doing here. But I promise I’m not going to cause you any trouble. My name is Greg Reid. I live in the house at the end of Main, a couple of blocks from the clinic. Check my driver’s license if you want. It’s in my wallet in my back pocket,” he told her, more color draining. “I’d get it myself but I can’t let go of my arm.”
She thought she detected desperation in the deep tones of his voice. Mostly what she heard was pain. The fact that he seemed to be doing his best to fight both replaced her skepticism with a sharp tug of guilt.
She was having one of the more rotten days of her life. But he didn’t seem to be having such a good one, either. All the man wanted was help.
It seemed wiser to abandon caution than to stick her hand in his back pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said, apologizing for his pain and her paranoia. “But there has to be somewhere else we can take you.” There was a hospital, but it was almost an hour and a half away. Skepticism turned to worry. Now that she was really looking at it, the angle of his shoulder looked strangely squared-off. “I have no idea what to do for you.”
“I’ll tell you what to do. It’s not that complicated.” His assurance came as lightning flashed. “Just let me sit down. Okay?”
Greg desperately needed to sit. Mostly because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand. Pain, searing and sharp radiated over his collarbone and chest, across his back, down his arm. He could feel sweat breaking out on his upper lip and the thought of letting go of his arm nearly made him nauseous. But at least the exasperatingly skeptical young woman uneasily stepping back to allow him inside looked capable of helping him out. He hadn’t been sure who he would find inside the old abandoned Baker place when he’d noticed the car and the faint glow of light from the window. As badly as he hurt and as hard as it was raining, he hadn’t cared so long as whoever it was could help.
His reluctant rescuer closed the door behind her as she followed him into the nearly dark and empty room. Light spilled from a doorway to his left.
“In here,” she said, moving past him. “There’s a stool by the sink.”
He followed her into the empty kitchen. As he did, a shard of bright red ceramic flew across the floor. Her foot had caught it in her haste to move one of the two oil lamps closer to the sink. There didn’t appear to be any furniture in the house. The only place to sit was the stool she had mentioned.
In agony, he watched her lift a cardboard box off it, then shove back the bangs of her boyishly short, sable-colored hair. She was young and pretty, and had he not been so preoccupied with the ripping sensations in his muscles, he might have paid more than passing notice to the lovely blue of her eyes. But she could have looked like a beagle and been built like a trucker for all he cared just then. All that mattered to him when he sank onto the wooden stool was the intelligence in those eyes. That and the fact that he was finally sitting down.
The base of the metal lamp clunked against the counter when Jenny moved it closer.
He looked even worse to her in the light. The moisture slicking his face was more than the rain that dripped from the ends of his hair and ran in rivulets down his neck. It was sweat. Fine beads of it lined his upper lip.
With his eyes closed, he shivered.
Growing more worried by the second, she touched her hand to his uninjured arm. Beneath the wet fabric, his hard muscles felt like stone.
“Hang on,” she said, letting her hand stay on his arm long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to fall off the stool. “I’ll get you a towel.”
She didn’t know if he was just cold, or if shivering was a sign of shock. But the thought that he could get worse than he already was had her silently swearing to herself. The book she might have looked up shock in was still impounded.
“Can you take off your shirt?” she asked, reminding herself that she could just ask him what the symptoms were. He was the doctor. “It’s drenched.”
“I don’t want to let go of my arm.”
She took that to mean he’d need help.
Two more boxes sat in the corner where she’d swept the floor and piled her blankets and comforter. Ripping open the nearest one, she dug under her sheets and pulled out a butter-yellow bath towel.
Hurrying back, she saw that he’d leaned forward to brace the elbow of his injured arm against his thigh. With his free hand, he fumbled with the first button of his shirt.
His awkward position and the wet fabric made the task harder than it needed to be.
She dropped the towel on the box she’d been unpacking. “Hold your arm. I’ll do this.”
His quiet “Thanks,” sounded terribly strained.
That strain and the intensity of his discomfort kept her from dwelling too much on how awkward she felt unbuttoning his shirt. Because he wore it with its long sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, she didn’t have to mess with buttons at his wrists. Once she reached his belt buckle, however, she did have to tug it from his pants.
He didn’t seem to care that a woman he didn’t even know had her hands inches from his zipper as she tugged the dry shirttail from the front, or her arms around his waist as she tugged from the back. In turn, she tried not to care about the way her nerves had tightened. He smelled of spicy soap, fresh air and something distinctly, decidedly male. As close as she stood to him, she could feel the heat of his big body radiating toward her, and the brush of his inner thighs against the outsides of her legs.
One of the droplets clinging to his hair broke free, sluiced down the side of his face and clung to the sharp line of his jaw.
Resisting the urge to wipe it away, she glanced back to his shoulder.
“You’re going to have to let go again.”
It seemed that he complied before he could let himself think too much about the pain involved. Biting down on a groan, he let her peel the wet fabric off his right side, then promptly grabbed his arm again the second she’d pulled it off his left.
The wet denim hit the counter with a soft plop, then slid to the floor.
Jenny barely noticed.
In the golden glow of the lamps, the sculpted muscles of his shoulders, arms and chest rippled with lean and latent power. The men at the club where she’d once been a trial member worked hours a week to look so carved and cut. There was no gym or health club in Maple Mountain, though. Never had been. Never would be. But it wasn’t his impressive and rather intimidating body that had the bulk of her attention as she reached toward the towel. It was the bruising that had already started to spread over his chest, the baseball sized lump beneath his collar bone and the way the edge of his left shoulder seemed to be missing.
“I don’t need that now.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The towel landed back on the box. “What do you want me to do?”
“Put your hand over the head of the humerus.”
Seeing what she was dealing with made her even more apprehensive. “You’re going to have to speak civilian.”
“The round thing under my collar bone.”
