Her Favorite Temptation

by Mayberry, Sarah

  “No, don’t. I’ll only be a second. I wanted to make sure you were all right. We haven’t worn you out, have we?” She was a shadow in the darkness as she approached the bed.

  “It was great to see everyone,” he said diplomatically.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Well, we won’t do it again, and now we’ve all had our Will fix for a while you can get on with your treatment without us bombarding you with visits and distracting you.”

  “I had a nice time, Mum,” he said.

  “I think Leah was a little overwhelmed. But she’ll get used to us.”

  “It’s only for two weeks.”

  He sensed his mother’s hesitation, then the bed dipped as she sat on the edge of the mattress. “Have you told her how you feel, Will?”

  He tensed, then her hand came to rest on his knee and he knew it was pointless to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “No. And I’m not going to.”

  “Because of your hand?”

  He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to.

  “You really think it would make a difference if she loved you, Will? People don’t fall in love with body parts. They fall in love with spirits. And you still have a beautiful spirit, baby. No matter what happens with your therapy.”

  He bit back the harsh response that rose to his lips. It was all very well for his mother to talk in warm and fuzzy abstracts, but the reality was that he was about to spend the next fourteen days making a fool of himself in front a woman he’d once carried to bed and undressed with indecent, feverish haste. A woman who was brilliant and beautiful and accomplished. A woman he admired—loved—deeply.

  He was now a man who took twenty minutes to wrestle himself into his clothes every morning, a man who couldn’t even cut his own meat. A man who had no idea what his future looked like. At all.

  It was nice that his mother thought that none of those things mattered, but he knew better. He would not offer Leah the worst version of himself. Not in a million years. No matter how much he loved her, or how much it would kill him to let her walk away when his therapy was over.

  The bed dipped again as his mother stood. “I’ll let you sleep.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, then the brush of her lips on his cheek.

  Even though he was bone-tired, it took him a long time to fall asleep after she’d gone.

  * * *

  WILL’S GUESTS INSISTED on cleaning the kitchen after dinner, and Leah did her best to keep up with the insults, challenges and in-jokes as they all worked together to put the room to rights. As clever and entertaining as they all were, she felt a little as though she’d spent a few hours in a wind tunnel by the time they headed for the door. She saw them off, feeling strange to be playing host in Will’s house.

  Afterward, she returned to the kitchen and tidied a few last items before flicking off the lights.

  She was making her way through the living room to bed when she caught sight of a photograph on the bookcase. She paused to inspect it and discovered a photo of a much younger Will standing bare-chested on the beach, a surfboard under his arm, Mark standing beside him in a similar pose. Will’s hair was cropped short and sun streaked, his face and body tanned nut-brown. She guessed he must be about seventeen or eighteen, his smile broad and carefree. His whole life ahead of him.

  Her gaze shifted to the photo on the next shelf, this one a family gathering, all the Joneses crowded around a table strewn with empty plates and Christmas decorations. They raised their glasses in a toast, clearly enjoying themselves and each other.

  The last picture was a shot of a sprawling city skyline. She guessed it was New York, but couldn’t be sure. She wondered what the story was behind it, why Will had chosen to display it in his home.

  There were so many things she wanted to know about him. What he’d been like as a kid, how he’d navigated his high school years—superbly, was her guess, but you never could tell, and there was a thread of sensitivity and perception in his songs that suggested he hadn’t been the average teen—if he’d ever considered any career other than music, when he and Mark had caught their big break, when he’d had his first kiss, when he’d first fallen in love...

  Too many things, really. A lifetime’s worth.

  She set the photo in its place, then left the room, turning the lights off as she went. She was tired after the drive and the big dinner, but instead of going straight to sleep she took a few minutes to review the material for tomorrow’s therapy session as she sat up in bed.

  She wanted to make sure she got it right, that she gave Will the best chance to recover fully. She wanted to feel confident tomorrow so that Will, in turn, could feel confident, because she knew that he had to be scared. She would be if she was in his shoes.

  He’d had nearly three weeks to acquaint himself with what his life could look like if the therapy proved unsuccessful, and even though he was doing his damnedest to present a calm, accepting face, there had been a handful of small moments throughout the afternoon and evening that had given him away.

  His expression when his mother handed him his meal with all the food cut into fork-size portions. The way his shoulders had squared when Vanessa’s husband, Brian, had offered to mow the lawn again on the weekend, and Will had assured him he could manage it himself. The way he’d changed the subject when Mark started talking about the last gig they’d performed.

  Will wasn’t a prideful man—witness his very modest house, and the way he’d chosen to retain his anonymity when they first met rather than trumpet his success—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in possession of a healthy ego. There were so many things he’d once taken for granted that were now barred to him. He was in free fall at the moment, grappling with new limitations, struggling to let go of old expectations.

  How she wished she could give him some certainty. God, how she wished she could look him in the eye and tell him he would play his guitar again, that he wouldn’t have to treat walking to bed as an obstacle course for the rest of his life.

