Wife by Design

He blinked. Stared for a second, and said, “You’re telling me I’m in for a lot of hard work.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t possibly do the job you’re promising to do. You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for.”

“I will get the work done and do as good a job—or a better job—than the company currently providing the services.”

The man was determined.

A characteristic she admired. A lot.

“My brother’s quality of life depends on him having that therapy.” His gaze spoke directly to her heart.

He wasn’t getting it. She couldn’t have him around.

“There are only so many hours in a day and you’ll still have to earn a living.”

“Before he went in for surgery, Darin was experiencing serious bouts of depression,” he said. “They were growing increasingly worse, with times of moroseness similar to what we went through about a year after his accident. If he ends up paralyzed for life, I’m going to lose him.”

The man’s desperation was understandable.

“I’ll get the work done,” Grant Bishop said again, the words as firm as any promise she’d ever heard. “I generally do the design work and the guys do the physical labor, which leaves me evenings to focus completely on Darin. If I have to, I’ll spend the days out in the yards here, and do my design work at night. Darin needs this therapy more than he needs trips to baseball games with me. And I swear to you, your residents will have nothing to fear from either me or Darin. He’s like he is because he was protecting a woman.”

The cause of Darin’s condition, the stingray barb lodged in his brain, had been in his file. The circumstances that had caused that barb to be there were not.

She couldn’t help herself. “What happened?” she asked.

Boundaries! The word screamed in her brain. Vital rule of health care—keep your boundaries.

But things were different at the Stand.

“He and his wife were scuba diving. She got tangled in her line and was losing all of her air. He got her untangled but was attacked by the stingray during the process so it took him longer than it should have. Badly bleeding and half out of his mind, he still got her up to the surface.”

“Darin’s married?”

“Was.”

“She left him? After he saved her life?” Because he was brain damaged. Some people were that selfish.

“She died. She was gone by the time they got her out of the water.”

“After he went through all that she didn’t make it?”

Grant swallowed, and that told her more than any words he could have said.

“If there was anywhere else I could afford to get the quality of therapy he needs, I’d be pounding on their door, too.” Grant Bishop’s quiet words fell into the silence. “Dr. Zimmer said that The Lemonade Stand is Darin’s best hope. Apparently, your therapist has a group session for the mentally handicapped.”

“Yes,” Lynn said. “She specializes in working with emotionally—and mentally—handicapped patients who are also physically injured.” The group session for the mentally handicapped had only one patient at the moment.

“Dr. Zimmer indicated that she’s good at encouraging the hopeless to find hope,” Grant Bishop said, looking her straight in the eye.

They were her own words to Dr. Zimmer the last time she’d seen him.

Grant said Darin had been suffering from depression even before the surgery. Lynn surmised that without sensitivity to Darin’s emotional issues, physical therapy might do him no good at all.

The Lemonade Stand, founded by a young man who’d grown up in an abusive household, existed to help save and protect human life. In a very real sense, Darin’s life depended on them. If the landscaping work was too much for Grant’s small company, they could hire out half of the landscaping, help Darin and still save the Stand some money.

“I’ll make a recommendation,” Lynn told the man. “Talk to your brother to make certain that you’ll have his cooperation with your plan, and call me in the morning.”

Call me in the morning. The words were a medical cliché, and in this case, they were a promise, too.

CHAPTER FOUR

“TELL ME AGAIN what this woman’s name is.” Sitting straight up, looking as handsome as ever in jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just beneath his elbows, Darin spoke with the authority of one who was in complete control. He was using his “normal” voice, as Grant had somewhere along the way begun to catalog it. “Normal” as opposed to his “child” voice—the one that was a repercussion of the brain damage he’d received during his attempt to save his wife’s life.

“Lynn Duncan.”

“And she was my nurse.”

“Four years ago, yes.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“You might when you see her.”

With his chin jutting slightly forward, Darin nodded, his gaze toward the highway visible through the front windshield.

“You know what I miss most?” Darin asked.

“Besides your memory, you mean?” Grant quipped lightly. Because that was what the brothers did in these moments when Darin could focus clearly.

“I miss driving,” Darin said. “How come you don’t ever let me drive, Grant?”

Just like that, the child was back, the last words ending on a near-whine.

“You can drive sometime,” Grant said just as easily as he’d named the nurse they were on their way to see. “I’ll take you out to the desert this weekend.”

To the vast expanse of land they visited on occasion, just to let Darin get behind the wheel of a vehicle again.

His older brother turned to stare at him. “You promise?”

