Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,46
chin and snuggled close.
“Stay.”
“YOU’RE KILLING ME, woman. Ow!” Nate winced as Jolene dabbed antiseptic against the cut on his jaw. With his leg propped up on a cushion and an ice pack numbing his knee, he sat with his back against the arm of her denim sofa and let her treat every contusion and laceration she could find. Hell. He just hadn’t realized how many there were and how thorough she could be.
“Hold still,” she warned him as she applied a swab of liquid adhesive to the cut.
“You’re killing me,” he repeated. The sting burned through his shoulder next as she cut away the shreds of his T-shirt and poured a mixture of saline and alcohol into the five-inch gash from the barbed wire. He exhaled a deep breath and clenched his teeth to keep from jerking. “Literally.”
“You’re current on your tetanus, right?”
“Yeah.” He’d had all his shots.
She peeled the stained cotton off his skin and tossed it on top of the pile of clothes that used to be his Courage Bay uniform. He’d transferred his keys and wallet and Grandpa Nate’s ring into the baggy, split-kneed jeans she’d given him to change into. The rest of his things were headed for the Dumpster.
“Ooh. Um…Ooh.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
“That bad, huh?”
Her eyes darted skyward as the wind shook the roof over their heads, but it was the only indication that she was worried about the worsening weather. She still wasn’t smiling when her gaze swept back over his chest. “You’re going to need some stitches, at least where the barbs caught you. One gap’s a half-inch wide, and the edges are pretty ragged.”
Right. She was looking at the small picture, the wound, not the beat-up old man. He, on the other hand, had been studying the whole package—the fresh scent of her rain-washed hair when she leaned in close, the curve of her rump as she bent over to check her first-aid kit, the soft cadence of her voice as she grumbled over her supplies. The unintended thrust of her breasts as she straightened, then grabbed the small of her back and stretched, working out a kink there.
Sensual awareness suddenly gave way to concern. Nate reached around and laid his hand over hers. “Everything okay?”
“Just a twinge of back strain. The baby’s fine.” She pulled her hand away to cradle the swell of her belly. “He’s been sleeping the past hour or so. I think he’s tuckered out from everything he’s done today.”
“Everything his mother’s done,” Nate corrected, slipping his fingers beneath the hem of her gray sweatshirt and finding a knot of muscles at the base of her spine.
As he dug in and massaged the cramp through the fabric of her shirt, her chin came up and her eyes drifted shut as if she just might be enjoying his attentions. Her lips parted, and the contented sigh that escaped seemed to zing along every nerve ending in his body.
Definitely a boost to his ego.
He should have stayed in the barn. Away from the growing intimacy of a man and a woman cocooned in a warm shelter, trapped together by the storm outside. He should have ignored the sirenlike call of refuge he felt when he held her in his arms, and the welcome she offered with each tentative touch of her hands.
They’d endured so much today, grown so close. He felt as if they’d shared an entire lifetime already. Holding on to Jolene at the edge of that arroyo had been like holding onto a dream. Stripped of inhibitions by exhaustion and pain, he’d given in to the feelings she stirred in him. He’d held her as if she was his to hold, as if the baby she carried was his to cherish, as if saving each other’s lives had bound them in some inexplicable way that no amount of time could ever change.
But those weren’t the proper thoughts to have for a woman who was carrying another man’s child, a woman who’d already loved and lost the man of her dreams. It wasn’t right to think of what he wanted, when his job was supposed to be about protecting her.
He’d tried to leave her. But he’d gotten hauled in by her mulish Texas temper and seduced by the simple human need to hold on and connect with another person while the world went to hell all around them.
So instead of pulling away, he kept massaging her. He lifted up the hem of her blouse