Fly Away, page 4
part #5 of Baxter Boys Series
He shoved that thought aside before he started thinking about Janice again.
“How ya been, Tough?” Roland held out his hand. Tough grabbed it with his calloused one and pumped.
“Busy.”
“It’s that time of year. School’s letting out, and everyone’s getting ready to go on vacation.”
One side of Tough’s mouth curved up. “Good for business.”
“You and me both. Lots of sports injuries in the summer.”
“Wow, that’s sad.” Turbo, Tough’s brother, came over, holding a red-haired toddler in one arm and a dark-haired toddler in another. DeShaun, his oldest son, trailed behind. “It must be awful to make your living off the misfortune of others.”
Turbo was never serious. In all the time Roland had been at the garage, Turbo was perpetually happy. He took the statement like the joke it was.
“Kind of like a tow-truck driver, huh?”
Turbo laughed. The kids in his arms watched his face and smiled when he did. “We’ve got a smart aleck on our hands.”
“Takes one to know one,” one of the old men at the checkerboard shouted across the garage.
“It never fails to amaze me how good their hearing is when I’m not trying to talk to them,” Turbo said with a headshake.
“I heard that,” the same white-haired guy shouted.
Tough laughed. “You know where the wrenches are. I’ll get a filter.”
Turbo shifted the kids in his arms. “Seriously? This is the only shop I know where people have to do the work themselves.” He looked at Roland. “He’ll probably still charge you.”
“Double rate when I do the work myself,” Roland said with a straight face.
“Triple if he tries to give me advice while he’s doing it,” Tough said with the same serious look.
Turbo grinned. “Well, I’d love to help, but I’m busy.” He jiggled the kids in his arms. “I’m heading over to Kelly’s children’s center to play for a while.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, to let the kids play for a while.”
Roland laughed at the idea of Turbo at the children’s center that shared the building with Tough’s garage. “The truth comes out first, huh?”
“There’s nothing wrong with having fun at any age,” Turbo said over his shoulder as he walked to Tough’s office. The buildings connected through the back office, although Roland had only seen family using the connecting doors.
“At least Kelly can help keep an eye on Turbo. No telling what he’ll get into over there,” Roland commented as Tough handed him the box with the filter in it.
“Kelly’s at a baby shower.” Tough snorted. “Along with Turbo’s wife and all the other ladies in the family.”
“Oh.” Roland set the box aside. He’d never really thought much about babies. Even when Janice and he were together, they’d kind of had an understanding that babies would be far in the future after both of them had completed medical school and residencies. His brother was married, and they weren’t planning on having children.
Having hit thirty with no kids and no wife, Roland figured he probably would never have any. He really hadn’t recovered from losing Janice. He definitely wasn’t interested in going through that again.
But a long-haired blond popped into his mind as he twisted the filter wrench. Dusty had impressed him with her drive and determination. She got knocked down but wasn’t afraid to get back up and keep trying. Although Dusty was going to have to find something else to do other than motocross racing. Maybe the doctor would break the news to her at her appointment on Monday.
Several hours later, his oil was changed, and he stood around drinking coffee and talking shop with the old men, Tough, and Turbo. The other Baxter brothers, Ben and Torque, had arrived in the early afternoon. Torque had his kids in tow. Roland remembered the shower was for Ben’s wife, Riley, who had picked Dusty up from therapy.
“When was her due date again?” Torque asked, taking a sip of his coffee and shaking his head when one of his preschooler twins asked to have a sip.
“Tomorrow,” Ben said. He was the only one who didn’t have a child in his arms. Every other time Roland had met Ben, he’d seemed pretty calm, but today he couldn’t stop pacing.
“I’m betting you’re going to get a call to meet her at the hospital,” Turbo said with a smirk.
Roland would bet on that too. When she’d picked Dusty up, he’d just hoped she made it out of the therapy center before labor started.
“Shut up, Turbo,” Ben said, his calm tone belying his words and the twitching of his leg.
Torque grinned. “There’s nothing to it, Ben. You watch your wife suffer in agony for twelve to twenty-four hours, then she can’t stop smiling, and you never sleep again. Easy as a medieval torture chamber.”
“We could have chosen a torture chamber?” Turbo acted surprised. “I’d have done that. In a heartbeat.”
Ben had quit trying to pretend he wasn’t pacing. He poured what had to be his seventh cup of coffee.
“You guys aren’t making him feel any better,” Roland felt compelled to say.
“There’s nothing to feel better about,” the old man with the white hair, Mr. Sigel, said.
“It hurts, and no amount of Twinkies makes it better,” Turbo said with a dramatic shudder.
“You must be talking about labor again.” Harris, Turbo’s wife, walked in the garage door.
“Busted,” Torque said under his breath.
Roland laughed. He saw his brother every other Christmas. They might spend a few minutes talking about the stock market. It wasn’t fun, and he couldn’t wait to leave. He’d much rather hang out in the garage with the Baxter brothers. But if the wives were home, that was his cue to go.
“I threw my check on your desk,” he said to Tough as a blond and a very similar-looking brunette walked in. He wasn’t sure, and couldn’t remember their names, but he thought those were the Baxter sisters. Twins, if he recalled correctly.
