He realized then what was different about her. Confidence. Daralyn had discovered confidence in herself, over and above the darkness that clutched her. The tool she’d been missing in her arsenal. She’d figured out a way to get it, forged from her own will and determination.
As he’d always said, she was stronger than all of them.
She might occasionally swing and miss with it, or find it too heavy to lift on her own all the time, but she had it. And she had him.
He eased her back to meet her gaze squarely. “Okay, listen. I know I’m a stubborn ass. However, despite current evidence to the contrary, I have a good grasp of the condition I’m in, and what I can handle. I’d really like to take a shower at home, with my own set up. If you wouldn’t mind being around for that, I could use…”
“A spotter?” She gave him a smile, her eyes warm.
He nodded, although he also gave her a harder look. “But you’re not my nurse. Got it? That’s not in your job description for this relationship.”
She tilted her head to the side, her hazel eyes thoughtful. Her hand rested on his shoulder, her thumb tracing the line of it, up to his neck, and it felt damn good. “But we can take care of each other, right?”
“Yeah. We can do that.” He cleared his throat. “Fair warning, though. I’m not great about someone taking care of me.”
“Imagine that.”
The light in her eyes said his girl was teasing him. God, he loved her. He loved her so much.
“Smartass,” he said with a gut-easing grin, pinching her. Then he sobered. “Part of it is what you’d expect. Guy, lots of testosterone, doesn’t like to be babied. But the other part of it is when I was wallowing in self-pity, I let my mom and others care for me like I couldn’t do anything for myself. So I associate accepting someone’s help as regressing toward needy, selfish asshole again. I’ll try to recognize when that’s happening, if you don’t mind being patient with me while I’m learning.”
“All right.” She nodded. She’d put her other hand on the opposite shoulder, was sitting facing him, her hands spread out on him like she didn’t want to stop touching him any time soon. Her scent was earth and water, lavender and clean, female things. It was all he could do not to crush her to him, hold her a couple hours.
“I can’t imagine your mother letting you wallow,” she said. “She was so good about not letting me get bogged down in things.”
“She figured it out for you before she figured it out for me." He shot her a wry look. " Maybe because I'm a boy and mothers are weird about their sons. They tend to coddle us when they should kick us in the ass. But she got there eventually, thank God, though I deserved more kicks than she gave me for pushing her to it.”
And on that note… He cleared his throat. “Thanks…for cleaning up my room. For all of it.”
At her soft look, he wrapped her up in his arms, humbled by everything she’d said, done, and obviously meant so fervently. “Most of all, thanks for coming home to me.”
“You are home to me,” she whispered.
He couldn’t have asked for a better home health assistant. Most people automatically tried to get ahead of him, make suggestions, be proactive because that was how they thought they’d be most helpful. They didn’t stop to think that he’d been doing this a while and likely knew the best, most efficient way to handle the task. She followed his direction to the letter.
Once he was sitting in the shower, he noticed her lingering, leaning in the doorway. He thought of how her hands would feel on his shoulders and chest, his back. He wasn’t up to sex, but having her naked and close enough to touch…he’d have to be dead not to be up for that.
“Take off the dress,” he said.
A quiet, weighted moment, then she pulled her dress over her head, her pulled-back hair funneling through the neckline and then falling to her back. She was wearing a light blue bra, the straps etching her delicate shoulders. The matching bikini style panties outlined her mound and point of sex in the same sweet cotton fabric.
He swallowed, staring at her. He wanted to touch her, hold her, inhale her. Be with her. He remembered, forcefully, just how much