Chapter 3 Dean
THREE
DEAN
She smells good.
She looks fantastic.
And fuck it, her hands feel a million times better than anything else I could’ve gotten up to tonight. So, while Anna Maxwell races around her house, the clang and clatter of pots and pans following her march through the kitchen, I simply lie here and pretend it doesn’t feel good to watch her.
Christmas angel indeed.
My lips twitch into a ghost of a smile as she sprints back to the living room, switching on the television and lighting a crackling fire in the hearth, and all the while, the calming tone of some dude on the internet emerges from her iPad.
It’s not a phone call. It’s a You Tube how to on strapping a busted shoulder.
Internal rotation. Immobilization. Wrap, wrap, wrap.
The temperature climbs to a comfortable seventy-ish degrees, warm enough that sweat begins to bead beneath my heavy winter jacket.
As Anna sheds her own outer layers, she sets her iPad aside and makes her way over to me.
With deliberate care, she leans in and drags my zipper down, huffing and grumbling as she rolls me one way and wrestles the sleeve off, then as she grits her teeth and rolls me the other way to do the same on my injured side.
Stripping me down to just a shirt, she tosses the jacket and takes off again, darting out the front door and leaving it wide open for the icy chill to steal our warmth.
She’s gone only a moment, quick as a flash, then returns with a heavy filing box in her arms, kicking the door shut behind her and setting the box near the coffee table.
I watch her through mostly closed eyes, cataloguing her long brown hair tied in two sexy braids, the ends almost in line with her elbows, and her bottom lip, thick from how often she abuses it with her teeth.
She snatches up her iPad again and storms into the kitchen, while, across from me, some chick natters on the news about the jewelry heist in town.
“Secure his shoulder,” Anna murmurs, reemerging with a stack of bandages bundled against her chest. Absorbed in the video, she shifts her shoulder, as though working through each step before she starts on me. “Pull it in. Place his hand on his hip.”
For the love of Christ, please don’t move my arm like that.
“Could put his hand on his back.”
“Just get me ibuprofen.”
She jumps in surprise, letting out a squeaky yelp as her bandages fly upward and her chocolate-brown eyes land nervously on mine. Her cheeks flush with embarrassment, the rosy hue spreading up to her temples and blending into her hair.
Fuck, she’s pretty.
“Ibuprofen for inflammation.” I turn onto my back and breathe through the pain. I’m accustomed to a janky shoulder. I’m not accustomed to aching hips, a twisted spine, and a weird, stabbing pain in my neck. “Then get me a heating pad or something. The rest will sort itself out while I sleep.”
“I’m so out of my depth here.” She snatches up the bandages and comes around to sit her size 0 ass on the coffee table.
Setting her things by her thigh, she leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
“There’s an actual chance you might have serious internal injuries, Dean.
If we don’t get them looked at, you might bleed to death and we wouldn’t even know till it’s too late. ”
“I’m not bleeding.”
Her eyes furiously flare wide, her stabbing stare flickering across my face.
“Okay, so I’m bleeding a little,” I amend. “But I’m not dying. You need to calm the fuck down and get me ibuprofen. It’s weird I’ve had to ask twice.”
Frustrated, she shoots up off the table and steamrolls out of the room, slamming doors and flipping taps.
She fills a glass with water and snags a bottle of pain killers.
Storming back into the living room, she presents both—and a metric ton of pissy mood.
“You’re wrong for this, Dean Warner. You’re risking your life, and for what?
” She thrusts the water toward my face, then shakes two pills from the bottle and offers them from her open palm.
“Because you don’t have insurance? Is that it? ”
Parched and entirely too nauseous, I accept the water with my good hand, while also pushing up to rest on my good-side-elbow. Unfortunately, that leaves me all out of hands, so I open my mouth and poke my tongue forward. “Put em in, please.”
Except, my words sound like ‘put-a-meen’.
She drops each pill, one after the other, on my tongue and glares as I tip the glass back.
“If you don’t have insurance, I can still get you help.” Exhausted, she plops back onto the table and fists the bottle of pills between her hands. “We could get you a payment plan—”
“Me?” I swallow my water and slump back to the cushions. “I need a payment plan for the damage you caused?”
She sighs. “I have insurance. You get the care you need, and then you talk to a lawyer and sue to cover the costs. That’s why we have insurance in the first damn place.”
