The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters
rugged ranch work, or whether it was nursing something—or someone—injured.
The diaper had not been pretty. Neither was her wound.
And yet he did not shirk from either one. She suspected there was very little he would not face head-on.
She was not sure why, but that simple competence left her almost breathless with awe, tingling with a physical awareness of him, and of the space he was taking up in her world.
On the kitchen table that was beside them he again laid things out with the precision of a solider taking apart a familiar weapon. From the first-aid kit he removed individually packaged disinfectant wipes, antibiotic ointment, gauze pads, gauze wrap, scissors, tiny metal clips.
He surveyed the lineup of materials, remembered something, got up and reached into the cabinet above the fridge again. He came back with one more thing.
Amy gasped when he set it down, her awareness of his considerable masculine charm competing with this latest item. At the very end of his line of first-aid items, he had added a very large needle, attached to an even larger syringe.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Penicillin. Don’t worry about it.” He picked up her hand, cradled it in his. With his other hand and his teeth, he opened a package and removed an antiseptic wipe from it.
She barely registered that. She was not sure she had ever seen such a large needle. She gulped. “You can’t just give a person a needle, you know.”
He swabbed the burn.
“You can’t?” he asked, unconcerned. She watched him as he tore open a second antiseptic wipe with his teeth and cleaned the whole area again. She glanced back at the needle.
“You have to be a doctor.”
“I didn’t know that.” He tossed aside the used wipes, opened the tube of ointment, squeezed some out onto the palm of her hand.
Gently, he smoothed the ointment over the burn.
At any other time, she might have appreciated the gentle certainty of his touch. But she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off that needle, and its place in the lineup.
“Or at least a nurse.”
“I’ve given thousands of needles.” He inspected her hand, and then satisfied, covered the burn with a gauze pad, item number three. The needle and syringe were item number seven and he was making his way steadily toward them.
“Thousands?” she asked with jittery skepticism.
“Literally. Thousands. To cows and horses, but I’m pretty sure the technique is the same. Or similar.”
He took the roll of gauze, item number four, and began to unwind it firmly around the pad in the palm of her hand.
“It isn’t,” she told him. “It’s not the same technique. It’s not even similar.”
“How do you know? How many horses have you given needles to?” He was making a neat figure eight over her burned palm, around her thumb and up her wrist. He went around and around, his movements smooth, sure, mesmerizing.
“Well, none. I haven’t actually ever given a needle to anything. But it just makes sense that giving one to a person and an animal are totally different things.”
She heard a certain shrill nervousness in her voice.
In contrast, his was low and calm. “Don’t worry, Amy, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“On purpose,” she said. “You might by accident.”
He glanced up at her sharply. She had a woozy sense of not being at all sure they were still talking about the needle.
“I’ll try not to.”
No promises, she noticed.
He picked up the scissors, item number five, cut the gauze wrap. She glanced over at the table. He was nearly done.
He picked up the little metal clips, item number six, pulled the end of the gauze wrap firm on top of her wrist and inserted the teeth of the clips into the thickest place on the gauze. He gave his handiwork a satisfied pat.
“You can’t just give a person penicillin,” she said, staring at what remained in his neat lineup on the table—number seven, the syringe and needle. “You need a prescription for it!”
“Okay.”
She eyed him suspiciously. He seemed to acquiesce just a little too easily. She watched narrowly as he methodically repacked the first aid kit. He picked it up, and almost as an afterthought, picked up the huge needle and syringe. He stowed them all back in the cupboard above the fridge.
“Oh!” she said, and let out a huge breath of relief. “You never planned on using the needle! You scared me on purpose.”
“Dressing a burn hurts like hell. I prefer to think of it as a distraction,” he said, and then he smiled.
His smile was absolutely devastating. It took him from stern and formidable to boyishly charming in a blink.
She looked down at her hand. He had distracted her on purpose, and she honestly didn’t know if she was grateful or annoyed by how gullible she was, but the smile made it impossible to be annoyed with him no matter how annoyed she was at herself.
And she realized the syringe and needle had indeed been a distraction. But that distraction had existed in the background. In the foreground had been the exquisiteness of his touch, his strength so tempered by gentleness, that pleasure and pain had become merged into a third sensation altogether.
And that third sensation scorched through her, more powerfully than the burn.
It was desire.
She wanted to kiss him again. Harder this time. Longer.
She had to get away from here. She was just in the baby stages of getting her life back in order. This was no time for kissing and all the complications that kissing could bring.
She’d known this man less than twenty-four hours. What was she thinking? The truth? She wasn’t thinking at all. She was falling under some kind of spell, an enchantment that had been deepened by tasting him, and then by the drugging sensuality of his easy smile.
He had a tea towel in his hand now. “Sorry. I don’t have a real sling. I’ll improvise with this.”
“I don’t need a sling!” Imagine how close to her he’d have to get to put that on!
“It’ll be better if we immobilize your hand. If we don’t, you’ll be surprised by how often you want to use it. You could just try it for today.”
“But I won’t be able to drive if my arm is in a sling.”
His gaze slid away from her before he turned back, opened his palm and held out two white pills.
“You generally need a prescription for these, too. We’re a long way from an emergency ward here. We take some liberties.”
“I really won’t be able to drive if I take those.” Or, she added to herself, keep my head about me.
“No, you won’t.”
“Then I’d better not.”
“Ah, well, there’s something I have to tell you. The driveway isn’t passable. I’m going to turn on the radio and see what the roads are like, not that it really matters if you can’t get out of the driveway.” He glanced to the window. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s snowing again.”
Her eyes drifted to the window. Snowing again was an understatement. The window looked as if it had been washed with white paint, the snow beyond it was so thick light could barely penetrate. She felt panic surge in her.
This terrible wave of affection had been building in her since he