“Fuck. Kristin. No!”
A muscular arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her backward as Julian pitched sideways and groaned before tumbling down the long flight of stairs, his balance off from the effort it took to pull her back to land on her ass on the second step.
“Jesus! He’s injured,” she rasped as she suddenly understood why he’d sounded like he was in pain just before the fall. “Julian!”
Kristin took the steps as fast as humanly possible and dropped to her knees beside his way-too-still body at the bottom of the steps.
He was on his back, and his eyes were closed and his head was bleeding. The stairs were marble, and there had been absolutely nothing to cushion his hard fall.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” she babbled as she felt for his pulse and watched the rise and fall of his chest with relief.
Regret tore through her, but she went into medical mode, ignoring the pool of blood on the floor as she pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans to dial 911 to get an ambulance on the way.
I shouldn’t have freaked out like that. He injured himself even more to keep me from falling.
After hanging up the phone and stuffing it back in her pocket, she dashed to the kitchen and opened drawers until she found a clean kitchen towel. She used it to hold pressure on the large gash to his forehead.
As he began to stir, she tried to keep him still. “Don’t move. I’m not sure if you hurt your back or your neck,” she told him sternly. “An ambulance is coming.”
He blinked as he opened his gorgeous blue eyes, and his gaze landed directly on her face almost immediately. “Don’t run,” he requested groggily.
“I’m not going anywhere right now. You almost killed yourself. What were you thinking?” She held the towel steady as she looked down at him, her heart melting as she thought about how confidently he’d put himself at risk to keep her from tumbling down the stairs.
“It was going to be me or you,” he answered as he shot her a crooked grin.
“You could have just let me go. Maybe I could have caught my balance.”
“Or maybe you wouldn’t,” he argued. “Better me than you. My head is harder.” He started to try to get up.
She pushed him back down gently. “Just for once, can you listen to me? Don’t try to get up right now.”
“You’re so beautiful when you’re cranky.” His expression was amused. “I’ll be fine.”
Again, she pushed him down. “Try to move again and I’ll clobber you so you stay still,” she threatened.
She scowled at him, and he did the last thing she expected.
He started to laugh.
CHAPTER 12
Kristin ended up staying for the weekend to watch over Julian, which didn’t exactly make him unhappy. If he had to take a knock on the head to see Kristin in his house, he’d gladly throw himself down the stairs again just to get her to stay longer.
Problem was, he really didn’t want her on those terms.
He wanted her here because there was nowhere else on Earth that she wanted to be, because that’s how he felt.
He wanted it all.
Call him selfish, but he wanted her to want to be with him.
She’d been prickly and professional while she watched him for any signs of concussion, even though his X-rays had been okay. Really, he was feeling better. His bruised ribs were healing, and other than some sutures in his hard head from his tumble down the stairs, and the frustration he was feeling from being an inactive couch potato for two days, he was fine.
“You should be okay,” Kristin informed him coolly. “I have to get going.”
She had her coat on like she was ready to head out the door. “We need to talk,” he told her honestly.
“After you’re totally recovered.”
“I am recovered. Sit,” he demanded, gratified when she flopped into one of the chairs in the family room, but not without a stubborn, mulish expression on her face.
Julian had become familiar with that look, and it generally didn’t bode well for reasonable conversation, but he was damn sick of putting off their discussion.
“We need to bargain.”
She lifted a brow. “Why? We have to get rid of this problem before everybody knows. It was a mistake.”
Ouch! Christ! She knows how to bruise a guy’s ego.
Luckily, since he was usually pretty hardheaded, he didn’t take it personally. “You want a divorce. I don’t. How do we resolve that? There are a million ways I could slow down the process.”
“So now you’re going to bully me and throw your money around?” Kristin asked, sounding more sad than angry.
Shit! He hated that. Having her be disappointed in him was worse than her being pissed off. In fact, he’d prefer she argue with him. “If necessary,” he answered, hating himself for being the tormenter she’d accused him of being. But he was desperate, and he knew she wasn’t about to give in.