“Did you tape it like a puzzle on purpose?”
“Yes, actually. I taped it like a puzzle on purpose because that’s the way you get the best support without cutting off circulation. Unless you hobble around on a badly sprained ankle despite medical advice, make it swell up and cut off circulation anyway.”
Pitting edema. It had swollen so much that the scissors left a groove down his leg as she cut and tugged the tape away. “If you just keep going around and around with tape, it gets far too constricting. I taped it specifically to support an inverse sprain.”
He grunted in response, but that sound became a low, pained hiss as she got the last of the wrapping off and blood rushed back into the skin.
It hurt when the blood got back into the area too.
She tilted her head to try and see the damage, but the low lighting didn’t make that possible. Examination would have to wait. “Let me get the splint on.”
“No!” He couldn’t snatch his foot back from it, but he did lift it. “I’ll use the crutches and hold my foot up. I won’t put any weight on it. Just don’t touch it until we’re back upstairs.”
“You don’t mind if anyone sees it?”
“We’ll go fast.”
Grace shrugged, grabbed the debris and stuffed it into the hands of one of his assistants, handed the bag to another, and rose to help him up on the crutches. “Don’t go fast. Go slowly. I’ve never seen anyone else come out this way, have you? It’ll be fine.”
Once inside, the light let her see just how pale he was. He almost looked like he’d been dusted with white powder, like an extra at King Louis IX’s court.
She wouldn’t nag. Wouldn’t yell at him. She’d just get him upstairs, tie him up and refuse to let him go to New York tomorrow. Yeah, that was a plan.
The look he gave her as he leaned against the inside of the elevator let her know that her yelling wouldn’t do any good anyway. He had the look of a man who’d been converted. In fact, the labored breathing and shaky hands said he’d probably have asked her for a wheelchair if there had been one in the suite.
By the time they got him upstairs, whatever civil facade he’d been putting up crumbled and no sooner had the door closed than he was announcing, “Everyone out. I need space.”
Miles and crew turned right around, Hailey dropping the bag she’d carried by the door on the way back out.
What did that mean for her? Should she go?
Grace stepped back and gestured to the bar. “I’ve got ice waiting. Do you want me to help you get situated before I go?”
“You stay,” he muttered, and continued through to the bedroom, which was elevated by a few deeply carpeted steps.
With the way he shook, Grace didn’t trust him to navigate the steps on his own and scrambled along with him, hands at his back, ready to grab and lower him to the floor if he started to go.
“Stop. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re shaking hard enough for it to measure on the Richter scale. And you were using your foot for balance when it was splinted or wrapped. Now you’re just a walking tripod. And I know how to control falls. I do it all the time. So shut up and take the steps. I’m not going anywhere. Be glad I don’t have you by the belt. Yet.”
He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked over his shoulder, “Your hovering is going to make me fall. Step off. If I fall, I fall. I’ll roll the other way and protect my foot.”
“No.” She turned his head to face forward. “Looking back compromises balance. Move it, or I am going to do a fireman’s lift and carry you up there, if for no other reason than to prove to you I’m not a delicate flower who can’t help you.”
“I’m just doing this to save your fool back. We can’t both be laid up.” Liam shook his head but took the steps as directed. Despite the bone-deep shaking in his frame, he got up them with ease and went to flop on the end of the bed. “You want to help me? Take off my pants.”
* * *
Grace stopped in her tracks, her hands going to her hips as she regarded him. However pained and cranky he felt right now paled to the irate tilt of her head as she looked down at him. “Your hands work fine. Take off your own pants.”
He unfastened them and then looked up at her, giving his best pitiful but harmless look. “Come on, Gracie. Don’t make me stand up again. All I want to do is kick back, take some flavor of painkiller, eat, and sleep. And maybe ice it once it stops throbbing...”
“Fine. If you’re going to play imbecile, I’ll help you with your pants.”
“Don’t you mean invalid?”
“Nope, I’m pretty sure I meant imbecile. I went to the theater. Even with your limp it shouldn’t have taken more than five minutes to make it the length of that stupid carpet, but I didn’t leave here for forty-five minutes because Tom came by with clothes and made me try them on.”
She hooked her fingers in the belt and tugged as he lifted with his good leg. He fell back on his elbows and watched her toss the trousers over her shoulder as she knelt to get a look at his foot. God, that thing hurt. If she touched it, he might cry like a baby. Maybe then she’d give him a little sympathy rather than her anger.
“Liam Jefferson Carter! What did you do?”
Uh-oh. The middle name had come out. She wasn’t even going to pretend not to be furious.
One cool hand cupped his calf and lifted, contrasting with the fire in her eyes. “You know, I was thinking we might switch you to heat—ice is usually only for the first forty-eight hours after the injury, but it’s worse now. That’s why it hurts more, that’s why it swelled despite the tape. Might as well be a new injury.”
“I know,” he muttered. “I’d actually say it hurts more right now than it did when I fell. So, congratulations, you were right. But you know I wasn’t doing this just to be a pain in your butt. I have to, Grace. That’s what this life is, if you’re lucky enough to get this high, then your whole life is schedules and obligations, and when I sign a contract to do a movie I also sign on for the promotional aspects at the time of opening. It’s contractual.”
“And is it also contractual that you go in there without any support? You could have done this a lot better with crutches, Liam. Then you would still have met your obligations.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Tell me why. Tell me exactly why, because...”
He lay back fully on the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if that would dispel his headache. The whole night had taken him to the end of his tether, so if she didn’t get off this, he might kick her out with the others. Then he could sleep and let tomorrow worry about itself.
“Liam.”
“I don’t need a lecture. If you’re going to keep after this, then you maybe should just go to the other
