40-Love - Olivia Dade Page 0,106

be awkward. I’m happy to help you get settled, if you want.”

“Thank you, but you’ve done enough,” she said, looking down that straight nose at him.

The pronouncement did not invite argument, so he didn’t offer one. Not about that, anyway.

He shoved his hair out of his eyes, recalling the doctor’s instructions. Following his instincts. “Fine. But you’ll need to elevate your arm above your heart whenever you can.”

“Yes.” Her gaze narrowed dangerously. “I also heard what the doctor said. There’s nothing amiss with my hearing.”

Well, that made one of them.

He deliberately ignored her growing ire. “You can put some ice in a towel or plastic bag to help with the swelling, but only over the splint. Fifteen to twenty minutes every few hours.”

“I understand that.” Each syllable sounded like ground glass. “I do not require you to reiterate all my instructions.”

Apparently, his instincts when it came to Candy were surprisingly sound. As she grew more and more irritated, that awful grayness receded. Her cheeks turned rosy, her brown eyes sharp. Her shoulders squared, and her voice got louder.

Broken arm or no broken arm, she looked more herself right now than she had since June.

He wanted that confident, truculent Candy back. For her. For himself.

So he continued talking, injecting a bit of extra pompousness into his tone. “You should wiggle your fingers as much as possible.”

“You—” Her brows snapped together, and she flung her uninjured arm in the air. “Are you aware that I was in the room while Dr. Marconi told me what I should and shouldn’t do? Did you somehow overlook my very presence?”

Honestly, this was the most fun he’d had all day. “I thought I saw you, but I wasn’t entirely certain. It’s harder to recognize you without that whole bouffant thing”—he swirled his hand over the top of his head—“you used to have going on up here.”

Her mouth dropped open in outrage. “A tiny bit of volume does not equal a bouffant. I’m not a refugee from the mid-1960s, Mr. Conover!”

“More late eighteenth-century France, then?” He sat back in his chair, crossing one ankle over his knee. “You are fond of proclamations. Very Marie Antoinette of you.”

She sputtered, her nostrils flaring.

He smiled at her in a particularly obnoxious way. “Anyway, I won’t go inside, but I’ll follow you home, just in case. And I’ll wait in your driveway until I see the lights come on.”

“Fine.” It was more a growl than an actual word. “As long as you stop talking, right this second, you can follow me home.”

That seemed like a fair tradeoff to him.

Besides, Shakespeare had the right of it. Nothing can seem foul to those that win.

So he obediently kept his mouth shut while she received her discharge papers and swiped her credit card for her emergency room copay. Still silent, he drove her to the school parking lot, and then followed her small SUV across town.

It was after midnight, and she was returning to a dark, empty house. Just as he would, as soon as he ensured she was safely home.

After she let herself into the front door and flicked on the interior and porch lights, she lingered in the doorway. After a moment, she raised her good arm in something that wasn’t quite a wave. More a gesture of acknowledgment.

Within that halo of golden light, he could read her lips. Thank you, Griff.

Then the door closed, and he drove home. Showered. Got in bed. Blinked at the ceiling as his brain inevitably returned to its favorite preoccupation.

Candy Albright. Again. Still.

She fascinated him for so many reasons.

Twenty-plus years of teaching, full to bursting with students and colleagues and discussions about poetry and plays and novels, had in turn taught him well. He’d learned at least one thing for certain.

Not everyone could decipher subtext.

Not even if they noticed its presence, which many people—too enmeshed in their own thoughts, their own concerns—did not. Not even when it was pointed out to them by, say, a longtime teacher who wanted his ninth graders to pass their end-of-year English proficiency test, and also wanted them to take pleasure in the way simple words could contain multitudes. Universes secreted away, but open to explorers with sufficient curiosity and persistence.

Even those who could decipher subtext didn’t always wish to perform the labor. He hadn’t required a teaching degree for that revelation. A decade of joyous, sometimes-contentious married life had clarified the matter sufficiently.

Yes, subtext was difficult. Fraught. No question about it.

Still. Since that first faculty meeting, he’d been amazed. Nay,