Walker Revenge (The Walker Family Series Book 5) by Bernadette Marie

the foot plates. Every muscle in his body
still ached. Even these tedious tasks hurt. But he’d be damned if
it was going to hold him back.
    Once he removed the obstacles, he pushed up
with his good arm, to stand on his good leg. Even that was wobbly,
but the bed was only a few inches away. He could do this.
    Pushing harder, he got up on one leg, but
the brakes on the chair weren’t as secure as he’d thought.
    Just as Chelsea walked out of the bathroom
with the toddler in her arms wrapped in a towel, Russell felt the
chair move, and he was headed toward the floor.
    It all flashed before him. He was going
down. Then he saw the little boy running around naked, and two
strong, yet feminine arms were wrapped around him keeping him from
falling.
    “What in the hell were you doing?” Chelsea
hollered as she guided him toward the bed, and sat him on the edge.
“You could have fallen and hurt yourself.”
    “I’m already hurt.”
    “Don’t you get sassy with me,” she scolded.
Her cheeks were fire red, and her eyes wide. “I’m here to help you,
and you’re damn well going to let me. Don’t you ever do that
again.”
    “You’re not my mother,” he retorted with
equal venom.
    “No, but I am,” his mother said from the
doorway as she picked up Lucas and wrapped him back up in his
towel. “I’ll strap you to that bed if you do that again.”
    Russell fisted his hands. “I’m fine. I have
to learn to do this.”
    Chelsea leaned in real close. “Then you let
me teach you,” she growled through clenched teeth. “I’ll damn well
let you do it when you’re strong enough.”
    His mother cleared her throat. “I’ll take
him upstairs and get him dressed.”
    He noticed Chelsea didn’t even look their
way. “Thank you,” she said as she kept a steely stare on him. When
his mother and her son were out of the room, she eased back. “As
pleasant as it is, why don’t you let me look at your catheter bag
so I can dump it.”
    Humiliation crept up his spine and spread
through his skin like a burn from the inside. “Can’t we have
someone else do that?”
    “I’m the nurse your parents hired to take
care of you.”
    “But you’re not a full nurse yet.”
    “Nope, but I’m here. It’ll take them hours
to get someone else out here from town to do it. By then, you might
have an infection if its full and flowing the wrong way up the
tube. Perhaps you should just remember that I’ve seen everything
you have, only now it’s absolutely in a professional capacity. You
don’t have to worry about anything.”
    God, he hated this. He hated every part of
it.
    He had no choices. This was his reality.
    “Fine,” he spat out. “Do it and then let me
get some rest. Those pills my mother gave me are starting to make
your face fuzzy.”
    She laughed as she lifted his legs onto the
bed and pulled up his pant leg.
    Russell laid his head back on the billion
pillows his mother thought the bed needed for show, and closed his
eyes. He didn’t want to see her looking at his—anything.
    She lifted his pant leg only. “You’ll be
okay for a little bit. What this tells me is you need more
fluids.”
    He opened his eyes and squinted at her.
“These are not the kinds of things I want to hear you tell me.”
    “Oh, is there anything you want me to tell
you?” She bore a stare into him, and he knew she was thinking about
his drugged slip of words when he’d first seen her. He’d told her
he loved her, and he wondered if it would always haunt him. But
then he thought about it. There was something he wanted her to tell
him.
    “Why don’t you tell me where you were the
night of my accident.”
    Her eyes grew wide. “You want to know where
I was when you were in your accident?”
    “Yeah. I mean, I was run off the road by a
truck that was owned by your ex-husband, which they found parked at
your house.”
    “Across from my house,” she clarified
curtly.
    “Did he leave you that truck?”
    Chelsea fisted her hands at her