Chapter 15
Wesley
Iwipe my hand down my face as I let out a sigh.
“What did I tell you about getting your hand too close to the blade, Dominic?” I ask as my arm drops back down to my side.
It’s hard not to glare at the kid, but damn, where the hell is his common sense?
The boy lacks it—that’s for sure. His blood is everywhere, from the floor of the shop below, up the stairs, and down the hallway, all the way to my office.
The company uniform, which is a long sleeve shirt with the Gnarly Pines logo, is covered in blood as well. He looks like a walking crime scene.
He looks from the arm he’s holding close to his chest to up at me.
“I didn’t mean to! But I thought I could snag the branch before it could get stuck in the gears,” Dominic says, his words a little slurred and slow.
He’s in shock. I don’t blame him, that blade got him good. If we don’t get him to a hospital soon, I may have a fainter on my hands.
“Well, learned your lesson didn’t you? That machine is made to handle all sorts of things. A twig in the gear wouldn’t have done anything,” I tell him, trying to keep my patience in check.
At eighteen, you’d think the boy would understand the importance of staying away from large, sharp blades made for cutting wood. I never should’ve put him on the line. This was my mistake. As much as I want to blame him, it’s myself that’s at fault here.
“A-am I going to lose my arm?” Dominic asks, his voice growing softer.
Before I have a chance to respond, the door opens and Blair steps inside with a first aid kit in her hand and Ledger right on her heels. She gives me a warm smile but heads straight to Dominic, who looks up at her with the first inklings of fear he hadn’t wanted me to see.
“Dominic,” Ledger greets. “My friend Blair here is a nurse and when I heard about your injury I asked her if she’d come take a look at it. Blair, this is Dominic.”
“Miss Blair, ma’am, I don’t want to lose my arm. Can you save it?” he asks her as she approaches.
The smile she gives him is warm, and when she speaks it’s slow and filled with kindness. “Let’s see what I’m working with. If I can’t do anything, I’m sure the local emergency room can help.”
“But I don’t got any insurance,” Dominic objects. “I can’t afford to go to the—”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Ledger says, cutting him off. “I’ll take care of whatever hospital bills occur if it gets to that point.”
Blair shoots him a pleased smile before she gets to work pulling away the blood-soaked towel. Ledger steps away from her and over to me.
“Have you started your report about this yet?” he asks.
“No, but I will. You know that.”
I watch as Blair tenderly cares for our employee.
She has a great bedside manner. Calm and confident, soft spoken but direct, she probably made a great nurse at every facility she traveled to.
I wonder at her career choice. She could’ve followed in her father’s footsteps.
Instead, she went in the opposite direction.
Because I’m watching her so closely, I notice her slight flinch as she leans forward to study the bloody wound. My eyes narrow on the way she quickly straightens and has Dominic lift his arm up to her line of vision instead, as if leaning forward was hard for her.
What’s that about? Did she sleep funny? Mentally, I make a note to pull the Epsom salt out for her to use in the bath tonight. A good soak will help with that.
“Hm, the first aid kit doesn’t have the instruments I need for this, nor do I have the space to really do much,” Blair announces with a sigh. “But what I can do is wrap your arm up nice and tight to get the bleeding to slow until we can get a doctor to check you out. That sound alright?”
“Shit, ma is going to kill me,” he groans, leaning his head back with a heavy grimace. “She’s always telling me to be careful ‘cause I’m a klutz. I guess she’s right about that.”
Blair chuckles. “Sounds like she cares about you.”
She turns to look at us. Again, there’s a slight flinch that she tries to downplay. I also catch sight of the small bruise she’s attempting to hide with her hair as it hangs a little more in her face today than usual. My body locks up in surprise.
Where the hell had that come from? How had I missed it this morning? Self-disgust and guilt cause my heart to race. What the fuck happened and why didn’t Blair say anything? It’s my job to make sure everyone under Ledger’s roof is taken care of.
“I’ll grab the keys to the truck,” Ledger offers, already heading for the door. “Blair, do you care to walk Dominic down?”
“I don’t mind at all. I wouldn’t want my patient to stumble down the stairs on my watch,” she says, shooting Dominic a wink.
I say nothing as Ledger leaves, and Blair works on wrapping Dominic’s arm. When she walks him out of my office, I walk over to the large window that looks down over the setup below and watch as she gingerly takes each step—her attention solely on her patient while mine is trained on her.
