and go all pioneer. Boil our clothes over a fire in this.” He touched the huge canning pot she’d found at the secondhand store and grabbed. For exactly that purpose.
Izzie had washed her laundry out in a pot like that many times as a girl, right on the kitchen stove. When she wasn’t sneaking laundry through Annie’s mother’s washing machine.
When she had had electricity to turn on that stove.
Her own mother hadn’t always bothered to pay the utility bills on the single-wide they’d rented a few lots away from Annie. Water hadn’t always been a given. Nor had electricity. Or gas for heat.
If it hadn’t been for her having access to Annie’s shower—when Annie’s mother was asleep—she would have gone to school unwashed many, many more times than she had. When she’d been eleven, she’d started hoarding old milk jugs full of clean water in her closet for those times when showers weren’t always possible.
She’d gotten to the point of showering three times a day when they did have water so she wouldn’t feel so dirty. She hadn’t exactly been able to afford deodorant at eleven—and they hadn’t had very good air-conditioning in that trailer. She’d hated it when the kids at school laughed at her for that.
It had taken her a while to break that habit after she’d moved in with Jake.
Izzie was extremely used to roughing it.
Poor Jake hadn’t understood at first.
Life with Jake had been a dream after that. It had taken her a long time to stop feeling guilty for liking life with Jake better than she had with her mother. It was almost as if those times she’d wished her mother dead had come true. Guilt and anger had been her companion for a while. Jake had seen to it that she had counseling though—even though it hadn’t come cheap.
“Let’s get the cold foods put away, and then we’ll get out of here.”
She thought that was a good idea. The semi-trucks and tour busses that had shielded them from the interstate were long gone. She half felt like they were sitting ducks right now.
They were starting to form a plan. Whether she’d ever tell him out loud or not, she was damned glad not to be navigating this thing alone.
65
Izzie was cooperating, and that was shocking the hell out of him. Allen shot his companion a look. She’d washed her hair during her shower. He wondered how she’d managed it with the cast and splint. Izzie’s hair had a lot of natural curl in it; the curls were his favorite.
They gave her face a pixie appearance. Told people exactly what her personality was, in a way that fit her perfectly. With people other than him, she was engaging and funny and fiercely loving and protective. With him she was snappish and a little cranky. He hadn’t figured out why yet, but Nikkie Jean had told him once that Izzie had had a rough road with a few physicians before.
She’d reluctantly admitted that one of those physicians had been Logan.
He hadn’t had any idea that Logan had been making Izzie’s life a nightmare for several months. Nikkie Jean implied it had been serious.
He’d been too busy as temporary chief of medicine before Rafe had been hired, and his path hadn’t crossed Logan’s that often back then. Not like it had before.
He should have made a point of checking on Logan after the Lannings’ deaths. Maybe he would have been able to see.
Logan apparently hadn’t handled the grief very well. Hell, Allen didn’t know who could. His eyes landed on the air splint. It now rested on the small counter.
She should be wearing it.
He held it out to her with a pointed look. “You ok? Bruises? Broken arm? You came damned close to a torn scapholunate ligament.”
“I’m good. I really don’t want to take anything right now. Nothing more than ibuprofen. Not with us on the lam here. Acetaminophen really knocks me out, even without the codeine. What if I have to drive this getaway vehicle? I need at least one hand free. Plus, I got an elastic bandage, if needed. And…a cast and splint would get too much attention. We’re trying to be incognito, remember?”
He was starting to see what she and Nikkie Jean had in common—constant sass and snark. While it was hilarious from Nikkie Jean, it had an entirely different effect on Allen.
It made him want to scoop her up and kiss the snark away.
“No kidding. You were a zombie yesterday. For a while