Brian Read online

  Rosalie’s large doe eyes widened as they settled on Brian. “How fantastic! A recovering vet! I see Emmy nominations! Or at the very least, a visit with Ellen!”

  The team laughed at her excitement. Reaper reached out and patted Brian’s shoulder. “This is perfect payback, man.”

  Brian shook his head. Well, hell…

  * * *

  Three days later, Andrew Willoughby, the prosthetist, was having a hard time pretending a cameraman wasn’t filming his every move. A hard task, seeing as he was seated on a rolling stool in front of Brian as he measured his stumps.

  “Just do what you normally do,” Edgar Rivera, the camera man, said, after Andrew dropped his tape measure for the third time. “Forget I’m here.”

  Andrew gave Brian a baleful look. “How do you do it?” he whispered to Brian.

  Brian shrugged. “You get used to it.” And he had. After all, as soon as Rosalie had learned what Brian was planning to do, she’d attached herself to him like a leech. For the past few days, Rosalie and Edgar had broken away from the rest of the production crew to follow him around in his apartment from the time he hit his alarm at the start of the day, brushed his teeth, fixed the thermostat, and then rolled into the agency’s kitchen. They’d sat beside him as he’d made cold calls, answered inquiries, met with bail bondsmen—all his daily shit—then they’d accompanied him and Raydeen to dinner, documenting every inconvenient little detail of his life.

  They’d wanted to get the “before” routine on film then follow him through the process of being fitted, and then learning to walk on his new legs. Thank goodness, they thought they’d have enough “before” by the time this day ended, so they could concentrate on some other couple in the agency and leave him and Raydeen the hell alone.

  Then maybe they could have some real alone time, aka sex.

  After going years without any, the last few days of abstinence had frayed every last one of his nerves. Not that he thought Edgar or Rosalie would have minded if they’d had to fade to black once he and Raydeen were in bed. Rosalie had told him point blank that people liked to know how “you folks” do everything.

  Not that Brian was offended by being called “you folks”—Rosalie was brisk and blunt, but didn’t have a mean bone in her body. Still, he was pretty sure with the way they’d already filmed his transfers from bed to chair to toilet, kindly leaving him alone before he pushed down his boxers, that their audience would be able to figure out that there would be some adjustments for sex.

  Not many, as it turned out, seeing as Raydeen was perfectly comfortable straddling him when they did it on the bathroom counter. He’d even hung from a chin-up bar to take her against the doorframe. He didn’t want her to ever regret not being boned standing up.

  “Andrew, tell Edgar and Rosalie why these measurements are so important,” Raydeen said from her position near the doorway. She made it a point to be with Brian through every step of the process. Not something she usually did, because she trusted the other staff, but he was her boyfriend, dammit. Brian kind of liked how possessive she was. Her hovering tended to get things done quicker, too.

  Andrew fitted the measuring tape around the end of the stump to measure the circumference. “The manufacturer needs exact numbers. They fashion a urethane and gel liner to fit over the residual limb. The fit has to be close to perfect because there can’t be any air bubbles between his skin and the liner or they’ll cause blisters and sores. They’ll construct a prosthetic that will be close to a perfect fit, but not exact because a residual limb—”

  “Andrew, you can say stump,” Brian whispered overloud.

  Andrew frowned at him. He’d likely been through too much sensitivity training to ever be natural with his patients. “The prosthetic is left a little larger because the size of the residual limb fluctuates throughout the day, so the artificial limb has to accommodate socks over the liner to help with those fluctuations.”

  Andrew’s discomfort was forgotten while he spoke because he took measurements farther up his stump and from the knee around the bottom of the stump and up to the back of the knee without dropping the tape again. Then he repeated the process on Brian’s other leg.

  “How long will it take for the prosthetics to be shipped back for Brian to try them out?” Rosalie asked.

  “About three weeks.”

  She frowned. “Any way they can come faster?”

  Andrew glanced upward. “No, that’s how long it takes.”

  Rosalie huffed, but didn’t try to argue with the man.