  She couldn’t do that, though, because she didn’t know. The research for C.I.M.T. was strong, but every case had its own variables. All she could do was offer Will her best efforts and hope.

  She set the papers on the floor and turned off the lamp. As always when she thought about Will, about what he was facing and how much she wanted to help him, her chest ached, and she rested her hand over her heart in a vain attempt to soothe it.

  People talked about heartache all the time, but as a doctor she knew that hearts didn’t really ache. Not unless something was drastically, terribly medically wrong. The sensation she felt was most likely the result of her vagus nerve being overstimulated by her anterior cingulate cortex—a fancy way of saying that her emotional state was impacting her physiology.

  Knowing what was happening inside her body didn’t make it any easier to bear. She loved Will, and she couldn’t have him. At least, she was almost certain she couldn’t, and she wasn’t about to put her theory to the test now. Not while his life was in upheaval. Not when he had so many other demands on his time and energy.

  Her role for the foreseeable future was to love him as discreetly, as privately, as secretively as she possibly could while continuing to be his friend.

  That was the most generous gift she could give him.

  Turning onto her side, she closed her eyes. Tomorrow was a big day, and she needed her sleep.

  * * *

  WILL WOKE TO the sound of running water in the main bathroom.

  Leah. In his home.

  He stared at the ceiling, indulging himself for a few precious seconds, imagining her naked beneath the shower. Water slicking over breasts, tracing the curve of her hips, the lean length of her legs. He’d washed her the night they’d slept together, smoothing soap-slicked hands over her body, exploring and teasing
and shaping. He’d mapped every inch of her, savored her, worshipped her.

  And she was about to sit beside him for six hours a day watching him struggle to do something as fundamentally basic as undo a button.

  The thought made his gut churn.

  Jesus, I don’t know if I can do this.

  Probably not the best time to be visited with this particular realization. Leah had spent days familiarizing herself with the program created for Will. She’d abandoned her life in Melbourne to live with him, was even now preparing to face their first day together. Will wouldn’t know how to even begin to tell her that he didn’t want to proceed after all her hard work. Nothing less than the truth would do, and the thought of admitting his gut-clenching self-consciousness to her was every bit as daunting as the prospect of actually doing the program.

  He was an idiot for agreeing in the first place. That much was blatantly clear to him as he swung his legs to the edge of the bed. No matter which way he turned now, he faced humiliation.

  His lip curled into a self-directed sneer as he rose. Seriously, sometimes his own bleating made him sick.

  Who was he kidding? He wasn’t about to ditch Leah or the therapy. He needed it—and her—too much. More important, the prospect of telling her how he felt—that he was wildly, deeply, passionately in love with her, therefore couldn’t bear to humiliate himself in front of her—was not an option.

  For her sake, he could never do that.

  So. The matter was decided. He would take his medicine like a good boy, and resign himself to becoming a feeble, flailing half-man in Leah’s eyes.

  She was unpacking a box at the table when he entered the kitchen, showered, dressed and resigned to his fate. She looked up, a smile on her lips.

  “Good morning. Did you sleep okay? I hope you don’t mind me setting up here. It seemed like the natural place.”

  She’d pulled her hair into a high ponytail, her face free of makeup. She looked young and focused and utterly gorgeous and he had to replay her words so he could respond appropriately.

  “Whatever is easiest for you.”

  “We can start the therapy after breakfast, if you like. Give you one last chance to eat a meal with your good hand.”

  He stared at her. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, I should have explained. As well as the exercises and drills we’ll be doing, you’ll be preparing your meals with your right hand, doing laundry, that sort of thing. Basically anything you’d normally do, so you’re forced to not favor the weak hand.”

  He nodded his understanding, even though he was inwardly recoiling from a vision of himself floundering through making a sandwich with only his bad hand. He would look ridiculous, to say the least. Like a bumbling idiot.

  Grinding his molars together, he collected a box of breakfast cereal from the pantry. Obviously, he’d missed a few of the finer details of C.I.M.T. in his reading.

  Awesome.

  He wondered what other surprises she had in store for him.

  “I had a nice night last night. Your family is really funny.” Leah continued to lay out supplies—plastic cups, what looked like a bag of marbles, a box of dominoes.

  “Yeah.” He shook cereal into a bowl, even though eating was the last thing he felt like doing. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like a rock. It’s so quiet here. I think I’d be late for work every day if I didn’t have traffic noise to wake me up.”

  “The birds start up pretty early, don’t worry. You’ll probably be missing the traffic soon. You want some?” He indicated the cereal box.

  “I had toast already, thanks.”

  Somehow he managed to keep up his side of the conversation as he ate his breakfast, even though dread knotted his stomach.

  This was crunch time. The first step in his journey from viable lover to helpless patient in Leah’s eyes.

  “Okay, we ready to get into this?” Leah asked as he rinsed his bowl at the sink.

