Wife by Design by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HE SAW LYNN twice on Friday. Both times she’d been walking within view of the Garden of Renewal. She waved. He waved back. And his thoughts of her were hotter than the lights he was wiring—the finishing touch on the garden.

By the time he collected Darin from his afternoon therapy session, he was ready to remove the caution tape from around the newly remodeled garden.

He told Darin the second he saw him, lifting his left hand to Darin’s right for a high five, a ritual at the completion of every job.

“I don’t know why you keep coming here to get me, Grant,” Darin said, leaving Grant’s hand hanging in midair.

“I like to watch the last few minutes of therapy each day so I can see how well you’re progressing,” he said, aware of the slightly petulant tone of his voice.

He was hurt. He knew he had absolutely no right to be, but he couldn’t help the way he felt.

“You’ve always liked to have me around,” he added as he headed down the hall and out the back door. Darin kept pace with him.

“I do like having you around,” his older brother agreed.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Nothing.”

It was a truculent “nothing.” Not an assured, truthful one. But he let it go. Because he knew what was wrong—if Grant was there, Darin couldn’t wait for Maddie—and was hopeful that if they continued to ignore the issue, it would fade away as so many others had in the past.

“Oh, yeah, look.” Reaching over with his right hand, Darin pulled Grant to a stop on the sidewalk. He held out his left leg. Pulled up the leg of the sweatpants he’d worn to therapy that day.

In place of the piece of gauze taped to his brother’s shin, there was a line of pink puffy skin. “Lynn came and got me and we went to her room and she took out my stitches.”

He’d wanted to be there. If for no other reason than to have the excuse to spend the time with Lynn. “She said seven to ten days,” Grant said aloud. “It’s only been six.”

“But I saw her in the hall before my therapy and I told her I was itching there and she said, ‘Let me take a look,’ and she did and she brought me right over and took out the stitches and walked with me back over to my therapy. Don’t worry, I wasn’t late, Grant.”

“I wasn’t worried. And I’m very glad the stiches are out. Now you can shower without having to make sure it’s covered.”

“That’s what Lynn said.” They continued on toward the garden.

And Grant thought about Darin’s nurse in the shower. His shower.

* * *

THAT EVENING, AFTER stopping for burgers on the way back home from The Lemonade Stand, Grant asked Darin to help him find the landscape lights he wanted in the supply shed behind their garage.

While they were in the shed, his phone rang, and he talked to Luke about a problem he and Craig had run into that day on a fifty-thousand-dollar job.

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