“I did.” He took Kate upstairs and set her on the couch. He brought a pillow from the bedroom, put it on the coffee table, and gently laid her foot on the pillow. “I invited Elsie, too.”

“Ohmigod.”

“Nothing to worry about. I told Elsie this was high-class stuff, and she should leave the gun at home.” He put a DVD into the DVD player and zapped it on.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark?”

“This is classic. This is terrific. I must have seen this a thousand times.”

Kate grimaced. “Isn’t this the movie where they get covered with spiders?”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of good stuff in here. Poison darts and booby traps and a bunch of scary chase scenes. You stay put, and I’ll go make us some supper.”

She rested her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. He was trying very hard to be nice to her, and she appreciated it. But she wasn’t the sort of person who felt comfortable being waited on. And already she couldn’t stand sitting anymore.

How was she ever going to get through four days of this? The bottoms of her feet itched to get moving. Her fingers felt cramped. She looked at the cast and cringed. It was ugly and awkward and wasn’t designed to support a cello. Disaster, she thought, this was a disaster. No, wait a minute. A cholera epidemic was a disaster. Starvation in Africa was a disaster. This was just a broken leg. Not even a bad break according to the doctor. A crack in the tibia. No big deal. She’d put on a long dress and nobody’d know. In the meantime she’d watch Indiana Jones do his thing. Except for the spider part. She didn’t want to watch the spider part.

Dave sidled into the room with a trayful of food. “Why do you have your eyes closed?”

“I don’t want to see the spiders. Are they gone yet?”

“Yeah. If you don’t open your eyes, you’re going to miss the part where he snatches the idol.” He set the tray on the coffee table and sat beside Kate. “So, you don’t like spiders, huh?”

“I can live without them.”

“Spiders are okay. They eat bugs. They catch flies and mosquitoes. Besides, I have it on good authority that the spiders in Raiders are fake.”

“They were big and ugly, and there were a lot of them.”

Dave grinned. “We could watch a different movie…”

“No. This is fine.” She looked at the plates of food.

“How did you get all this? Homemade lasagna, Italian bread, salad.”

“Leftovers from the freezer brought to you thanks to the miracle of the microwave. Except for the salad.”

“You like to cook?”

“I can take it or leave it. Mostly I like to eat. That means I have to do some cooking.”