  “Sure.” His feet felt as heavy as lead as he walked to the table. The urge to blurt that he’d had a change of heart gripped him, tightening his throat. Maybe he could justify himself without telling her everything. Maybe he could tell her he felt uncomfortable about her not accepting any wages for her time, or that he’d rather wait and fly to the U.S. to attend one of the live-in clinics. Maybe he could—

  “First things first.” She placed a padded white mitt in front of him. “This will be your constant companion for the next two weeks. It’s designed so you can take it on and off yourself. If you give me your hand, I’ll show you how to fasten it.”

  Wordless, he held out his good left hand and watched as Leah slipped the mitt on, tightening a hook and loop fastener around his wrist. The mitt was padded enough to make it impossible for him to perform tasks with his good hand.

  She talked him through the day’s structure next, explaining how they would be working on a range of different tasks, each of them challenging his dexterity and hand strength in various ways. Some tasks would be timed, and he would be encouraged to improve on his achievements each round. But first they needed to set up a motor log to record any changes in his hand strength or agility.

  Together they assessed his right hand, assigning each movement a range from one to five and recording the numbers in a notebook. When they’d finished, Leah passed him a bowl of marbles and a plastic cup.

  “You ready for this?” she asked, her gaze steady on his.

  He fought to hold her eye, aware that his heart was pounding and that his palms were growing sweaty.

  Why had he voluntarily put his head in this noose? What madness had possessed him when he’d accepted her offer? For a moment he felt dizzy with desperation and frustration and regret.

  “Let’s go,” he managed to say, somehow forcing the words past the tightness in his throat.

  “You have thirty seconds to get as many marbles in the cup as possible. We’ll do ten sets over half an hour, trying to improve each time.”

  He eyed the marbles, painfully conscious that they would be hard to separate from each other and even harder to grip with his affected hand. He was going to fumble. He was going to fail more times than he succeeded. He was going to look like a fool. As predicted.

  Leah touched his arm to get his attention. “It’s supposed to be hard, Will. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. But it will get better.”

  He nodded, his focus once again shifting to the bowl of marbles.

  “All right.” She called up the timer function on her phone. “And...go.”

  Frowning in concentration, he moved his hand to the bowl, forming a pincer with his thumb and first two fingers and attempting to pluck a marble from the bowl. It took him three tries before he successfully picked up a marble. He immediately transferred it to the cup. Self-conscious heat flowed up his chest and into his face, prickling beneath his armpits. This was a task any two-year-old could accomplish, and yet he struggled.

  And Leah had a front-row seat.

  He fumbled his next attempt, his gaze flicking across to where she sat. God only knew what she was thinking.

  That he was far, far worse than she’d thought? That it was nothing short of pathetic to see a grown man struggle to complete such a simple task? That he was a sad shadow of his former self?

  By the time the thirty seconds was up, he’d transferred a grand total of only seven marbles. He could barely force himself to meet her eye.

  “Excellent. That’s our baseline. Let’s see how much we can improve on that,” she said, making a mark on her notepad.

  He stared at her, astonished that she could sound remotely pleased with his paltry achievement. She looked at him, eyebrows slightly raised in question.

  There wasn’t a hint of condescension in either her expression or her voice. No pity, no regret. She was compl
etely sincere.

  It hit him then that he was the one making a deal out of all of this, turning it into something it wasn’t. Leah was here to do the work that needed to be done. Because she believed in him. Because she cared for him.

  She wasn’t judging him.

  She wasn’t embarrassed for or by him.

  She wasn’t fazed by his fumbling. At all.

  A different sort of heat rushed over him then, and he bowed his head as it hit him how profoundly, stunningly lucky he was. In the midst of all the shit he’d been dealing with, he’d found this amazing, generous woman.

  “Will.”

  He heard the sound of her chair moving, then her arms were around him, her cheek resting on his head.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  And he suddenly knew that it was okay, that despite all his darkest fears, this process was not going to destroy him in her eyes. Or his own. It was work, pure and simple, and it had to be done, and they would do it. Together.

  He remembered what his mother had said last night, about his injury not making a difference if Leah loved him. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the notion without rejecting it out of hand. Allowed himself to imagine a future with Leah at his side, a future where he didn’t need to be perfect and whole. For a moment it danced before him, as enticing and miraculous as a mirage. Then Leah pulled away from their embrace, sitting back on her heels, and he looked into her eyes and was reminded of how truly exceptional she was.

  One of a kind. Sweet and clever and sexy.

  He wanted to be worthy of her. He wanted to be her match.

  He made a promise to himself then and there. He would work from dusk to dawn these next two weeks, he would do everything required and more. He would sweat, he would toil, he would bow his head and take everything that came his way. Then, when he and Leah had filled in the last entry in his motor log, he would take stock of the situation—of his progress—and decide if it was enough. If he could stand to let her walk away without asking whether she wanted to be a part of what might come next.

  A part of his future, whatever it might look like.