Page 33 of Santa Baby Maybe
“Oh, that’s not my husband,” Joy objected. “Does he even look like he could be my husband? No way. Nope. Just a guy I work with.”
“I’ll make sure she’s well cared for,” I said. “Thank you, doctor.”
“Yep,” she said, and she and the nurse returned down the hallway from where they’d come.
“Your address, Joy.”
“Crazy. My husband. As if,” Joy was muttering.
“Joy,” I said more sharply. “Address.”
“Why do you need my address?”
“So I can plug it into the app,” I explained. “Then a very nice man or woman will pull up shortly in a car and take us there. It’s this magical thing called Uber.”
“I can call for my own car. I have crutches now to get around. You don’t need to take me home.”
My jaw dropped. Was she serious? “Joy, we have to get you home. I have to find out if you have everything you need. If you don’t, I need to get it for you. Right now, your only responsibility is lying down on a couch. I assume you have a couch? If you don’t, then we’re going to my place.”
Her jaw tightened like she was going to be stubborn.
“Joy! I did this to you. You have to let me make this better. Now, you have two seconds to give me your address or I’m taking you back to my place.”
Relenting, she gave me her address and I plugged it in, taking the effort to save the information for future purposes, even though I had no idea what they would be.
She refused to allow me to carry her to the car when it arrived, and I relented because she was still in the wheelchair. But I did lift her out of the chair and into the car as carefully as I could. Wheelchair returned, crutches on the floor of the car, I got in on the other side and promptly lifted her legs into my lap, making her basically shift so she was leaning back against the car door. When she started to make a fuss, I reminded her, “The doctor said you need to keep it elevated.”
“You know this is a lot of fuss over a sprained ankle.”
“A sprained ankle I caused,” I said even as I ran my hand up and down her very healthy left ankle. Which was really quite narrow where it met her foot.
“You didn’tcauseit. We bumped into each other and I fell. Tell me again what you were doing there. Did you say shopping?”
I didn’t reply because Ihadcaused it. I’d been purposefully waiting to bump into her. I just hadn’t meant to do so literally. Only she didn’t know that.
“You know, you have very nice ankles,” I said, running my finger around her delicate left ankle just underneath her leggings. No wonder it had twisted so easily. It looked perfectly fragile.
“You mean when one isn’t swollen three times its normal size,” she said, looking down at her feet.
“Yes,” I huffed. Except then.
The trip took twenty minutes to a small, well-kept housing community on the outskirts of Denver near Aurora. When we stopped in front of a neat ranch house, with its well-manicured landscape that I had no doubt would be filled to the brim with color in the spring, I wasn’t surprised.
My condo was cool and sophisticated. Simple and suited to my needs.
This house was warmth and comfort. I could feel it come over me just looking at it. But it was also something else. It felt solid and real. Not a transient thing, a place to stay, but a home. I got out of the car and retrieved her crutches.
“I’m using them,” she insisted as she shuffled out of the car.
Seeing her holding the car door to help her balance, I relented. She would need to get accustomed to the crutches, and the short walk from the sidewalk to the front door would be easy to manage. I handed her the crutches and she tucked them under her arms, then slowly I walked her to the front porch.
I watched as she reached into the satchel she’d had thrown over her shoulder this whole time, and dug out her keys. She unlocked the door and navigated herself inside. The living room was to her right and she didn’t waste any time making it to the couch and easing herself down.
The house was much like Joy. Filled with color and warmth. Oversized, comfortable furniture in the living room. An old-fashioned dining room table and hutch in the room to my left. There was an arched doorway leading to what I imagined was the kitchen. Now that she was safely settled, I moved in that direction.
“Where do you keep your pain medication?” I called to her even as I stepped into the kitchen, which was clean and neat except for a coffee mug sitting in the sink. But then I heard it. The low growling.
Crouched in a small ball by a door that led the backyard, Jake growled at me with the ferocity of a wolf.