Tough nodded. “Thanks.”
Roland threw a hand up as he walked away. “See you guys in a few months.”
The brothers called out farewells. He nodded at the twins and Harris and Cassidy and Kelly. He would have nodded a greeting at Riley, but Ben had hurried to her and was hovering over her in a way that Roland, even with his limited experience with pregnant women, could tell was guaranteed to annoy her. He laughed to himself and shut the door behind him, digging in his pocket for the keys to his car which they’d parked along the street to get it out of the way.
A blond head in the back of one of the cars caught his eye. At first, he assumed he was imagining things. For some reason, he seemed to see blond heads everywhere lately. But he slowed down anyway. In the back of his mind, ever since he heard about the shower, he’d wondered if he’d see Dusty.
She had her braced leg propped along the back seat. Her head leaned back against the back window, and her eyes were closed.
Maybe he should have walked by, but he tapped on the window.
She jerked up, wincing.
Immediately, concern tightened his chest.
Her eyes widened when she saw him. She twisted and put her finger up to put the window down.
“Hey,” he said. “Riley made it through the shower without anyone having to practice their baby delivering skills?”
Dusty smiled, which was what he was going for. “Yeah. Much to everyone’s relief. Mine, most of all.”
“Yeah. I can see you taking a bike apart and putting it back together blindfolded, but I have a hard time picturing you delivering a baby.”
She smiled, but it was pinched. His health care instincts kicked in.
“You’re hurting.” He’d found with people like Dusty, it was better to state the obvious, because she’d just deny it if he asked.
She sighed. “My back.”
A jolt of concern went through him. Of all of her injuries, her back was the one that could have done the most damage.
“I’ve been sitting too long, but,” she laughed, “it hurts to walk. It hurts to sit. It hurts to stand on my head.” She swallowed. “I can’t really do anything without pain.”
“Someone is coming to take you home?” He wasn’t sure whose car she was sitting in.
“I told them to take their time. Hanging out at the garage is downtime combined with family time for them, and I didn’t want to rush them.”
“I’ll take you home.” Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew he was blurring the line between therapist and patient. He already thought of Dusty way more than his other clients, and he’d warned himself repeatedly that he needed to be careful.
She looked down, seeming to think about it. He half hoped she’d say no. But there was no denying the excitement that leaped in his soul when she said, “Okay.”
“Let me run in and tell them. I’ll be back out in a second to give you a hand.”
Her head snapped up, and he held up his hand. “I know. I know. You can do it yourself. I’m your therapist, remember?” He felt like he needed the reminder. “But let me help because I want to and it makes me feel good.”
Her lips curved up, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
He hurried in. The ladies wanted to come out and talk to her, but he assured them she was fine, and since they all knew him as Dusty’s therapist, he got the impression they figured she’d be in good hands.
Dusty was out of the car when he returned. “I thought you said I could help?”
She lifted a slim shoulder. “You weren’t here.”
“Here.” He held out his arm. “Hold onto me, and try to keep from putting all your weight on your knee.” Her hand came up and squeezed his biceps. He tried to tell himself that didn’t give him a thrill, but it was an outright lie. Pointing them in the direction of his car, he started walking, letting her set the pace.
“I assume your ribs don’t hurt?” He remembered reading on her chart that they’d been bruised. Sometimes ribs were the slowest thing to heal.
“My whole body feels sore. I overdid it with the shower.” She gave him a sideways look. “I tried to help decorate.”
He shook his head. “The therapist in me wants to lecture you.”
“Ignore him.”
“I think that’s my feminine side.”
“So,” she said slowly, “as a therapist, you identify with the female pronouns?”
He laughed outright but stopped abruptly when he glanced over and she wasn’t smiling.
“Male pronouns. Every day.” His grin teased a smile out of her.
They stopped at the side of his car. “Do you need to sit in the back?” he asked.
“If I take my brace off, I can sit in the front.”
“The contents of your chart are confidential, but I think you know the doctor told you to wear it all the time except to shower.”
She sighed. A deep sigh that said just how sick of the brace she was.
“You know, if you didn’t do dangerous things like race motocross, you wouldn’t be wearing a brace right now.”
“I’m just as likely to have a car accident and be in worse shape,” she replied. Stubbornly in his opinion. It fascinated him how someone so small could have so much determination.
He opened the back door.
“I can fold myself in, but I look like a groundhog squeezing into a mousehole. Maybe you could pretend there’s an elephant standing in the middle of the street?”
“What? And miss the show?” he teased then turned his back out of respect for her pride. She had a lot of it.
Her home was only twenty minutes from Tough’s shop, in the wealthy section of town, and they spent most of the ride in silence between her giving him directions.
He pulled up the long, curving drive. A large brick two-story home sat majestically at the top. A massive shiny dark blue and silver motor home, with a BMW SUV attached to it, was parked beside the garage.
“My parents are home,” Dusty stated flatly from the back.
Since the only vehicle in sight was the motor home and attached SUV, Roland assumed they must have just arrived in it.
“They’ve been away?”
