Page 16 of Leave a Mark
Wren shrugged. “I’ll live.”
“You? You’ll be fine. I’ll be the one cleaning it up.” He got out of the Jeep, but not before he saw her stunned look.
“What are you doing?” she asked after he came around and opened her car door.
“I’m helping you up those stairs, and, in the event that Angry Agnes has soiled your sheets, I’m going to be making up your bed because you are in no shape to do it yourself.”
“What?” she asked, eyes wide.
“You heard me.” He held out his hands. “Do I have your permission to carry you up the stairs?”
“Hell no! I can make it up the stairs just fine, and I can handle everything else, thank you very much.”
Lee felt his brows meet and pull down. “Were you listening when the nurse talked about straining the surgery site and risking another hemorrhage?”
“That won’t happen,” she said evenly.
“I’ve seen it happen. It isn’t pretty.”
Wren stared at him, stone-faced. “Let me at leasttrythe stairs.”
“Fair enough.” The stairs weren’t his biggest concern. Sure, they would hurt, especially when she used her hip flexor on her right side to mount each step, but Lee was most concerned about her lifting, reaching, and pulling — exactly what she’d need to do if she had to change her bedding. “But I’m helping.”
“Yeah, you’re good at that,” she grumbled. But when he offered his hand to help her down from the cab of the Jeep, she accepted. Even with his aid, she winced as she stretched her legs down to reach the ground.
They made their way slowly to the foot of the stairs, and Lee looked up at the top before glancing back down at her.
“You sure about this?”
Her answer was to grip the banister with her left hand. Lee grabbed her right elbow as she ascended. And she was smart. She went up slowly, using her left side to mount each stair and then just letting her right leg catch up. Even though he gave her a boost with each step, by the time they reached the top, her jaw clenched tight, and he could feel her trembling.
“Shit…” she sighed, catching her breath. “That truly sucked. I’m never leaving the house again.”
Lee laughed. “You’ll feel better in a few days. I promise.”
Wren unlocked her door, but before she opened it, she looked up at Lee with a stern expression.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He started to ask what she meant when she swung the door open, and Lee took in the front room of her apartment. Hips. Thighs. Backs. Buttocks. Breasts. Photographs of every conceivable body part hung all over the room — all of them covered in intricate and astounding tattoos. Scores and scores of them.
“Wow.” And a moment later, “Did you do all of these?”
“Ha. I wish,” she said. “Most of these are inspirations. But I did the ones in the black frames.”
Lee scanned the walls. He counted fourteen, and they were among the most striking. In one, an inverted Chinese fan spanned the lower back on a woman with generous hips. She’d captured the color, the grain, even the sheen of the fan’s silk, and a riverside town sprawled over the bamboo ribbing. It looked real enough to touch. In another, Wren had tattooed a pair of black lace underwear across a young woman’s entire pelvis. Lee found himself staring in order to find her cleft, but it was so well camouflaged among the lace pattern it was almost impossible.
“Those are incredible.” He hoped she could hear the awe in his voice. He’d never seen anything like it.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, stepping up to her coffee table and bending to clear sheets and sheets of sketches.
“What are you doing?” He tore his eyes from the wall and frowned at her.
“It’s such a mess. It’s embarrassing.”
Lee reached forward to stop her. “First of all, it’s not a mess. Clearly, this is your workspace, and you are damn good at your work. Secondly, you aren’t supposed to be doing chores,” he scolded. “You need a good five days of rest.”
He watched her brush her bangs out of her eyes again. She obviously wasn’t comfortable having him in her space, and it showed. And why should she be? He was pretty much a total stranger.Even if I am her doctor. Scratch that.Especiallysince he was her doctor.
