“Please spare me the Folgers commercial plot of your sister’s involvement in your Cookie Monster briefs,” Darcy said, struggling to keep her expression straight.
His underwear said “om nom nom” on the waistband. The bear would have beenembarrassedto eat this man.
Teagan put both palms over his face.
“You know what, why don’t you go back without me. I’ll get down by myself, and we can just never discuss this again,” he mumbled.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Darcy said, amused despite her best efforts.
She got off his lightly furred thighs and pushed him over to his side so she could look at the long bloody scratches that had cut through the fabric on his hip. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but it was still a mess.
“Dammit,” she said, patting the area with gauze. She had enough tape and bandages to cover the wound, but some actual professional was going to need to be involved.You are delinquent in necessary qualifications, Machinist’s Mate Albano.“I have to take you to an emergency room. These need to be cleaned out, maybe stitched up.” There went her evening.
“I can drive myself if you had plans,” he offered.
“Of course I had plans.”
“Then I’ll just take myself—”
“No. Beforeweget to the ER, we are going to come up with an explanation for how this happened that does not involve that poor bear.”
“The poor bear,” Teagan repeated.
“Yes, the poor bear. Who was just minding his own damn business before some asshole wandered off the trail and interrupted his dinner, and then some other asshole sprayed him with mace—”
Teagan looked up at her through thick blonde eyelashes. His soft, shining hair was a pale, nearly white-blonde color that Darcy would have assumed he’d paid dearly for if he was a woman but was curling over his ears and forehead in a way that suggested he didn’t pay much attention to it.
“You just saved my life. I don’t think you’re an asshole,” he said seriously.
“Well, the bear does,” Darcy replied, waving her hands in the air. “And you are not going to put him on a hit list. You are going to tell the doctor that you tripped and fell over your own hideous finance bro sneakers.” She hoped her expression impressed him with the seriousness of this command.
Those full lips of his thinned in a stubborn line. “Won’t the doctor need to know what happened to clean out these cuts? Don’t bear claws have... bacteria or something?”
Darcy glared at him. “Tell the doctor you fell in bear shit, then.”
“I tripped on my own shoes and fell in bear shit,” Teagan repeated incredulously.
“Yes,” Darcy insisted.
“And I am doing this so the bear is not unjustly accused of mauling me?”
“Youshould, but if not for the bear, do it because I amtelling you to, and I am the one who is going to be carrying your carcass down the mountain.”
That got a reaction.
“You most certainly will not. I can walk,” Teagan said fervently, his bloodshot hazel eyes flashing with panic. He began struggling as though he intended to stand. Darcy leaned one palm against his chest to hold him down.
“Barely. You’re limping.”
“And there’s no way you can carry me.”
“Of course I can. What do you weigh, a buck sixty? I could do that piggyback, even.”
“More like one eighty-five—”
“With your boots on, maybe,” Darcy said skeptically. Teagan was over six feet tall, but thin and wiry despite the breadth of his shoulders and chest, like a soldier who’d just come off campaign. The chiseled line of his jaw appeared painfully sharp. “I had to lift a guy who weighed over two hundred during basic, so it’ll be fine.”
“You absolutely cannot,” Teagan said.
