New Lease of Life (9 page)

A rich laugh swept away Pip’s embarrassment. “I’d left my phone in the hall, and I ran to answer it.”

“Are you expecting an important call?”

“I’d hoped so.”

“Oh. I’ll keep this brief, then.”

“Then I’d have to wait for you to call me back.” Another huff of laughter. “Idiot.”

“Me?” Important? Okay, that was definitely a smile. Pip knew he hadn’t used those cheek muscles in months. The emotion felt foreign on his face.

“I left you my number, didn’t I? I couldn’t ask if you wanted it because you were still asleep when I left. Did you have a good nap?” Colby inhaled sharply. “You’re not phoning to tell me to leave you alone, are you?”

“Now who’s an idiot? And yes, I feel very rested, thanks. But I didn’t just ring to tell you that.” Although any excuse to listen to the laughter-tinged tones. The crutch was probably in the kitchen if he’d bothered to look. Or behind the door in the lounge. If Pip was being honest, the search had become a little sketchy once the thought of ringing Colby had formed in his mind.

“Uh-huh.”

Colby sounded a little off. Cautious. But Pip didn’t want to ask. Not after the last time he’d jumped to conclusions. Any more implications of wanking or phone sex and he’d pop a boner himself. Think unsexy thoughts…. Oh yeah, his crutch.

“Yes, I can’t find my crutch. Do you recall seeing it before you left?”

“At your house?”

“Colby? Did you pack my crutch by accident?”

“Nope.”

Now Pip was confused. The laughter had gone from the few words that Pip could wrangle from Colby.

“You must have. I need it to get around, and it’s not here.”

“But you’ve found something to use in its place.”

What? A handy tree branch? “No.”

“But you’re downstairs.”

“I came down on my arse. It wasn’t dignified.”

“Didn’t you check out your empty dressing room?”

What did this have to do with his crutch? “I couldn’t face it. Not today.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“Colby, did my crutch accidentally get mixed up with the donation?”

“By accident.” Colby seemed to mutter to himself. “No.”

Realization crept up on him and dumped icy cold water over the initial joy at hearing Colby’s voice again.

“You
stole
my crutch? You bastard!” All the time Pip had been clinging onto Colby and sobbing like a baby, that wanker had been planning to humiliate him. “D’you think it’s funny? Taunting the cripple.”

“You’re
not
a cripple.”

Pip didn’t even acknowledge that. “I thought you were different. God, I’m so stupid! I thought you actually—”

“Actually what? Liked you? I do, when you’re not trying to bite my head off. That’s why I took it. I figured the first thing you’d do was go and look in the dressing room.”

“What difference would that make? You’ve left me trapped in my home.”

“I think you’ve been doing a good enough job of that yourself. No car. Grocery deliveries. I let the man from the supermarket in, by the way. Funny, ’cos I thought he was due the other day when I was ’round. I didn’t know where the tinned stuff went, but I put your fresh stuff away in the fridge. You’re welcome.”

“Don’t make me feel indebted to you, you bastard. I let you into my house, and you stole something you weren’t entitled to. I should call the police. Trading Standards.”

“What?”

“You’re a thief.”

“Technically, I suppose.”

Pip snorted his disdain at that addendum.

“You’re not a cripple,” Colby said, far more reasonably than he had any right to be. “You don’t need that monstrosity to get around.”

“I do.” Wow. That sounded petulant. Maybe he should stamp his foot to really get the point across. “Bring it back.”

“You said yourself that you need the crutch for balance. That’s all. It doesn’t need to support your weight. Shouldn’t, in fact.”

“Oh, so you’re a doctor now?”

“No, but I did train as a physio. Relying on that crutch is putting unnecessary strain on your shoulder, maybe even putting your back out of alignment. It’s definitely contributing to any muscle wastage you’re experiencing in your calf and lack of strength in your ankle.”

“It’s my ankle that’s the problem. Weren’t you listening to anything I told you earlier?”
When you held me.
The bastard had been toying with him. Wanted him emotional and out of the way so he could steal his only means of getting around.

“Yep. Osteowhatsit.”

