Chapter Nine #2
The order cut through all the things happening inside of her body. She sat up a little straighter. “I can’t stay off it.”
“You can. You will. I know where the ice is. Got anything to wrap it with?”
“Yes, but—”
“Tell me where.”
COPELAND PUT ICE in the baggie he found, tossed it at her, demanded she elevate her ankle and put the ice on it. He didn’t listen to her reply, just stomped to the upstairs hall closet she’d said the wrap was in.
He grumbled to himself as he pawed through the closet. She hadn’t known exactly where it was, just that there was some in there. Figured.
It was a nightmare of packed shelves. Huge, and everything was in neat little rows, but the rows were of such disparate items it felt like a disorganized mess.
He found all sorts of things. Old curling irons and other hair paraphernalia.
Piles and piles of colorful towels of all sizes.
Stacks of linens. A tub with the image of a cowboy on a horse full of loose pennies.
A box of bullets. A medal of some kind. Two trophies that depicted a woman holding a gun.
He thought he was getting close when he found an old shoebox full of medicines with labels so faded they looked like they’d been here since the 90s. He pushed aside the box, paused when he came face-to-face with another box. This time of condoms.
Hell. He really did not need to think about that. He was about to give up, let her stomp around on her twisted ankle and her own stubbornness and call it a day, but as he was moving the medicine shoebox back into place, he noted a spool of wrap and grabbed it, muttering to himself.
Because now he was going to have to touch her again.
And he knew there were condoms in her closet.
No. She had two perfectly good hands. She could wrap her own ankle. She would be the first to tell him she could handle everything her damn self.
He marched down the stairs, propelled by that righteous certainty, until he made it to the couch. She held out her hand, that prim look on her face. Like a queen ordering a servant about. “I can do it.”
He rolled his eyes, even though letting her do it had been his plan. It was an ankle. It wasn’t the 1800s. He wasn’t a man who got hot and bothered about an ankle.
He was damn well going to wrap her ankle. “Sit up.”
“Copeland.”
“Sit. Up.”
She sighed heavily but sat up, moved her feet from their elevated position on the arm of the couch to the floor. He kneeled down. The pant leg of her jeans was still cuffed from when he’d checked out the status of her ankle.
He’d been in sports all through high school, so he knew how to handle an elastic bandage.
He kept telling himself that as he unwound the piece of fabric, then had to touch her again.
It’s an ankle. Get a grip.
But no amount of self-flagellation seemed to make a difference. Touching her was like touching silk. This tough, do-it-all-herself ranch woman who had shooting trophies in her hall closet was soft and warm, and it really twisted something in him he’d long since refused to let be twisted.
Damn her.
As he wrapped her ankle, anger and frustration and something that felt far too close to fear not to put him in a bad mood, swirled inside of him until he’d certainly worked himself up into a lather.
He knew he should keep his mouth shut. He knew a lot of things. But temper won.
“Now, you’re going to listen to me. I don’t care how I-can-do-it and stubborn you want to be, you have to stay off this ankle. It’s not a terrible sprain, but it’s not going to heal if you’re hobbling around.”
“That’s all well and good, but—”
“There are no buts. If you need help, you call in some help. I can handle a few things, but the Kirks want to help, so you’re only being a stubborn idiot by refusing it. Well, sorry, pal. That’s done.”
He was still crouched in front of her, but he’d leaned forward, and now she did too, poking a finger into his chest.
“I didn’t ask for you to be here. I didn’t ask for your help or your opinion. I can handle myself.”
“You’re doing a piss poor job of it.”
She dug the finger in deeper. “Screw you.”
He put his hand over her wrist, pulled her finger out from drilling into his chest. “Yeah, right back at you.”
He was too close, he realized in the silence that settled over them, fraught and angry. He held her wrist and they were eye-to-eye, practically nose-to-nose, in this odd little position.
Her cheeks were flushed with temper, and those blue eyes flashed with it. Her temper might have stoked his, but it wasn’t just that. This close, just like last night, when they’d argued, it became something else.
Because neither leaned back. He didn’t drop her arm and she didn’t try to pull it away. They stayed right where they were. Too close and too annoyed by each other.
And too…something else. That incessant pull. A magnetic force all its own. A throb, an ache. He knew he shouldn’t drop his gaze to her mouth, all twisted up into a scowl. And he knew that shouldn’t make that ache deeper.
But it did.
She was just so damn pretty. Stubborn and obnoxious, and he was perverse enough to like exactly that. She didn’t fall apart at…anything. And why that made him want to handle it all, he didn’t have a clue.
But it was more than handling things because he wanted his hands on her and that was a line he absolutely had no business crossing.
Damn, he wanted to.
It would be an absolutely colossal mistake. There would be no defense, no crawling out from under it. If he touched his mouth to hers, everything imploded no matter how carefully he handled it.
And still, he was just a whisper away from doing it. Because no amount of rational thought seemed to break through this ridiculously tight magnetic pull that seemed to exist.
Then her phone rang, and they both jolted apart. Like caught, guilty teenagers.
For a moment, maybe just a second, they stared at each other, maybe in mutual shock. What had they been thinking?
But then she looked down and pulled the phone out of her pocket. He didn’t miss the way her hand shook. The way she cleared her throat and licked her lips. And that was the problem.
He could deal with a little one-sided and inappropriate lust. It was a harder thing to do when the feeling was clearly mutual. That was going to lead to a very dangerous mistake.
“I-it’s Thomas,” she said, looking at the screen of her phone very, very intently. “Vi must have had the baby.”
He gave a sharp nod, moved into a standing position, and tried to be very grateful about the perfect timing of the baby’s arrival as Audra answered the phone.
Instead, he just felt edgy and irritable.
And it was all her fault.