A Match Made in Texas- By Arlene James Page 0,13
admit it, Stephen dearly wanted his agent’s reassurance. Instead, he would have to settle for the ministrations of the new nurse. At least he hoped that she had decided to take the position. He turned his head slightly to find Kaylie Chatam regarding him serenely from the open doorway.
He smiled, for two reasons. One, the petite nurse’s soft red hair hung down her back in a thick, straight tail of pure silk at least as long as his forearm. Secondly, she was dressed for work in shapeless pink scrubs with surfing penguins printed on them.
“In the Netherlands,” he told her, “they say ‘Goedemorgen.’”
“Gude morgan, then.”
He tried not to correct her pronunciation, covering his amusement by saying, “Penguins?”
She plucked at the fabric of her loose top, looking down at a penguin tumbling through a cresting wave. “Best I could do. No skates, but at least they’re creatures that are comfortable on the ice.”
He laughed. And regretted it. Squeezing his eyes shut against the sharpened pain, he hissed until it subsided to a more bearable level. When he opened his eyes again, Kaylie Chatam was standing over him, pill bottle in hand.
“Mr. Doolin’s gone down to ask for your breakfast tray. Let’s get these into you so you’ll be up to eating when it’s ready. All right?”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But then I need to get to the bathroom.”
She dropped the pill bottle into one of the cavernous pockets on the front of her smock and slid her small but surprisingly strong hands beneath his arms, helping him into a sitting position on the side of the bed. He tried to bite back the groan that accompanied the action, but the pain was breathtaking. It eased as soon as he was still again. She quickly gave him the pills. After swallowing a pair of them, he was ready to go forward. He shoved up onto his good leg, jaw clamped.
Moving effortlessly into a supportive posture, Kaylie slid her arm up over his back to his shoulder, her own shoulder tucked neatly beneath his arm. Hopping and hobbling, he inched toward the bathroom door. Small bathrooms, he mused a few minutes later, had their good points, as the close confines allowed him to manage for himself. Afterward, the little nurse made a very welcome suggestion.
“Maybe you should eat your breakfast in the sitting room.”
Stephen looked into the sitting room and smiled. Comfortable as it was, the bed had already begun to feel like a prison to him.
“If it’s any inducement,” she went on in a teasing voice, “there’s a large cup of coffee in there.”
Stephen eagerly slung his arm around her shoulders. “Lead me to it.”
Chuckling, she eased him forward. By the time they reached the near end of the sofa, some three or four yards, his head swam. Bracing her feet wide apart and gripping his one good arm, she helped him lower into a sitting position in the corner of the comfortable couch before fetching a small, brocade footstool for his injured leg.
“How’s that?”
He waited until the pain subsided enough that he could get his breath. “Guess I’ll live. What about that coffee?”
While she went to the small writing desk standing against one wall and retrieved a tall, disposable cup with a cardboard sleeve, Stephen looked around him. Oddly elegant paintings that featured game birds, dogs and tools of the hunt from a bygone era covered the walls of the room. In contrast to the antique artwork, he noted, with relieved satisfaction, a flat-screen television hung over the mantel. The old girls didn’t have their heads entirely buried in the past, then. The screen was nowhere near as large as the one in his media room back at the house in Fort Worth, but it would do for watching the playoff games.
Stephen took the coffee container from Kaylie with his good right hand, turning it with the aid of the fingertips of his left to get the drinking slot in the plastic top adequately positioned. Taking a careful sip, he sighed with satisfaction.
“I have cream, if you’d like,” she said, reaching into her pocket once more and drawing out the tiny containers.
“Black is fine.”
Nodding, she parked her hands at her slender hips and glanced around before snapping her fingers and hurrying back into the bedroom. “Hang on.”
Like I’m going anywhere, he thought wryly. She returned an instant later with one of the bed pillows and a bath towel.
“We’ll have to keep using this as a lap tray until I find one,” she