Urgh. She couldn’t just lie here and stress. She flung back the bed covers. Wolfe had set up a schedule which included daily afternoon naps. But she wasn’t interested in napping. She was going to worry herself into an ulcer if she stayed in this bed any longer.
She knew the guys were just trying to follow the doctor’s orders. They were taking care of her. It was sweet and somewhat stifling. But she was feeling much better. Right now, what she needed was to stop thinking.
Slowly, she stood, resting her weight on her sore foot. They were still carrying her everywhere. It would be nice to move around on her own. Or to not have someone help her in and out of the bath.
Cautiously, she took another step. It wasn’t too bad. Hobbling to the door, she opened it and peered out. Nobody was around. Surprising.
Moving into the passage, she realized she had no idea where she was going. She walked past the door to the playroom and paused.
Perhaps this was her chance to do some exploring. Biting her lip, she opened the door and limped inside, shutting the door behind her. What to look at first? Should she even touch anything? What if they’d met someone else? Stolen her and brought her here? Then this would be some other girl’s room.
She growled at the thought.
Okay, so not only was she possessive of the guys, she was feeling possessive of a playroom?
You’re being silly. She moved further into the room and carefully sat on a bean bag next to a bookshelf filled with children’s books. It would be nice to sit here and read.
Or have someone read to her.
On the bottom shelf were some coloring books and pens. She picked up one of the books and a box of pens.
Lots of adults enjoyed doing this sort of thing, right? So it wasn’t weird for her to color. Was it? She opened up the book, flicking through the pages until she found one of a puppy licking an ice cream.
This looked like fun.
She’d never have dreamed of doing this while she lived with William or her father. She’d never known when one of them would walk in. And they’d have been horrified. Image was everything.
She started coloring in the dog’s face. She was concentrating so hard she didn’t hear the door open.
“Ahh, here you are,” Caleb said.
She glanced up in shock, the pen going straight across the page, through the ice-cream. “Oh no, I ruined it.”
He walked in quietly. “Ruined what?”
“The picture. Look. There’s brown marker through the ice cream. Now I have to start a new picture!”
“Why?” he asked calmly, kneeling next to her.
She held up the picture. “Because it’s not perfect.”
His face softened. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, jelly bean.”
“But . . . but . . . it doesn’t?” she asked.
“Of course not. It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to color outside the lines, you can. Or make the ice-cream brown and the puppy blue. That’s up to you.”
“But puppies can’t be blue.”
“They can if you want them to be. It’s your picture. Do what you like.”
She rubbed at her eye with her hand. “I’m so tired of being perfect. Of having to look perfect. Act perfect. I was a doll who they molded into the perfect puppet, stuck in a fortress built on lies.”
“Hey. Look at me.” He waited until her gaze hit his. “I don’t think you’re perfect.”
“You don’t?”
A grin twitched at his lips. “Nope. In fact, I know you’re not perfect.”
“I might be perfect,” she told him haughtily. “You don’t know how I’ve changed in the last eight years.”
“Sing ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’,” he said to her bizarrely.
She started singing and he shook his head with a wince.
“Nope, you still can’t sing for shit,” he told her.
“Caleb!” She gave him a shocked look. Then she had to smile.
“Say Peter Piper had a pickled pepper, ten times really fast,” he said to her.
She tried. She really did but around the fourth time she completely messed it up. She giggled.
“Pat your head and rub your belly.”
“I can do that!” she protested. She showed him.
“You’re patting your head and your belly,” he told her.
“Nuh-huh,” she laughed.
“Uh-huh. Now, I’d ask you to demonstrate your ability to make a lemon meringue pie but last time you set the oven on fire.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh, so you’re saying it was the oven’s fault.” He nodded seriously. “Fair enough. Would you like to demonstrate your lemon meringue pie making ability?”
She bit her lip. “That’s a pass.”
“I thought so. And let’s not even start with your shoelace tying.”
“Hey, that’s a low blow. I tie a shoelace just fine, it’s everyone else who does it wrong.”
“Oh, is that so, brat?” He leaned in to tickle her and she laughed so hard she snorted.
“More proof! You don’t laugh perfectly either.” He continued to tickle at her sides. Damn him! He knew all of her worst spots. She tried to shove herself away.
“Careful! Don’t jolt your arm.”
Well, she wouldn’t jolt it if he wasn’t tickling her!
“Mercy! Mercy!” she cried.
He drew back, grinning at her. “So what were all those complaints about having to be perfect?”
Her smile dimmed. “I had to pretend to be perfect.”
“For William and your father?”
She nodded. “Anytime I messed up, my father would lose it. He’d berate me. Sometimes William would join in. It. . .wasn’t nice.”
“Wasn’t nice, huh? I’m thinking that’s an understatement. You realize that if everyone was perfect that we wouldn’t laugh or cry or get angry or feel joy, right? Life would be pretty damn boring.”
“Wolfe would like it.”
“Wolfe has issues that go a long way back. He’s taught himself to control his emotions, that doesn’t mean that they’ve disappeared. You have to be patient with him, all of this is something new to him. I know he’s obsessed with what you eat and keeping you on a schedule, it’s his way of controlling things. And showing he cares.”
“I know. I’m not upset by it.”
“Do you know that he fully expected to be kept in the background when we found a woman that we wanted to have a relationship with?”
She didn’t like the idea of them with anyone else, but she didn’t have a right to get upset at the idea. She’d been married to someone else. “What do you mean? In the background?”
“He thought she’d be ashamed to be seen with him.”
“What?” she gasped. “That’s awful. Any woman like that isn’t worthy of him.”
Caleb smiled. “And that’s why you’re perfect for us. You see each of us for who we are. You know that while Wolfe might have problems with intimacy that he’d have your back no matter what. That he cares in different ways. That even though Aleki smiles and jokes, he’s the most sensitive of us all. And that I. . .”