The Valtieri Baby

She nodded, and walked away towards the kitchen to make the hot chocolate, and he gritted his teeth and made it the last few steps to the bedroom.

Then he looked at his foot.

The nurses had struggled to get his trousers on over it without hurting him. What hope did he have, one-handed? He couldn’t do it alone.

Which meant asking Anita.

She came back with the hot chocolate while he was sitting on the side of the bed scowling.

‘Problem?’

‘I can’t get my trousers off on my own,’ he said grudgingly.

She suppressed a smile. ‘No, I don’t suppose you can. And you need something to keep the weight off your foot in the night.’ She plonked the chocolate down on the bedside table, threw the bottom of the quilt back and put two pillows in the bed.

‘OK. That should do it. So, are you sleeping in the trousers, bearing in mind that you’d have to be dead to let me help you?’

He winced at the mild tone which belied a world of hurt—hurt of his making. He deserved her sarcasm. Hell, he deserved more than that. It would serve him right if she left him to struggle on his own. So he swallowed his pride. He needed her help, like it or not, and he realised he might have to grovel to get it.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that quite as it came out. No, I’m not sleeping in them, but I have no idea how to get them off, I just know it’s going to hurt.’

‘Not if I do it—assuming you’ll let me help you?’ she asked more gently.

He shrugged, hating it but out of options, and unfastened his trousers, pushing them down to his knees before sitting back down on the edge of the bed. He felt naked and vulnerable. Ridiculous. He’d been fine with the nurses, so why was he worried about Anita?

Because I know what it’s like to make love to her.

‘Just do it, Anita,’ he said, and she gave a little shrug and knelt down at his feet, which brought her eyes in line with the telltale bulge in his jersey shorts. And just south, on the inside of his muscular thigh, was the transparent dressing over his wound.

She winced. ‘That was close. It could have been really catastrophic.’

‘My sex life’s not really your problem,’ he said shortly, struggling with her proximity and wishing she’d just look somewhere else before he gave himself away, but she just rolled her eyes.