“See. I knew you weren’t taking me seriously—”

“Osteomyelitis.” Colby’s sigh traveled easily down the phone line, hot, heavy, and full of frustration. And all of it directed at Pip. “I was listening. But do you? Your physio should be telling you all of this…. Shit! Pip, you are—”

“Phillip.” Pip ground out between clenched teeth.

“You said I could call you Pip.”

“I never.”

“It was implied when you never corrected me.”

“You stole my crutch.”

Another sigh. “Mr. Longhampton—”

Okay, that hurt. He’d meant to punish Colby by withdrawing the right to use his nickname, but that retreat into the formal hit Pip like a punch to the gut. Made him want to cry out and grasp hold of the tentative friendship that had been forming between them.

A cutoff sound of frustration punctuated Colby’s sentence. “Phillip, you’re not going to physiotherapy, are you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Colby snorted out a laugh, but this time the sound held no hint of amusement. “Unfortunately that’s true, and you’re not going to let me close enough to make it my business, are you?”

It seemed Colby didn’t expect a response to this. He continued, “I left you something in the first wardrobe. If you don’t want it, phone me back, and I’ll drop that metal monstrosity back to you. On current form, I guess we’ll be speaking later. Night.”

With that, Colby ended the call.

LEFT HIM
something? What? Pip glared at the phone as if it could provide him with the answer. Something like a gift? The screen of his phone turned black, and Pip blinked against the drop in the level of brightness. He hit redial and waited, not overly surprised to hear a recorded message tell him that the phone he was calling was switched off. Bastard! Not even an option to leave a voice mail message.

Just in case Colby had been lying, Pip flipped the business card over and dialed the shop number. It rang for what felt like an inordinate amount of time and then connected to answer phone.

The urge to leave a scathing message fought against his common sense. Who was to say Colby would be the first one into the shop in the morning? Or that in an hour Pip wouldn’t regret the awful accusations that were threatening to spill from his lips. His anger would surely pass, but inadvisable words spoken in haste would be impossible to take back. Unless Pip planned to hike several miles to a less savory neighborhood and attempt to commit his first count of B&E, simply to wipe away an inadvisable message.

The beep announced that he’d run out of time to leave his message, thankfully taking the option out of Pip’s hands. Because in this very moment, he was still sufficiently pissed to go into major rant mode without giving the consequences much thought. Not just at Colby for making Pip think they’d made a connection, but at himself too for believing such a thing. He’d throw in his life, the dog, early morning jogs, and persistent friends who obviously hadn’t been quite tenacious enough. Okay, that last one should be his own stupid pride he was cursing.

Screw his pride. Screw his gammy leg. Screw Colby.

Please.

And screw his inappropriate libido too.

He needed to know what Colby had left for him. What sort of person left a gift and didn’t wait around to see how it would be received?

Santa bloody Claus.

Easter bunny.

Tooth fairy.

An image of Colby in shimmering translucent fabric with sparkly wings and a
big
wand slipped into Pip’s head, bringing an unwanted smile to his face and a thought too cruel to even acknowledge.

The perfect boyfriend.

Stupid brain! Wanting things his body could no longer deliver.

Of course not all Christmas presents were wanted or well-intended. What about that year he’d decided he wanted to be a chef, and one of his aunts had given him a tea towel and a bag of flour for Christmas? He’d been eleven and thoroughly humiliated. Even now the memory of his aunt’s braying laughter had the power to make him shudder.

Too much Easter chocolate gave him a stomachache, and in order for the tooth fairy to visit, no small amount of pain, or weeks of niggling irritation, had to be endured.

Why should Colby be any different to those magical, but often spiteful, benefactors? What if Colby’s gift was something cruel? A toy dog or something similar.

No. The Colby he’d come to know over the last few days seemed the last person to do something to deliberately cause hurt or offense. He came across as concerned without being overly sympathetic or condescending. And he appeared to consider Pip’s anger more of an issue to overcome than his leg and poor body image.

Moreover, Colby had seemed genuinely thrown that Pip hadn’t gone directly to the dressing room. As if the thought that Pip wouldn’t act in that manner hadn’t even occurred to him.

