Her Favorite Temptation

by Mayberry, Sarah

  The knot in his belly loosened as his decision settled over him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just freaked out for a moment there.”

  She smiled slightly, head tilted to one side as she considered him. Then she nodded as though satisfied with what she saw, and rose.

  “Let’s take it from the top. And let’s aim for eight this time around.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LEAH CONCENTRATED ON the timer as Will made his second attempt at the marble exercise. Witnessing his embarrassment, his self-consciousness, and not saying a word was one of the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. But talking about the situation, drawing attention to it, wasn’t going to make it any easier. She knew that instinctively, on a purely gut level. Will needed to make his own peace with the situation, in his own way. Her job was to get out of the way and let him get on with it.

  Accordingly, she called out when the time was up, noting the seven marbles he’d again transferred to the cup, encouraging him to better it with his next pass. And he did, lifting his haul from seven to eight and finally to ten by the end of the half hour.

  “Fantastic. That’s a 42 percent increase, by the way,” she said.

  Will’s smile was small, but it was there. She explained the next task to him—buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt—and slowly the morning disappeared as they worked through the program. She could see he was wearying toward the end, and she couldn’t help wondering if maybe they should have waited another week to give him a little more time to get over his post-surgical fatigue.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked as she pushed her notepad aside.

  “Honestly? Absolutely beat,” he admitted.

  There was a rueful twist to his mouth, but she was glad he’d been honest with her.

  “Let’s eat, then maybe you should have a rest before we roll into the afternoon,” she said.

  Will glanced toward the kitchen, and she knew he was wondering what in hell he would be able to prepare with only his weak hand. Well, they were both about to discover that.

  “Won’t know until we try,” she said, answering his unspoken question.

  He nodded, and together they inspected the fridge. He decided on soup and toast, a smart option since there was a pot of chicken noodle soup his sister had prepared, which meant Will would simply have to reheat it and butter some toast.

  She busied herself at the sink as he worked, allowing him to set his own pace, feeling his frustration as his body refused to obey him. He managed to serve up two portions of soup, however, transferring them to the microwave one by one. She stepped in to take them out, worried that third-degree burns would not be a good addition to his roll call of injuries, then he tackled the toast.

  It was cold by the time he’d finished, the butter thick in parts, the bread gouged in others. But Will had made it, and he’d learned the important lesson that his “bad” hand was more capable than he’d assumed.

  They went onto the deck to eat, talking about her new training course and the weather and his sisters. Afterward, she stood aside while he rinsed the dishes and set them in the dishwasher.

  “I need a bloody merit badge after all that,” he said, eyeing the dishwasher with satisfaction.

  “You need some rest more. Bed or couch?” she asked.

  He glanced into the living room. “Couch. For some reason it feels marginally less like I should be collecting an old-age pension.”

  She followed him, passing him a throw blanket and watching as he stretched out on one side of the sofa.

  “You should join me,” he said, gesturing toward the other leg of the sectional sofa.

  Her first impulse was to say no, to keep her distance. But then she reminded herself that she had only two weeks with Will. “Sure,” she said lightly. “I could do with a nana nap.”

  “I think we’ll refer to it as a catnap in future, if you don’t mind, Dr. Mathews,” he said, very dryly.

  “Catnap. Got it.”

  There was a second blanket draped over the back of the couch and she grabbed it before moving some cushions out of the way so she could stretch out.

  “I’m pretty sure the last time I did this in the middle of the day was when I was in kindergarten after story time,” Will said as she settled onto the couch.

  Their feet were almost touching at the corner, and when she rolled onto her side she was staring across the diagonal at Will, and he at her.

  “This feels more like a sleepover. I think you’re supposed to have a flashlight so you can make creepy faces while you tell me scary stories,” she said.

  “Funny, but scary stories have never been on the agenda during my sleepovers.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Even tired, Will was incorrigible.

  “Go to sleep, you shameless flirt.”

  She closed her own eyes, then opened them again when she felt the nudge of Will’s feet against hers.

  “Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” he said, smiling sleepily.

  She closed her eyes again, aware of a warm tide of happiness rising inside her. No matter what else happened, this moment, right now, was perfect.

  It was good to be here with Will, and she was incredibly grateful and humbled that he trusted her enough to make himself so vulnerable with her. His trust, his faith, was a gift, and helping the man she loved reclaim his life was a privilege she would treasure for years to come.

  If all that meant she was opening herself up to a whole world of hurt in the near future, well, so be it. Holding that truth tight to her chest, she let herself drift into sleep.

  * * *

  THE NEXT THREE days passed slowly, measured out in thirty-minute intervals, sometimes timed by Leah’s phone, other times by the number of repetitions Will achieved of a particular task.

  As she had warned him up front, many of the exercises he repeated were frustratingly dull, and there was more than one occasion when he felt his temper beginning to fray. Each and every time, Leah accepted his snappy comeback or acerbic comment with perfect calm, waiting until he’d come down off his frustration before taking a small, playful dig at him and inevitably making him laugh.

