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 Tubehow toon 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 heavywinter 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’mnotaccustomed 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’msoout 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 anactualchance 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. “Ineed a payment plan for the damageyoucaused?”
She sighs. “Ihave 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.”