He’d hoped to have the weekend to tend to landscaping at the women’s shelter. Hoped to be able to do the job in his spare time. To spare Luke and Craig any additional work. “Yeah, I promise,” he said, because he had to.

And because he hadn’t even seen the women’s shelter landscaping. Maybe Lynn had been exaggerating. Seeing the job from a layman’s eyes. He and his guys had designed and installed a block’s worth of new landscaping in a day. Surely it couldn’t take Darin and Grant more than that to keep it up.

“But today is only Monday so we have to get a week’s worth of work done first,” he said now as they pulled into the parking lot outside the The Lemonade Stand.

“They make lemonade here?” Darin asked. “I like lemonade. Do you think they’ll let me have some?”

“There’s a cafeteria,” Grant said, information gleaned from his recent conversation with Lynn, Angelica and Lila McDaniels to finalize their plans and schedule Darin’s first therapy session. “We’ll see if they have lemonade. And you remember what I told you about the ladies, right?”

They’d been over this every day for the past week. Morning and night.

“They’ve been hurt and need me to stay away.”

It was the childish version, but at least the message was clear.

“That’s right.”

“I’ve never hurt anyone, have I, Grant?”

“Nope. As long as you don’t count those times you got me in a headlock and knuckle brushed my head.”

“Yeah,” Darin snorted as he grinned. “But you deserved it.”

“What did I ever do to deserve that? It hurt like hell.”

“One time you put my leather baseball glove in the bathtub.”

“It was dirty. I wanted to clean it for you.”

“You ruined it, Grant.”

“I know.” But he hadn’t meant to. He’d been four at the time.

“It was my first real glove and Mom and Dad didn’t have the money to buy me another one.”

Funny how things worked. Darin had damaged crucial parts of his brain attempting to save his wife. But he could still remember an event like this, which had happened more than thirty years before, as if it’d been yesterday.

“I’m sorry.”

Darin nodded. And gazed out at the nondescript parking lot.

“I’m afraid, Grant.” His tone was back to preaccident Darin. The admission was nothing he’d ever have expected to hear from his big brother.

“What if therapy doesn’t work?” he went on. “What if I never get the use of my arm back? I’m burden enough to you.”

Shoving the truck’s automatic gearshift into Park, Grant gave Darin a light punch on the shoulder. “It’s going to work, bro. And in the meantime, you’re going to be pushing a lawn mower with one hand. Just be glad it’s your right one that works.”

With one capable movement, Darin unfastened his seat belt and opened the door to the truck. Grant read the tension in the stiffness of his brother’s upper lip.

“Hey,” he said, a hand on Darin’s paralyzed limb. “We’re in this together, right?”

As long as Darin believed that, they’d be fine. Because Grant wasn’t going to let go. Or give up. Ever.

Darin took a long moment to answer. Grant waited.

“Right.” The answer finally came.

With that, Grant led his slightly taller and broader brother into the front hallway of The Lemonade Stand.

* * *

“LYNN!” THE CRY was a harried whisper. “That man is back.”

Sitting in her office close to the public access door at the Stand, Lynn glanced up from charting a twenty-eight-year-old pregnant woman who’d just been in for a checkup to see Maddie hovering in the doorway.

She frowned. “What man?”

A lot of men wanted access to their residents. The Stand’s job was to keep them away.

“The one who was here before, the baseball-cap-slapping-when-he-walked-in-the-hallway one.”

Ah. Grant Bishop. He was fifteen minutes early.

“It’s okay, Maddie, we’re expecting him. Lila was supposed to tell you.”

Lila McDaniels, The Lemonade Stand’s managing director, made it a point to give Maddie her duties every single morning.

“Oh, that’s right. I just saw that baseball cap and freaked out, didn’t I?” the woman said. “And he’s got someone with him, too. Lynn, is that okay? Does Lila know about him?”

Standing, Lynn wrapped an arm around the pretty woman’s slim shoulders; this morning Maddie wore a yellow Lemonade Stand oxford shirt with their white logo stitched above the breast pocket. “His name’s Darin,” Lynn said as she led the woman out to the hallway. “He’s going to be doing therapy with you during your session and...he’s...special, Maddie. I was hoping you’d spin some of your Maddie magic on him and help him feel welcome.”

“I just like to be around women.”

“I know, but he’s a nice man. He’s been approved to be here, and I’m asking as a special favor,” Lynn said, praying that her assessment of Darin hadn’t been wrong four years before. And that it wasn’t wrong to trust that assessment a little bit now. “You won’t have to be alone with him at all, and if he makes you afraid, you’re to stop Angelica immediately and she’ll get you out of there.”

