So much information for someone with a pounding headache, sitting naked in a stranger’s lap.
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Okay.”
His eyes roamed across my face and then he gently touched the bandage on my right temple. “Your head should be fine, your hands, however . . .”
My hands?
I looked down and gasped.
Through gaps in the bandages around them, I could tell my hands were huge, swollen, red, and angry, and I could barely feel them. “What happened?”
“I think you have frostbite, but I’m not a doctor. I wrapped them and tried to get you warm, but they’re not cooperating like the rest of your body.”
Tears filled my line of vision. I needed my hands. People needed hands! Especially if people were supposed to type out a story due to an editor in a mere thirty days!
Panic seized my chest as I stared at my hands, a few tears leaked out onto the bandages. “But . . . my book.”
“Your book?”
“How am I going to finish my book?” I burst into real tears then. “It was my final promise to him, I promised him! Why would the universe be against this? Against me like it was against him . . .” I started to shake.
“Hey, hey.” Julian held my hands in his. He didn’t hold them tight, not that I could feel a whole lot. “I won’t let anything happen to your hands, okay?”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” I snapped.
His face lost a bit of its arrogance as he looked away and then met my eyes again. “Money buys good doctors, though people still die, that’s the sad reality. Money can’t buy more time . . . or a healthy body . . .” His eyes were glassy. “But this is frostbite, you’d let something like that set you back? O wielder of knives?”
I scowled to keep from smiling. “Now I don’t have a weapon.”
“You never needed a weapon in the first place.” He grinned.
I sucked in a sharp breath and broke eye contact. Refusing to let him see the blush that I felt warming my cheeks or the ridiculous notion I had in my head that with a man like him this close to me, I would always need a weapon and armor.
Because Julian Tennyson up close was lethal.
And Julian Tennyson thinking about me, holding me in his arms, felt too good.
I shivered again.
He wrapped the blanket tighter around us. I tried not to think about the fact that I was sitting in his lap like a child, his arms around me, his body keeping me warm.
The fire roared in front of us. “So much for relaxing.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Tell me about it.”
“I’m sorry . . .” I felt stupid. “For going out in the snow.”
“Look at me,” he whispered. “You were getting firewood, hardly a crime, and mere princesses can’t control the elk population, though I’m pretty sure you could have beaten him had you not gotten knocked out.”
“I went down fighting.” I chewed my lower lip and smiled.
“That’s how we’ll spin the story.” He winked. His laugh was gravelly; I felt it low in my belly. “Promise.”
“Hopefully, there won’t be a story to tell.” But even as I said it, I knew there would be a story because he was Julian Tennyson.
And I was Keaton Westbrook.
The press would pay good money for photos of us in the same room.
Add that to the fact that we were both naked.
Nobody could ever know.
It would ruin everything, including the book deal. People didn’t forgive you for being human, and they rarely forgave you for moving on with life even though it was a natural thing to do.
“Who’s Noah?” he asked.
I ignored him.
And felt his body shut down a bit right along with his interest. It was better this way, better not to let him in.
I was already naked in his arms.
I was already hating my response to him because it was so unlike the way I used to respond to Noah.
I let my guilt project itself into hate, and I directed it at Julian Tennyson, gladly, because it was better than admitting that it was nice.
Being held.
Rather than offering comfort and empty words.
It was nice, too damn nice.
Chapter Eight
JULIAN
She was beautiful when she wasn’t being argumentative. Hell, she was beautiful no matter what.
And my body was having a hard time cooperating with the signals my brain was sending, signals like Injured, Stranger, Don’t take advantage.
I wasn’t that guy anymore.
He didn’t wake up from the coma.
And any remnants left of the man who would just take what he wanted and move on had died right along with my mother.
I’d buried my past.
Or I’d attempted to.
She was asleep again. She pressed a hand to my chest and held it there like she was waiting for a heartbeat.
She said his name again.