“Let me see your hand.”
Reluctantly, she held it up so he could unwrap his shirt. Once it was off, he tossed it in the trash. There’d be no saving it. He’d have to pay Lou for a replacement. Although, considering the only part that made it a uniform shirt was the “Lou’s Riverview” in black letters over his left pec, Aiden could just ink up one of his undershirts with a Sharpie and the old man would never know the damn difference.
He ripped open several alcohol wipes and gently cleaned the blood from her hand, starting on the outside and working his way in. He tried like hell not to notice how her knees brushed against his thighs or how her soft breaths feathered over his hand as he tended her cut.
Or how her long red hair fell like a silky curtain on either side of her face and she smelled like lilacs in the spring.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since she left in such a rush last night. Although, if he were being honest, from the first day he saw her working at Lou’s, he’d thought about her a lot more than he should. She was off-limits to him. Though she had a boyfriend, from what Aiden had observed in the month before the guy got locked up, they were about as much of a couple as Aiden and Xander.
Aiden had a feeling if he wanted to get between them, her boyfriend wouldn’t even put up a fight. Which didn’t make any fucking sense, because if Aiden had a girl like that, he’d kill anyone who tried taking her from him.
Hammer, meet nailhead.
That whole killing thing was the reason he didn’t allow himself to consider her as anything other than a coworker. Aiden only did no-strings-attached, and there was something about this mysterious woman that told him one night—or even several nights—with her would never be enough.
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth when he carefully swiped a pad over the gash. Glancing up at her, he said, “That’s gonna need stitches.”
Before he even finished the sentence, her head shook back and forth. “No, it won’t. Just wrap it up, and it’ll knit itself back together eventually.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would probably work if you didn’t need to move your hand for a few weeks. But if you wanna keep working, you need stitches or you’ll open the wound every time you move your thumb.”
Her eyebrows pulled together, and she drew her full lower lip between her teeth and bit hard.
“You afraid of needles and doctors?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly, staring at the floor, her face paling beneath her peach freckles.
…
“You’ve never been to the doctor?”
The way he said dahctah would have made her smile if she wasn’t so petrified of the idea of seeing the inside of a hospital for the second time in her life. And she wasn’t about to tell him about her first visit.
She shook her head and clamped her teeth on her lower lip as pieces of her past dug their way into the forefront of her mind. It wasn’t that she’d never had any reason to go to the doctor or hospital growing up. But when your parents were the reasons you needed to go, they usually weren’t too keen on taking you and risking a visit from the local authorities.
“Okay, tell you what,” he said, lifting her chin to force her gaze to his like he’d done the night before. “I’ll get this wrapped up, and then I’ll take you to the hospital to get it taken care of properly. I’ll wait for you, take you home, and then call Xander to pick me up. That sound all right?”
Something in her stomach fluttered as his sapphire eyes searched her face for an answer. What was it about Irish that could make her feel things she never thought she’d be capable of? Was it because he was a walking contradiction?
On the outside, he looked like a pierced and tattooed-to-the-gills badass you wouldn’t want to meet in broad daylight, much less a dark alley. But if he saw her coming, he opened the door for her. If he thought she was being hassled by a customer, he stepped in. And every time he looked at her, she knew he’d never let anything hurt her as long as he was close.
“You with me, kitten?” he asked, his voice soft and deep.
Funny. He’d said something similar the night before when she’d started freaking out. Stay right here with me, kitten. At the time she’d thought it was meaningless, but now the little girl that still lived deep inside her cynical shell was sighing with starry eyes. Kat would have to be careful to keep that tiny part of herself in check.
She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, okay,” she said in response to his offer.
A shallow grin told her he was satisfied with her answer, and then he got to work opening up the antibiotic ointment and setting out some sterile gauze pads.