She could have told Maddie about the newest patient in what was scheduled as a group therapy session but most often consisted of just Maddie. But she hadn’t wanted her to fret—and blow the situation so far out of proportion that she wouldn’t be capable of trying.

Lynn, stopping on the private side of the door leading out to the lobby, put both her hands on Maddie’s shoulders. “You know we’ve all talked about the fact that you don’t want to live your whole life afraid of men,” she said.

Maddie nodded.

“You and Sara have talked about this a lot and you told her that you understood and would try.”

Maddie was frowning. “But I didn’t know it meant now, Lynn,” she said, her voice trembling. “Sara didn’t say it was now. Does Lila know?”

“Yes.” Maddie’s cooperation wasn’t critical to Darin’s opportunity at the Stand, but it was vital to Maddie’s mental and emotional health. “I believe what Sara explained to you was that you can’t continue to live here forever if you don’t try your best to be healthy. We aren’t a hideout, Maddie, and we don’t want the women who come to us to think that we are. As a resident here, you’re an example to them, so you can’t be hiding out, either. That means you have to be able to be around men occasionally.”

“I know, but―”

“Maddie? Look at me.” Lynn waited.

The pretty blue eyes eventually focused on her. “What Alan did, I don’t want that anymore, Lynn,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “And I...you know...I’m...well...I wasn’t smart enough to stop him.”

All the air left Lynn’s lungs. She’d never heard Maddie acknowledge her challenges. Wasn’t even sure how much she was aware of them.

“Alan abused you because he was a bad person, Maddie, and for no other reason. You stayed because you loved him. Just like lots of the other women here. Think of Jennifer. She’s practically a genius and she stayed.”

“She’s an animal doctor.”

“I know,” Lynn said. “I’ve met Darin, Maddie. He’s a good person, I promise.”

Maddie nodded, but looked at the door in front of them as though she was facing a guillotine.

Grant Bishop had signed all of the necessary waivers on Darin’s behalf, allowing those within the shelter to share his information.

“Darin had a brain injury, Maddie. He...struggles.”

The slender woman’s brows drew farther together as she alternated between biting and licking her lower lip. “Is he retarded?”

“No. And you know we don’t like that word. But sometimes things don’t come together for him like they used to.”

“He’s dumb like me?”

What was this? She’d never heard Maddie sound so derogatory about herself. But then, they’d only been close for a little over a year.

“You aren’t dumb, Maddie.”

“I am, too, Lynn. And Sara says that I have to be strong and face my life, not run from it.”

“Did you tell Sara you were dumb?” There was no way the counselor would have promoted such thinking. Or allowed it if she could help put a stop to it.

Maddie looked down.

And Lynn got a sick feeling. “Who told you you were dumb?”

Maddie shrugged. And mumbled, “No one.”

With a finger under the woman’s chin, Lynn lifted Maddie’s face until she looked her straight in the eye.

“Maddie? You know my rule. It’s okay if you make a million mistakes a day, you just don’t lie to me.”

Her eyes widening in horror, Maddie said, “I don’t, Lynn, I swear I don’t and―”

“It’s okay, I know you don’t.” Lynn gave Maddie’s shoulders a squeeze. “And I need you to tell me who told you you were dumb.”

“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, and besides, she didn’t tell me.”

“Who did she tell?”

“Regina Cooper with the stitches in her face.”

“And what did Regina say?”

“She told her to shut up because she saw me standing there.”

“She told her not to talk like that because it’s not true,” Lynn said now, letting Maddie off the hook, while making a mental note to prepare Sara for her next session with Maddie. And to mention the incident at their staff meeting later that morning, too.

They’d know who was talking to Regina about Maddie by the end of the day. And if it happened again, the mystery woman would be asked to leave.

“Maddie? Darin Bishop got hurt trying to save his wife,” she said. “I’m trusting you with that information because I know you’re smart enough to know what to do with it.”

Maddie stared at her, blinking a couple of times while she chewed her lip, and then took Lynn’s hand from off her shoulder and clutched it tightly. “Okay, Lynn, let’s go. I’ll be friends with him,” she said.

And for Maddie, that appeared to be that.

In that moment, as she pushed through the door to greet Grant and Darin Bishop, Lynn almost envied the other woman’s simplicity.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I REMEMBER YOU.” Darin’s wide-faced grin matched his five-year-old tone and Grant stiffened, a natural reaction to exposing his older brother to people who might not expect to hear near–baby talk coming from a grown man.

Because if they reacted adversely, Darin would be able to tell and it would upset him.

“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.