Then there was the not exactly small matter of the extended hug and Colby’s lips brushing the top of Pip’s head. Not to mention several interested glances that Pip had intercepted. Although Pip didn’t have a clue why Colby should want to stare at Pip and his broken body, not when all Colby had to do was glance in the mirror to be greeted by rugged perfection.

Gah! His procrastination was simply delaying the inevitable. He’d only find out what Colby may or may not have left in the wardrobe by going back up there.

Pip pushed himself to his feet, then used the walls and furniture to keep his balance while he navigated the hallway, his mind focused on the anticipation of what he might find rather than each unsteady step. Fueled by enthusiastic zeal, the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long time, the journey back up to the dressing room didn’t seem to take the same toll on him as earlier.

In the doorway of the dressing room, Pip paused and steeled himself. Colby had proved himself to be thoughtful, considerate, and sexy; why would his gift not reflect those qualities? He placed a hand on the solid wood door and slid it open.

His breath, which for some reason he’d been holding, spewed out of him in a rush.

Nothing. The space was empty.

An elaborate ruse to get Pip off the phone, or…? He glanced over his shoulder. Slightly ajar, the door to the wardrobe on the right of the entrance taunted him. He turned completely and pushed the door open the rest of the way. Quickly, before his anticipation could build only to be dashed to pieces again.

On the top of the dresser, Colby had left him the remains of the picnic lunch, with a note written on paper ripped from the notebook Colby had been using to catalogue his collection and in the same fuchsia print. The short missive proclaimed “
eat me
.”

Bite me, should have been Pip’s knee-jerk reaction, and he waited for his temper to rile at being told what to do, but the rage of defiance never came. Instead the expected—and oft relished—sweep of angry heat manifested as a warm fondness when he realized Colby had saved him two of the four cookies.

His stomach gurgled happily at the sight of the food, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. A slim box, maybe four foot or so in length, provided a backdrop to the food. Swirls of pale green and lavender decorated the box in a tasteful invitation to reach out and touch.

Absently Pip did just that, tracing the path of one undulating sweep until his finger reached a green ribbon in one corner. His gaze fell on another of Colby’s business cards, or at least the reverse of it, where only one word filled the blank space.

Pip
.

Closing his fingers around the box, Pip tugged the gift toward him, unable to resist giving it a minute shake. The contents moved within the box but didn’t rattle; a muffled knock against the cardboard indicating the item had been packaged with care and attention. Deep in his bones, Pip knew this wouldn’t be the flour incident all over again. Too much care had gone into the setup and presentation for humiliation to be Colby’s primary aim.

With more anticipation than trepidation, Pip eased the lid from the box. Tissue paper, the same pale green as the pattern on the box, filled all the available space and cocooned the contents.

Nestled in, no, framed by the paper—there could be no denying the artful presentation that had gone into the packaging of the item—Colby’s gift taunted him. It was either a cruel prank in light of the now empty wardrobes or the sweetest gesture, and Pip couldn’t decide whether to be angry or elated. Even as his brain argued both sides of the debate, Pip reached out and traced a finger up the length of the dark shaft.

Smooth to the touch, the black body of the walking stick contrasted perfectly with a creamy white handle.

A thoughtful gift, Pip decided, but one that only served to remind him of his limitations. Although he doubted Colby intended his gift to be perceived in that way.

Cradling the shaft in his fingers, Pip lifted the stick out of the box and studied it more closely.

Beneath his fingers, the shaft warmed to his touch. A band of metal, possibly silver, added an interesting contrast to the dark wood and joined the shaft to the handle. Made of a completely different material to the rest of the walking stick, the handle stuck out at a right angle and appeared just the right size for a man’s hand. Darker lines crisscrossed the off-white substance, and peering closer, Pip could see that a design had been etched into surface.

A river scene.

His anger flared before he could stop it, red mist blotting out the obvious, and he tightened his fingers on the cane in preparation for launch.

Colby couldn’t have known.

The voice, from the part of him that had come to trust Colby enough to sleep while a stranger all but ransacked his house, whispered these words in his head, forcing them past the rush of rage.