“No police,” he declared implacably.
“No police?” Julia asked, feeling her brows shoot up. “But you’ve been shot!”
“No police,” Douglas repeated.
“Listen, the doc is coming to fix him up,” Nick put in. “We’ll be okay now, can you go and find somewhere else to sleep?”
“Sleep?” she asked incredulously, like she’d just walk out on this scene and lay herself down on some fluffy pillows and calmly go to sleep. Was he mad?
She looked in Douglas’s eyes and then her gaze dropped down to his wound. There was blood all over his chest… his very well-muscled chest, she noted vaguely. But the wound looked like it was no longer bleeding.
“We need to make sure he doesn’t lose any more blood,” Julia tried to pretend like she knew what she was doing, which she most certainly did not. “When’s the doctor coming?” she demanded to know from Nick.
“Girl, you need to leave this to me,” Nick returned, obviously losing patience.
She stood up to her full height, which, in bare feet, was five foot nine, at least two inches taller than him.
“When, I asked you,” she stated, her voice straining for calm and authoritative (and she felt she didn’t do half-badly), “is the doctor going to be here?”
Nick glanced at Douglas and Julia followed his gaze.
Douglas was lounging against the towel covered pillows holding the hand towel pressed firmly against the wound. He looked for all the world as if he was watching an only slightly entertaining play. When it became apparent that something was required of him, he just shrugged his good shoulder and Nick started to say something but Julia whirled on Douglas.
“You have two choices, Douglas Ashton,” she told him sharply, her temper flaring out-of-control. “Your first choice is to tell me when I can expect a doctor to arrive and your second choice is that I will first phone the police and second phone my mother so she can tell me how to treat you. You are not going to quietly bleed to death on my bed!”
“Calm yourself, Julia, I’m fine. It’s a flesh wound,” Douglas returned.
“It’s a f**king gunshot wound!” she shouted.
“Calm yourself!” Douglas roared in a voice she’d never heard before. He reared up and then gritted his teeth in pain and Julia stepped back, partially in fear, partially in surprise.
She’d seen his face of thunder and been awed and, maybe, a little thrilled by it. But that roar was something else. It was the roar of a man that expected to be obeyed, who was entitled to be obeyed and who didn’t, wouldn’t, maybe even couldn’t abide it when he wasn’t. It was his right, not only by birth and by accumulation but also because, she sensed, he’d earned it.
She took a deep breath and considered his ridiculous command to calm herself when he was lying on her bed bleeding from a gunshot wound. Regardless of his title, station or whatever else, she decided to ignore it. And it took every ounce of courage she possessed because this man, who could go from bland and unmoved to seductive lover to roaring aristocrat to dangerous, predatory deity, scared the living daylights out of her.
Still, none of that changed the fact that Douglas was bleeding from a gunshot wound on her bed.
“Nick, go get the whisky from his study and the first aid kit that’s in the kitchen,” Julia ordered and when Nick didn’t move she whirled on him. “Go!”
Nick glanced at Douglas who obviously gave him the go ahead because Nick left the room.
“Lay back, relax, when he gets back, I’ll, well, I don’t know what I’ll do but I’ll figure out something,” she told Douglas.
Douglas was watching her and she watched him right back, steeling herself against his glittering, intense eyes whose depths she couldn’t read.
Obviously unable to win one of his staring contests, she finally asked, “Are you in pain?”
“Not when I don’t move.”
“Then don’t move.”
“Good advice.”
Julia stopped staring at him and started glaring at him and Douglas just accepted her glare. Nick arrived back and just to do something, she grabbed the whisky decanter and gave it to Douglas.
“Drink,” Julia commanded and Douglas gratefully lifted the decanter to his lips.
“Doesn’t alcohol thin the blood?” Nick asked.