Twenty-one years old. A lot of his students were older than that. Hell, he’d already been fourteen when she was born!
Enough of that, he thought as he preceded her to the closed door they’d passed earlier and opened it into the library. This was his favorite room, smaller than the others with a brick fireplace, bookshelf-lined walls, a leather sofa, a large mahogany desk and a couple of desk chairs. He could relax in here, renew his energy and prepare his lessons and lectures for upcoming classes.
He found it a good place to try to clear his mind of the unsettling problems and troubling speculations his father’s illnesses had brought with them. He invited Brittany to sit down, then took the chair behind the desk.
“You have a beautiful home,” she said as she looked around. “How I envy you these books. Have you read all of them?”
“Most of them,” he admitted. “The house and antique furnishings were a legacy from my mother. She was a true Southern lady. Impeccable manners and charm were born and bred into her from generations going back to before the Civil War. She inherited the house from her father and in turn passed it on to Dad when she died.”
He leaned forward and put his arms on the desk. “It’s awfully big for just the two of us, and it’s getting more and more expensive to keep up, but we could never sell it.”
“Of course you couldn’t. You and your brother will want to pass it on to your children.” There was sympathy mixed with understanding in her tone.
Much as he appreciated her empathy, she wasn’t here to discuss his problems and he pulled his attention back to the subject at hand. “Do you really want this job, Brittany?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand to stop her. “Think carefully before you answer. Given proper attention to his diabetes Nate could live for another twenty years.”
Again she opened her mouth and once more he silenced her. “No, hear me out. I certainly don’t expect you to spend the next twenty years of your life taking care of us—”
He heard himself say “us” and snapped his mouth shut. That wasn’t what he’d meant! She wouldn’t be hired to look after him. Just his father!
He felt the flush that colored his face but decided to ignore it and go on. “That is, I realize you would eventually want to go back to school to get your bachelor of science degree in nursing, or get married and move away, whatever, but I don’t want Nate subjected to a new caretaker every few months. He gets confused enough without adding that to the indignities he has to endure.”
Too late he saw the irritation that contorted her face as she stood and braced her arms with her hands flat on the desk.
“What right do you have to assume that nursing is just a hobby with me?” she asked angrily as he leaned back. “One I can work at when I want to, and walk away from when I don’t?”
He tried to answer but she hurried on. “Is it because I’m young? Well, don’t judge me by the way you may have acted when you were twenty-one. I take my work seriously, and if this is your way of asking if there’s a man in my life the answer is no, there isn’t. As for going back to the university, it will be years before I can afford to do that. I’m still trying to pay off Mom’s and Dad’s bills.”
Ethan was taken aback, but he also jumped up and glared at her across the desk. “Now, just a minute. I wasn’t implying you aren’t good at your job, I just want some assurance that you won’t get bored after a few months and leave Nate for something more exciting—”
“Do you call diabetes and forgetfulness boring?” she asked.
“No, of course not,” he said more softly. “I know firsthand what a big job it is, but doing the same thing day after day for a sick old man is bound to get monotonous.”
“I don’t think of Nate as a ‘sick old man.”’ Her tone had lowered, too. “I think of him as a man who needs the help that I can provide, and every stride we make forward will be exciting.”
Ethan sank back down in his chair and wasn’t surprised to see his hands shaking. “Please, sit down. I don’t usually get this emotional. It’s probably because I haven’t had to face the gravity of dad’s illness until now. He’s had the diabetes for several years but knew how to take care of himself so there was no problem.
“It was about a year ago that he started having difficulty with his blood sugar, and that’s when we discovered he hadn’t been getting his shots regularly. After a few other tests, the doctor told us Nate had developed the early stages of senility, which often shows up in diabetics, and that was causing him to forget to give himself the injections.”
He ran his hands over his face. This was harder than he’d expected. He suspected he hadn’t really faced his father’s illness before. It was so much easier to hide from it, pretend it was a temporary inconvenience that would eventually go away.
“That’s when I sold my house and moved in here with him so I could monitor him, remind him to take his shots and fix his meals,” he continued, “but there were still the dietary restrictions and the blood tests. Now he’s started wandering off and getting lost. So far I’ve managed to find him without much trouble, but he needs full-time care and I can’t give it to him and still keep my day job, which we need to live on.”
He looked at Brittany and she saw the anguish in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to insult you or imply that you wouldn’t take proper care of him, but I have to be sure the person I hire is reliable, and you’re so young and so beautiful. I can’t believe you’d be content to put up with the irritation a patient in Nate’s condition can cause.”
Her heart melted at the torment in his voice, and without thinking she got up and walked around the desk to stand beside his chair. “Ethan, I’m well qualified to watch over your father and see to it that he gets his medication.”
She put her hand gently on his slumped shoulder. He was only wearing a lightweight shirt, and she could feel the warmth of his bare skin beneath it. “I think he and I would get along really well together. I like him, and he seems to like me.”
She started to lift her hand away, belatedly aware she was taking a liberty she shouldn’t be, but he reached across his chest and held it where it was. She felt his muscles twitch beneath her palm.
“What’s not to like?” he said hoarsely. “When can you start?”
Chapter Two
Brittany shivered as she stood in front of the open door of the closet in her one-room apartment, clad only in a set of the expensive pastel lingerie her mother had bought her. Not that she was cold. She wasn’t. She was having an attack of nerves.
She’d been so confident of her ability as a medical assistant when under the watchful eye of her instructors, but from today on she’d be alone with her patient, with no one to tell her what to do if something unexpected should happen.
Her gaze traveled over the contents of the closet. What would the Thorpes want her to wear? She hadn’t thought to ask them. Some patients still expected nurses to wear white starched uniforms, but those had gone out of style years ago. In the hospital she wore a white lab coat over green scrubs, but in training for home visits she’d usually donned jeans and a T-shirt under the lab coat. Cleaning up after patients at home could get pretty messy at times.
She finally decided on a beige pantsuit that looked professional and was machine-washable, a necessity in her occupation. Since Nate was more in need of supervision than medical attention, she’d been designated his caregiver, so she didn’t think he or Ethan would mind if she dressed casually in her own clothes.
Grabbing two freshly laundered lab coats and her medical kit, she hurried out the door and locked it behind her.
Ethan told himself he wasn’t pacing the floor and that he was just wandering around the house while he waited for his dad’s nurse to arrive.