“So, this afternoon with Dominic,” I hedge as I settle deeper into the couch cushion.
Ledger looks over from the couch across the room, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches the football game on the television.
He raises a brow. “Yeah, what about it?”
“What if we have Blair be our on-site nurse? We can find her space in an empty office somewhere and make it the medical room,” I suggest. “With how often our guys get hurt, it would be nice to have someone who knows what they’re doing tending to them.”
Ledger considers this, his eyes going back to the screen but he’s not really watching the game.
“I don’t see why not. Run it past her. If she’s okay with it, we’ll make it happen,” he replies after a minute.
“It’ll get her out of my hair,” Rhett mutters from the floor where he and Santi are playing a card game.
My gaze flickers to him. He’s toying with his split lip that’s situated between the two hoops on his bottom lip. It’s another little injury I had missed this morning but picked up on this evening during a tense dinner.
Santi chuckles but the sound is off tonight. “It’ll probably get you out of her hair.”
The tension humming between these two has been as noticeable as Blair’s absence this evening.
Rhett hasn’t stopped making snide remarks since getting off work, most geared toward Blair, which in turn seems to be pissing Santi off.
Blair occasionally snipped back but mostly remained silent despite the attempts me, Santi, and Ledger made to drag her into conversation.
After the dishes were done, she’d excused herself to go up to her room where she’s been for the past two hours.
“As long as she’s as far away as possible from me, I don’t give a fuck whose hair is involved,” Rhett says. “You’ll probably have to fight Colly on this though. She’s practically in love with Blair—if you don’t hurry there might even be a proposal soon.”
Rhett’s assistant manager is a bubbly woman whose exceedingly good at her job but has, on more than one occasion, complained about how there aren’t enough women in her line of work. I have no doubt that she appreciates Blair’s presence and help recently.
“Colly likes everyone,” Santi points out. “But I’ll object at the wedding if Blair accepts the offer of marriage. Blair deserves better than that workaholic.”
I start to chuckle but Rhett kills the mood by muttering, “She deserves a swift boot to the ass.”
“Yeah? Then so do you,” Santi counters. “Quit talking about Blair like that or I’ll make you.”
The two of them glare at one another before returning their attention to the cards in their hands.
I suppress a sigh and it looks like Ledger does too. Santiago and Rhett are grown men. Whatever’s going on between these two is none of our business. It would be nice, however, if they sorted it out.
Before I can open my mouth to suggest the empty room in Building D that’s being used for storage as a nurse’s aid station, the sound of Blair’s footsteps coming down the stairs catches my attention.
I look up just in time to watch her stroll by the entrance of the living room, heading toward the kitchen.
As casually as I can manage, I get to my feet and head out of the room.
I stop to lean against the threshold of the kitchen and watch as Blair moves around the space.
She picked up where everything was pretty quickly; now she looks utterly at home.
There’s a thoughtful pinch of her brows and a frown that tugs at her mouth.
Is she deep in thought? Is something bothering her?
When she reaches up to grab the knob of a cupboard, she flinches.
“Can I help you find something?” I ask her.
Blair gingerly turns around to face me, looking the epitome of innocence.
“Nope, I’m good. I’m just… looking for a sweet treat.”
My body tenses at the lie.
She’s good?
It doesn’t look like it to me.
“Can I make you one of my favorite treats?” I press her.
“I don’t need assistance, Wes,” she counters. “Thanks, though. You can head back in with the others.”
Ignoring her not-so-subtle dismissal, I push off the wall and walk toward her. She steps aside with a sigh as I reach up, open the cupboard, and grab for a mug. Rather than hand it to her, however, I take it and begin pulling the ingredients out for hot chocolate.
“What are you doing? I don’t even know what I want. Why are—”
“Let me make you some hot chocolate. It’s my favorite go-to drink when I’m having a rough go of it,” I interrupt as I reach for the real chocolate bars then head for the refrigerator where the whole milk is. “While I do, you can tell me how you got that bruise on your face.”
I look over in time to watch Blair reach up and gently poke the spot by her eye. She gives me a sheepish smile when she catches me staring.
“This? I fell out of bed this morning and hit my eye on the nightstand,” she answers with a shrug.
Another lie.
Blair’s good at this.