Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
“You really didn’t have to drive me back,” Kenny said as Smith brought his Land Rover to a stop in front of her sprawling, ugly rental property.
He put the car in neutral and turned to face her, one arm hooked around the top of his seat and the other draped over the steering wheel. It was such a sexy, utterly confident, masculine pose that she felt a little breathless as she stared back into that penetrating green gaze.
“No need to wait for a ride share when I was right there.”
“We’re meant to be seeing less of each other,” she reminded, breathlessness creeping into her voice. “Not more.”
“We can see less of each other after today,” he said with a nonchalant lift of his broad shoulders.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said.
The stilted politeness in her voice was met with a grave smile that didn’t travel to his eyes.
“You’re welcome.”
“So, I won’t have to text my schedule for tonight, I take it?”
“Ralphie’s. At six-thirty-ish,” he intoned. His right hand, dangling over the top of the steering wheel, waved slightly for emphasis and drew her gaze.
Her eyes sharpened and she reached for his hand with both of hers. She cradled the large, warm appendage gently and stared down at a slightly inflamed wound in the fleshy part of his palm.
“What happened?” she asked in horror as she assessed the injury with a trained eye. She gently prodded at the two puncture wounds about an inch apart at the base of his thumb.
She was a little shocked that she hadn’t noticed it before now.
“Is this a bite of some kind?” She’d seen a few snake bites while doing her ER rotation as a student doctor and while reminiscent of one, upon more thorough inspection, this didn’t appear similar to those.
He winced and shook his head, looking a little sheepish.
“I hooked myself fishing the other day.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “That’s awful. Did they give you a tetanus shot? Antibiotics?”
“They?”
“The attending physician,” she clarified, her eyes narrowing suspiciously at the caginess in his body language. His hand, however, remained in her grasp even though he could easily have pulled it away by now.
“Smith?” she prompted. “What did your doctor say?”
“I didn’t go to the doctor.”
“What? So who removed the hook? One of your fishing buddies?” Not ideal, but his friends were mostly competent guys.
“I was alone. I pulled it out. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“What?” She heard the dismay in her own voice as she once again assessed the wound, carefully checking for any signs of infection. While it was slightly warm to the touch, it did appear to be healing nicely.
“That was incredibly foolish, Smith,” she reprimanded. “Going fishing alone, for starters. And then tending to a potentially serious wound without consulting a doctor. You should at least have consulted a doctor about after care. What were you thinking?”
“Kenna.” His voice was annoyingly, condescendingly patient.
As if he were speaking to a child, not a trained surgeon.
“It was a shallow wound caused by a barbless hook. Easy enough to remove. I cleaned it thoroughly, slathered it with antibiotic ointment, and took a couple of ibuprofen. It hurt like a bastard for a few hours, but it’s mostly fine now. ”
She glared down at the injury, her thumb tracing gentle circles around the wound.
“Had you caught any fish with that particular hook?” She was still concerned, and jumped a little when his free hand cupped her jaw and gently tilted her face upward to meet his eyes.
“The only thing I caught that day was my own damned self,” he told her with a reassuring smile.
“I’m a lousy fisherman, actually. Harris and Greyson are constantly raving about how great the fishing is at that spot and when I found some fishing gear at the cottage I thought I’d give it a go.
I just… I needed to get out of my own head for a while.
I thought it would be a good way to let off some steam. ”
“When did it happen?” she asked, still absently tracing her thumb over the lines in his palm. But that was okay, because his own thumb was restlessly scalding spellbinding runes onto the sensitive skin of her face. Leaving calamitous trails of fire in its path.
“On Monday,” he told her.
“After you left here?” she asked and he nodded. The gesture added more weight to her already overburdened heart and her eyes flooded. “So this is my fault?”
“No, sweetheart, this is entirely on me.”
The familiar endearment just about destroyed her. It had been so, so long since he’d called her that. She’d always found it a little incongruous. Too saccharine. A little embarrassing.
And yet…
She’d also always melted a little every time he’d used it.
And she now recognized how much she’d missed hearing it. He had all but stopped calling her that after their wedding.
They were still touching each other. At this point it was almost compulsive.
Necessary.