  She knew how to push his buttons, how to appeal to his sense of the absurd and strip away his pride so he could laugh at himself. She knew how to put his world back into perspective with a look or a quip or an observation.

  She was a wonder. And he fell harder for her every day, finding new things to admire and adore about her with every hour. Like the fact that she always, without exception, cut the crusts off her bread, be it in the form of a sandwich or toast, and that she could recite the periodic table of elements backward and forward, and that sometimes when she laughed the tip of her nose wiggled.

  He loved her crazy, wild hair and her willowy body and her laugh and the way she sometimes understood that he didn’t want to talk. He loved that she’d never seen a single Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and that she didn’t understand why so many women loved shopping, and that she would rather eat a bar of chocolate than go to a fancy restaurant.

  As he woke on the fourth day of his therapy, he brooded over all of the above and more as he heard Leah moving around the house, adding yet more things to his list of things to love about her—the sound of her footfall in the hall, the scent of her perfume drifting through the house, the high, off-key singing with which she greeted the day.

  Honestly, he’d heard cats mate with more harmony, but it didn’t stop him from grinning as he threw back the covers.

  He showered as quickly as he could, then dried off and reached for the now-loathed mitt. It had quickly lost its pristine whiteness, and he suspected it would need a damned good wash by the time this was all over, but it was a necessary evil and one that he wouldn’t let himself shirk.

  It took much, much longer t
o dress using only his bad hand, and he was feeling hot and more than a little hungry by the time he found Leah in the kitchen. She was reading the back of a box of something, frowning slightly, a spatula in her other hand.

  “Morning. I thought we could have pancakes for breakfast, but I can’t work out how to halve the recipe. How on earth to you halve an egg?”

  “You don’t. You make a full batch and eat so much you feel sick. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Clearly not. Clearly this is yet another area where my education has been severely limited.”

  “Let’s fix that, shall we?”

  She wore a knee-length denim skirt today, a rarity for her in his experience, and her slender, shapely calves were pale and bare.

  Hard not to think about what she was wearing underneath, or how silky smooth her thighs had felt beneath his hands that one crazy night...

  “We need milk, eggs and a frying pan,” he said, heading for the fridge and away from temptation.

  Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt as though there was more strength in his hand as he fed his fingers through the handle on the milk jug, and he tested his theory by attempting to tighten his grip as he transferred it to the counter. There was a small but noticeable sense of the plastic biting into his hand, and he smiled to himself.

  A tiny win, but still significant. And definitely encouraging.

  “What’s so funny?” Leah asked.

  “Apart from the fact that you want to halve an egg?”

  “I have openly admitted I am cooking-challenged. But feel free to take a cheap shot,” she said, opening her arms wide in invitation.

  He let his gaze skim her breasts—a moment of pure self-indulgence—before picking up the box of pancake mix.

  “All my shots are handcrafted and custom-made to order, thank you very much,” he said. “And I strongly resent any implication to the contrary.”

  The witticisms continued as he mixed the batter, both of them laughing at the hash he made of cracking the egg with his right hand. Leah picked eggshell out of the mix, then he set the frying pan on the stove and added a generous dollop of butter.

  “I know that as a former cardiothoracic specialist I should abhor all things buttery, but my God, that looks good,” Leah said, hovering at his elbow with a longing expression on her face.

  “Gotta make pancakes with butter. It’s mandatory.”

  “Noted for future reference.”

  He poured the batter, watching like an eagle for bubbles to form, indicating it was ready to be flipped. Leah offered him the spatula when the first bubbles appeared, but he waved her off.

  “Watch and learn, baby.”

  He curled his hand around the handle, frowning as he worked to get a good grip, desperately hoping he’d be able to live up to his own cocky bravado. He gave the pan a shake, watching with satisfaction as the pancake slid across the non-stick surface.

  “And here we go,” he said, flicking his wrist and flipping the pancake into the air.

  In theory, he’d used just enough force to cause the pancake to rise and flip before dropping safely into the pan. In practice, his dodgy hand and trying-too-hard tension sent the pancake flying.

  Leah gave a stifled laugh, and he turned to discover the pancake had landed on her shoulder.

  “Quick, get the maple syrup before it goes cold,” she said.

  Then she started laughing, and so did he, the whole world forgotten as they gave in to a moment of pure silliness and release. Her face was creased with laughter, her eyes filled with tears, her shoulders shuddering. He suspected he looked similarly manic and out of control, and didn’t give a toss.

  “God, I love you,” he said impulsively.

  She blinked, the smile freezing on her face. Something dark and painful flickered behind her eyes and she turned away.

  “I should get a plate for this....”

  He stared at her back as she walked away, telling himself to let the moment die a natural death, to let her think that he’d simply made the comment off the cuff, a throwaway line that meant nothing. They still had ten days of therapy to go, after all. He still had no idea what the outcome would be, even if the initial signs were promising.

