“I’m a hundred percent better today,” he started in, stopping when his words garnered him a very clearly raised eyebrow in his direction. She was all confident-looking in her leopard-patterned top.
“As opposed to yesterday,” he conceded.
Had she put on the tiger that day for him?
He wouldn’t blame her.
“I just want you to know how much it means to me…what you’ve done these past two days.” He stopped right where he’d planned. And then said, “I’m never going to forget…” His voice dropped off midsentence as his ears heard his words, and something inside him rescued him from himself.
“You might want to wait until the end of the week to be saying things like that,” Iris said, and pushed herself back until the footrest came out on the chair. She sat there, looking him right in the eyes. Appearing as though she had every intention to remain there. Take a nap even.
Not that he begrudged her one. She most definitely deserved some catch-up sleep after all he’d deprived her of with his heat and ice and pill requirements. But not there.
Still, he’d started the conversation. He couldn’t just completely bail. “I could wait until the end of time, and I’d still be grateful.”
With her lips turned, her chin jutting, her brows raised, all as though she’d suddenly decided there was merit in his words, she nodded. But didn’t lower her footrest. Instead, she pulled out her phone.
Confusion replaced the huge amounts of gratitude he’d been feeling.Panic took over for confusion. With a little anger bobbing in and out.
“I no longer need twenty-four-hour care.” He told her about the wheelchair, the grabber thing, the shower chair, postulating that they were tools meant to make one independent and ending with Joel’s proclamation regarding Scott’s upper-body strength. Punctuating the finale with a good chest and upper arm muscle clench.
Emulating any of the action figures of his youth, if he did think so himself.
Iris appeared to be listening. She was watching him, not her phone. Seemed attentive. He couldn’t read her, though. Which did not please him. Used to reading juries made up of total strangers, and doing so accurately more often than not, Scott was vexed by her ability to stump him.
Because he was already on his last nerve due to the constant pain in his left leg. Not just the knee. No, his injury had to make itself felt up and down the entire damned limb.
That was it. He’d almost lost Iris the day before by being cantankerous. He’d needed her then. Now he didn’t. All he had to do was be a difficult patient. A grouch.
Something he could offer with very little provocation at the moment.
“I’m serious, Iris. I want to do this alone from here on out. I need my place to myself.”
“I know. You’ve made up your mind. You have a right to make your own choices.”
And there she sat. With the silence drawing out between them. Until she asked, “You done?”
Her question played right into his plan. Bringing out the grump in him. “Yes, as a matter of fact I am,” he snipped. Then thought of something else to say, pursuant to the black weekend bag she’d erroneously brought into his home but couldn’t give voice to it lest he prove himself wrong.He’d said he was done.
“Good, then here’s your choice. You put up with me in your space until your back allows you to be up on crutches full-time—no need for a wheelchair…”
His gut clenched. He gritted his teeth. He waited for whatever other cockamamie option she was about to deliver with such sassy confidence so that he could hand down his third and final option—she had to go.
“…oorrr…” She drew out the word, turning her phone around, to show him a call screen. With his sister’s name on top in big bold letters. Big enough, bold enough for him to read from several feet away. “Or she’s catching the next flight home, cutting her family-moon short by two weeks. Your choice. I gave her my word.”
Scott’s mouth opened.
But no winning argument came forth.
Sage had clearly issued a threat she fully meant to keep.
And Iris was there because of the very same threat. She was there for Sage. To preserve the Bartholomews’ very special bonding time as a new family.
Not for him.
Chapter Thirteen
She had to stay. She’d given Sage her word. So why when she heard the truth come out of her mouth did she feel…happy? As though she’d been given permission to do something she’d wanted to do but wasn’t allowed to do?
