2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“It’s just a nick,” Bear grumbled even as Valentine gently rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt to his elbow, her fingers skating over his skin. He certainly wasn’t going to complain about having her hands on him, but he didn’t like that she was making a fuss over him.
She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look at him as she popped open her first aid kit, rummaged around. Her long auburn hair was pulled back in a loose braid, with a few wisps falling out around her face. “You’re bleeding all over my sink and your shirt is soaked. This isn’t a nick.”
“It is,” he insisted. “It’s just along the area over my ulna. That’s why it’s bleeding so much, but I’ll be fine.”
She turned on her faucet, keeping the water pressure low as she slowly ran it over where he’d been cut.
He bit back a wince at the sting, but nodded as the blood washed away and he could see it clearly. He’d been right, it wasn’t that deep.
“I think you might need stitches.” She bit her bottom lip, and he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her like that, but he’d give up a kidney if she would kiss him with that gorgeous mouth.
He’d had dreams about her soft, pillowy lips, how she’d taste, what it would feel like to cup the back of her head as… Nope. Damn it… He looked away. For some reason she seemed to be perpetually annoyed with him, so staring wouldn’t win him any points.
“Nah, I’m good,” he said. “And I can do this.” Even though he wanted her to keep touching him, he figured it was better to wrap this up and get out of here as soon as possible before he said something stupid. He started to reach for the first aid kit, but she nudged it back.
“Sit still,” she ordered as she pulled out a can of liquid spray that would help stop the bleeding quicker. “So, ulna?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“It’s just interesting that you used the correct anatomical word.”
“Not one you’d expect from a roughneck?”
She raised her head now, lifted that perfect eyebrow again. “That’s not what I said, or what I meant.” Then she sniffed a little haughtily.
“I was in med school.” He shrugged, but then stilled, not wanting to mess up her work.
“Really? That’s impressive.”
“Yeah, one year only, and don’t be impressed. I hated every second of it, but some things stuck with me…” He sighed, wondering why the hell he was opening up to her. Oh yeah, because she fascinated him, and every time he was around her, he turned into an awkward teenager again. “My parents desperately wanted me to be a doctor.”
“It’s brave to go against family expectations,” she murmured as she oh so gently set the bandage over his newly cleaned wound. She had the lightest touch.
“I guess.” There’d been nothing brave about it though, he’d simply wanted to live his life on his terms. His older brother had already joined the Air Force—against his parents’ wishes—and he’d been their last hope.
“It took me until I was twenty-five to really push back against my family, so it’s brave to me. There,” she said, smiling as she stepped back from his perfectly bandaged arm and surveyed her work.
When she smiled it was like the sun came out and it took him a moment to remember how to breathe. And now he desperately wanted to know what she’d pushed back against her family about.
He hated that he was still so dusty and a little grimy after work, but he was grateful he’d been here to stop that asshole. He’d also been tempted to chase after the guy and beat the shit out of him, but sanity had prevailed. He was going to call a detective friend of his later just to let him know what had happened and to pull video feeds from the area, because that mugger was a menace. One of the residents had been killed right outside the complex last year so they’d installed even more cameras and implemented a monthly change of the gate codes. But sometimes precautions weren’t enough.
And Bear couldn’t even think about what could have happened if the guy had turned his knife on Valentine.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to get out. He wished he had the right to comfort her.
“Don’t thank me,” she said as she continued cleaning up all his blood from the countertop. She definitely wasn’t squeamish. He found that interesting. “I should be thanking you for saving me.”
“You already did.”
“Well I’m thanking you again. And also apologizing for acting like a—”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.” He knew she worked from home and hated that he’d been disrupting her work day.
Sighing, she leaned against her countertop after setting her bleach spray down. “I really do. I’m sleep deprived—not because of the construction—and trying to finish a musical score before… It doesn’t matter.”
He sat at her small kitchen table. “It does matter. What are you working on?” He knew she was an artist, but wasn’t sure exactly what she did for a living.
“I volunteer at an after-school art program, and the kids there are working on a play with a different instructor. But I volunteered to help with some of the songs because they’re doing something original. I don’t think it’s going to matter anyway.” She set a pot of water on the stove then sat across from him. “Some of the set donations fell through and… Whatever, I took my frustration out on you, and I’m really sorry. I want to say I’m normally not like that, but you’ve met me, so.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh.
“You’re passionate and I respect that.” And okay, he was fully in lust with the woman, no need to deny it. He was pretty sure she could do no wrong in his eyes and that terrified him. “What kind of donations are you guys looking for?”
“Oh, just stuff for the sets.”
“As in construction-related?”
She blinked. “Well yeah, but I wasn’t fishing around for anything.”
“We’ve got plenty of leftover lumber or whatever the kids could possibly need. One of my guys actually builds the sets for his own kid’s theater program. I’ll come down tomorrow and talk to the director, see what they need.”
She blinked again. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Oh my god, thank you. This is so generous. I…wow, thank you. I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He pushed up from his seat, needing to leave now before he said or did something stupid. Which was normally the case with her. So he was going to call today a win and get out while he was ahead. “I’m going to give you my number.” He wrote his cell on the little whiteboard on her fridge. “Call or text me and I can meet up with whoever is in charge tomorrow morning, get a feel for what they need.”
She stood with him, looking a little dazed as she nodded. “Okay, yeah. I can’t believe you’re doing this. I’m texting you now,” she said as she picked her phone up from the countertop. “Are you sure you can miss work in the morning to meet up?”
“It’s no problem. My crew has things handled here.” The truth was, he didn’t normally work on jobs anymore. Not as intensely as he was for this job anyway.
He’d done the manual labor side of things for a little over a decade, but once he’d had so many jobs, he’d had to step back and trust that the various crews he’d built up over the years could handle themselves. But then he’d agreed to do this renovation job as a favor to an old friend and had met Valentine by complete chance.
So he’d been spending a lot of time on this job site, something his guys all gave him shit for. But he didn’t care because he got to see Valentine on a regular basis.
Not that he’d be confessing any of this to her.
“Well, great. I’ll reach out to her tonight and then let you know when we can meet up tomorrow. And I’m still going to thank you again for saving me. Most people would have stayed out of it.” She swallowed hard and shook her head slightly, as if banishing the memory of earlier. “So thank you.”
Instead of kissing her, the way he wanted to, he mumbled what he hoped sounded like a normal response then got out of there before he gave in to temptation. Once he was outside, he pulled out his phone to call his friend about the mugger. The condo complex had better than normal security but clearly it didn’t matter when someone had targeted Valentine outside of it.
She might only ever see him as a friend, but that didn’t matter. He would do everything he could to keep her safe.