Love on the Lifts Read online

  Allie was putting together a salad. Leah was mixing up some brownies. It was the brownies that the guys would ooh and aah over. Not that I cared if my efforts were barely appreciated.

  I mean, Joe hadn’t bothered to thank me once for all I’d done for him that afternoon. And he was a lousy patient. Most guys are from what I understand. But he became the worst after he woke up from his nap, like he was trying to drive me away.

  Adjust the afghan, bring me some water, bring me some juice, hot chocolate, hot apple cider, turn up the TV, turn it down, change the DVD. Honestly, you’d think he was completely helpless.

  Okay, so he was pretty helpless. I’d actually spent some time in my bedroom moving around using only one leg, trying to raise my sympathy level when I got really frustrated with him. I couldn’t complain about his demanding attitude because he had told me not to hang around. So my unhappiness with him was totally my fault. I didn’t like that, either.

  “Geez, are you trying to murder that chicken?” Leah asked.

  I looked at the cutting board. The chopped chicken was pretty much annihilated.

  “I like it finely chopped,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s finely chopped.”

  I scooped it into the casserole dish where spaghetti noodles, cheese, and peas were already waiting.

  “Want me to chase Cynthia and Brad away?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t care that they’re here.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Really? You’re totally over Brad?”

  “Totally.”

  “That’s great! Ian has a friend—”

  “No thanks.”

  “But he’s another Aussie ski instructor and—”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be busy taking care of Joe.”

  Leah looked at me, her eyes blinking. “He’s not helpless, you know.”

  “Not completely, no. But he can’t get around very easily. And he’s definitely not going to be able to go to the slopes. I can’t just leave him here alone to fend for himself.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why not?”

  “Because she likes him too much,” Allie said.

  I jerked my attention to her.

  She shrugged. “Don’t you?”

  I sorta felt like I was playing revolving door crush, leapfrogging from liking one of my brother’s friends to the other. I mean, that should have been a strike against Joe: hanging out with my brother.

  Of course, now one of my best friends was hanging all over my brother….

  “I don’t know what I feel,” I admitted. “I mean, I like him, sure. He’s nice. And okay, I feel responsible for his present condition. I fell first. He fell trying not to run over me.”

  “So you’re going to spend time with him out of obligation?”

  “I’m going to spend time with him because he needs me.”

  I wasn’t about to admit that maybe I needed him, too.

  Chapter 21

  As the days went by, Joe became the worst patient on the planet.

  He didn’t like being waited on, didn’t want people canceling their plans because of him. I offered him my bed because he couldn’t get down the stairs to sleep in the bed that Brad had vacated. I’d magnanimously offered to sleep in Brad’s bed and share the room with my brother. But I guess Joe figured out what a great sacrifice the offer was on my part, because he said that he was fine still sleeping on the couch or in the recliner.

  The first night I started out checking on him every hour on the hour—in case he needed pain medicine or something to drink or eat, or a DVD changed in the player.

  The answer was always the same: I don’t need anything, Kate.

  Eventually I gave up and stretched out on the couch so he could call for me if he needed anything. He slept in the recliner.

  He never did wake me up to get him anything. But a couple of times I woke up and found him staring at me. He always looked guilty for doing it, like maybe he shouldn’t be watching me sleep. The thing was: I lost track of how much I watched him sleep. I just liked looking at him.

  The third day we were both snappish. Lack of good sleep and guilt were responsible for my bad mood. I think Joe simply wasn’t used to being housebound.

  He was hobbling around the living room.

  “You need to use your crutches,” I chastised him.

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t get out of here. You’re injured.”

  “I can’t ski, but I’m moving around better. I could go outside and build a snowman.”

  “How are you going to get to the backyard where the snow is? There are stairs, you know.”

  “I can hop down or scoot down on my butt.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  He studied me hard. “Okay. How ’bout the hot tub?”

  “What about it?”

  “I think the swirling hot water would be good for my knee, and there are no steps leading to it. Should be a breeze getting to it.”

  “There’s the freezing-our-butts-getting-in-and-out factor to consider.” Besides, did I really want to be in a small tub with him, especially since I had no bathing suit? I mean, who brings a bathing suit to a ski resort?

  “Snowman it is then,” he said.

  Stubborn, obstinate, crazy were words that flittered through my mind as I watched him struggle into his jacket, standing on one leg, before reaching down for his crutches.

  “You coming?” he asked.

  I stared at him. “You can’t be serious about going out there.”

  “Dead serious. With or without you. Although without you, I could trip and freeze to death before anyone found me.”

  That wasn’t likely to happen. He was just being difficult. On the other hand, I was going a little stir crazy as well.

  “Yeah, I’ll come.”

  I put on my own jacket, jerked my knitted cap down over my ears, and stuffed my hair up beneath it. I wanted to be there when he realized that getting down wasn’t hard…but getting back up the stairs?

  That was going to be a different story.

  It’s a little difficult to build an awesome snowman when your mobility is limited.

  Joe made it down the stairs by gripping the rail and hopping from one step to the next, holding both crutches in one hand. Once he got to the ground, he went only a couple of feet. The crutches were sinking into the foot of snow that covered the backyard. Eventually, Joe gave up and dropped to the ground.

  It took willpower on my part not to rush to his aid.

  “Okay, so crutches on snow don’t work so well,” he said, peering up at me as I stood on the steps looking down on him.

  I worked really hard not to gloat. “Tried to tell you.”

  “Well, I’m here now. I might as well enjoy it.”

  But he sure didn’t sound like he was on the verge of enjoying it.

  I moved nimbly down the stairs and knelt in the snow beside him. “What now, genius?”

  Okay, so I was gloating a little bit.

  He scooped up some snow, packed it into a ball, and held it up. “I make little snowmen.”

  What he actually did, after packing snow around his knee, was make a little snowman village. Kinda like what I created when I went to the beach and made sand castles.

  Only he made a little igloo house and had small snowmen standing around it. I’d actually gone into the house and brought out some little hard-shelled candies that he used for the eyes. He was partial to using the green pieces. So here were all these snowmen with eyes like mine.

  “You’re pretty good,” I said.

  “It’s not the first time that I’ve hurt myself while I was skiing. I’ve broken my leg twice, so I learned pretty quickly to look for other entertainment.” He tapped his snow covered knee. “This is a walk in the park.”

  “More like a hop in the park,” I corrected him.

  He grinned. “Yeah. More like that.”

&nbs