Sam nods and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.
Lexi catches sight of something on his arm. ‘Wait. What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘That red thing on your arm.’ It looked like a scratch, but she only caught sight of it briefly, so she can’t be sure.
Sam turns his arm over to look at it, as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Oh, that? It’s nothing.’
Lexi grabs his arm– and there’s that static again. ‘It’s not nothing. That looks like a really bad scratch. It looks like it could hurt a lot.’
He shrugs, but she looks closely at his moonlit face, and he does seem a little pale.
‘C’mon,’ she says, ‘let’s get you cleaned up. I’ve got a first-aid kit in my shop basement.’
‘I’m okay. Really.’
‘Listen,’ she tells him. ‘You just rescued my cat and the ungrateful little sod attacked you. The least I can do is disinfect your wound.’
He laughs. ‘Woundmakes it sounds like I’ve been at war.’
Lexi lets the words hang in the air because, yes, they have been at war. And this is just a temporary truce.
‘I need you at your best so I can fight you properly,’ she tells him. ‘Otherwise it’s just too easy, and where’s the fun in that?’
Sam smiles, more at ease now he knows Lexi isn’t setting some kind of love trap for him. ‘Fair enough,’ he says. ‘Okay.’
It takes longer than usual to make it down the street and round the corner, stopping every few feet to check Pippin is still following them. Then she has to unroll the metal grate at the entrance to the alley, open the door, and disable the alarm. It probably would have made more sense to do this at his shop, if he has a first-aid kit, which if he’s following the law, he should. But Lexi has tea that she can make for him– very important after a battle wound, if underrated by Americans. And it’s time for Pippin to go home, anyway. Despite how tired he must be after his ordeal, he gallops down the stairs as soon as Lexi opens the door, and when she and Sam make it to the office, she sees he’s made a dash straight for his basket. Poor little guy. First things first: she fills his food bowl and gives him reassuring strokes until he starts to purr. Then she turns her attention fully back to Sam.
‘Right,’ she tells him. ‘Sit. First, I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’
‘Oh,’ he says, getting ready to politely decline. Lexi has seen that look in American eyes before. She knows what it means.
‘Non-negotiable,’ she says, and bizarrely, this shuts him up.
She goes to the staff kitchen and flicks on the kettle, then fishes around for antiseptic cream and bandages. She winces at the thought of antiseptic on the cut, but Sam is a big strong man. He can take it.
‘This might sting a little,’ she says, in her best kindergarten teacher voice, as she sits down opposite him. ‘But I know you can be brave.’
In response, he sticks his tongue out at her. Lexi is enjoying the playfulness. It feels flirting-adjacent, and that will have to be enough.
He nods. ‘I can be brave.’
But there’s still a sharp intake of breath when she gently dabs at his cut with cotton wool.
‘Sorry.’ She says it softly because the moment feels strangely intimate, and she doesn’t want to scare that intimacy away.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he says, a standard American response to her too-frequent need to apologise. Only, in this case, it’s not quite true. Holding his arm with one hand, wiping his cut with the other, Lexi points out as much.
‘Well, it kind of is a little. I asked for help with my cat, and that’s how you got injured, so...’
‘Fair point.’
His skin is warm to the touch and feels good under hers. And, up close, despite the antiseptic, she can still make out his distinctive scent: clean laundry, salty skin, a hint of cedar and musk. Up close to Sam, Lexi hopes her breath doesn’t smell too much of stale coffee; she wishes she had Tic Tacs in her bag and that she’d bothered with perfume this morning. Truth be told, she’s not even totally sure she bothered with under-eye depuffing cream, and she knows the bags must be spectacular. And as for her hair... who knows whatthat’sdoing. Which is fine, because this isn’t a date. This is her putting her cat’s rescuer back together.
‘He was afraid,’ Sam says softly. ‘He was afraid, so he lashed out.’
He searches Lexi’s eyes with his. He clearly wants to know if what he’s said has registered, that she knows he’s not just talking about Pippin now.
