Wood Worked

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’ve tried several times, and—”

“No, I mean are you sure you don’t need an ambulance?”

“Yes, but I do need some help.”

“I understand. Flynn will be over in less than two minutes.”

“He will?”

“Yes,” Spencer said firmly. “Call me back as soon as you’re okay.”

“All right.” I barely remembered to thank him before hanging up. In retrospect, it was so simple. I could’ve stayed on the bed and just called Spencer and told him I’d fallen. Then when Flynn arrived, I could say that I’d managed to get up by myself. There had been no real need for painstakingly lowering myself down and shouting my head off.

Briefly, I wondered how much longer I could blame my dumb decisions on the pain medicine.

“Alyssa?” The back door slid shut, and I heard heavy footsteps approaching.

“In here, in Raphael’s room,” I called back. But that was stupid, too. He knew which room I was staying in—he was the one who’d done the bathroom remodel.

Then he was hovering over me, our positions nearly the same as they had been in the street last week. He’d pulled on a thin white undershirt that did very little to hide his muscles. They were the muscles of a man who could build decks and handle animals twice his size. I couldn’t stop staring at his massive biceps. I’d heard before that there was such a thing as a hand model. Flynn should be a bicep model.

“Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly as he looked down at me. Those deep chocolate eyes appeared to be staring right into my mind.

“I don’t think so, I just can’t get up.”

Flynn didn’t move. “Are you sure nothing’s broken?” Then he amended his statement. “Nothing new, I mean.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Regret filled me as I looked up at him. This had been a bad plan to begin with, and now it wasn’t even a ruse anymore. I really did need help.

Flynn stared me down for a moment longer, then stepped over the crutches to my side. Unlike Spencer and Raphael, who normally scooped me up like a baby, Flynn put his hands under my armpits and lifted me to my feet. Without waiting to see if I had my balance, he let go and bent to pick up the crutches. I grabbed onto the window ledge for support until he handed them to me.

I desperately needed to sit down, but I was still a few feet away from the bed. Awkwardly, I got the crutches into position and took a series of small steps. It seemed to take forever because I had to turn toward the bed, crutch my way over there, and then turn again so I could sit down. But I finally got there without falling for real. I shoved the crutches against the wall and gratefully sank down on the side of the bed. If Flynn hadn’t been there, I would’ve lain all the way down and been asleep in seconds.

But he was still here, his thick forearms folded across his broad chest. “Who taught you to use those?”

“Raphael.”

Flynn scowled.

“What?”

“Usually he’s a better teacher than that.”

Clearly, this guy was a grump. Still, he was Spencer’s brother and the twins’ uncle. I was determined to repair the relationship that seemed to have frayed in the past week. I smiled up at him. “Thank you for your help.”

“Welcome,” he grunted and turned away.

“Wait!” I said hastily. “Raphael’s making gumbo tonight, and the twins were really hoping you could join us for dinner.”

“I’m busy,” he said.

“Flynn?”

He stopped for the second time. “What now? Need a glass of water? Want me to read you a bedtime story and tuck you in?”

What the hell was wrong with this guy? He clearly wasn’t the same easy-going uncle who’d played with the kids in the park last week. “I wanted to thank you for the bench and the handrails in the shower.”

“Welcome.” It was like he was only allowed to say fifty words to me total and he didn’t want to use them all at once. But I continued on.

“Now I can get clean and wash my hair. It’s practically perfect, even though I’m usually a bath person.”

His gaze went to the open door of the bathroom. “Not much chance of that since you can’t submerge your cast.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “I was just daydreaming the other day of making a little ramp in there to keep my leg elevated.”

“A ramp?”

“Like a platform for my bad leg to keep it out of the water.”

He frowned. “You’d never be able to get in or out of there. If you could’ve pulled yourself up today, you would have.” His brown eyes returned to me as he scoffed. “I doubt your bath time fantasy includes a strange man lifting you naked out of the tub.”

I willed my cheeks not to heat as I tried to ignore that last part. Truth was, my daydreams and fantasies had gotten a bit more risqué than I was used to lately. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. “I was thinking about that handle thing they had dangling over my bed at the hospital. I could use something like that to lower myself down and get back up again.”