To Die For

He might have jumped the fence and tried to look in the French doors, but I had pulled the curtains closed over them and he wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. Everything was all right.

I breathed a huge, mental sigh of relief.

“There’s no telling what time Wyatt will get here,” Mrs. Bloodsworth said. “I’m going to go ahead and start supper for us. If he doesn’t make it in time to eat with us, I’ll just keep things warm for him.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked, hoping there was, because it was getting kind of old just sitting around all day and letting someone wait on me.

“One-handed?” she asked, and laughed. “Other than setting the table, I can’t think of a thing. Just come into the kitchen and keep me company. I don’t get to cook all that often now, with just me in the house. There’s no point, is there? I’ll eat a sandwich for supper, and sometimes in the winter I’ll open a can of soup, but food’s pretty boring if you don’t have company.”

I followed her into the kitchen, and took a seat at the table. There was a formal dining room, of course, all true Victorians had them, but you could tell most of the Bloodsworth meals had been eaten at this very table. “You sound a little bored. Have you thought about rejoining Great Bods? We have some great new programs.”

“I’ve thought about it, but you know how it is. Thinking about something and actually getting around to doing it are two different things. After my bicycle accident, I’m afraid I became a bit of a slug.”

“Who took care of you when you were hurt?”

“My daughter, Lisa. It was misery. The collarbone was bad enough, but the ribs-that was agony. I couldn’t move without hurting, and I couldn’t find a comfortable position, so I was constantly moving. My left arm is still weak, but I’ve been exercising it and I’m almost back up to normal. Six months! It’s ridiculous to take that long to recover, but I suppose that shows my age.”

I snorted. It wasn’t an elegant sound, but it got my point across. “I’ve broken a collarbone, too, when I was on the high school cheerleading squad. I had to work hard to get back in shape for the next year. It’s a good thing the squad didn’t do pyramids and flying stunts for the basketball games, or I couldn’t have managed. Six months sounds like a good recovery time to me.”

She smiled. “But I’m not doing handstands, am I? You were.”

“Not then, I wasn’t. I couldn’t; my shoulder just wouldn’t hold up.”

“Can you still do a handstand?”

“Sure. And a backflip, cartwheel, splits. I try to work on my gymnastics at least twice a week.”

“Could you teach me how to do a handstand?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s balance and strength, and practice. You need to do some light weight-lifting to get your arm and shoulder stronger, though, before you start. The last thing you need is to fall and break something else.”

“Agreed,” she said fervently.

“I can do a one-handed handstand,” I said, bragging a little.

“You can?” She turned from the stove and stared at my injured arm, wrapped in the blue-shawl sling. “Not now, you can’t.”

“I probably can, because I use my right arm, since it’s strongest and because I’m right-handed. I always tuck my left arm behind my back, anyway, so it won’t wave around and upset my balance.”

Well, the upshot of that conversation was that by the time the pork chops, green beans, mashed potatoes, and biscuits were finished, we were both dying to see if I could manage the handstand. Mrs. Bloodsworth kept saying no, I shouldn’t take the chance of injuring myself even more, since the stitches were new and I’d lost blood, things like that, but I pointed out that in a handstand what blood I had left would be rushing to my head, so I wasn’t likely to faint.

“But you’re weak.”

“I don’t feel weak. I was shaky last night, just a little shaky this morning, and now I feel fine.” To prove it, of course, then I had to do the handstand.

She fussed around me like she wanted to stop me but didn’t know how, and at the same time I could tell she was really interested. We took the sling off my left arm, and though I could move the arm a little today, I still didn’t have a lot of range, so she moved it for me and tucked it behind my back. Then, in a stroke of genius, she tied the shawl around my hips and over the arm to keep it in position.

I got on the other side of the table, away from the stove and in the wide entry into the dining room, so there was plenty of space. I bent over, placed my hand on the floor with my elbow braced against my right knee, centered my gravity over my arm, and slowly slowly slowly began to curl, lifting my feet off the ground.

So that’s what Wyatt saw when he came in the back door. We’d been so engrossed we hadn’t heard the car in the driveway.

“Holy shit!” he said, the words exploding out of him and making his mother and me both jump.

That wasn’t a good thing, because it ruined my balance. I began to topple, Mrs. Bloodsworth grabbed for me, and Wyatt vaulted the table. Somehow he caught my legs, keeping me from tipping over, then wrapped a brawny arm around my waist and gently flipped me upright.

There was nothing gentle about his tongue, though. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” he roared at me, his face dark with temper, then turned to Mrs. Bloodsworth. “Mother, you’re supposed to stop her from doing something stupid, not help her!”

“I was just showing-” I began.

“I saw what you were ‘just’ doing! For God’s sake, Blair, you were shot just twenty-four hours ago! You lost a lot of blood! Tell me how, under those conditions, doing a handstand is even remotely reasonable?”

“Since I did it, I’d say it was within the realm of possibility. If you hadn’t startled me, I’d have been just fine.” My tone was remarkably mild, because we had frightened him. I understood. I patted his arm. “Everything’s okay. Why don’t you just sit down and I’ll get you something to drink. Iced tea? Milk?”

“You’ll be okay,” his mother said soothingly. “I know you had a scare, but really, we had everything under control.”

“Under control? She-you…” He stopped sputtering and shook his head. “She isn’t any safer here than she would be at home. A broken neck can kill her just as dead as a bullet can. That’s it. I’m going to have to handcuff her to the vanity in the bathroom, and leave her at my house all day.”

Chapter Sixteen

Needless to say, supper wasn’t a very cheerful occasion. We were mad at Wyatt, and he was mad at us. That didn’t interfere with my appetite; I had to rebuild my blood supply, you know.

His mood didn’t improve when, as we were leaving after he’d helped his mother clean up the kitchen, she delivered a parting shot by hugging me and then saying, “Take my advice, honey, and don’t sleep with him.”

“Gee, Mother, thanks,” he said sarcastically, which earned him a sniff and a cold shoulder.

“I completely agree with you,” I told her.

“Will you be back tomorrow?” she asked me.

“No,” he sourly replied, even though she hadn’t asked him. “You’re a bad influence on each other. I’m going to chain her in the bathroom just like I said.”

“I don’t want to go with you,” I said, scowling at him. “I want to stay with her.”

“Tough. You’re going with me, and that’s that.” He clamped a strong hand around my right