"Does a view of your cleavage go with your services?"
"Fringe benefit," she replied with a cheeky smile, "thrown in for free."
"I've seen better."
"Not at this price, you haven't."
"What are you being paid? I'll double it to get you out of here."
"I figured you'd try that." She fished in the bowl of fruit salad on his dinner tray and came up with a pineapple spear. She sucked on it nonchalantly. "But you might as well know right off the bat that money isn't my only motive."
"Don't tell me you came here out of the goodness of your heart."
She made a face at him. "You know better than that."
"Then what?"
"Imagine what a boost it will be to my career to work with the great Adam Cavanaugh. Pretty soon offers will come rolling in from movie stars with lower back syndrome and sports stars with stress injuries. Before it's over, I'll be as famous as you."
"You're wasting your time. I'll never be good for anything but to lie here and stare at the ceiling."
"Wanna bet, duckie? I'll have you walking if it kills me. If it kills both of us. In the meantime we're going to come to hate each other."
"We already hate each other."
She laughed. "So we're ahead of the game. Now be a good boy and eat these nice, plump veggies Pete has cooked for you."
"I'm not hungry."
"You've got to be. You haven't eaten in days. Pete said so." She picked a slice of banana out of the fruit salad and ate it. "He cringes every time your name is mentioned. What did you do to terrorize him, anyway?"
"I told him I was on speaking terms with Buddha and that he'd never reach nirvana if he didn't get out of here and stop pestering me. And the same goes for you."
"No good. I'm not a Buddhist."
"You know what I mean." He turned his head away. "Just get away from me. Leave me alone."
"Not till you've had dinner."
"You can't force me to eat."
"And you can't force me to leave. You can't move, remember?"
His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Get out." He strained the words through a set of straight, white teeth.
"Not until I've given you all the expertise I've got. So that when I'm interviewed by People magazine I'll be able to say in all honesty, and with an eloquent little tear in my eye, that I did everything possible for you." She spread the linen napkin over his bare chest. "Nice pecs. They'll come in handy when you start moving yourself into the wheelchair. Nice chest hair too. Very sexy."
"Go to hell."
"At the risk of repeating myself, not until you've eaten your dinner." She held a forkful of food near his mouth. He refused to open it. "Look, Ace, you're in a state of malnutrition already. Because of the atrophy of muscle and bone, you've got negative nitrogen balance, which means bad news. Unless you get some protein into your tissues, you're history. Besides that, if you pack some meat on those bones, they won't protrude so much, which is one reason you've got decubitus ulcer, or in layman's terms, bedsores on your backside.
"Now, I know you can digest because Bo Arno told me you could. You've also regained bowel and urinary control, which came as a great relief to me, and which is one reason I'm trying to talk you into eating a full meal. Otherwise, I would pretend I didn't notice that you were starving to death in addition to your osteoporosis, soft tissue ossification, contracture, etcetera that goes with lying around and not doing anything.
"To sum it up, Cavanaugh, you're dead in the water before we start unless you eat some of this food. Now, what'll it be?"
He stared at her, then at the fork she still held near his mouth. "My arms aren't paralyzed. I can feed myself."
"Good. That's one less duty I'll have to worry about."
She passed him the fork. He looked at it for another long moment. Then crammed it into his mouth. It became apparent just how hungry he was. After that first bite, he ate ravenously, practically shoveling in the food. Because he was so busy chewing and swallowing, Lilah handled the conversation almost single-handedly.
"I don't know when you saw Elizabeth last, but the baby has really blossomed in the last few weeks. Elizabeth is as wide as a barn and her boobs are out to here." She made a motion with her hands, cupping air several inches in front of her chest. "Thad's giddy over them. She's convinced the baby is going to come early, though her doctor says everything's right on schedule. They've gotten the nursery painted and ready. All it needs is an occupant.
"Megan, of course, can't wait to have the baby home so she can help take care of it. I want to see her the first time she's confronted with a dirty diaper. Bet her tune will change fast enough. That was an awfully indelicate belch, Cavanaugh. More water?
"Matt's afraid they're going to love the baby more than they love him, so he's being a real pill, and Elizabeth is letting him get by with it so as not to unbalance his psyche. Thad is acting like a complete dodo. For a man his age his daddyhood antics border on the absurd. But this is his first child, so I guess it's understandable if one is into that kind of thing."
"What kind of thing?" Adam mumbled around a mouthful.
"You know, home and hearth."
"That's not for you?"
"Hardly!"
"You don't envy your sister?"
"Are you kidding?"
"You'd rather sleep around."
"What a tacky phrase, Mr Cavanaugh," she said, taking umbrage. "I read the newspapers, same as you. I know what's going on. Nobody in his right mind 'sleeps around' anymore."
"That must really cramp your style."
"On the contrary," she said coldly. "I've always been very particular about my bed partners."
"But you've never narrowed the number down to one."
"I think settling down with one man for life sounds boring." He harrumphed and blotted his mouth with the napkin, then tossed it down into the empty plate. "You missed the tapioca," Lilah pointed out, pleased to see that it was all that was left of the food.
"I despise tapioca and Pete knows it. That's his way of defying me."
"What are you going to do about it," she taunted, "beat him up?"
"Very funny." He closed his eyes and laid his head on the pillow. "All right, I've eaten. Get lost."
"Oh, I can't. Not for a while."
His eyes popped open. "You said you'd leave me alone if I ate."
"Well, I fudged a smidgen. Now, don't look so venomous. We're just getting to the fun part."
"Somehow I doubt that."
She lifted the tray off his lap and set it on the floor near the door, which she opened. "Pete, we're ready," she called. Her voice echoed through the house.
"Ready for what? Look, I ate, isn't that enough?"
"Nope. We start tonight."
"Start what?"
"A smoldering affair." Adam raised startled eyes. She laughed. "Don't you wish? Actually we start your physical therapy."
"I don't want physical therapy. It won't do any good. I'm not putting myself through that humiliation. Pete, get that crap out of here. What's in those boxes?"
"Portable therapy equipment."
"Get it out of here."
"Soon this bedroom will look like a gymnasium. Hand me that screwdriver, will you, Pete?"
"Pete, if you value your job, if you value your Asian ass, you won't lift a hand to — All right, you're fired. Pete, didn't you hear me?" Then in a stubborn tone of voice, "I won't use any of this. I mean it, you two. You're wasting your time."
"Will you shut up!" Lilah yelled at him as she rammed the screwdriver into the palm of her hand. "Look what you made me do."
"This is my house," Adam said in a tightly controlled voice. "I didn't ask for your services, Ms. Mason. I don't want them. I don't want you."