister, that’s what you’re for.” Abruptly turning pitiful, he whined, “Come on, Merrily, I’ll