his back, where the worst scars lay, and the deep-tissue skin grafts were still healing. Remarkably, the majority of his shoulder had been spared, so he had mobility there, and the burns up his face were for the most part superficial. If you could count losing part of his ear as superficial. No grafts had been necessary there, but the damaged skin was red and shiny in places. Ugly.
Shae McArthur didn’t appear to do well with ugly, and he was going to use that to his advantage. He had to concede, though, that she’d made no attempt to hide the fact that she had been staring at his injuries. There were none of the darting glances that he’d come to expect as people attempted to wrap their minds around the extent of his injuries without appearing rude—and a part of Jordan kind of appreciated her openness. At least she was honest. The scars were there and she didn’t pretend they weren’t.
And she didn’t pretend they didn’t bother her, either.
Okay. One point for Shae for honesty.
But he was still taking his shirt off whenever he could.
Jordan unloaded his brand-new cheap tent, the sleeping bag he’d used on his cross-country trek, a box of groceries and his duffel bag of clothes, then proceeded to carry them around the windfall and load them onto the sturdy rubber-wheeled gardening wagon he’d bought. At almost two hundred dollars, it had all but wiped out his cash supply, but there was no way he’d be carrying much weight on his back and he figured the wagon would come in handy around the ranch.
Clyde instantly got the hang of what was going on and jumped up on top of the gear Jordan had piled into the wagon, his small body lurching and swaying when Jordan started pulling. Only a mile. No sweat.
Except that the wagon was heavy. He wasn’t used to the altitude and despite working out as much as his body would allow, he was gasping for air by the time the ranch came into view. The sun was starting to set and he still had a lot to do.
But at least he was alone.
It wasn’t until he’d unloaded everything into a pile that Jordan realized he’d left his pills in the car. He was not going back—it would be a pill-free night. If he didn’t sleep, tough. He wasn’t exactly a stranger to sleepless nights. And if he had a nightmare, the only one he’d disturb was Clyde—who was sticking to him like glue now that it was getting dark. Jordan didn’t know what kind of shape the house was in, and since he didn’t want to share with rodents, he started setting up his tent. If the fabric had been any thinner, it would have qualified as disposable, but it was all he’d been able to afford after the wagon purchase, and if the zipper worked, he could keep the rain off and the mosquitoes at bay.
He and Clyde had shared a couple of hamburgers prior to driving back to the camp, but now he was hungry again. Apparently Montana air was good for him, because food hadn’t been any kind of priority over the past year—just something he needed for survival. Until recently chewing had felt awkward and uncomfortable as the skin on his face healed, so he hadn’t taken much pleasure in food. Now he wished he had another burger. Instead he made do with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich made by the light of a battery-operated lantern.
Feeling ridiculously exhausted after dragging the wagon to the ranch, he laid out his sleeping bag and settled on top of it, letting the sounds of the wilderness lull him. He didn’t expect to sleep that night—not easily, anyway—because sleep was never easy without the meds, but at least he could listen to the sounds of his childhood instead of the traffic on the thoroughfare near his Virginia apartment.
Clyde appeared to prefer the traffic noises. After nervously pacing the tent for at least ten minutes, snuffling the air and trying to see through the nylon at what was causing the fascinating noises outside, the poodle finally turned a few circles and collapsed in a curly heap against Jordan’s side. His eyes remained stubbornly open, though, fixed on the tent door. Jordan reached down to idly ruffle the hair on the poodle’s head, then a few seconds later his hand relaxed on the dog’s warm body.
That was the last thing Jordan remembered.
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