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more than she wanted it to.
    “Nothing is fixed,” he guessed softly. “You’re still jiggling the toilet handle and putting a bucket under the leak in the spare bedroom ceiling. You’re still getting slivers in your feet from the floor you refuse to rip out, even though it was going to cost more to refurbish it than it would to put in a new one.”
    “That’s precisely why I need to sell it,” she said reasonably. “It’s not a suitable house for a woman on her own.”
    Again, he heard something Jessica was not telling him.
    “We’ll talk about selling the house,” he promised. “We’ll probably get more for it if we do some fixes.”
    He noted his easy use of the word
we
, and backtracked rapidly. “How about if I come back later in the week? I’ll have a quick look through the house and make a list of what absolutely has to be done, and then I’ll hire a handyman to do it. My assistant is actually tracking one down to fix the door on your shop, so we’ll see how he does there.”
    “I think the real estate agent can do the list of what needs to be done.”
    She’d already talked to a real estate agent. He shrugged as if he didn’t feel smacked up the side of the head by her determination to rid herself of this reminder of all things
them
.
    “Your real estate agent wants to make money off you. He is not necessarily a good choice as an adviser.”
    “And you are?”
    He deserved that, he supposed.
    “Okay. Do it your way,” Jessica said. “I’ll pay half for the handyman. Do you think you could come in fairly quickly and make your list? Maybe tomorrow while I’m at work?”
    He didn’t tell her he doubted she would be going back to work tomorrow. Her face was pale with exhaustion and she was slumped in her chair. No matter what she said, now was not the time for this discussion.
    “I’m going to put you to bed,” Kade said. “You’re obviously done for today. We can talk about the house later.” He noticed he carefully avoided the word
divorce
.
    “I am exhausted,” she admitted. “I do need to go to bed. However, you are not putting me to bed.” She folded her one arm up over her sling, but winced at the unexpected hardness of the cast hitting her in the chest.
    “I doubt if you can even get your clothes off on your own.”
    She contemplated that, looked down at her arm in the sling. He knew at that moment, the reality of the next four weeks was sinking in. In her mind, she was trying to think how she was going to accomplish the simple task of getting her clothes off and getting into pajamas.
    “I’ll go to bed in my clothes,” she announced.
    “Eventually,” he pointed out, “you’re going to have to figure out how to get out of them. You’re going to be in that cast for how long?”
    “A month,” she said, horror in her features as her new reality dawned on her.
    “I’ll just help you this first time.”
    “You are not helping me get undressed,” she said, shocked.
    He felt a little shock himself at the picture in his mind of that very shirt sliding off the slenderness of her shoulders. He blinked at the old stirring of pure fire he felt for Jessica. She was disabled, for God’s sake.
    It took enormous strength to wrestle down the yearning the thought of touching her created in him, to force his voice to be patient and practical.
    “Okay,” Kade said slowly, “so you don’t want me to help you get undressed, even though I’ve done it dozens of times before. What do you propose?”
    Her face turned fiery with her blush. She glared at him, but then stared at her sleeve, bunched up above the cast, and the reality of trying to get the shirt off over the rather major obstacle of her cast-encased arm seemed to settle in.
    “Am I going to have to cut it off? But I love this blouse!” She launched to her feet. He was sure it was as much to turn her back to him as anything else. She went to the kitchen drawer where they had always kept the scissors and yanked it open.