Don’t be scared.
“Are you okay, Mr. Blane?”
Blane? His mouth groggily attempted to correct her, but the woman talked right over him.
“Is there someone I can call to come get you?”
He chuckled at that. Just a half laugh, which eventually turned into a real one, strong enough to finally pop this goddamn bubble.
Clay needed to stop this. Now. He considered calling the shrink, whose wrinkled card lay back in the motel, at the bottom of his duffel bag. He wondered if he should, in fact, be taking the meds that had been given to him—and then shook his head.
“No. No, Doc. There’s nobody to call.” He had to smile then at the woman’s concerned expression. How was this person so nice? Couldn’t she see that he was absolutely the last person on earth she should be bothering with? Had she no survival instincts whatsoever?
“Well, I could bring you—”
He swung his legs over the side of the table, wincing as his thigh got to that crucial angle, and then covering up the expression as he realized what Dr. Do-Good’s reaction would be. He let go of her hand, immediately wanting to take it again, then hopped down, ready for the pain this time, and reached for his shirt, which he pulled over his head.
“Oh. I haven’t applied the petroleum jelly. You need—”
“I’m fine.”
Her eyes roamed his chest in a way he could almost feel, and fuck, he hated slimy crap, but he wanted her to spread that shit all over him. “You should really let me…”
Fuck yes, touch me.
“No,” he heard himself say. Firm almost to the point of rudeness. “I’m fine, Doc. Seriously. I got it.” He smiled at her again, made the expression hard and self-sufficient. “When can I come in again?”
“Oh. I’d better look at the…” He caught her eyes, let his gaze take in the smooth skin of her face, broken only by the unnaturally rosy flush of her cheeks and that fucking bruise that made him want to kill.
Farther down, her lab coat blocked his view of the rest of her, but he knew. He remembered, from those brief, stolen snatches, her pale legs in that dress and—
He glanced back up and found her watching him watch her. Her words had trailed off, and there was awareness here between them. Awareness he might not have given her credit for before. She looked so innocent that he’d thought she might be oblivious too. But the flush crept farther up her ears, and he knew she’d gotten at least a tiny bit of what his thoughts were.
Clay considered stepping forward, doing something inappropriate. He considered it and then threw it away, because his track record with ladies was pretty grim. Not only that, but this woman was the only person he’d found who’d take care of him. And that was the priority.
Priorities. Right.
“Can you take me tomorrow? For my back?” he asked, cutting through this absurd fantasy they appeared to be sharing. Synchronized hallucinations. Folie à deux, he remembered a psychiatrist calling it once on the stand, and he’d gone and looked it up—shared insanity. That was what this shit felt like.
“Yes,” she said without hesitating. And he liked that. He couldn’t help but enjoy that she wanted him to come back, but he also knew it was bad. Attachments were bad. Anything that distracted from his goal. Anything that risked his cover, his anonymity. “We’ll need to numb your back. You’ll need an injection.”
“No.”
“It’s too big a surface, Mr. Blane. The pain—”
“It’ll be fine. No injections.”
“Then we’ll do one section at a time.”
“I want to get it out, Doc. All of it.”
“There’s so much solid black. I really can’t…” She stopped, appearing to reevaluate. “Fine. We’ll use a numbing cream. The treatment won’t be as effective. The research proves it. But I won’t do it otherwise. Not with that much ink.”
“Got it. You’re the expert.”
“See you tomorrow, then?”
“Yes, ma’am. Although”—he glanced at the door—“maybe I should wait for you to finish up here. Walk you to your car.”
