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His stomach hardened, but he fought to keep his expression neutral. “The firm isn’t ready for that. I need more time to build up the clientele.” What he didn’t say was he needed to recoup what he had spent to start the business.
But Sandra read his mind anyway. “Look, you’re in over your head, but—”
“The answer is no,” Steven barked, and he immediately regretted it when Sandra’s eyes widened.
“Suit yourself.” Her tone had lost its friendliness, and she marched out of his office.
Great. First, he’d hurt Rose, and then he’d upset his best employee. If he wasn’t careful, Sandra would be on Michael’s heels as he ran out the door. And that would really put Steven in a bind.
Around lunchtime, Lanie popped her head in. “I’m here to take you to your physical therapy appointment.”
Steven finished what he was typing and hit save before he glanced up and forced a smile. “Yay.”
“I know you hate it, but it’s good for you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He pushed back from the desk and gestured to his chair. “I suppose if it’ll get me out of this stupid thing, it’s worth it.” Without waiting for her response, he maneuvered his chair from behind his desk and out of his office.
“I talked to Rose,” Lanie said as she pushed him through the front and headed for the van. “Sounds like you two had another argument because you aren’t taking your health seriously.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not.” After locking his wheelchair into place in the van, she buckled him in. “I’m worried about you two. Maybe you should consider couples counseling or therapy.”
“I’m already in enough therapy,” he muttered.
Lanie snorted and shut the door. When she climbed into the driver’s seat, she shot him a look in the rearview. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. She looked like their mother when she did that, and his heart ached. The first anniversary of her death was coming up fast, and he wasn’t ready to face the reality that she had been gone a year.
He closed his eyes, willing his thoughts in another direction. Unfortunately, they turned to Rose. She hadn’t said it, but the look in her eyes had told him she hadn’t believed him when he’d promised to try harder to take care of himself. Their goodbye had been lukewarm at best, and though he had no real reason to doubt her, his gut told him something had changed between them.
With a sigh, Steven turned away from the window. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if Rose pushed to postpone the wedding not for my health but because she had an ulterior motive.”
When his sister met his gaze in the rearview with a quizzical frown, he tried to think of a better way to word it. For once, the tightening in his chest had nothing to do with his heart attack and everything to do with his jumbled-up emotions.
“I knew after our first date Rose was the one for me. The only reason I waited to propose was because we both wanted to finish our degrees. And then we wanted to establish ourselves in our respective careers.” He turned to the window as they passed Bea’s Diner. “But I sort of blew that up when I got it in my head to move back here and open my own practice. Rose was doing well in Baltimore, and she’d received a job offer for a position in Boston.”
“And now you’re afraid she regrets that decision?”
A weight fell off his shoulders. “Yes, exactly. And my biggest fear, the one I can barely bear to think, let alone say out loud”—his voice lowered—“is that if we had put it off any longer, she’d wise up and leave me.”
“Oh, Steven.” Lanie shook her head as she turned off Main Street and headed toward the parking lot of a large building. “Rose loves you. She may not have promised ‘for better or worse’ yet, but she meant it all the same when she accepted your proposal.”
“I wish I could believe that.” When Lanie opened her mouth as if to protest, he hurried on. “Wait, let me finish.” He took a deep breath. “Just… look at me. I’m not even thirty years old, and I can’t walk, I—”
“But you’ve made progress in such a short amount of time!” After pulling up to the entrance of the building, she put the van in park then turned and looked at him. “You will walk again. You will have a beautiful, wonderful, long life with Rose.”
Tears pricked behind his eyelids, and he blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. “Thanks, sis. That means a lot.” He nodded at the clock on the dash. “We’d better go, or I’ll be late for my torture appointment.”
She laughed. “There’s that sense of humor I know and love.”
Lanie might have taken his statement as a joke, but Steven had meant it as anything but. No matter how much he tried to convince himself that physical therapy was necessary to reclaim his life and walk again, nothing would ease the sense of dread that grew within him the closer they got to the building. From everything he had heard, Ronnie, his physical therapist, sounded like a sadist. And he expected she would work him until tears literally poured down his cheeks before pushing him some more.
“Ah, my next victim,” said a woman with spiky blue hair and a row of earrings climbing each ear. She rubbed her hands together. “I’m Ronnie, and you must be Steven.”
Great first impression. Steven shot a pleading glance at Lanie, who shrugged helplessly. When he turned to look at Ronnie, she had a hand on her hip and a smirk on her face.
“Nothing like the smell of fresh fear to start a new session,” Ronnie said with a laugh. She smiled at Lanie. “I’ll take him from here.”
“Good luck,” Lanie whispered. After giving him a quick hug, she rushed out to the van. Steven watched her leave, wishing he could follow.