“Yeah. They’re retired, and they travel the country almost year-round.”
He tried to remember her age from her chart. Twenty-six?
Like she could read his mind, or maybe like she’d dealt with these questions all her life, she said, “I have two older brothers. I was an ‘oops’ that my parents most definitely weren’t expecting and didn’t really want.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, like she really believed it, that Roland was honestly taken aback. His parents weren’t the most nurturing people in the world, but he’d never doubted that he’d been wanted.
He glanced in the rearview mirror to see her face, as his heart hurt for her. Maybe this was why she worked so hard to be the best in a sport that wasn’t known for its women competitors.
He pulled up beside the RV. “I know you can get out yourself,” he started.
Her doorlatch clicking interrupted him. The gentleman in him couldn’t let her do it herself. He got out in a hurry.
No question it was awkward, with her back brace and her knee brace, and her shoulder stabilized in a sling. “I can’t believe the doctor even lets you out of the house. You’re basically a walking medical supply store.”
“Funny.” She avoided his eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be out of the house, are you?” he asked suspiciously, realizing belatedly he should have phrased it as a statement.
“Only for therapy.” She hooked a hand over the open door, standing with most of her weight on one foot. “I couldn’t stand being cooped up inside all the time.” She lifted a shoulder again. “Even when I wasn’t racing, Kelly and Cassidy both spend a lot of time helping kids in the area, and Harris has the library, of course, and I was helping one of them constantly on my downtime, but now...” Her fingers tightened, and her eyes closed in frustration. “I’m more helpless than the kids they’re working with. I’m pretty much useless.”
His hand ached to touch her cheek. He nodded instead. “Yeah, I know. It’d be hard to go from what you were doing to doing nothing.”
“Exactly. And when I sit around, all I think about is the stuff I could be doing and the stuff I want to do, and I can’t do any of it.”
He almost said she should have her friends over, but he’d just seen her friends, and they all had babies and small children. They’d be busy, and Dusty shouldn’t be jostled by toddlers and little kids anyway.
“Now that your parents are home, they’ll keep you busy.”
“They’ll be leaving,” she said flatly, her expression blank.
It was too much for Roland, and his mouth shot out words faster than his teeth could catch them. “Then I’ll come by. I’m not busy tomorrow, and I work early mornings, so I can be here at three o’ clock every day. We’ll find something to do that won’t get you in trouble.”
He wasn’t skirting the line between therapist and patient any longer. He’d just busted right through it. It was worth it to see how Dusty’s face brightened.
But she said, “You don’t have to.”
“I know. I want to.”
Her blue eyes shifted to his, and they stared at each other. Hers wide and uncertain, the most vulnerable he’d seen her. Who knows what she saw on his face. Hopefully the swirling in his chest, that he couldn’t even decide what it meant, didn’t show up there.
As he looked deeper into her eyes, he had to admit to himself that his feelings really did go beyond the surface therapist-patient relationship.
That thought made him jerk back and look away. He couldn’t do that. Not only could he not risk his heart with a woman who raced dirt bikes for fun, but he couldn’t risk his job by getting involved with a patient. Just two months ago, his friend and the only other male physical therapist had been fired for getting involved with a patient. Roland knew, with his position as taking on the “tough” cases and also his high-profile clients, that he might be too valuable to get fired, but he didn’t want to risk his job. For getting clients in physical therapy, reputation was everything.
Plus, he needed to remember Janice. She was a daredevil, too, although she didn’t race.
A little voice in his head reminded him of Dusty’s chart. She wouldn’t be racing dirt bikes ever again.
He might not lose her like he lost Janice, who loved the speed and thrill of flying. What was wrong with him that he was attracted to daredevil females? Wait. Did he just admit he was attracted to Dusty?
“I want to help.” He heard the words come out of his mouth.
She nodded. “Okay. I’d like for you to help me.” She looked a little surprised that she said that. He almost laughed at her open mouth and widening eyes. At least he wasn’t the only one whose mouth seemed to be running off and leaving the thinking part of their brain far behind.
Her mouth quirked up in a small smile, and his followed. The air between them seemed to swirl, like something fundamental shifted in their relationship.
The spell was broken by a woman’s voice calling, “Dusty, honey. Is that you?”
Chapter 7
Dusty turned, her shaking hand having nothing to do with the pain that throbbed in her back and foot and everything to do with the man standing in front of her. What was that syndrome called? Rescuer syndrome or something? Where one fell in love with one’s doctor or nurse or, in her case, therapist.
Great. On top of all her physical problems, now she had mental issues. Just wonderful.
“Hi, Mom.” She pasted a smile on her face. Her mom loved her, she was sure of it. But when Dusty was growing up, she didn’t really want to be bothered with her, and it was hard to get over that. “Where’s Dad?”
“Oh, you know him.” Her mom waved her hand. “He has sports on already. We’ve only been home for five minutes.”
Her dad had been a top producer at one of the big sports channels. He’d never been on the air, but he’d lived, breathed, and slept with sports. NASCAR had been his favorite. She had to hand it to her parents; doing the dirt bike circuit when she’d been little hadn’t been cheap. They’d never complained one time about the money.