“So, your premiums go up?” I scoff. “And you want me to seek legal counsel, which would cost me money, for damages you caused?”
“Listen!” she snarls, tired of my shit already. “I’m trying to help you! Obviously, I didn’t set out tonight to run a man down in the middle of the friggin’ street.”
“You have a short temper, Anna Maxwell.” I choke out a soft, pain-in-every-part-of-my-body chuckle, and offering my water back before I spill it, I lick my lips and thrill in the way her eyes follow the movement.
No poker face, either. “You mustn’t be a very good lawyer if you can’t even control your outbursts. Judges hate that, don’t they?”
“I have control of myself,” she bites out through gritted teeth.
Snatching up a brand-new bandage and peeling the plastic off the outside, she brings her eyes back to mine and wages a war between her bad mood and her common sense.
Gotta be nice to the guy you nearly killed a week before Christmas.
“If you sit up, I can help wrap your shoulder.”
“I don’t need—”
“I insist.” She grabs my shirt and yanks me up, forcing my back against the couch cushions, but when I tilt to the side, she catches my face with a resounding crack of her palm against my cheek, then crawls onto the couch beside me, perched on her knees, to become a post for me to lean on.
I’m not a monster or anything, but when a beautiful woman insists on placing her tits exactly in my line of sight…
“We probably should take your shirt off,” she grunts. Not at all the tone I would take if our positions were reversed. “I can’t wrap you effectively with it on. Plus, we probably need to get eyes on your torso. Ya know,” she growls, “make sure you’re not bleeding internally.”
“You’re quite forward, you know that?” I hurt all over. Agony creates fingers of pain, like little bastard fork prongs poking every nerve ending I own. But that doesn’t stop me from teasing the woman who’s clearly more in shock than I am.
One of us was mowed down like a pin in a bowling alley tonight, the other is feeling big feelings about it.
“We only met tonight.” I push forward with a grunt and allow her to grab the hem of my shirt. “But you’re already taking my clothes off. New-age women.” I click my tongue. “Not like my mama’s generation.”
“Mmhm.” She tugs the fabric over my head, careful not to destroy my shoulder more.
“I understand your desire for your mother’s bosom during this difficult time.
Luckily for you, I can wrap this up nice and quick, thanks to Mr. Fix-It on the internet, then I’ll call your mom and have her swing by to collect you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
In an alternate reality, maybe.
“What were you doing on the road anyway?” She peeks across at her iPad, the video moving well ahead of where she’s up to. Grabbing my bicep, she pulls my arm away from my body and places my hand on my fucking hip.
I release a feral, pained hiss from somewhere deep in my chest. “Fuck, woman! Gentle please.”
“Sorry.” She lays her arm across my back, propping me forward. “Children typically learn to stay off the road by around kindergarten. Did your mother forget to impart this vital piece of information on her baby boy?”
“Guess it slipped her mind.” I tip my head to the left and lay against her chest. Fuck it.
We’re riding shock and impulse tonight, and her booming pulse in my ear distracts me from the agony in my shoulder.
“Not ashamed to admit I was admiring your car, even as it was running me the fuck over. Don’t see many Road Runners around these days.
Not in the condition yours is in, anyway. ”
“It’s in worse condition now than it was an hour ago.
” She gets to work dragging the tan bandage all the way across my chest and around to secure my arm in place.
“While you’re busy admiring my car, I’m terrified it might be dented.
I feel bad for hitting you and all that, but my heart might not handle any real damage to the frame. ”
I cough out an agonizing, lung-aching laugh. “Priorities matter, Counselor. You always had a thing for the classics, or did you divorce an enthusiast and take his baby in the settlement?”
Pausing, she looks down and meets my eyes. “I’ve never been divorced, nor have I met a man who loves his car more than I love mine.”
“So, while your girlfriends were out buying soft-top zipabouts on their seventeenth birthdays, you bought muscle?”
“No. I helped rebuild it from scraps.” Going back to work, she reaches across and stretches the bandage around my chest. “It belonged to my father, and what we lacked in funds, we made up with enthusiasm and time spent at the junkyard.”
“No shit?” I pull away and reconsider her girly braids. Her long, dark lashes curled around eyes of melted chocolate. Then I grab her wrist and bring her hand in front of my face. “Been a minute since you were last under the hood, huh? Your palms are clean as can be.”