  When he’d finished with all the measurements and they’d completed all the forms, Brian could tell Rosalie was bored. “You know, you don’t have to stick around. I’m just going to be doing some floor exercises with Raydeen for about an hour before I head back to the office.”

  “Can you do those back at your place later?” Rosalie asked, giving them a sly look.

  Raydeen held up a hand next to her mouth and pretended to whisper to Brian. “She wants to see us make out after I make you sweat.”

  “I got that,” Brian said. He shrugged. “Babe, it’s completely up to you.”

  Raydeen smiled. “I’ll bring a yoga mat.”

  * * *

  Raydeen counted as Brian completed his sixtieth sit up. She’d hunkered down and placed his legs over her shoulders while she gripped them to hold them against her body while he pumped up and down. Brian was pretty sure this wasn’t the way she conducted these exercises with her other patients, but any excuse to get her hands on him was one she’d take. She’d confessed that she too had been feeling a little snippy due to their lack of intimacy of late.

  When he rested on the mat, she moved his legs off then lay beside him. She too was dressed in bike shorts and a tank for the workout. “Let’s do some lateral crunches, now.”

  Brian glanced sideways and gave her a mean look.

  She returned a perky smile. “Isn’t this fun?”

  “So, why the workouts, Raydeen?” Rosalie asked. She sat on the edge of the armchair in Brian’s bedroom.

  Brian thought she was kind of cute in a nerdy way. Rosalie Saucedo was wiry and slim, medium height. Her dark brown hair was wavy and usually pulled back in a tight pony tail. She rarely wore makeup and always dressed in what he’d call her “director’s uniform”—khaki pants, a three-quarters sleeved Henley, a khaki vest with lots of pockets, and hiking boots. When she followed the team into the woods on a hunt, she added a floppy, military-style hat.

  He guessed she was in her late thirties, but it was hard to gauge a number because she had very few lines on her pretty oval face.

  “Brian needs to strengthen his core, buttocks, and thighs to help him maintain his balance once he’s up on his prosthetics.”

  “Looks like he’s already in pretty good shape,” Rosalie said, eyeing Brian’s muscled chest and abdomen.

  The tank he wore looked glued to his body because he’d sweated so much. Every hill and hollow were nicely defined. “He’s in great shape, but it doesn’t hurt to keep honing those muscles. It’ll make his time in rehab shorter.”

  “I read somewhere that the life expectancy of an amputee is ten to fifteen years less than a normal person’s.”

  By the way her back stiffened, Brian was pretty sure that comment had Raydeen’s hackles rising.

  “First,” she said, “an amputee is a normal person. Second, that ten to fifteen-year loss occurs when amputees don’t up their cardio. It’s a vascular issue that aerobic exercise helps. Brian plays basketball and rolls around the track. Plus, based on his abs,” she said, patting his belly, “he’s been exercising on his own—a lot.”

  “What will his rehab experience look like? How long is the process of getting him used to his new legs going to take?”

  Raydeen smiled at Brian. They’d already discussed it. He knew it was going to be a long and arduous journey, lasting up to a year. “It’ll be like taking baby steps. The first day, he’ll only wear his new prostheses for a tota
l of two hours. Only half an hour of that will be with him standing on them. When he does stand on them, we’ll have to check his residual limbs every fifteen minutes for swelling and to see how his skin is doing.”

  She reached for his hand and held it. “Each day we’ll add more time, until we’re adding an hour more of use every day. And there may be setbacks. If he has issues with sores and seepage, we’ll have to work with the prosthetist to make adjustments to the thickness of the socks, to the artificial limb, or get a new liner. It takes time, but the end result will be added mobility. Depending on the style of limb he uses, he will be able to walk, run, climb… It’s entirely up to him.”

  Brian gave her a smile, telling her silently that he held not a shadow of doubt that he’d get there. “What’s next?”

  She went to her knees, bracketed his face with her hands, and kissed him.

