While she got her supplies to doctor his injured feet Kelsey reminded herself of all the reasons she wasn’t going to sleep with him again.
He’s got a family.
I’m leaving in three weeks.
He has no interest in a girl who can’t whip up a loaf of fresh-baked bread with one hand tied behind her back.
“Holy crap, that stings.” Ross flinched and tried to pull his foot away.
Kelsey held tightly to his foot. She had him lying facedown on her moth-eaten sofa so she could attend to the injured area, and was studiously avoiding staring at his butt. Only a few broken rays of sunlight peeked in through the large window in front of the sofa, which was blocked from the view of the street by the overgrown pine that dominated the front yard.
“Stop that, you baby. This is the ‘no sting’ antiseptic. See?” She handed him the bottle.
He made a sound of disgust as he examined the label. “No wonder the kids always cry when I use this on them. Someone needs to sue this company for false advertising.”
A tiny giggle escaped her. “Do you want me to get you a piece of rawhide to bite?”
He took the sock that had been balled up next to the couch and threw it over his shoulder, at her head. She held up her hands to block it. “That’s the thanks I get for playing doctor? Dirty socks thrown at me?”
“Are we playing doctor?”
The timbre of his voice changed, and she felt her cheeks grow hot, even as the lower half of her body went cold.
“Erm…no. Remember? I’m an EMT. So I’m not really playing anything.”
Ross twitched again when she rubbed loose the final piece of gravel that had become embedded in the raw flesh beneath the blister. She squirted a bit of antibiotic cream onto a huge Band-Aid and covered the delicate—but at least now clean—injury.
“Of course. Funny how at one time I hardly believed that,” he mused, his voice only slightly strained as she turned her attention to the other heel. “Now I see that it fits with the whole, first aid kit in the bathroom and the front seat of my car thing.”
She winced. “Was that a bit much? I’m sorry. I just figured that now that you were in Colorado, you’d be driving more, and it’s always a good idea to carry the basics out here, in case you run out of gas or get in an accident some distance from a hospital.”
“Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.” The hint of teasing in his voice wasn’t mean, and she smiled. “Then again,” he continued, “you drive so slowly, I can’t imagine you would ever get into an accident. Except maybe if you got rear-ended.”
“I do not drive slowly,” she protested. “I drive carefully. There is a difference.”
His other foot hadn’t gotten as dirty, so she was able to patch it up fairly quickly. Just as she finished slipping on the bandage, Ross rolled onto his back. He moved unexpectedly, and she lost her balance and ended up in his lap. His eyes were the deepest blue she’d ever seen, and when she tried to push away, he grabbed her wrists and held her in place.
“Ross, what are you—” She broke off, the searching in his gaze leaving her light-headed and scared. Why did she feel as if he’d been poised on the edge of discovering something about her all day long? Something she didn’t want to share?
“Every time I think I am starting to understand you, you surprise me all over again,” he said. One of his large, warm hands rose to cup the side of her face, and she closed her eyes to let the sensation wash over her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered, voice husky with the sudden throb of blood rushing through her veins.
“You make no sense,” he replied. “I watched you at that store today and you don’t want the attention. You aren’t in it for some kind of glory. You are more worried about my blisters getting infected than you are about climbing a mountain where people regularly die through no fault of their own. I read an article about you yesterday in Outdoor magazine. You and your dad. I didn’t know you climbed with him. Or that your mother died climbing Annapurna. You didn’t tell me that.”
“Don’t,” she said, catching his hand in hers, shaking her head fiercely. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” he asked.
“Don’t make this something it isn’t.” She leaned forward. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about my parents.”
“Maybe I want to hear about them. Maybe I want to understand you a little. Is that so wrong?”
“Look, I’ve been climbing with my dad since I was a kid. There’s no mystery in it. And yes, my mom died on Annapurna. She turned back from the summit because a storm was moving in and she was worried about me being at base camp alone. My dad was determined to summit, so she let him go. She was being cautious. But cautious doesn’t always protect you up there. Feel free to psychoanalyze that however you want.”