Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade
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stairs to the upper level presented a problem and after several attempts with the crutches, Carly conceded that she needed help.
Since Evie Lee was already on the landing at the top, Carly said, “I’m going to need you to carry the crutches up for me. But why don’t you let your dad know I’m coming first.”
Evie Lee shrugged and did her little-girl-happy-dance until she was out of sight.
Carly heard her holler through the door to her father that Carly was there, but no answer came in response.
“He can’t hear me,” Evie Lee said a moment later, at the top of the steps again. “It’ll be all right. I told you, he’ll be in there for a really, really long time.”
The prospect of standing there waiting for that really, really long time was not appealing. Especially when the alternative was that Carly could get in and out of her room without seeing him at all.
“Okay. Come and get the crutches for me, then.”
The child obliged and while Evie Lee dragged them up in front of Carly, Carly used the banister to aid in hopping one step at a time on her good foot.
It was noisy and awkward and Carly kept up a silent chant of Please don’t let him come out of the bathroom, Please don’t let him come out of the bathroom, the whole way.
When both she and Evie Lee had finally made it to the top and Carly was on the crutches again, she realized that sometime during the trip the shower water had stopped running. Not a good sign.
Before she moved from that spot at the top of the stairs, she said, “It sounds like your dad is out of the shower. Knock on the bathroom door and yell in again to let him know I’m out here.”
“Okay,” the child agreed as if she just didn’t understand what the big deal was.
But Evie Lee barely made it to the door when it opened before she had the chance to do or say anything. And out stepped Bax.
It was obvious he was fresh from the shower. His short hair was still damp and all he had on was a pair of faded blue jeans that rode low on his hips. His feet were bare and so was his entire upper body—broad shoulders, big biceps, muscled pectorals, flat belly and all.
And an even worse case of goose bumps sprang to the surface of Carly’s skin than the mere thought of the same scenario had caused.
“Whoops,” Evie Lee said at the look of surprise on her father’s face. “I was just comin’ to tell you Carly was out here.”
“I’m sorry,” Carly was quick to say. Once she could drag her eyes off his chest. “I didn’t bring any of my stuff with me to the cottage, and I was trying to get to my room for it now. Evie Lee knocked before and called in to you, but you must not have been able to hear her.”
And didn’t Carly just want to crawl into a hole rather than face him looking the way she did!
Bax recovered himself and granted her a smile that made her suddenly feel wobbly on the crutches. “No problem. Do you want to use the bathroom up here?”
Hot, steamy air was wafting out into the hallway, smelling like a far more manly soap than she’d ever used. The idea of stepping into that was too arousing to entertain.
“No, I’d rather just take my things down to the cottage.”
“How did you plan to do that?” he asked reasonably.
Only then did it occur to her that he was right. How was she going to manage suitcases and crutches, too?
“I guess I hadn’t thought it through,” she admitted.
“I don’t mind if you want to use the bathroom up here, but if you’d rather not I can carry your things down to the cottage for you.”
She didn’t know how he could be so calm and collected when she felt like a blithering idiot.
But then, he wasn’t looking at the magnificent specimen she was looking at. He was looking at her, dressed in the same rumpled sundress she’d gone to her going-away party in, her face unwashed in more hours than she wanted to think about and her hair straggling around her ears, weeping for a comb.
“It would be great if you could bring my suitcases down to the cottage,” she said when she found her voice. “There’s a full bathroom down there. In fact, it’s better equipped for someone incapacitated because my dad sometimes had patients stay there. Well, not in the bathroom—I mean, he’d have patients stay in the cottage. But the bathroom has grab bars and a seat in the shower and—”
She stopped herself before she babbled anymore.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’d really appreciate it if you could bring my suitcases down. That would be great.”
“Why don’t you show me which room is yours and I’ll get them,” he said.
Carly pointed with a nod of her chin to the end of the hall. “It’s that one.”
“Can I go with Carly to visit her sister in the hospital?” Evie Lee said then.
Carly explained what the child was talking about as she followed Bax into her room.
“So I have two patients already,” he said as he put Carly’s carry-on bag under one arm, picked up the smaller of the other two to tote in one hand and then hoisted the largest in the opposite hand.
“I don’t think there were any complications or anything,” she answered, trying not to watch the flex and swell of his muscles in the process. “Tallie Shanahan—she’s our nurse and midwife—delivered the baby, and when I called from Cheyenne, she said everything was fine. So I don’t know if you’d call Hope and the baby your patients.”
“I should still look in on them. How about if we all go together? You can show us the way.”
“Sure. That would be fine,” Carly said, feeling anything but fine.
She hated that just being near this man could reduce her to some kind of bumbling schoolgirl.
She took a deep breath to try to get control over herself. “I’d like to shower first, though,” she added.
“Need help?”
“No!” she said in too much of a hurry before being sure if he was teasing her, flirting with her, or if he was offering medical aid.
But the glint in his green eyes and the hint-of-the-devil smile that brought out his dimples made her inclined to think he was teasing. And flirting.
“Like I said,” she continued, “the shower is equipped for people who aren’t at their best. Besides, they told me at the hospital that I could unwrap my ankle to bathe and then just wrap it again, so I shouldn’t be too handicapped.”
“Did they show you how to wrap it again afterward?”
“No, but I’m sure it won’t be too hard.”
“You might be surprised. If you wrap it too loose, it won’t do any good and too tight will do damage. Why don’t you leave it unwrapped and I’ll do that for you before we go over to the hospital? At least I can teach you how to do it right so you can take care of it yourself from here on out.”
There was no mistaking his more professional tone.
“Well, okay,” Carly agreed without enthusiasm. Somehow just the thought of his touching her—even only her ankle—made flutters of something she didn’t understand go off in the pit of her stomach.
“Let’s get you back downstairs then,” he suggested.
Carly did an ungraceful about-face on the crutches and headed for the stairs again.
At the top of them she hesitated, unsure how best to make the descent.
“You probably ought to go down on your rear end,” came the advice from behind