Page 19 of The Mountain Man's Determined Bride
“You are? Luke you don’t look fine. You do know what happened to me wasn’t your fault right?” He didn’t answer. Just continued to look at her hand.
“Luke Walker, look at me right now.”
His head snapped up, their eyes locking on each other.
“You don’t see it Morgan. It was my fault. When you left the cabin in a hurry that was because of me.” He looked at her then, his eyes questioning? It sounded awful to blame him and she couldn’t admit it.
“Did you think I was messing around with Margie? That has to be it. I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out what could have possibly made you leave six years ago but it didn’t click until you’d said you saw the whole thing, the two of us together but I swear there is no way I ever was or would be interested in her.”
“But she was there with you, her arms around you even. I heard you tell her how glad you were that she was there. I couldn’t listen to any more, I had to leave.”
Luke rubbed his hands over his tired weary face. “I knew I should have just done everything myself.”
“What do you mean?”
Luke rose from the chair, pushing it back into the corner of the cubicle. “Okay, it’s true that I invited her there but it wasn’t for me, it was for you. I was planning a quiet weekend for us. I was going to take our relationship to the next level and ask you to marry me. She was in on the whole thing but just to help me with all the food and decorating. She hugged me because she was happyus.”
“So why was she there yesterday? She acted like you were, I don’t know, lovers.”
“Oh hell no, I’ve never thought about her like that.” Luke made a nasty face, his body shaking all over. “Gives me the creeps just hearing you say that.”
“Well maybe someone should tell her then.”
Before Luke could comment further, an orderly came into the cubicle telling them it was time to move Morgan to her own room and asked that Luke step back out into the waiting room.
He moved close to Morgan, leaned in and kissed her lips softly. “I’ll be waiting in the hall when they bring you to your room okay?” She smiled and he turned to the man in scrubs. “Do you know what room she’ll be in so we can go wait for her?”
The orderly gave all the information the family would need to find her and with one glance back over his shoulder, Morgan watched him walk from the room.
Chapter Sixteen
For the next few days, Luke spend as much time as possible at the hospital, not wanting to be away from Morgan any longer than he had to. He’d been there for every physical therapy appointment and instead of having to call a nurse, he was there to help her from her bed to eat and to use the restroom. He updated Bill and Tyler after each doctor’s visit and bugged the nurses station about when she’d be able to go home and what all he would need to take care of her.
“I’m not going to your house to recuperate Luke. Uncle Bill already has all my stuff at his house and you need to work anyway. He’s retired so he’ll be there.”
“I don’t really need to work and he’s too old to be picking you up. What if you have a mishap and fall?”
“I’m not going to fall. I’ve been working really hard in therapy and I won’t be doing anything stupid. You can come over any time you want but I’m going back to his house.”
Luke looked so cute when he didn’t get his way. His lips turned up into a pout and the space between his eye brows resembled a mini washboard.
“I want you to go home and get a good night’s sleep okay? Doctor Colby said I should be able to go home tomorrow so I would like you to come and get me when I get discharged.”
“When did she say that? I didn’t hear any such thing.”
“She told me when they were changing the bed sheets and you’d gone for coffee. It’s not a big deal. She thinks the therapyhas been helping. Usually they send a nurse to the house for a few additional weeks to help with the therapy but she lives pretty close to Uncle Bill so she’s going to stop over early afternoon everyday while her son is at school and do a little work with me.”
“You don’t need my help?”
Luke looked like he’d just lost his best friend.
“Oh stop. I do need your help. I’ll be counting on you to run me all over tarnation because I won’t want to be stuck in that house all day every day. Maybe we can go for breakfast some mornings or lunch even.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to be at my house that way I could take you wherever you wanted to go whenever you had a whim?”
“Maybe.” He was right and she knew it would only take a couple days for Uncle Bill to be driving her crazy but them as a couple still had a long way to go. Neither had discussed it exactly and she still had a job back in Colorado. They’d done a lot of talking in the last few days but she still had some thinking to do and some decisions to make. She just needed a few days to herself for that.
“Maybe what?”