“Of course I can stand.” He made an effort to rise, paled, and lowered himself carefully back down. “Just not right now.”
“All right, that’s it—I’m calling for help.”
“No!” He reached out to grab her wrist when she would have risen. For a man who couldn’t even stand, his grip was remarkably strong. “Don’t call anyone.”
“Trent, you need help. Just let me—”
“No.” He swallowed, then added. “Please.”
Apparently he’d swallowed a large amount of pride. Annie groaned, annoyed with herself for letting his plea affect her. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend you aren’t here? Just go about my business and step over you when I want to get to the other side of the room? Toss a throw rug over you, perhaps?”
His eyebrows dipped lower. “I never realized until today that you have such a smart mouth on you,” he grumbled.
“Yeah, well, you would try the patience of a saint. So what are we going to do, Trent?”
“I gave in and took a muscle relaxer a few minutes ago. When it kicks in, I’ll be able to get up and go home.”
“If it’s like any muscle relaxer I’ve ever taken, you won’t be able to drive when it takes effect. You’re already starting to float, aren’t you?”
He made a visible effort to focus on her face. She didn’t know how well he could see without his glasses, but she suspected the glazed look in his eyes had more to do with medication than myopia. “I can handle it,” he muttered.
She shook her head. “Do you ever ask for help, Trent McBride?”
“Do you?” he countered.
He had her there. “At least let me call your brother.”
He shook his head. “He’ll tell Mom, and she’ll freak out and start hovering. She and Dad are planning to leave for a month-long cruise in a few weeks, and I don’t want to give her reason to delay it again. They both need the vacation very badly after everything that’s happened in our family during the past couple of years.”
She didn’t know what had happened in his family, but it was an argument she couldn’t really refute. His concern for his parents obviously outweighed his own discomfort, and she wouldn’t have felt right going against his wishes. Painfully estranged from her own parents, she could only envy the close bonds she’d sensed in the McBride family. She could also identify with Trent’s need to prove himself independent of them.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked more gently. “Would a heating pad help?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t express his gratitude that she’d given up her insistence to call for help, but she saw it in his expression. “Thanks.”
“If I help you, can you make it to the couch?”
“I think so,” he answered cautiously.
“I’ll get the heating pad first. Don’t try to move—I’ll be right back.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he muttered.
She hurried into the bedroom, still half convinced she should be calling an ambulance instead of trying to take care of him herself.
She should have known that Trent wouldn’t follow directions even when he was in terrible pain. She found him struggling to rise when she returned with the heating pad in hand. Making a sound of exasperation, she tossed the pad on the couch and moved to help him.
“You really are mule-headed, aren’t you?” she chided, bracing him with her shoulder. Her reaction to seeing his pallor and the pain in his eyes made her voice sharper than she had intended. “I told you to wait until I got back.”
“If I wanted to be lectured, I’d have called my mother,” he complained, his words slurred because he was forcing them through clenched teeth.
“Something we should probably be doing, anyway,” she retorted, all too aware of his body pressed full-length against hers. She had one arm around his waist, which confirmed her belief that he could stand to gain a few pounds. She could feel heat radiating through his washed-thin denim shirt. She pushed her instinctive feminine reactions to the back of her mind and concentrated on his welfare.
Lowering him to the couch was an ordeal in itself. She blinked back a film of sympathetic tears when a broken gasp escaped him. He was hurting so badly and she felt so helpless.
He barely fit on her secondhand couch. She slipped a throw pillow beneath his head and managed to position the heating pad at the small of his back, where he said the pain was most intense. She retrieved his glasses from the floor and set them on the coffee table within easy reach. “Can I get you anything?” she asked then, hovering beside the couch. “Something to drink? Soda? Hot tea, perhaps?”
“No, I’m okay for now. If you have houses to clean or something, feel free to go. I’ll just lie here a few minutes until the medication does its job, then I’ll head home.”