Forrest had been waiting for them when they got to the house, along with the Robinsons. Immediately after reuniting the couple with their son, he’d taken them to a safe house the support team had set up outside of London and probably wouldn’t be back for a few hours.
When she got to Jake’s room, Jes tried to close the door quietly behind her—and failed. She winced and could only hope it wasn’t enough to wake him up.
“You can stop trying to be so quiet,” a deep, husky voice murmured from behind her. “One, I’m already awake. And two, you suck at it.”
Jes turned with a sigh to see Jake struggling to sit up and trying to work his shredded suit jacket over his shoulders. From the grimace on his face, it was obvious moving around hurt like hell.
She darted over to the bed, dumping the towels and first-aid kit on the nightstand. “Stop trying to sit up. You’re going to make it worse. Let me help you.”
When it looked like he wanted to argue, she grabbed one lapel of his jacket, using her free hand to ease it over his shoulder. Even though she did it slowly, she couldn’t miss the grunts and groans of pain as his jacket came off—or the way her hands came away stained red.
“If you help me to the bathroom, I can shower off.” He fumbled with the buttons of his dress shirt as he started to sit up again. “I’ll be fine after a few hours of sleep.”
Jes pushed him back down again. “Yeah right. You wouldn’t make it two minutes in the shower before falling on your face. So why don’t you skip the drama and let me clean you up? It’s why I brought all that stuff in here in the first place.”
She pushed his hands away from his shirt and undid the buttons. He scowled and looked like he wanted to protest, but then gave up, letting her gently peel his jacket and shirt off. She wasn’t sure she even needed to bother with the buttons. It was so torn, it probably would have come off in pieces anyway.
Jes cringed when she saw his skin was just as damaged, especially along his forearms and biceps. But those lacerations were nothing compared to the gaping wound in the side of his chest. Even though it wasn’t bleeding much now, it still looked god-awful. She’d never been particularly squeamish at the sight of blood, but now she found herself looking anyplace other than that hole.
Fortunately, it was easy to distract herself with the other parts of his body. Like his broad shoulders and the smooth, sculpted pec opposite the wound. To say Jake was well built would be a disservice to the definition of the term. He was an Adonis, with perfect muscles layered on top of other perfect muscles. Jacked enough to make Jes think he could bench-press a small car, but wiry at the same time. The combination of the two was breathtaking.
And those abs? If there’d been more men like him around back in the day, Maytag would have gone out of business before it even got started. She suddenly had visions of long lines of women standing around him with their laundry, waiting for a chance to put those washboard muscles to good use.
Forcing herself to stop thinking of things as distracting as that, she focused on the reason she’d helped him get his shirt off to start with. Picking up one of the wet washcloths, she sat down on the bed and gently cleaned the scratches on his forearm. The lacerations had almost completely sealed themselves with fresh pink scar tissue, which was rather amazing. Even so, there was a lot of blood to wash off, and her stomach twisted into multiple knots resembling balloon animals. Furry, wolf-shaped balloon animals.
The funny thing was, it wasn’t the blood soaking into the washcloth that had her so bothered. It was the idea of Jake bleeding. Obviously, she never wanted to see a teammate get injured, but she was stunned when she realized it was much more than that. The thought of Jake being hurt made her ache somewhere deep inside.
It took three washcloths and one trip to the bathroom to rinse them out before she was done with his forearms and biceps. After that, she turned her attention to his chest. The wound still hadn’t closed over. If anything, it looked worse than before. Like it was getting infected. There was no way in hell that tree limb had missed his lung and she wondered how he was still able to breathe.
“Why isn’t it healing like the others?” she asked softly, carefully wiping the blood away without making the wound bleed more.
“I think there are pieces of that tree left in the wound,” he said. “My healing abilities are slowing down to give me time to get the crap out.”
So that’s what Caleb had meant bydebris. Jes blanched at the thought of how they were going toget the crap out. “What happens if it stays in there? Will it heal?”
“At some point, yeah,” he admitted. “But it will take a few days, and I’ll end up with reduced lung capability from the twisted scar tissue that will build up around the wood pieces.”
Okay, that didn’t sound good at all. “What do we need to do to get the pieces of wood out?”
“I’ll need someone to root around in the wound with a pair of tweezers or forceps and pull the pieces out one by one.”
She was afraid he was going to say that.
Jes bit her lip. “Should I get Caleb?”
Jake let out a half-hearted snort. “You don’t seriously think I want a ham-handed brute like Caleb poking around inside me with a sharp implement, do you?”
Yeah, probably not. But that didn’t leave a lot of options.
“I guess I could do it,” she said, even though the idea made her queasy. “I don’t have any medical training beyond basic first aid, but if you want me to try, I will.”
His gaze locked on hers, the warmth in his deep brown eyes drawing her in. “I don’t want to ask you to do something like that. I can do it myself.”
Jes wasn’t so sure of that. Even if he could manage it, there was no way he’d get all the wood chips out. And the thought of him having trouble breathing because pieces of wood were still in there was something she didn’t want to think about.
“I’ll do it.” She dragged her gaze away from his and reached for the first-aid kit with hands that shook a little. She took a deep breath and forced herself to get a grip. “Tell me exactly what to do.”
Giving her a nod, he rolled over onto his stomach, his hip brushing hers. It occurred to her for the first time that she was actuallyin bedwith Jake. Although this was definitely not what she’d pictured when she imagined that scenario.
