As Faith dozed, I drove, warning myself against entangling myself with this woman any more than I already had.
I’ll just get her cleaned up and situated, make sure she has food, water, and a TV remote. Then I’m outta here.
That was the plan I made, anyway, as I pulled into the Pono Kai parking lot. I woke Faith up and carried her to her condo’s front door, but my plan was crumbling already. My arms were growing used to holding her; she fit perfectly against me, and I could definitely get used to having her delicate arm draped around my shoulders.
Stop.
Faith keyed the door unlocked and turned the handle, and I kicked it open.
“Ooh, that felt very firefighter-y,” she said, and she wiggled her ass a little in my arms.
Her face was inches from my mine and it took all I had to keep my gaze on her clear green eyes and not let it drop to her mouth. But her gaze was just as bad, glinting with humor but more than a little heat, too.
“Where?” I asked gruffly, tearing my gaze away.
“Couch.”
The condo was huge, lush, modern. Sunlight streamed in from large windows, and the beach was steps away from her lanai.
See? Rich, spoiled tourist. The worst kind.
Or so I told myself as I pulled the coffee table over so that Faith could rest her foot on it.
“Now what do I do?” she asked.
“Ice.” I went to the freezer in her chrome-and-marble kitchen.
“They just wrapped up my foot, all cozy-like.”
“I can rewrap,” I said, putting ice cubes in a Ziploc. “Besides, don’t you want to get cleaned up?”
Faith arched a perfect eyebrow. “Are you heroically offering to bathe me?”
I brought the kitchen mallet hard on a bag of ice cubes to distract from the image her words wanted to conjure in my brain. “I’m a professional. I cut the clothes off of people every day.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet.”
“I’ll call a nurse friend,” I said, returning to the couch. Carefully, I unwrapped the boot from her ankle and set the bag of crushed ice over it. The swelling was bad but had subsided since the waterfall.
“Hurts,” she whispered.
“Already looks better than earlier.”
Her gaze darted to me hopefully. “You think so?”
“Definitely. I’ll bet you’re walking by the end of the week.”
“A week.” She shook her head. “I’m not staying a week. I’m done.”
“Giving up already?”
“What can I do? Crutching over beach sand feels like a bad idea. And if I managed it, I’d be lopsided.”
“Lopsided?”
“I can’t sunbathe on my stomach. I’ll only have a tan on my front half.”
“I thought you were here for a reset?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember saying that.”
“Personal growth,” I amended quickly.
“I am, but need I remind you that I live in Seattle? We get that thing you call ‘sunshine’ for ten minutes every other June.”
I smiled, and she smiled back, and the air between us seemed to warm.
I jumped to my feet. “Water. You need to stay hydrated.”
“You’re a teddy bear, aren’t you? Tell me about Wall Street,” she said when I returned with a glass of water.
“It was chaos. Lots of booze, drugs, sex—”
“Where do I sign up?” She offered a brazen smile. This woman was anything but shy.
I chuckled. “It was high-pressure. The booze, drugs, and sex were to combat the stress, but it never worked. There was always more. I felt like stress was our main commodity. I never built anything. Nothing tangible, anyway. Just moved money around to make more money.” I shrugged. “It wasn’t enough.”
Faith settled back on the couch cushion. “Not enough how?”
“Mentally,” I said. “Spiritually, I guess, if you want to call it that.”
“So you came here for personal growth too.” Her smile was coy as she sipped her water. “A reset?”
I shrugged. “Hawaii’s a good place for that.”
“I knew there was something deeper going on with you behind your perfect manly physique and less-than-perfect bedside manner. We have a lot in common. Don’t we, Asher…?”
“Mackey,” I said. “And I wouldn’t go that far. I didn’t quit after one day.”
Faith’s arch look returned. “You also didn’t blow out your ankle and require a private helicopter tour to the hospital, now did you?”
“True.” I sniffed a laugh. “When I arrived, I had no job. I started island hopping and blowing through my 401k. Trying to find where I belonged.”
“And it was Kauai.”
I nodded. “It felt like where I needed to be. So, I went through EMT training