  Yet he couldn’t wait another second to tell Leah how he felt.

  He’d been in limbo, his life on hold, for months, and he was sick of it. He wanted Leah, wanted to tell her that he loved her, and he wanted to do it now, even if it was a mistake.

  He was sick of rationing hope and hedging his bets. Sick of being tentative and uncertain.

  If she didn’t love him...he would deal with it. If it made things awkward, he would fix it. Somehow. But he had to know.

  He needed to know.

  “Leah...” He went after her, catching her elbow with his bad hand.

  She swung around, her beautiful eyes wary.

  “Not so long ago, we agreed that whatever happened between us should only ever be about one night,” he began.

  She blinked, and he realized he’d caught her off guard, that despite her wariness, she really had dismissed his comment as off the cuff and meaningless. In which case, what he was about to say might be a little more shocking to her than he’d anticipated.

  But he wasn’t about to back off now.

  He held her gaze, wanting her to see how sincere he was. How important this was to him. “What I’m wondering is if you’d be willing to reconsider that decision.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I know I’m not exactly Prince Charming material right now. Zipper-head, gimpy hand and all the rest.” There was a tremor in his voice and he cleared his throat. “The thing is, I seem to have fallen in love with you, Leah Mathews. Bad timing, I know. But there it is. And I really need to know if there might be a chance that maybe you feel the same way about me.”

  Leah’s face was ashen, her eyes huge. Then, to his everlasting horror, she burst into tears.

  * * *

  LEAH TRIED TO hold back the avalanche of relief and joy crashing through her, but Will’s words, the look in his eyes, the way his voice quavered with emotion, were so far beyond anything she’d ever allowed herself to hope for that she was powerless to stop the tears from pouring down her face. Her throat closed over with emotion, her shoulders hunching as she cried with the intensity of someone who’d received the shock of a lifetime.

  A good shock, but still.

  “Leah.”

  Will pulled her into his arms, his body tense against hers. She understood that it was her turn to talk, her turn to reassure him, but she couldn’t seem to get her mouth and vocal cords to work.

  “I’m s-s-sorry.” She clutched at his shoulders and back, scrunching fistfuls of his T-shirt as she pulled him close, trying to tell him with her body what she couldn’t seem to say with her voice. She’d convinced herself that she’d imagined the connection between them, told herself over and over that he couldn’t possibly feel the same way she did. That he had too many other things going on in his life for her to be more than a blip on his horizon. And yet he loved her. He really loved her. “I didn’t expect you to—I never thought—God, Will.”

  He pulled back, even though she was doing everything she could to keep him close.

  “These are happy tears?” he asked, realization dawning on his face.

  “Yes. Of course. I love you. How could I not love you?” It was so obvious to her she couldn’t understand why he would ever doubt it.

  The words were barely out of her mouth before he was kissing her, his fervor so ardent her head bent back on her neck. She didn’t mind, though, because his arms were around her, and her body was against his, and his words of love were still ringing in her ears.

  “You’re sure?” he said, breaking their kiss and pulling away so suddenly she was left ga
sping.

  “That I love you? Yes, Will. Very sure,” she said, unable to fathom his doubt, unable to believe that she was the one reassuring him when she’d been so sure that she was alone in this.

  Then it hit her like a body blow.

  “Are you asking because of this?” she said, catching his right hand in hers.

  For the first time he looked away. As though he couldn’t bear to see her face while he spoke. “There’s no guarantee anything will change. No matter how hard we work at it. You know that better than anyone.”

  “Will...” She closed her eyes, trying to marshal her thoughts. Because she understood that what she said next was important. Crucial, even. Then she opened her eyes and hoped she’d found the right words. “I have felt alone all my life. I was always too smart, or working too hard, or too full of doubt to fit in with everyone else. But when I’m with you, I never feel alone, Will. Never. I feel seen, and I feel listened to, and I feel important and cared for. When I first met you, I told myself I had to be insane to think that someone like you would be interested in someone like me. But it didn’t stop me from falling in love with you, because loving you is as easy and as natural as breathing for me. This may shock you, but my love doesn’t come with conditions or requirements. It absolutely doesn’t require physical exam, that is for sure. It just is, Will. And it’s unstoppable, because, believe me, I’ve tried to stop it. So I guess what I’m trying to say in my usual inarticulate, rambly, too-wordy way, is that I’m not going anywhere. No matter what.”

  Will’s expression was pained and she realized he was close to tears. “I hate the idea of you being lonely,” he said simply. “That can never happen again.”

  “It’s okay. I know a really good cure for it.” She leaned forward to kiss him, touched beyond words that her pain was his pain. But maybe that wasn’t such a surprise, since her chest had been aching for weeks on his behalf.

  The sound of hook and loop fastener being ripped open made her step away in time to see the constraint mitt fall to the floor.

  “Will—”