David(54)

I couldn’t do this. I’d fallen in love with a kind, gentle man in a wheelchair. I didn’t sign up for the lies and the secrets. I couldn’t do it anymore.

And there was no going back this time.





Chapter 37




David

Physical therapy was five days a week, four hours a day. I thought it would be easy. I’d bent my knee with no effort, hadn’t I? But physical therapy was kicking my ass.

“Just one step at a time, David,” Sergio, my physical therapist, said as I dangled between the parallel bars. “Just one.”

I felt sweat bead on my forehead as I dragged my left foot forward. I was scuffing up my sneakers for the first time in over two years, but I looked like a damn fool doing it.

“Now the other foot.”

It went like that every day. No exceptions.

And when I wasn’t being tortured by a Hispanic Nazi, I was still stuck in the damn wheelchair.

Wow, what a change that surgery did for my life.

Ash had stopped trying to talk to me on the drive to and from the therapy building. I no longer bothered to go into the office. I mostly hung out in my cottage, lying in bed, wondering what Ricki was doing. I went over the last conversation we had so many times that I had every bit of it memorized. But I didn’t know what I could have done differently, what I could have done to keep her from leaving me.

I would do just about anything to see her face again.

And then I did.

Sergio was yelling at me to move one foot at a time, and I looked up to swing the hair out of my face, and I saw her. Just briefly. But I saw her reflection in the mirror that took up one long wall so that patients could watch their muscles move. It was supposed to be inspiring. It was actually quite irritating.

But I saw Ricki’s face.

I stared at the mirror the entire rest of my session, hoping to see her again. But I didn’t.

Then three days later, there she was again.

I knew I wasn’t crazy!

I knew she was angry. I knew she said she didn’t want to see me again. But she also said she loved me.

I worked harder, moving that foot forward with more strength, more confidence. And I started doing the exercises at home I’d been skimming over, stretching my legs and rebuilding the muscles that had gone weak in the years that I was paralyzed. Day after day I could feel the muscles getting stronger. And, soon, I was taking more than one step at a time.

Her hair was a little shorter. And she had it pulled back in a funny ponytail that only actually held part of it. It was nice, the way soft tendrils of hair fell around her face. It set of her blue eyes really nicely.

She was beautiful. And she was watching me.





Chapter 38




At the Compound

“Okay, people, we have a couple of new cases.”

Ash held up a handful of file folders, as Donovan, Joss, and Kirkland made their way to the conference table. David wasn’t there. He was at physical therapy, but he’d promised to come into the office later in the day. That would be the first time since his surgery that he’d stepped foot in the main house. Ash saw it as a victory of sorts.

The physical therapist said that David was making better progress than they initially thought he would. He was already walking with one of those metal walkers that old people often push around in front of them. Plus, the therapist said he would soon graduate to a cane. And from there, he’d be walking unassisted.

It was nothing short of a miracle.

Ash worried after Ricki disappeared that David would fall into a depression he wouldn’t be able to climb his way back out of, but he seemed to have perked up these last few weeks.

Things were definitely looking up for Gray Wolf.

“We have the owner of a popular club in downtown Los Angeles who believes a former girlfriend has hired someone to kill him. Sounds a little like paranoia to me, but we always give the clients what they want.”

Kirkland held up his hand as if he was a child in school.

“I’ll take that one off your hands.”

“I would have been disappointed if you didn’t.”

Ash handed the file to Kirkland, then held up another. “We have a wealthy heiress who wants a bodyguard to follow her around for a few days while she changes insurance carriers.”

Donovan immediately touched his finger to his nose, the universal sign for ‘not me’ and Joss stuck out her tongue as she stood to retrieve the file from Ash.

“That’s it,” Ash said. “You need to work on paperwork,” he added, pointing to Donovan. “You’re always three or four cases behind.”

“Yes, boss.”

Ash looked around the room and nodded silently to himself.

Life was good.





Chapter 39




David

I found it quite ironic that my job required me to sit most of the day despite the fact that I’d just fought for months to get back the use of my legs. I suggested a standing desk to Ash, but he thought it was some sort of joke. When I showed him pictures of several I’d picked out, he laughed. I tried to enlist Rose’s help, but she thought I was crazy, too.