The skid of rubber against rock jerked Nick’s attention away from rolling the blanket in time to see the czarina lose her footing. He dropped the blanket and reached for her even before her involuntary cry of alarm flew from her throat, but his one-handed grab didn’t stop her from bashing her knee on the rock.
“Ow. Dammit. Ow.”
He guided her down until she could sit on the ground. She immediately clamped both hands over her knee and winced. “Ow.”
He crouched in front of her and took hold of her calf to immobilize the knee. “I’ll bet,” he sympathized. “Let me see.”
“No, no. Just give me a minute.” She closed her eyes and leaned forward to increase the pressure of her hands on her knee. “I’m okay.”
Maybe, but she’d gone pale under her tan, and guilt as hard and sharp as the stones cascading down the rocky wall pelted him. Responsibility for her fall rested squarely with him. He’d pushed her. Not physically, no, but baiting her like he’d done amounted to the same thing. She’d been scrambling to put distance between them because he’d been acting like a dick. Now she didn’t even want to trust him with her injury, when, ironically, he actually had skills to offer. Dr. Nick Bancroft did, at any rate, but he’d never meant for her to find out the hard way.
Contrition made for a heavy crown. “Let me see, Czarina. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.” Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he lifted her hands away. A quick glance down revealed the torn, bloody knee of her sweatpants.
“Yep. That’s officially an ‘ow.’” He couldn’t see much through the hole in her sweats, other than she had a scrape that would need to be cleaned and bandaged. Determining the extent of any bruising or more serious injury would have to wait until he could take a closer look. “I have a first-aid kit in the Jeep, but for now—” he peeled his shirts over his head and separated the T-shirt from the fleece pullover—“this will work as a field dressing.”
“Oh, hey, that’s not…um…never mind…”
His ego appreciated how easily she lost focus on what she’d been about to say when his naked chest came into view. He wrapped the T-shirt around her knee and tied it in place.
“Up for a piggyback ride?” He tugged his pullover on and looked over in time to see her wide eyes turn wary.
“Don’t be crazy. You can’t carry me all the way to the car. I’ll walk.” As if to prove it, she planted her good leg and used handholds in the rock to pull herself to a standing position. Even holding the wall, it took a moment of hobbling to find her balance.
Oh, where was the faith? Working in the ER required well-developed persuasive skills—compassion, logic, and on occasion, a hard-assed show of authority. “Czarina, if I needed to, I could carry you all the way down this mountain. As far as how you end up at the car, you have two choices. Climb on my back, or I haul you over my shoulder.” He handed her the rolled blanket. “Entirely your call.”
She measured him with a look, correctly concluded he’d follow through on the threat, and opted for the piggyback ride. He hitched her onto his back, taking extra care with her injured knee, and made his way to the parking area. The trip didn’t take long, and under other circumstances he would have enjoyed the feel of her thighs clamped around his waist and her tits pressed against his back, but right now he was too aware of her quick inhale when he climbed off the rocks, or her ragged exhale when he took them over a rough patch of ground, to concentrate on anything else.
Back at the car, he deposited her in the passenger seat and fetched the first-aid kit and a couple bottled waters from the back of the Jeep. Across the parking lot, a group of about fifteen tourists stood beside a couple of vans while tour guides unloaded mountain bikes. Ideally they’d be on their way down the mountain before the group took off. He didn’t want to get stuck behind a bunch of cyclists if the czarina needed stitches or an X-ray. When he walked back to her, she had his T-shirt untied. While he watched, she held it up. A red stain bloomed across the cotton. She turned as white as the shirt and slurred, “I don’t feel so good…” Then she swayed in the seat.
Shit. He dropped the kit and waters on the floor of the Jeep and took hold of her arm. “Hey, Czarina. Look at me.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face, waited until her eyes rolled his way, and then he pointed at his face. “Right here.”
She locked onto him. Good. Without letting go of her arm, he reached down and snagged one of the waters. He stuck the cap between his teeth, twisted it off, and held the bottle to her lips. “Hydrate.”
She managed a sip. Then another. Her fingers curled around the bottle. He handed it to her. “Keep drinking.” While she obeyed, he knelt and opened the first-aid kit. For half a second he debated taking her sweats down to avoid aggravating the wound, but the Jeep didn’t offer much privacy and they weren’t the only ones in the parking lot, so he worked the leg up as gently as he could.
“Sorry,” she murmured between sips. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.” He glanced up at her before using the other bottle of water to clean his hands, and then scrubbing them off with an antiseptic wipe. “It’s easy to get light-headed at ten thousand feet, on an empty stomach.” He used the T-shirt to apply direct pressure to the cut. Wanting to distract her while he cleaned and examined her knee, he set the first-aid kit on her lap. “There should be a multipack of Band-Aids in there. Can you pull out a large?”
She tucked the water bottle beside her and started digging through the kit. “Of course.”
“Thanks. So, actually, Czarina, it’s me who owes you the apology.” He took the shirt away and looked at the scrape—about an inch long, superficial, and not too ragge
d, like maybe a single sharp rock edge did the deed. No stitches required, nor did he see a lot of bruising around the site. Cleaning and disinfecting the cut before adding a Band-Aid ought to do the trick. As long as she had full range of motion, he was willing to let it go at that.
“Hardly,” she said without looking up from her rummaging. “It’s not your fault I chose a bad foothold and skinned my knee like a kindergartner. Here…” She lined up two sealed Band-Aids on her good knee. “Will these work?”
He refolded his T-shirt clean side up and then pulled the water bottle from where she’d wedged it between her body and the seat. “There should be some that are about the size of those two put together. Find me one of those,” he instructed, determined to keep her busy while he cleaned the cut so she didn’t fixate on the blood. “It’s my fault you were in a hurry to leave.”
She shrugged. “You’re on a timetable this morning. You don’t want to be late for—oh!” She grabbed the seat and hissed out a breath as he poured water over her cut.
“Sorry.” He pressed the shirt to the wound he’d just flushed, and then glanced at her. The pink in her cheeks reassured him she wasn’t about to pass out. “You okay?”
“I’m a big baby. That took me by surprise.”
“Almost done,” he told her, and took a tube of antibacterial cream from the kit. “Anyway, back to my apology.” He dabbed the antibacterial on the scrape. “I don’t usually piss a woman off to the point she’ll scale rocks just to get away from me.”
“I wasn’t pissed off. Look, you’re free to accept as many”—she broke off and cleared her throat—“commitments as you see fit. I didn’t ask for any promises, and I don’t expect any.”