Wife by Design

“You do?” Lynn’s smile appeared genuine as she approached, her gaze meeting Darin’s. She held out her hand. “I’m glad because I’ve never forgotten you.”

“I’m pretty memorable.” Darin shook Lynn’s hand as his voice reverted to that of a grown man. A completely harmless, charming grown man.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m going to work hard because I want to use my arm and because I promised Grant. Who’s that?” Like Grant, Darin had noticed the slender blonde woman in jeans and a staff blouse who was hovering behind Lynn.

Unlike Grant, his older brother had the tact of a child.

“Darin, Grant, this is Maddie,” Lynn said, turning to take the other woman’s hand and pull her forward.

“You’re pretty.” Darin smiled the killer smile that had been unwittingly stealing hearts from good men for most of his life.

“It’s good to meet you,” Maddie said, her words a tad slow and thick sounding. After a quick glance at each of them, her gaze returned to the floor.

“Do you see a spider?” Darin asked. “I could kill it for you. I can step on him. Both of my feet still work.”

“I don’t see a spider.” With a sideways glance, Maddie seemed to send Lynn some kind of message.

“Maddie’s in physical therapy, too,” Lynn said. “She and Darin will be sharing this morning’s session.”

“And maybe more,” Maddie said. “Angelica mostly works with groups unless someone needs her to stand right there next to them the whole time. I don’t need that. I know my exercises and don’t need help with the machines anymore. She just has to check and make sure that I’m using my muscles right.”

Grant studied the other woman. She was...way above average in the looks department. Her blue gaze was clear. And yet...she reminded him of Darin. Postaccident Darin.

“Maddie works here,” Lynn told the two men.

“I’m a good Friday.”

“A girl Friday,” Lynn said quickly, and Grant took a mental step back. He’d been so busy taking care of his own business and finding help for Darin that he hadn’t really considered the day-to-day business of The Lemonade Stand.

Lynn had mentioned residents. She’d been referring to abused and battered women.

Like Maddie?

Was she in therapy to recover from injuries caused by physical abuse?

Had she been hit in the head?

“I saw a movie called His Girl Friday,” Darin inserted into the conversation. “It’s a Cary Grant film that’s part of the National Film Registry’s catalog and ranks number nineteen on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years...100 Laughs,” the man who’d once been headed toward a top position on Wall Street finished.

“That was a funny movie,” Maddie said. “That guy kept getting arrested. But I didn’t like it that the main guy yelled all the time. If you’d like to come with me, I’ll show you where we do therapy....”

Darin stepped forward, took Maddie’s elbow and Lynn started. She looked as though she was going to step in.

“Okay, but I’m a little scared.” Darin’s childlike voice could be heard as the two walked through the door that Darin opened after letting go of Maddie while she typed a code into the box on the wall. “I can’t use my left arm at all, you know....”

Lynn followed, looking like a mother hen as her gaze darted back and forth between Maddie and Darin.

“He won’t hurt her,” Grant whispered, leaning in close as he fell into step beside her.

Lynn put visible and immediate distance between them, saying nothing. And Grant cursed himself silently for not being more aware, more in tune, with the fact that he and his brother had just entered a very sensitive culture.

It wasn’t going to be enough just to make certain that he and Darin didn’t do anything to hurt these women; they were going to have to be aware that every move they made, every look they gave, every sentence they spoke, could potentially scare any one of them.

Lynn Duncan included—apparently.

* * *

“WE CAN WATCH through here.” Avoiding eye contact with the man she’d been schooling herself not to think about for a week now, Lynn walked toward the large window in the hallway outside the physical therapy room where Maddie had led Darrin. “Angelica keeps the blinds closed when she has to, but if she can keep them open, she does. A lot of battered women suffer from PTSD―post-traumatic stress disorder―and often that’s accompanied by bouts of claustrophobia.” Keeping it professional. Aside from the warmth that suffused her body as it came, once again, in close contact with Grant Bishop.

What in the hell was the matter with her?

Darin looked up, saw them and waved. With a tap on his shoulder, Angelica called his attention back to her and the bar she’d placed within his brother’s left grasp.

“If you want to hand me over to whoever’s going to show me the grounds, we can move on,” Grant said. “He’ll do better if I’m not here distracting him.”

“Lila, our managing director, was going to go over things with you, but she’s...busy...this morning.” Their newest resident, a middle-aged woman named Melanie Zoyne, had appeared on the doorstep in the middle of the night with no broken bones or cuts that needed stitching, but bruising on every bruisable part of her body. “My next appointment isn’t until after lunch, so as long as there aren’t any emergencies, I’ve been elected to do the honors.”

She’d been up with Melanie since three—thankfully there’d been no indication of internal injuries to accompany the varying stages of bruising the woman’s brother had left in his wake—and was running on adrenaline.

Which might explain the weakened state that was allowing for inappropriate reactions to the jeans-clad man standing beside her.

He was just a man. Like any other.

“Darin’s eager to please you.” It was one of the things she’d noticed about the brothers four years before. Rather than being cantankerous or resentful, as many injury patients were, Darin just seemed to want to keep his brother happy.

Did Grant have that effect on everyone?

“He’s eager to get the use of his arm back,” the man at her side said, his gaze trained on his brother. And then he glanced at her. “Dr. Zimmer says that the location of the injury, the part of the brain affected by the surgery, is retrainable. With hard work Darin will be as good as new.”

As good as he’d ever be with an incurable brain injury. Grant was still watching her. Waiting?

“I know, he told me,” she said. “And while I’m not a surgeon, I dealt with a lot of brain injury patients during my years on the neurosurgery ward, and from everything I’ve studied, seen and learned, I completely believe that Darin can recover from this latest setback.” She sounded like the consummate professional. With a last glance in the therapy room, not at Grant’s brother, but to make certain that Maddie was fine, Lynn headed down the wide hallway, stopping to straighten a magazine on one of the cherrywood end tables in one of the conversation nooks stationed along the wall.

She’d take him to Lila’s outer office. Show him the large map of the grounds on the wall across from Lila’s desk. Take him out to the garage that housed the lawn equipment and fertilizer they already owned—collected through donations. Then give him a brief tour of the private beach and the bungalows because he couldn’t explore those unescorted—and finally get back to real life.

Lunch with Kara, whom she hadn’t seen since Maddie had brought the little girl to her office on the way to the preschool housed on the property. This was the private preschool for residents at the Stand, not the preschool run by current and former residents that was attended by neighboring children and—like the other businesses—helped support the Stand.

She’d get through these next moments and then get her mind back on the things that mattered most.

* * *

“YOU AND DARIN have the biggest part of the battle won,” Lynn Duncan said as she guided him through a maze of hallways that were wide enough to be rooms. “He’s willing to work hard.”

“Darin’s always been willing to go the extra mile.”

“But his attitude is good,” she said, turning another corner closely enough that he bumped into her.