  As the kiss deepened, Rosalie cleared her throat. “Will he be able to drive using his artificial legs?”

  Raydeen turned her head, snuggling her cheek against Brian’s as she answered, “No. Since he can’t feel the pedals, and he lost both legs, he’ll still need to use hand controls when he’s driving.”

  Brian liked that she seemed to need to touch him quite a lot. “But I’ll be able to move more easily around the van, out of the van, even set up my own surveillance gadgets without needing someone else to trek through the weeds.” He turned his face to kiss her palm. “I might not be able to chase down a target on foot, but I can definitely do more of the physical work.”

  Rosalie smiled. “I’ve already seen you at work in your van, tracking your team on those monitors while you’re typing a mile a minute on a keyboard, or flying those nifty drones. I’d say they’re pretty lucky to have someone with your skills.”

  Brian tipped his chin. “I’d say they’re pretty lucky, too.”

  “We should shower,” Raydeen said. “I’ll go first. While you’re in, I’ll start dinner.” She turned to Edgar and Rosalie. “I’m making chicken enchiladas with green chili sauce. Hope you two like jalapenos.”

  Rosalie clapped. “The hotter the better, but you don’t have to cook for us.”

  “Since this is your last night with us,” Raydeen said, pointedly, “I thought we’d celebrate.”

  Rosalie tilted her head and gave the couple a sly smile. “That’s so thoughtful. Don’t suppose we could get some kind of intimate fade to the bedroom shots before we leave…?”

  Brian chuckled. “By the end of dinner, I don’t think either of us will even notice you’re here…”

  Chapter 11

  Six weeks later, Brian sat in the ops van with Edgar sitting on a low stool beside him, his camera leaning on his shoulder. It was a Saturday, and Raydeen had ridden shotgun to keep him company and because she wanted to support him, should he need any help.

  Rosalie and two other cameramen, along with various other film crew flunkies, followed two different sets of hunters as they trekked along two separate trails through thick brush in the forest near Glacier National Park, on the trail of a man who was the subject of a statewide manhunt. Armed search teams had been brought together from all over northwest Montana. The hunters had been assigned a sector to search that morning in support of Sheriff Miller’s deputies, after the sheriff had reached out the night before to ask for their help.

  Brian had parked the van at a roadside rest stop not far from the two trailheads, just a widening of the road with a concrete wall barrier between them and the drop into a deep ravine. He wore his new “pegs”—his nickname for what were actually pretty cool pieces of hardware. Andrew had been able to get them delivered sooner than the usual three weeks, because he’d mentioned that the manufacturer’s work would be featured on the series, and the company had rushed the production schedule. He’d had a full four weeks to get used to them.

  Brian still couldn’t spend a full day in them, but he’d donned them right before heading out with the hunters to be their eyes and ears. Raydeen was there to remind him to remove the prosthetics and check his legs periodically for redness, although that requirement had stretched to two-hour intervals now. From the van, he’d monitor the team’s livestream camera feeds as well as operate the drone in their sectors.

  He’d already unboxed the drone, tested the camera, replaced the rechargeable battery, and was now ready to fly it. Picking up the van’s remote, he opened the back door of the vehicle, set the drone in the middle of the floor, then sat at his console. The picture from the forward camera showed the open doorway and a clear view of the mountains inside the park.

  All the calibrations on the left side of the screen were normal, so he used the joystick to start it. “We have liftoff,” he murmured as it flew out the door.

  “I have one of those—not as fancy, of course,” Edgar said. “I take it out to Griffith Park on the weekends when I’m in LA. My kid loves to watch it fly, but I never share the controls. He tends to dive bomb people’s heads.”

  Brian grinned. “We won’t be doing any of that. I like to keep it high enough and moving fast enough that it doesn’t get shot out of the air.”

  “Oh.”

  “You had to say that,” Raydeen drawled from her seat beside him.

  With the drone in the air, Brian hit the remote again and closed the back door of the van. Then he quickly scanned the monitors. The team all wore camera-outfitted helmets. He counted the number of feed “squares” on his large monitor, just to make sure they were all working, then turned his attention back to the drone.

