Deirdre nodded, and Brendan—to the young woman’s wildest bewilderment—asked, “Was it bad?”

She bit her lip in surprise. “A-Aren’t you mad?”

Mad? Of course Brendan was mad. Furious, even. Furious for an entire day. He had been downright apoplectic in the evening, when he’d waited and waited for Deirdre to come home on time. Every second had burned!

So what? All that rage had melted away—how could he stay mad after witnessing the lengths this woman would go to just to conceal her injury and the pain it caused her? How could he honestly tell himself that her maddening refusal to be candid was not motivated by her fear of his reaction?

“If you could just... If you had just told me frankly that you were suffering from an injury, I would have calmed down much sooner!”

Brendan went downstairs and called Dr. Ginger on the phone in the living room. As he ordered the doctor to come as soon as possible, Deirdre quickly protested from the bed. “W-Wait! You don’t need to get Dr. Ginger! It’s