“Fuck.” He moved his hands from her shoulders to her face, cupping it gently. His fingers were shaking. “I thought I’d lose you.”
She grabbed his wrists, not to pull his hands away, but because she needed to touch him. Opening her mouth, she wanted to tell him how much he meant to her, how much she regretted putting that tortured look on his face, but what came out was something different. “I did a peroneal strike on Ian.”
Chris blinked. “What?”
His hands prevented her from turning her head toward him, but she could see enough of Ian in her peripheral vision to tell that he looked amused. “I’m sorry. It was just instinct. He was going to do the fireman’s carry and take me outside, and I just couldn’t go.” Dropping her gaze, she stared at Chris’s chin. “Not yet. I’ll do it, I promise. Just…not yet.”
Chris was quiet for too long of a time. Although she wanted to check out his expression, to see if he looked mad or exasperated or impatient or exhausted, she just couldn’t bring herself to look any higher than his chin. It was a nice chin, strong and square with a hint of stubble, but it didn’t give her much feedback as to what he was feeling.
“Knee strike?” he finally asked, and surprise allowed her to meet his eyes. His expression didn’t show any of the emotions she’d been expecting. Instead, he looked…blank.
She nodded slowly, wondering what was behind his impassive mask.
“Nice. You took him down with one knee strike?” His mouth curled up in a proud smile. “Look at you, warrior woman.”
There was the sound of a throat clearing from Ian’s direction. “I wouldn’t say she took me down.”
“Not all the way,” Daisy agreed, feeling a little light-headed from relief that neither Chris nor Ian was furious with her. “He just sort of sagged a little, and I was able to pull my arm free. I was going to land a couple more kicks, just to make sure he stayed down, but then I remembered he was Ian, not a bad guy, so I just ran.”
“That’s the whole point of our training,” Chris said, his eyes warm as they fixed on hers. “Getting away. Not that I don’t wish Walsh had managed to catch you and drag you out of this house.”
The thought of what might have happened if she’d been a little slower still had the ability to turn her legs into rubber. The logical portion of her brain scoffed at her for fearing going outside more than being inside a gas-filled house, but it couldn’t change her body’s conviction that terrible things would happen once she stepped through her front door.
“Hey, Jennings. Can you let go of your lady long enough for me to do a quick check?” a male voice behind Daisy asked. When Daisy turned to see who’d spoken, Chris’s hands dropped away from her face and landed on her shoulders again. He tugged her closer, so her back pressed against his front.
“Junior,” he greeted the firefighter, who was already pulling out a blood-pressure cuff from his medical bag.
“Why don’t we take this party into another room?” Ian suggested. “It’s getting crowded in this hallway.”
“Things are a little busy back there.” Junior jerked his head in the direction of the living room. “The repair guy’s here fixing the leak, with the sheriff hovering over him asking questions about what caused it. That, and the windows wouldn’t open, so we had to break some of them when we were ventilating. They’re boarding them up now.”
“The windows are broken?” Her stomach jumped at the thought of the open spaces that would surround her without the protective glass barriers.
Chris’s hands started to massage her shoulders as he moved his mouth close to her ear. “I’ll call Lenny over at the hardware store and see how soon he can get here. Until then, they’ll be covered in plywood.”
Although she nodded, her insides were still unhappy.
“The training room, then?” Ian asked, reminding her of the direction the conversation had been headed before she’d been distracted by broken windows.
“Sure.” It wasn’t until she was leading the three men into the gym that she remembered the mess she’d made with her improvised barricade. When Junior gave a low whistle, she cringed. “Sorry about this.” She waved her hand at the scattered weights. “I usually keep it neater.”
“This is awesome.” Apparently, the whistle had been in admiration of the room, not condemnation of its untidiness. “Man, I’m jealous. If I had this nice of a gym in my house, I probably wouldn’t leave either.”
Chris, who’d dropped his hands from her shoulders when they’d moved into the training room, stiffened and put a hand on her lower back. Daisy gave him a reassuring smile. Junior’s comment was probably the least upsetting thing that had happened in the past few hours.
Oblivious to Chris’s irritation, Junior grinned as he waved her toward a weight bench. “Your throne, gym princess.”
She smiled and took a seat, but Ian cuffed the back of the other fireman’s helmet.