  Brian was happy to be part of another hunter op. While he’d done a few stakeouts since the one that had gotten him into trouble, simply watching houses to see whether skips turned up, he hadn’t been needed for a true, track-a-thug-through-the-forest mission. Not since he’d begun wearing his new legs, anyway.

  Brian was still getting used to them.

  The first time he’d donned them, paying close attention to Andrew’s guidance because he was eager to get this process conquered, he’d had a moment when he’d been helped by Raydeen and another therapist to stand on his new legs. The prosthetics had been fashioned to give him back the height he’d lost. When he’d straightened and gripped the parallel bars, he’d felt dizzy for a moment, and then he’d gazed down at Raydeen as she’d smiled teary-eyed back at him. “Damn, I feel like me again,” he’d said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

  Of course, that moment of euphoria had been followed by many more of frustration, because learning to walk when you couldn’t feel your “feet” took some getting used to—a different kind of balancing act than any muscle memory could provide. However, he’d quickly moved from the parallel bars to a walker, and then crutches for support. These days, he used two canes with cuffs to help with his balance, but he hoped that, soon, he’d be competent enough to use just one, then someday none. His long-term goal was to learn to use prosthetics with running blades, so that he could get back to the kinds of exercise he’d enjoyed before his legs had been blown to hell. Now, that goal appeared to be within reach.

  But today, the dual canes leaned against the work table. He’d left his chair at home. No, turning back. No letting it be “the crutch”. Sure, he used it around his apartment a lot, but once he was dressed with his legs on, and was ready for work, he walked the hallway to the kitchen. Yes, his coffee cup was a thermos with a strap so he could hold it while he used his canes, but he was becoming more independent every day.

  One of the coolest things for him was forgoing parking in a handicapped space and searching for a ramp. Although he was still a little wobbly, if he took his time, stepping onto a curb while balancing on his crutches was doable.

  Hell, one thing he hadn’t anticipated was that people looked at him differently. Before, many folks he passed never made eye contact, or if they did, it was to deliver a kind smile. These days, they greeted him with full smiles, some even admiring, which seemed a little weird to him, but Raydeen said they were just reflecting his confidence back to him
.

  And she was right. He felt more confident, more himself. He couldn’t wait for the day he could stride down the sidewalk, holding her hand.

  There wasn’t any space for doubt left in his heart about where this relationship was heading. Not anymore. He was in love. He loved everything about Raydeen Pickering—her sarcastic wit, her stubborn fierceness, her sensual spirit. That her face and body made him happy just looking at them and feeling them beneath his fingertips was a bonus. Good Lord, all she had to do was give him a smile that stretched her freckled skin across her nose and made her brown eyes glitter, and he was lost.

  He hadn’t told her he loved her yet. Not in words. He hoped she’d be patient just a little while longer. Then again, she’d never spoken those words either.

  He’d worried about that, at first. Reaper, oddly, had been the one to put his worry to rest.

  One morning, after all the skip assignments had been made and the hunters with their film crew shadows had departed, it was just him and Reaper.

  Reaper had chucked his chin at Brian’s prosthetics. “How’s it goin’, buddy?”

  He’d smiled and sat back in his chair, his legs extended in front of him. “Pretty damn good.” He pointed toward the canes. “Raye says I’m getting close to not needing them at all.” He wrinkled his nose. “I thought I was in pretty good shape for a wheelchair guy—I worked with hand weights, did crunches, sit-ups, pullups, pushups, but it’s…different. My ass and thighs get a workout with me just standing in them. No amount of resistance, stretchy-band workouts prepares you for that.”

  “Good to know, but I wasn’t talking about your legs. We can all see your progress, and we’re proud of you. You’ve worked damn hard. I’m wondering how you and Raye are doin’.”

  “Great,” Brian had said, but from the look Reaper gave him, a penetrating stare, he felt a frisson of doubt. “At least, I think so.”