“I’ll take care of the rations,” he said.
There was something in his eyes. Something foreign. It wasn’t fear and it wasn’t anger. It wasn’t annoyance and it wasn’t curiosity. I couldn’t place what was raging behind his light blue eyes but when he turned to face me, he took my breath away. He rolled his shoulders back and started for the hallway, pausing just before he left to take one last look at me. His eyes studied my body intently and then he turned to make his way toward me.
I settled back onto the couch, watching him approach me before he sat on the coffee table in front of me.
He held out his hand and I knew what he was asking for, without ever speaking or even motioning with his fingers. I picked up my ankle and put it in his hands. They were massive, but soft. He must’ve not lived out here long. Not long enough to build up the callouses that came with chopping the firewood we used last night and not long enough to build up a tolerance to the wounded.
Unless that was somehow part of his training in the military.
His hands dwarfed the whole of my ankle. He unraveled the ace bandage and quickly peeled the gauze from my foot. Slowly, he began to roll my ankle. I winced and hissed in pain, trying my best not to look like a total wimp. But what he was doing hurt and I had a feeling it was going to hurt for a while.
He kept fingering around the joint of my ankle, almost like he was searching for something. His eyes were stern and concentrated, his lips pulled into a thin line that touched his mustache to his beard. I really got a chance to study him in that moment. I took in the muscular slope of his shoulders and the raw strength of his forearms. Veins were bulging in places I didn’t even know they could exist and a heat graced my cheeks while his fingers continued to roam my skin.
“No tendons or ligaments seem to be ruptured,” he said.
“That’s good.”
“How’s the pain?” he asked.
“Could be better.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
I stared at him in wonder while his eyes slowly lifted toward mine. That was what he did in the military. He had been a medic. I’d only ever heard that phrase from my doctors when they were trying to figure out the type of pain I was in. I felt my eyes widening while his blue eyes studied mine and, for a split second, that look rushed behind his eyes again.
It was almost as if he was hesitant and I really wasn’t sure why.
“Six,” I said breathlessly.
He nodded at my answer and proceeded to rub that soothing gel on my foot again. The warmth immediately kicked in and I groaned, leaning my back against the couch. I had no idea what this stuff was but I needed some of it. I could put it on my neck and shoulders when they ached after sleeping wrong on my pathetic air mattress all night.
I sighed and closed my eyes while he placed fresh gauze on top of the salve. He wrapped my ankle back up, making sure it was stable and secure before he placed my foot down. I opened my eyes and watched him retreat, walking down the hallway without looking back this time.
CHAPTER 9
LIAM
I couldn’t believe she’d actually gotten up to walk on that damn ankle. Was she insane? If she fell and hurt herself in this cabin somehow, we’d be up the creek without a paddle. I didn’t have the equipment necessary to stitch her idiocy up.
I sat on the edge of my bed and sighed. I bought this cabin and moved up here for seclusion. I came here to get away from everything and everyone. I was fucked in the head in ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t begin to explain and solitude was what I needed to try and heal. But now, seclusion was the last thing I was getting.
Instead, I was taking care of a clumsy, stubborn woman. I was responsible for a city girl who didn’t know anything about surviving in the woods. She just cooked food willy-nilly and thought I’d bow down to her graciousness. She had no idea the man she was currently residing with.
However, if she heard me last night, she’d gotten a glimpse into it.
Groaning, I laid my back on the bed. Fuck. If she’d heard me last night, then that meant my screaming woke her up. Surprisingly, though, she hadn’t seemed frightened. Perhaps she had slept through it?
I started counting off the pounds of meat, the frozen vegetables, and the food I had in the pantry. Cooking three meals for both of us was going to take twice as much food as I’d anticipated. I knew I didn’t have enough meat for all of those meals, which made me thankful I’d purchased all that rice. The meals couldn’t be extravagant, but if I cooked exact portions and she didn’t chomp down two massive plates at a time, I thought I could get us by until this snow let up.
Once it did, I could start trying to dig a trail out to that tree to cut it down. Then, it was just a matter of getting my fucking truck to run long enough to get her back into town.
I reached over and turned on the radio to listen to the latest weather report. The signal was coming in fuzzy, which meant any moment now, we’d lose power. I’d have to stoke up a fire to get some light going in the main room so I could ration the gasoline as much as possible. Out here when it was just me, I enjoyed the dark, the gray that blanketed the sky above the cabin. I hand washed dishes and kept the lights off, so the only electricity needed was for my fridge, my deep freezer, and the water heater.
I didn’t have enough gasoline to power the house completely for weeks on end.
Suddenly, I heard a thump. A hiss came from down the hallway and then a whimper. Damn it. Whitney must’ve tried to get up and walk again. Whitney, with her crazy blonde hair and her beautiful blue eyes.
What the hell was she thinking?
Standing up from the bed, I dashed out of my room. I strode down the hallway and found her on the floor, tears threatening to pour down her cheeks while she tried to get up. I could see the frustration on her face as she tried to raise herself up but, before she could try any harder, I had her scooped up into my arms.
“Are you crazy?” I asked.
“No, I’m Whitney,” she said.
Holy hell, she was feisty. In another lifetime, when I was another man, I would’ve adored that about her personality. I would’ve taken one look into her eyes while sinking my fingertips into her hips and I would’ve drained the sassiness right out of her voice with my lips.
But now, with the man I had become, it was nothing but a nuisance. It didn’t take away from how radiant she was, though.
I set her back down on the couch and tucked the blankets around her body. She groaned, laying her head back on the pillows and I watched her blonde hair flutter around the pillowcase. She really was a beautiful woman, with her lightly tanned skin and her cupid’s bow lips. Any man would’ve been lucky to have this woman trapped with him. In another universe, I would’ve already tried to kiss her.
The frustration on her face, however, was evident.
“You need to stay off your ankle,” I said.
“Except for when I have to pee,” she said.
“Do you need help getting to the bathroom?”
“No, it was just a hypothetical statement.”
“I’m not here to barge in on your privacy,” I said.
“Yet you think that’s what I’m doing.”
Her statement shut me up while the fire grew behind her eyes.
“How do you know what to do?” she asked.
“What?”
“With my ankle,” she said. “You just knew what to do. You asked me questions and were focused like a doctor would be. Is that what you did? In the military?”
Her questions were fired in rapid succession and I could tell she’d been sitting on them for a while. I figured this moment would come, when she’d want to know shit about me. I sat on the edge of the couch and propped her ankle up on my lap, studying the swelling of her toes and testing if she could wiggle them. I kept flicking them with my fingers and watching them jump and it wasn’t until I’d tested all five of them that I sighed.
“I used to be a medic, yes,” I said.
“In the Navy.”