Almost Fired by the Cowboy - Natalie Dean Page 0,25

too acutely aware of the musculature pressed up against her body. Her protests faded, though, and eventually they passed through a doorway.

Out of the rain, she took a moment to shake her head, water flicking everywhere from her choppy pixie cut. Of course, that movement had her looking down, and she couldn’t help but notice that Sal’s backside was just as impressive as his front side.

Huh, God really was unfair sometimes.

He let out a small grunt, interrupting her accidental ogling, and then she was being set down on something relatively high up. Enough for her feet to dangle off the floor, which was something considering that she was at least sixty percent legs. Looking around, she realized they were in the mechanic’s garage, a place she’d only gone to once before when Teddy needed to borrow her for a quick errand.

Licking her lips, her gaze finally returned to her unexpected hero. Her position on the tool table had them seeing eye to eye, something she wasn’t quite used to. He was giving her quite the intense stare, one that made her equally want to stick out her tongue at him or run away and hide.

“Uh, thanks?” she said, feeling uncertain. She was covered in mud and soaked and surely looked a right mess while he could have subbed in for some sort of movie star in a romantic scene where he’d just been caught in the perfect drizzle.

“What do you need to fix yourself?”

“What? Oh… a towel would be a good start. And an ice pack. I think bringing down the swelling will help me get it back in place.” Also, it would take an edge of the pain off. Because with each passing minute, Nova was more and more aware of just how much her leg was throbbing.

“Okay.” He gave her a solid nod then turned to walk off, no doubt to get her the things that she had asked for. Sure, she was irritated at being manhandled and thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, but she was pleased that he was listening to her directions without second-guessing her. He didn’t try to tell her what to do or lecture her on being careless. He asked what she needed, and it seemed like he was going to get it.

But still, what a strange dude.

10

Salvatore

Crack!

Sal watched as the woman popped her knee back into place, wincing at the rather dramatic noise. She, however, didn’t seem to think anything of it, pressing one of the ice packs he’d gotten her against her knee while grumbling something about the joint being extra angry.

“Is that why you have a limp?” he heard himself ask before thinking better of it. On second thought, probably not the best way to start the conversation. But he found himself at a loss. He’d gone to the horses hoping to find her, to see if he could decipher what had turned her mood so sour at their last meeting, only for her to basically accuse him of being a real jerk and dismissing him. If he hadn’t been so irritated with her actions, he wouldn’t have left his nice, filtered water bottle behind. And if he hadn’t left that behind, then he wouldn’t have gone back to the barn to get it and stumbled across the injured woman literally stuck in the mud.

Needless to say, it’d been a very interesting day.

And that wasn’t even taking into account everything that had happened after that. She’d brushed him off at first—somewhat predictably—and tried to do that horrible knee-twisting thing she did before. It didn’t work, something he guessed had to do with the mud and rain, but she kept on trying, but each time she let out truly awful sounds of pain and misery.

It had been too much for him. Before he could even think it through, he was picking her up and hauling her towards what had once been Teddy’s mechanic garage, but which had become more of a general garage since she had stopped being a contracted employee.

Nova was solid—that much he’d figured from when she’d barreled into him. But he had pointedly ignored how his broad palm felt against the back of her strong thighs as he held her to him, his other hand busy holding her calve to stop her injured knee from jostling. His whole focus had been only on getting her to safety as quickly as possible and getting her to safety with as little jiggling as possible. Two goals that