LITMIR.BIZ

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the time she’d managed to usher him out of the suite she’d had a scalp-stretching bun forced on her, as well as more than half the clothes that he’d brought with him.

      This nonsense was going to last two days. Two days. Not twenty. In two days, she’d be back home and in her own clothes, she wouldn’t have to blend in with Liam’s Group. She could wear what she wanted. She didn’t need five pairs of slacks. She didn’t need blazers and blouses, and why in God’s name had Liam included accessories and shoes for every outfit?

      Grace flexed her toes up and then gave them a wiggle in the strappy sandals she’d still managed to succumb to wearing with the suit—aka the last thing she’d agreed to try on. She didn’t blend in. The crowd dressed casually. She looked like she’d come straight from closing down a tenement for the poor and disenfranchised. Or, actually, she probably looked like she was trying too hard to look important.

      While Liam looked tired. And in pain.

      And like he needed to be knocked out, since that apparently was the only way she was going to get him to behave and actually take some time to heal.

      Anyone who watched him right now would likely come to the same conclusion. He tried, bless his little idiotic heart, but his limp was still there. Pain had a way of overriding willpower and concentration. It also distracted from a person’s ability to judge anything accurately, like how well he was doing pretending it didn’t hurt.

      By the time he made it to the double doors and out of her vision, Grace’s irritation had turned to worry and her head ached from the way her brows refused to un-pinch.

      No matter where she stood in the crowd, she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him now. The only thing she could pray for was that Miles, the assistant who hated her, would keep an eye on him and not let him overdo things.

      As if that would happen. It’d mean going along with her demands, and if she’d picked up anything from him this afternoon it was that his last priority was pleasing her. Liam wanted to keep going, and Miles would facilitate that, regardless of whether or not it was best for Liam.

      With a growing sense of dread she turned to push her way back through the crowds. They were sticking around to be there and see those shining people they’d come to see on their exit back out of the theater. One trip, two chances to catch sight of them, no matter if they had to stand waiting two or more hours in between.

      Not Grace.

      Let Miles help keep him on his feet. The trouble with having no control over a situation? No matter how much she told herself that he’d be fine, that he was an adult and could make his own decisions, she still worried about him all the way to the street to catch a taxi. And likely would continue to worry for the remainder of the night, while she sorted out only the clothes she’d wear in the next two days and lumped the rest together to be messengered back tomorrow.

      But at least that would give her something to do besides fret.

      * * *

      Two hours later, Grace dragged the crutches out from beneath the cream-colored sofa. She’d intended on doing so when Liam hobbled in the door of the massive suite she’d been pacing since the ten minutes it had taken her to sort the clothes out.

      But, amazingly, he’d called and asked her to bring them down to the back entrance.

      She couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. Passing her bag of supplies, she grabbed it for the splint and implements stashed inside, just in case it was a bad thing.

      A short ride down, and she hurried to the back entrance.

      A small part of her wanted to believe this request for the crutches was a positive thing. That he had decided that he should do what she wanted, and had given up on whatever macho idiocy that had him feigning invincibility.

      When she stepped out the back, the limo was waiting. He hadn’t even hobbled inside without them.

      Liam sat sideways at the opened back door, pale and slouching, his tie undone and his shirt half-unbuttoned.

      “Good grief, you look horrible.”

      “Thanks,” he muttered, glancing down.

      His look led hers and that overwhelming urge to shake him reared up again. “Oh, God, Liam. Did you try to chew through this tape?”

      “It’s cutting off circulation, which I would have thought would make it hurt less. But it doesn’t!”

      She propped the crutches against the side of the limo and dropped to her knees, glad she’d brought the bag. It took only a moment to locate her gauze scissors and she slipped the safety end under the tape to cut through what he’d managed to make impossible to remove any other way.

      “Did you tape it like a puzzle on purpose?”

      “Yes, actually. I taped it like a puzzle on purpose because that’s the way you get the best support without cutting off circulation. Unless you hobble around on a badly sprained ankle despite medical advice, make it swell up and cut off circulation anyway.”

      Pitting edema. It had swollen so much that the scissors left a groove down his leg as she cut and tugged the tape away. “If you just keep going around and around with tape, it gets far too constricting. I taped it specifically to support an inverse sprain.”

      He grunted in response, but that sound became a low, pained hiss as she got the last of the wrapping off and blood rushed back into the skin.

      It hurt when the blood got back into the area too.

      She tilted her head to try and see the damage, but the low lighting didn’t make that possible. Examination would have to wait. “Let me get the splint on.”

      “No!” He couldn’t snatch his foot back from it, but he did lift it. “I’ll use the crutches and hold my foot up. I won’t put any weight on it. Just don’t touch it until we’re back upstairs.”

      “You don’t mind if anyone sees it?”

      “We’ll go fast.”

      Grace shrugged, grabbed the debris and stuffed it into the hands of one of his assistants, handed the bag to another, and rose to help him up on the crutches. “Don’t go fast. Go slowly. I’ve never seen anyone else come out this way, have you? It’ll be fine.”

      Once inside, the light let her see just how pale he was. He almost looked like he’d been dusted with white powder, like an extra at King Louis IX’s court.

      She wouldn’t nag. Wouldn’t yell at him. She’d just get him upstairs, tie him up and refuse to let him go to New York tomorrow. Yeah, that was a plan.

      The look he gave her as he leaned against the inside of the elevator let her know that her yelling wouldn’t do any good anyway. He had the look of a man who’d been converted. In fact, the labored breathing and shaky hands said he’d probably have asked her for a wheelchair if there had been one in the suite.

      By the time they got him upstairs, whatever civil facade he’d been putting up crumbled and no sooner had the door closed than he was announcing, “Everyone out. I need space.”

      Miles and crew turned right around, Hailey dropping the bag she’d carried by the door on the way back out.

      What did that mean for her? Should she go?

      Grace stepped back and gestured to the bar. “I’ve got ice waiting. Do you want me to help you get situated before I go?”

      “You stay,” he muttered, and continued through to the bedroom, which was elevated by a few deeply carpeted steps.

      With the way he shook, Grace didn’t trust him to navigate the steps on his own and scrambled along with him, hands at his back, ready to grab and lower him to the floor if he started to go.

      “Stop. I’m fine.”

      “You’re not fine. You’re shaking hard enough for it to measure on the Richter

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