And Kenny didn’t believe she was in any way capable of stopping anytime soon.
Smith seemed to be facing the same dilemma. Neither of them wanted to end the contact, but both of them knew that it was either end it or deepen it.
And that was dangerous.
“Where did you go?” he asked, a helpless, anguished note in his voice.
His question confused her. She wanted to reply, but wasn’t sure what he meant. And she worried that asking for clarification would shatter the breathless spell that had been cast within the confines of this little bubble.
Instead, she nuzzled her cheek into his palm and lifted his other hand to her lips, planting a soft, lingering kiss onto his injury.
His breath snagged at the contact and he groaned quietly.
“Kenna…” Her name was a drawn-out whisper of regret and she nodded.
She already knew what he was about to say.
As she released her hold on his hand, a tear slipped down her cheek and dropped into his palm. His long fingers closed around the moisture.
“Don’t cry,” he pleaded, his other thumb finding a second tear and swiping it away with a gentle roughness that matched his voice.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” she said, uncertain if she was apologizing because of the physical wound, or for all the other emotional wounds she’d inflicted over the past year and half.
She inched back in her seat, putting the tiniest bit of distance between them, enough for him to remove his hand from her face. Leaving her cold and bereft.
“Thank you again,” she said, blindly reaching for the door handle behind her. “For the ride.”
She found the handle and at the last possible second, turned away from him to open the door. She was out of the car before he could react.
She opened the back door to retrieve her cane seconds later.
Smith, caught off guard by her swift actions, was fumbling with the handle. Knowing that he would insist on walking her to the door, Kenny sharply called his name, halting his movements. His head lifted to meet her eyes through the open window of the passenger door.
“Smith, just leave. This is all too confusing.”
His jaw tightened and he looked set to argue.
“Please.” The word emerged on a raw whisper and the wind left his sails in one, heavy exhalation.
“Take care of yourself, Kenna.”
She stepped away from the vehicle and he watched her slowly make her way up the porch steps and to the front door. But he thankfully respected her request and remained in the car.
He drove away only after she’d unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
“Here’s the deal, okay? We don’t look at them, talk to them, smile at them, wave at them, or in any way, shape, or form acknowledge them.
At all. They. Do. Not. Exist. Are we clear?
” The woman speaking—a pretty, slender brunette—had a stern, no-nonsense tone of voice and was, quite frankly, a little scary.
Which said a lot, because Kenny, who was rather proud of her own workplace boss bitch energy, didn’t scare easily.
The woman—Daffodil Carlisle—was referring to the group of men gathered around the pool tables at the other end of Ralphie’s pub.
“Daff, you go over these rules every time we come here. I think we all get it by now,” a drop-dead gorgeous mixed-race woman with sleek black hair retorted, raising her voice to be heard over the noise of the pub.
“Do you, Charity?” Daff responded tartly. “Do you really? Because we all remember the time I caught you snogging Miles in front of the ladies’ restroom.”
“A lapse,” Charity said with an airy wave of her hand. “And I’ve already apologized for breaking one of your sacrosanct ladies’ night rules. I don’t see why we have to keep rehashing my momentary weakness. The man looks great in jeans. I couldn’t help myself.”
“The rules bear repeating,” Daffodil insisted primly. “Especially since we have a new member in our midst.”
She pointed at Kenny, who flushed uncomfortably.
“I won’t talk to them,” she promised. “I barely know any of them.”
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. But the one she did know would be spending the evening studiously ignoring her. And vice versa.
She eyed the group of tall, good-looking guys again.
There was an inordinate amount of attractive people in this town.
Was there something in the water here? There were—as far as she knew, thanks to Tina’s gossipy intel at the start of the evening—two sets of brothers in the group. Tina’s own husband, Harris, was a twin.
The shared DNA among some of them explained the good looks, but the remaining two men in the group were also very attractive.
And then there was the seventh.
Smith.
She hadn’t expected to see him here tonight. But of course, if all his friends were here, it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to stay away just because Kenny happened to be here too.
Why hadn’t he told her that he’d be here tonight? They’d agreed to communicate these matters to each other just that morning and he’d fallen down at the first hurdle.