Lily heard the faint hint of despair behind the quip. He was a man used to relying on his body strength. To have it taken away from him, or even reduced marginally, struck at the very heart of what he believed being a man entailed. ‘Let’s concentrate on getting you standing and then walking before we even think about running. Can you circle your ankles at all?’
He circled his right ankle easily enough but again his left was slow to respond. A look of frustration tightened his features. ‘This is pointless. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this.’
‘You have to be patient,’ Lily said. ‘You can’t expect instant results. This could take months or even years.’
His dark brows snapped together. ‘Is that how you make your money? Stringing people along for years on end with a vague hope of a cure?’
‘I try to be honest with all of my clients.’
‘How about you start being honest with me?’ He flashed his diamond-hard gaze at her. ‘What are my chances? You can shoot from the hip. You don’t need to sugar coat it. I can take it like a man.’
Lily ran her tongue over her sandstone-dry mouth. ‘I think it’s going to be a long and hard struggle to regain your full mobility.’
‘Are you saying I’m never going to regain it?’
No one wanted to hear the bad news. That was part of the agony of rehabilitation. No one ever wanted to accept what fate and circumstances had dished out. Life was incredibly cruel at times. Bad things happened to good people. There was no way of getting around it.
‘I think it’s too early to say,’ she said, taking the safe middle ground.
His eyes burned with acrid bitterness. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you? It gives you a safety net in case things don’t go according to plan. You get your money either way, don’t you, Miss Archer? You’ve made sure of that.’
Lily bitterly resented his summation of her character. She was the very last person who would exploit another’s vulnerability. She’d had her vulnerability exploited in the worst way imaginable. The memory of that night was like a cancer inside her head. She tried to radiate it with distractions, she tried to poison it with activity, but still it festered there, waiting for another chance to destroy her.
‘I’ve had to put off several other clients in order to come here,’ she said. ‘Some financial compensation for that is not unreasonable.’
His green-brown eyes measured hers for a pulsing moment. ‘Then we’d best get my brother’s money’s worth, hadn’t we?’
Lily handed him a heavier weight, taking great care not to encounter his fingers in the exchange. ‘Yes. We’d better.’
He cooperated for a while but she could see his impatience simmering inside him. She knew it must be humiliating for someone so used to being in control to have so much of it taken away. But patience was exactly what he needed right now. There was no point going at things like a bull at a gate. Slowly but surely was the best way of managing any crisis.
She was living proof of that.
‘I think that’s enough for today,’ she said, after he worked through a couple more exercises.
He frowned at her. ‘Are you joking?’
‘No.’ Lily picked up the weight he’d left on the floor and took it over to the rack, trying not to notice the warmth of where his fingers had been. ‘You’ve been sitting for more than ten minutes. Didn’t your neurosurgeon advise you to limit sitting at this stage?’
‘But I’ve done nothing.’ His frown turned into a glare. ‘You’ve done nothing.’
‘On the contrary, I’ve been observing you the whole time you were doing the reps. I was noting your posture and the activity of your muscles. You have a lot of tension in your neck and shoulders. Your left side is much worse than your right. It’s probably a knock-on effect of the injury to your lower discs and, of course, your broken arm.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
Lily didn’t care for the gleam that had so quickly switched places with his glare. ‘Um...plan?’
‘Are you going to massage me?’
A swooping sensation passed through her stomach. Stop acting like an idiot. You’ve massaged hundreds of clients.
Yes, but none of them have been male!
The conversation went back and forth inside her head until she realised Raoul was looking at her quizzically. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Of course...’ She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘I’d need to hire a massage table. I didn’t bring one with me. It might take a few days to get one. I should’ve thought, but it was all such a rush and I—’
‘I have one.’