Trading Secrets. Christine Flynn
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car and the faint glow of light from the window. As badly as he hurt and as hard as it was raining, he hadn’t cared so long as whoever it was could help.
His reluctant rescuer closed the door behind her as she followed him into the nearly dark and empty room. Light spilled from a doorway to his left.
“In here,” she said, moving past him. “There’s a stool by the sink.”
He followed her into the empty kitchen. As he did, a shard of bright red ceramic flew across the floor. Her foot had caught it in her haste to move one of the two oil lamps closer to the sink. There didn’t appear to be any furniture in the house. The only place to sit was the stool she had mentioned.
In agony, he watched her lift a cardboard box off it, then shove back the bangs of her boyishly short, sable-colored hair. She was young and pretty, and had he not been so preoccupied with the ripping sensations in his muscles, he might have paid more than passing notice to the lovely blue of her eyes. But she could have looked like a beagle and been built like a trucker for all he cared just then. All that mattered to him when he sank onto the wooden stool was the intelligence in those eyes. That and the fact that he was finally sitting down.
The base of the metal lamp clunked against the counter when Jenny moved it closer.
He looked even worse to her in the light. The moisture slicking his face was more than the rain that dripped from the ends of his hair and ran in rivulets down his neck. It was sweat. Fine beads of it lined his upper lip.
With his eyes closed, he shivered.
Growing more worried by the second, she touched her hand to his uninjured arm. Beneath the wet fabric, his hard muscles felt like stone.
“Hang on,” she said, letting her hand stay on his arm long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to fall off the stool. “I’ll get you a towel.”
She didn’t know if he was just cold, or if shivering was a sign of shock. But the thought that he could get worse than he already was had her silently swearing to herself. The book she might have looked up shock in was still impounded.
“Can you take off your shirt?” she asked, reminding herself that she could just ask him what the symptoms were. He was the doctor. “It’s drenched.”
“I don’t want to let go of my arm.”
She took that to mean he’d need help.
Two more boxes sat in the corner where she’d swept the floor and piled her blankets and comforter. Ripping open the nearest one, she dug under her sheets and pulled out a butter-yellow bath towel.
Hurrying back, she saw that he’d leaned forward to brace the elbow of his injured arm against his thigh. With his free hand, he fumbled with the first button of his shirt.
His awkward position and the wet fabric made the task harder than it needed to be.
She dropped the towel on the box she’d been unpacking. “Hold your arm. I’ll do this.”
His quiet “Thanks,” sounded terribly strained.
That strain and the intensity of his discomfort kept her from dwelling too much on how awkward she felt unbuttoning his shirt. Because he wore it with its long sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, she didn’t have to mess with buttons at his wrists. Once she reached his belt buckle, however, she did have to tug it from his pants.
He didn’t seem to care that a woman he didn’t even know had her hands inches from his zipper as she tugged the dry shirttail from the front, or her arms around his waist as she tugged from the back. In turn, she tried not to care about the way her nerves had tightened. He smelled of spicy soap, fresh air and something distinctly, decidedly male. As close as she stood to him, she could feel the heat of his big body radiating toward her, and the brush of his inner thighs against the outsides of her legs.
One of the droplets clinging to his hair broke free, sluiced down the side of his face and clung to the sharp line of his jaw.
Resisting the urge to wipe it away, she glanced back to his shoulder.
“You’re going to have to let go again.”
It seemed that he complied before he could let himself think too much about the pain involved. Biting down on a groan, he let her peel the wet fabric off his right side, then promptly grabbed his arm again the second she’d pulled it off his left.
The wet denim hit the counter with a soft plop, then slid to the floor.
Jenny barely noticed.
In the golden glow of the lamps, the sculpted muscles of his shoulders, arms and chest rippled with lean and latent power. The men at the club where she’d once been a trial member worked hours a week to look so carved and cut. There was no gym or health club in Maple Mountain, though. Never had been. Never would be. But it wasn’t his impressive and rather intimidating body that had the bulk of her attention as she reached toward the towel. It was the bruising that had already started to spread over his chest, the baseball sized lump beneath his collar bone and the way the edge of his left shoulder seemed to be missing.
“I don’t need that now.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The towel landed back on the box. “What do you want me to do?”
“Put your hand over the head of the humerus.”
Seeing what she was dealing with made her even more apprehensive. “You’re going to have to speak civilian.”
“The round thing under my collar bone.”
With caution clawing at her every nerve, she stepped back into the space between his legs and did as he asked.
He sucked in a sharp breath at the contact.
“That’s it.”
“Oh, geez.”
His reddened skin somehow felt cool beneath her hand but hot beneath her fingers. Bone protruded against her palm. Honed muscles knotted around it. Feeling them twitch and tighten as his body’s nerves objected violently to the damage, she jerked her glance to his face once more.
With his eyes closed, his lashes formed sooty crescents beneath the dark slashes of his eyebrows. The skin stretched taut over his cheekbones looked as pale as his beautifully carved mouth. His lips parted as he blew a slow breath.
Exhaling with him, she watched him open his eyes.
For the first time she noticed his eyes were gray, the silver gray of old pewter. Mostly she noticed the sheer stoicism that kept him from caving in to the pain and hitting the floor.
“Now what?” she asked, mentally bracing herself for whatever came next.
“The muscles have started to spasm, so you’re going to have to use some muscle yourself. Take my arm and when I let go, pull while you push the head over and down. I’ll brace myself against you.”
Glancing from the rigid muscles of his jaw and chest, she uneasily curled her fingers above his elbow. His big body stiffened the instant he removed the support of his own hand, but she was more aware of how her own body went still as that hand anchored at her waist.
With his strong fingers curved at her side and digging into her back, her voice sounded pitifully thin. “Like this?”
Teeth clinched, he muttered a terse, “Go.”
Shaking inside, feeling his muscles quivering, Jenny pulled on his arm. Its heaviness caught her totally off guard. Tightening her grip, she pushed on bone.
He grunted a breath. “Harder.”
There was no doubt in her mind that she was hurting him. His damp skin became even slicker, his breathing more harsh. Fighting the frantic urge to stop, she felt the bone slip.
He bit off another, “Harder.”
“I’m pushing as hard as I can.”
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