Breaking Her No-Dating Rule (3 page)

A hot plate sat on the floor about a foot away, which was new. Somewhere closer to keep the water hot for the footbath.

She was taking that temperature range very seriously at least. Probably keeping it better than the whirlpool baths at the hospital.

“Chelsea’s toes are pink now,” Ellory called, on seeing him. It almost helped. “Well, almost all the way pink. A couple of her small toes have a bit of yellow going on. We had a little trouble with the water temperature at first, but once we moved the hot plate closer, it got easier to keep it in the range.”

“It’s not hurting as bad now,” Chelsea added in quiet tones, swiveling in her chair to look the lobby over.

She was looking for her fiancé, as they all were, but she was the one who’d be hurt the most if the man didn’t make it back.

Anson stepped around and crouched to look at her toes. “No blisters have formed yet, so that’s good. You’ll likely get a couple of blisters soon, when they start swelling. But we’re going to take good care of you, and when the storm passes we’ll get you to a hospital.”

“What about Jude?” Chelsea asked, letting him know what she was interested in talking about but not whether she’d heard him at all. Someone would have to repeat the information to her later.

Anson straightened so he could address the group. “The storm has gotten to the point where it’s impossible for us to continue searching. I want to be clear: this is just a suspension of the search, not the end of it. I’m sorry we haven’t found your fiancé yet.”

“Jude.” Chelsea repeated the name of the missing skier, stopping Anson with one hand on his arm.

“Jude,” he repeated, his pulse kicking up a little higher. He knew why it was important to her, but saying the man’s name made it harder to maintain the distance he needed to be smart about this. “Just because we have to postpone going back out to look for Jude, it doesn’t mean it’s time to give up hope. So don’t get ahead of us, okay? You’d be surprised what someone can survive. Those mines are a pretty good shelter. There are also some rocky overhangs between here and where we found you. And some of those might actually be better.”

“How could they be better? You’re closer to the snow,” one of the rescued asked.

He contemplated how much to actually tell them about his experience with this kind of situation.
I know these things, I killed someone with snow once
wouldn’t inspire anyone to trust him. This had to be about them, not about his fear or guilt. “Small spaces hold the warmth your body makes better, and the wind can’t get into it as fully as it does in the mines, which have a bigger entrance and room for the wind to move around inside. He might still show up here before we get out to him, but as soon as the storm lets up we’ll get back out there. It’s not time to give up hope.” He repeated that, trying to convince himself.

It was time to bandage Chelsea’s toes...and hopefully him moving on would make them take the hint not to ask more questions. He didn’t have any answers or much of a mind left for coming up with more empty words of comfort. He was too busy trying to ignore the similarities between this storm and
his
storm.

Pulling off his cap and gloves, he squatted beside Ellory at Chelsea’s feet, struggling to hold his calm for everyone else. “Do you have some gloves for me to use?”

Ellory ducked into the bag of supplies she’d packed and fished out the box of gloves. One look at them confirmed they wouldn’t do. Small. He could squeeze into a medium at a pinch, but large were better. “All right, this job has been passed to you.”

To his surprise, she didn’t argue at all, just grabbed a couple gloves from the box and put them on. Crouched so close he was enveloped in a cloud of something fruity and floral. The woman looked like summer, and she smelled like spring. Warm. And distracting. He scooted to the side to give her room.

“What is the job?” she asked, looking at Chelsea’s toes and maneuvering herself so she could gently cradle the patient’s heel in her lap.

He handed the gauze to her and began ripping strips of tape and tacking them to the wheelchair, where she could get to them. “Part of the healing process is just keeping the site dry and loosely bandaged.” He gave short, quick instructions, and left her to it.

She unrolled the gauze carefully and began wrapping. He watched, ready to correct her, but she did it as he would’ve: a couple of passes between the two toes to keep them separate, controlling the moisture level better, and then loosely around the two together.

No matter how out of her depth she looked, she was anything but incompetent. There might even be some kind of medical training there. The cloud of floral scent stole up his dry, burning sinuses and almost made his mouth water like a dog’s.

Awesome priorities. Reveling in attraction to some woman while the lost man was freezing. Maybe dying. He definitely didn’t have the warm comfort of a fireplace and a wench-shaped blonde to take his mind off his failure to get back to the lodge safely, didn’t even know his friends had been saved, so he suffered that additional torment—worry for them in addition to himself.

An inferno of shame ignited in his belly.

Hide it.

At the very least he owed them all a confident appearance. Calm. Strength. Determination.

Meltdowns were something to have alone—a luxury that would have to wait until he was no longer needed.

CHAPTER THREE

E
LLORY
HAD
READ
about frostbite treatment so she could anticipate Dr. Graves’s needs for that, but she had no idea what his other needs were. She’d kind of pegged the search and rescue team as attracting the kind of adrenaline fiends in it for the thrill, but Anson looked almost as devastated by returning empty-handed as Chelsea had.

With the bandage applied, she switched off the hot plate, scooted it out of the way and stood. What came next? She didn’t know, but certainly there would be something she would need to do, and being on her feet would help her react that much faster.

“They still hurt, I know,” Anson said to the woman, looking at the toes now hidden by the gauze, the patch of yellow skin surrounded by angry redness hidden. “But most of this might not even be frostbite. The yellow area is, but the good news is that we got to it in good time and it’s very unlikely to leave any lasting damage. I won’t be able to tell for a couple of days if it’s frostbite or the lesser version, which you all have on your fingers and toes...frostnip. We’re going to treat yours as if you have frostbite, just to be safe. I’ll see what kind of antibiotics Dr. Dupris has in her inventory, and some pain medication.”

