Where the heck had that come from?
Pushing that confusing thought aside, Jes focused on Jake’s muscular back, cringing when she saw that the wound looked even worse from this side. She second-guessed herself about a dozen times as she dug through the first-aid kit and came out with a set of twelve-inch-long forceps wrapped in plastic. Maybe she was in over her head on this.
“Don’t I need to sterilize these or something?” she asked, suddenly wanting to put off digging around inside Jake’s body for as long as possible.
He chuckled, the raspy sound reminding her how difficult it must be for him to get his breath. “I’m pretty sure the tree limb wasn’t sterile before it went in. I think the forceps are clean enough right out of the package.”
She used one of the wet washcloths to wipe away as much of the blood from the wound as she could, then took a deep breath. “Okay, what do I do?”
“Slip the tip of the forceps into the wound and move them around slowly,” Jake said, lifting his head from where it’d been resting on his hands and looking at her over his shoulder. “I can feel the pieces in there, so I should be able to guide you to where they are without too much trouble.”
The thought of sticking the forceps in Jake and searching around made her a little light-headed. She really didn’t want to do this. But she had to.
Pulling on a pair of rubber gloves from the first-aid kit—because it seemed like she should—she picked up the stainless-steel forceps and slipped them into the gooey mess that was the entry hole in Jake’s back before she could change her mind.
“By the way,” he added lightly, as if he didn’t even feel what she was doing, “there might be a few bone chips floating around along with the wood chips. If so, you can go ahead and take them out, too.”
The image of digging out pieces of Jake’s bone with the forceps was more than she could handle right then, and she felt her stomach start to twitch.
“You need to start talking and distract me, so I can think of something other than what I’m doing right now, or I’m going to be sick,” she said.
Jes expected him to ask what she wanted to talk about, but instead he flashed her a smile over his shoulder that almost calmed her frazzled nerves all by itself.
“I can do that,” he said, turning back around. “Tell me about your family. Do they know that you work for STAT?”
“Um…” She paused, surprised at the question. She’d expected him to talk about the mission. Maybe he realized that subject really wouldn’t take her mind off what she was doing. “Actually, I’ve never given them any reason to think I’m not still in the CIA.” She let her hands function on autopilot while she concentrated on his question. “I don’t think I could ever tell them about STAT. My family is cool, but like yours, they aren’t ready to know about what goes bump in the night. Fortunately, they aren’t the kind to pry for a lot of information, which makes it easier.”
“Tell me about them,” he said before softly instructing her to move the forceps a little to the right.
She smiled a little. Her family was her favorite thing to talk about. “Dad just retired from the Army National Guard and Mom is a writer.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Three older brothers. Two of them are twins, which is kind of cool. They’re all married, and the twins have kids of their own, which is fun. They think I rock, though to be honest, both of my nieces are barely a year old, so I’m not sure how much we can trust their opinion.”
Jake chuckled again, throwing her another glance over his shoulder. “Oh, I don’t know. From what I’ve seen over the past few days, I think your nieces might be onto something.”
Jes knew Jake was messing with her, but she had to admit she liked it all the same. The way he was looking at her, his expression somewhere between amusement and smoldering, completely worked for her.
Forcing herself to think about something other than Jake’s dark eyes—and what she was doing with her hands—Jes told him about her nieces and how adorable they were. She was so focused on talking about her family she didn’t even notice the tree chunks piling up on the towel on the nightstand, along with a smaller stack of something sharp, white, and tinged with blood, which she refused to give a name to.
“I think you’ve gotten as much out of me from back there as you’re going to,” he said after she dropped another small piece of wood on the towel.
Jake started to roll onto his back, and Jes slid over on the bed a little, giving him more room. As he got settled, she realized cleaning out the wound was going to be much more difficult from this direction, since she’d be able to see every little flinch and grimace he made as she worked.
She braced herself, but when she slipped the bloody forceps into the wound to the side of his heart, he didn’t react at all. Once again, it was like he didn’t feel anything. She knew that couldn’t possibly be true, but she kept going, following his softly spoken orders about what to do and where to move.
“When we were at Darby’s place last night, you mentioned you took theater classes in college,” he said as if somehow knowing she needed another distraction at that exact moment. “How did you end up in the CIA instead of Hollywood?”
Jes placed her left hand on the warm, smooth skin of his chest to steady herself as she pulled another piece of tree bark out of him. “I went to the University of Pittsburgh as a theater major and thought for sure I’d end up in movies or on TV, but then I started crushing on this hot guy my sophomore year.”
Jake snorted. “There’s always a guy, isn’t there?”
She laughed. “I don’t even remember his name now, but at the time I thought he was all that. He was a senior, from a wealthy family with connections on Wall Street, and didn’t even know I existed. So in a desperate ploy to get his attention, I signed up for a class he was in, figuring I’d sit near him and ask him for help with my homework.”
“That was devious of you,” Jake pointed out, mouth twitching. “What class did you sign up for?”
“Some political science elective.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t know what the hell political science even was. I simply signed up for the class and bought the stupid textbook. Unfortunately, within a week, I figured out the guy I’d been chasing was an asshat. Of course, by then it was too late to drop the class. Turned out, it all worked in the end. Taking that class was the best mistake I ever made. I changed majors before the next semester started.”
