“Right back at you. Come on and finish this pie with me.” Sally grinned at her. “You’ll figure out what to do with all that money when the time is right.”
Vivian took a deep breath, hoping with all her heart that what Sally said was true.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dean sat down in his recliner, feeling as though his body was starting to merge with the leather and the padding of it.
I’ve been sitting in this chair way too much,he thought with a groan.I know it’s important for me to rest, and it’s nice to be so comfortable, but I hate feeling like an invalid like this.
Noelle stepped into the living room, smiling like an angel. They’d just finished eating dinner together, and he knew that she’d lingered in the kitchen to clean up the dishes. He felt badly that she had to clean up after him, although she’d been doing it ever since the surgery without any kind of complaint.
“I wish you didn’t have to do everything right now,” he said, feeling a pang of regret.
“I don’t mind.” She sat down on the arm of his recliner. “You know I like doing dishes anyway.”
He smiled at her but then sighed, feeling tired and listless. He disliked the thought of another evening at home doing nothing but watching movies. He wished he could take her out for a drive or even walk along the beach with her under the moonlight. Unfortunately. he was still feeling too fatigued after his surgery for anything like that.
“Well, I appreciate you.” He lifted his face up to hers for a kiss, which she gave him immediately. “Do you want me to move over to the couch so we can cuddle?”
“No, that’s okay.” She kissed his forehead. “I know you’re more comfortable in that recliner, and I want you to stay there. I’ll be right over here.” She sat down on the couch, which they’d pulled up close against his recliner so that she could be right next to him even when he wasn’t sitting on the couch with her. “What movie do you want to watch tonight? Something funny? Something romantic? I might even be willing to watch something mildly scary, since it is spooky season.”
Dean smiled at her. He loved her with all his heart, and he knew she meant well, but he felt like a child under her care, and he hated that. Even the kiss on the forehead made him feel helpless and useless, like a little kid that needed to be pampered. He knew that Noelle didn’t want him to feel that way, and he wished he could just snap his fingers and feel differently. But he was tired of waiting for his recovery and waiting to stop being in pain, and he was feeling more and more worried that he wouldn’t be feeling fully recovered by the time of their wedding after all.
“I don’t know, sweetie,” he said, trying to make his tone sound cheerful but knowing that he was failing. “I’ll watch whatever it is you want to watch.”
Noelle watched his face carefully for a moment, and he knew that she could tell that he was feeling down. “Why don’t we talk for a bit?” she suggested, scooting even closer to him on the couch. “You can tell me about your day.”
An expression of regret flickered over her face a moment later, and she seemed to realize that Dean trying to talk about his day was very unlikely to make him feel better about his situation. He hadn’t been able to be very active at all since the surgery,and she knew that dwelling on that wasn’t going to improve his emotional state.
“Not much,” he said, squeezing her hand to let her know that he appreciated her but he didn’t want to talk about it. “How was your day?”
“Good.” She laughed, immediately getting a light in her eyes, which he found so endearing. “A lot of quirky things happened today. There’s never a dull moment at the physical therapy clinic, that’s for sure, but today was really one for the books.”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “Tell me about it?”
“But of course.” She grinned at him. “The first wild thing that happened today was because Mr. Henderson came into the clinic—because he's recovering from a fall that gave his knee a bad knocking. He has to use his legs a lot while he does his farm work, so he's been coming in a lot to make sure his knee is healing the right way, and to do the exercises I've been assigning him, of course.”
Dean listened curiously, wondering what was so quirky about that. He knew that Mr. Henderson was a bit of an odd character, like a classic cartoon farmer out of a children's book. He had a bushy white beard and even bushier sideburns, and he always wore brightly colored plaid shirts with overalls.
“So today,” Noelle said, starting to laugh even harder as she spoke, “he came in with a special guest. Now of course it's normal for people to have a guest waiting for them in the waiting room while they're in physical therapy, it happens all the time. We've got a coffee machine and magazines out in the lobby because of that, since our actual clients tend to arrive right at the time of their appointment and they don't really need a waiting area. But the guest that Mr. Henderson brought with him today didn't need magazines or coffee.” She paused for dramatic effect, grinning impishly. “The guest that Mr. Henderson brought withhim was none other than his favorite pet duck, who was wearing a little green bow tie and I have to admit, was generally very polite.” Noelle laughed brightly. “Mr. Henderson didn't understand why we couldn't just leave Stanley in the lobby to wait for him while he was in therapy. I tried to explain that ducks need supervision, and I even said that someone might be allergic to Stanley, but Mr. Henderson kept insisting that he is a house-trained duck.”
Dean chuckled, enjoying Noelle's story but mostly enjoying how delighted it clearly made her.
“And that's not all,” she said, wiping away a couple of tears of mirth. “Later on this afternoon, the fire alarm went off. I was so worried, since I knew we didn't have a drill or anything like that scheduled. I wondered if maybe Chip had burnt a bag of popcorn or something in the break room, so I'm in the lobby urging everyone to go outside and thinking that I'm just going to run into the break room and make sure it wasn't just a smoke alarm mishap, when I see this little boy standing underneath the fire alarm and grinning. It was totally obvious that he just pulled it for fun.”
Dean couldn’t help grinning himself, knowing that it was the kind of stunt he would have loved to pull when he was a kid, only he never would have dared. A moment later, however, his feelings of sadness swept back over him again. He’d been such a free spirit years ago, always going off and having adventures and doing things with his hands. Although he could hope that the results of the surgery would allow him to be a free spirit like that again, he felt frustrated and helpless in the meantime.
“Dean.” Noelle touched his hand and he turned to her, regretting that he’d let his emotions spiral again. She was trying to cheer him up, he knew that. “It’s all going to be okay. I know you’re in pain right now and you’re tired, and it’s hard to stay positive when our bodies aren’t feeling their best. But you havenothing to be sad about. You’re going to feel better soon, and –” She touched his arm. “Don’t forget you get to marry me soon. Our wedding is coming right up. Just focus on that.”
Dean leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, but—I’m worried that everything isn’t going to be all right. It’s hard to stay optimistic about our wedding when every time I feel pain I get concerned that I’m not going to be fully recovered in time for our big day.”
She looked into his eyes for a moment sympathetically. “I know you’re going to feel just fine,” she said, but he detected a glimmer of worry in her expression, and it made his heart sink. “Hey.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and clicked on it a few times. “I found a song that I think would be absolutely perfect for our first dance.” She hit play, and the slow, sweet chords of a love song filled Dean’s living room.
“Come on.” She stood up and took his hand, gently tugging him up out of his chair. “Let’s test it out. Dance with me.”
Dean hesitated, but he couldn’t resist her. He put his arms around her and began to sway, looking down into her face and smiling. His heart stirred as he imagined dancing with her at their wedding, surrounded by their loved ones, just having vowed to love each other for the rest of their lives.
They sped up their dancing as the song’s tempo became faster, moving from a sway to an amateur waltz. Dean was just thinking that Noelle was unbelievably graceful and beautiful when a sharp pain shot through his hand.
