Page 42 of Beach Cottage Kisses

“You leave here, you get me as a roommate for the next week or so.”

They were all plotting against him. Led by Sage, he was sure. She’d know how he’d be feeling. Know that he’d be climbing the walls caged up when his health didn’t ultimately require him to be trapped in a hospital bed. The two of them had spent enough hours within hospital walls, visiting their ailing mother as kids.

And she’d called Iris.

Who’d talked to the medical staff while he’d still been out.

He froze all thought. For the second it took him to realize that once he got home,theywere no longer in charge.

“Fine,” he said.

And started his own counterplotting.

Chapter Ten

Fine?

Iris had been prepared for opposition. A lot of it. Sage had warned her. Her own three years of friendship with Scott Martin had informed her. And she gotfine?

Because of the drugs?

Or the sex? Did he think close proximity when he was at his worst would end any attraction between them once and for all?

The idea had merit. Enough that she was willing to explore the possibility. To hope for it, even. Feeling better about the hours and days ahead, energized to get on with them, she said, “Dr. Abbot will be in shortly. Once he signs your discharge papers we can go.”

“There will be ground rules.”

With her sudden new lease on life, she nodded, and said, “Probably a good idea.”

“I’m the boss in my home.”

“Understood.” Unless he thought he was going to go against medical protocol. Iris wasn’t the least bit averse to calling in the troops if need be. Sage had already insisted on that one. It was the only reason she wasn’t flying home immediately. If Scott didn’t comply with doctor’s orders, Sage, Gray and Leigh would be on the next plane to San Diego.

“Fine. Then, if you could please lay the clothes you brought on the bed, I’ll get dressed so we can be ready to go as soon as the paperwork is done.”

No could do. “You’re supposed to wait for a final check, first.” She told him what she’d been told. “Something about wound seepage.” And vitals.

“So no clothes. I’d still like some privacy.”

He was going to get up. She just knew it. The look on his face. The way he was still holding the edge of his covers as though ready to throw them off. Without being privy to his postsurgical instructions, he could seriously hurt himself.

Perhaps she’d been a bit premature in her celebration of their future together.

They weren’t even home yet, and the battle had started.

“You can’t get up yet, Scott,” she said, her tone firm because it had to be. “You had a completely torn MCL, stage three, the worst. There can’t be any weight-bearing right now and your crutches aren’t here yet.”

She used logic because it was his go-to language.

The glare coming at her from his blue eyes, beneath the tousled strands of his blond hair, almost amused her.

But not quite.

He was not going to be an easy patient.

And while she was still on board with the idea that being together over the next week would kill any attraction between them, she started to have serious doubts about their friendship surviving.

Holding her gaze with his steely stare, making her feel a little bit like a losing defendant on his witness stand, he said, “I have to pee.”