“Oh yeah. I wasn’t wearing any.”
“You weren’t wearing any?” he repeats in confusion. Maybe he’s not as observant as I gave him credit for, considering I’ve been in the house a good twenty minutes and this is the first time he’s noticed that I’m barefoot. “You walked all the way from your condo to here with no shoes on?”
“It’s only about a mile,” I tell him, determined to brazen it out as he continues down the hallway to his bedroom with me still in his arms.
“More like two miles,” he growls. “I swear, Tori, you need to take better care of yourself.”
He hits a nerve with that, but I swallow down my instinctive comeback. I can’t afford to let my mouth get away from me right now. It’s bad enough that I have to stay here where I’m not wanted. I’ll be damned if I let Miles Girard of all people know just what dire straits I’m actually in. He’d probably fall over from laughing too hard.
Except he’s not laughing as he carries me through his room and into the luxurious en suite bathroom. No, he’s actually really gentle as he places me down on the edge of the large sunken tub and then reaches past me to turn the water on.
“Let’s get your feet washed off and see what kind of damage we’re dealing with.” He grabs a washcloth and towel from the nearby linen closet before kneeling next to the tub.
“It’s no big deal,” I say as I start to stick my injured foot under the running water.
He stops me with a gentle hand to my knee. “Give it a second to warm up. It’s brutally cold first thing in the morning. And you won’t know how big a deal it is until we get it clean and can actually see the damage.”
And so I wait, watching—bemused—as he sticks one hand under the stream of water while he adjusts the faucets with the other. Finally, when he’s satisfied with the temperature, he nods for me to get my feet wet.
It’s perfect—warm enough to send shivers of pleasure up my back but not hot enough to hurt my injured foot or make the blood run faster. Chloe makes fun of Miles all the time for his minute attention to detail, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate it at the moment.
“I have to admit, I feel a little like Goldilocks right now,” I tell him as he sticks the washcloth under the running water.
“Why Goldilocks?” he asks, before squirting some orange-and-bergamot-scented shower gel onto the wet cloth.
“You know, the whole too hot, too cold, just right thing? This water is just—” I break off with a moan as he takes my foot in his hand and slides the washcloth over it.
He freezes, his eyes jumping to mine. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I duck my head, suddenly embarrassed by my overly dramatic reaction to his touch. But it’s been so long since a man has touched me tenderly—even longer since one has touched me for a nonsexual reason—that I can’t help responding to him. I know he’s just trying to help me, but the way he’s cupping my ankle while his fingers stroke the washcloth over the sole of my foot feels entirely too good.
Worse, it feels right, like it’s something I’d let him do for me over and over again.
Which is ridiculous, I know, considering the fact that we’ve been enemies pretty much since the beginning. I can forgive almost anything, but the way he treated my best friend is unforgivable. Just because she’s managed to move past it doesn’t mean I have. And it doesn’t mean I ever will, no matter how good he is at washing and massaging feet.
“Are you sure?” he asks as he resumes cleaning my feet. He’s being even more careful—even more gentle—this time around.
“It just stings a little.” Which isn’t even a lie—the soap definitely makes the cut burn whenever it touches it.
“I’m sorry about that, but you don’t want it to get infected. I’ll be done washing the blood and dirt away in a second.”
“It’s not your fault. I’m the idiot who walked all the way over here without shoes.”
“That’s true.” He glances up at me, his lips quirked in a crooked smile that makes his already too-handsome face look positively godlike. “Why did you do that, anyway?”
“Like all ultimately stupid plans, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a dozen or two half-finished inventions that fit that description.”
“I wanted to feel the sand underneath my toes. But I didn’t figure on the glass close to the street. Once I hurt myself I figured I’d just buy a pair of flip-flops from a street vendor, but I forgot how early it was. No one is out yet.”
“Once we get you bandaged up, I’ll run down to Chloe’s room and see if I can find you a pair of fluffy slippers to walk around in. It’ll probably be easier on your feet than shoes or going barefoot on these hardwood floors.”
As he talks, he rinses off my injured foot, then moves on to my other foot. This one is just bruised with a few little scrapes on it, but he takes just as much time on it as he did the first one. He even digs his thumb into my arch, rubbing my sore muscles until I’m nearly purring in satisfaction.
I try to stay stiff, try to remind myself of all the reasons I don’t like him. But it’s hard to do when he’s taking such good care of me—especially when he could have just left me hobbling along on my own.
I smile at him despite myself, and he blinks a little, like he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating or not. I can’t blame him for that—it may be the first time I’ve done something besides snarl at him since I found o