All this she promised herself while she dried, then dressed in a fresh tunic-style tee and leggings. Forte had left both of their duffel bags in the bedroom she hadn’t been using for her nap. The two bedrooms did share the full bathroom, which, in this case, worked out conveniently, but she wondered how other guests worked it out.
“I can hear you wandering around, so I’m guessing you can’t find clothes or you’re considering every detail of those rooms based on how you might set up a B-and-B.” Brandon’s voice echoed down the corridor, and she jumped.
“You know me so well.” She decided to cut through the hallway back to the other bedroom instead of going by way of the bathroom again.
Brandon met her in the hallway, brushing a wet strand of hair from her shoulder and bending to press his lips against the place where her neck and shoulder met. Delicious shivers went through her at his touch.
“Do you need help getting your boot on?” he murmured.
“I don’t need help, particularly, but I’d be faster joining you out in the living room if you did help.” She smiled at him.
He sighed as he followed her into the room. “You’re a capable woman, and I respect you for it. I also want to help whenever I can. Sometimes you don’t pay attention to your own well-being and I intervene before you really do something bad to yourself. But times like today, when you’re fine as long as you do things at your pace, I don’t want to smother you or boss you around.”
Ah. He’d absorbed what she’d said about giving orders earlier. She sat on the bed, looking up at him.
“I’m trying.” He reached for her hand and lifted it, brushing her knuckles with his lips. “But could you meet me halfway and ask me for help to let me know when it’s okay to take care of you? It’d give me a clear signal so I don’t push you into having to push back.”
His request made, he reached for her medical boot and brought it to her.
She smiled at him and lifted her right foot.
Her leg as a whole was looking a lot better. The angry red scrapes and cuts from hitting the asphalt and rolling to avoid the explosion were healing well. The skin around the cuts had faded to her normal skin tone. Luckily, they’d been able to avoid stitches for the deeper cuts and use butterfly-stitch bandages, which she’d been replacing daily right after her bath. The bruises were still showing up, though; rising up under her skin in awful blotches of black, blue, and purple with a crazy mustard yellow around the edges.
Swelling in her ankle was under control, but she could still tell the difference when she looked at it side by side with her good ankle.
Brandon studied the evidence of her brush with blowing up, his expression somber. Then he carefully pressed a kiss against every scrape and bruise, lingering over her ankle.
She parted her lips. Maybe the rest of the day could wait.
Then his gaze met hers and humor danced in his eyes. The desire still burned, but she couldn’t help smiling in response, her mood lightening.
“We should get a sock on your foot to protect your skin from rubbing against the inside of the boot.” Brandon worried too much. “But I guess this’ll be good to get you out there for a late breakfast and we can ice your ankle while you’re out there, then get a fresh sock on it before we put the boot back on.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Okay, but we can ice the ankle with the boot on, too. I’d just as well have my toes bare to the air for a little bit if I’m not going to be on my feet for the next couple of hours.”
He gave her a smile as he straightened to stand in front of her. Impulsively, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his thighs, rubbing her face into his abdomen.
One of his hands came to rest on the back of her head.
“Sophie.” His voice had gone husky. “I promise I’ll cuddle with you after you have a chance to eat, but if you keep doing that I’m going to forget I wanted to make sure you got breakfast.”
She held on an extra-long moment and then released him, standing up and making him take a step back. Oh, he didn’t have to, but he did for her.
“How are our four-legged friends?” she asked as she walked down the hallway. She was trying hard to walk with a normal stride now that it’d been a few days. Her doctor had said she could as long as there was no pain when she put weight on the ankle. She made it most of the way before little twinges told her it was too soon.
Brandon placed his hand on her lower back and urged her past the living room area and over to the sitting area with the settee. “They’re fine. Not sure if they want to be friends yet, but war hasn’t broken out, either. “
“That’s g—oh!” She slowed and let Brandon lead her around the gorgeous setup on the low table. She sat and barely noticed as he coaxed her into lifting her right leg to rest on the length of the settee.