Good news. She’d take whatever kind of win they could get.

Anson asked the standard allergy questions, got whatever info he needed, and nodded once to Ellory—a kind of
do it
nod. She had been promoted: triage to assistant, or nurse...or whatever that position was.

“I can check with Mira. Which antibiotic do you need?” If she had to, she could no doubt find in Mira’s books which kind of antibiotic was good for skin infections, but she’d rather he tell her. She wasn’t a doctor. Not by a long stretch. But she knew enough to know that antibiotics were a tricky lot—some worked for everything, some worked best for specific things, and these days a frightening amount were resistant to stuff they used to be awesome at fighting.

“I’m sure she’s got some of the broad-spectrum ones, but I don’t know how well the drug cabinet is stocked for anything obscure.” For some reason she wanted him to think well of her, and she felt more competent even saying the words “broad spectrum.” Like proving to him she wasn’t a complete idiot was important. Probably something to do with the lecture she’d gotten about her clothes...

She didn’t even know the man, had never seen him before today, but as he spoke she became aware of something else: there was a rawness about him she couldn’t name. Something in that raspy timbre that resonated feelings primal and violent.

He rattled off a few medication names that sounded like gibberish to her, and she didn’t ask him to repeat himself, just hoped she could remember them when she came face-to-face with a wall of gibberish-sounding drug names.

Then she’d come back here and keep an eye on the good doctor with the terrible name, because alarm bells were ringing in her head.

Chelsea suffered the whole situation with more dignity than Ellory could’ve mustered, and directed the conversation back to what she really wanted to talk about. “If I got frostbite in the mine and I wasn’t in the snow, Jude’s going to have it for sure, isn’t he?”

“Nothing is ever certain.” Ellory said it too quickly. It sounded like a platitude. She shook her head and tried again with better words. “You can’t compare your situation to his for a couple of reasons: women don’t hold heat as well as men do, and your boots are different. Even if they are the same brand, the fit will be different. If his have more room inside than yours they’ll hold heat better. If he’s taken shelter in a smaller space than you did, like Anson...Dr. Anson...was saying, he could just be warmer...”

Anson pulled out the footrests on the wheelchair and carefully positioned Chelsea’s feet on the metal tray. “Find a pillow for her.”

Ellory knew he was speaking to her, even though he didn’t look at her. She hurried to the main desk and the office behind, where she knew she’d find some. When she presented him with two slender pillows from the office, he put one under Chelsea’s feet and rose. “Would you like the other pillow to sit on?”

“Yes.” She made as if to rise and Anson put his hands out to stop her. “No walking. No standing. When you need to go to the bathroom, someone’s going to have to go with you. Right now, I’ve got you. Luckily, you weigh about as much as a can of beans...” He caught her under the arms and lifted. Ellory slid the pillow beneath and then stood back as he returned Chelsea to her seat, lifting a brow pointedly at him when she saw his shoulder catch again and a wave she could actually name cross his handsome features: pain. His shoulder definitely hurt.

She really had to stop thinking about how hot he was. It wasn’t helping at all. It wasn’t breaking her resolution to think that the untouchable doctor rescue guy was hot, but it might lead her to other thoughts. It also wasn’t her fault that his eyes looked like moss growing on the north side of a tree...deep, earthy green blending to brown. Was that hazel or still green if she looked...?

He was staring at her. It took a couple of nervous heartbeats for her to realize that it wasn’t because he was a mind-reader.

Oh, yeah, she’d made the
Ahh, your shoulder does hurt
face at him. Because it did. He’d made the pain face, she’d made the
ahh
face, and now he was making the scowl face.

He didn’t know she was sexually harassing him in her mind.

While she was trying to decide what she was supposed to be thinking, the man pivoted and walked straight through the archway leading to the rest of the resort.

Where was he going?

Crap.

She should have gone after the medicine by now.

He was going to disturb Mira, maybe make her leave the love nest and come down here.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Chelsea,” she babbled, and rushed after him in a flurry of flowing skirts and jingling bracelets, but she was too late to see which direction he’d headed. The elevators all sat on the bottom floor, where she was.

The man was a ninja. A cranky, frosty ninja.

*

Ducking into the stairwell, Ellory tilted her head to listen, hoping he wasn’t outside earshot. The plush carpeting that blanketed the hallways and stairs made it hard to tell which way he’d gone. “Anson?” Tentative call unanswered, she stepped back into the hallway.

Okay, so he didn’t go upstairs by any means, he wasn’t heading for Mira and Jack’s suite.

Mira’s office? He did want antibiotics for Chelsea. She turned to the right, the shorter hallway, gathered her skirts to her knees so they’d stop the damned swirling, and ran. No yelling. Yelling disturbed people. And every single person in the lodge, except for maybe the two upstairs sheltered from all this information overload in their love nest, were disturbed enough with the current situation.

One turn and then another, she reached the final hallway just in time to see Anson reach the end and turn toward the wall outside the clinic.

Before she could call out to him, he reared back and slammed his fist through the drywall.

The loud slam and cracking sound stunned her into staring for a couple of seconds. Long enough for the pain to reach his brain and make him pull his hand out of the hole while the other gripped his poor shoulder. If it hadn’t hurt before he’d done that...

“You broke the wall,” she muttered as she trotted forward, no longer running. She was not at all sure how to respond to this masculine and aggressive display. She didn’t know anyone who hit walls when they were upset. Generally, she kept company with people who avoided violence. “I have the keys to Mira’s office, we can get whatever you need for Chelsea. I’ve been keeping an inventory of supplies.”

He finally turned to look at her and she saw it again—he wasn’t just upset. She saw desolate, blind torture in his hollow eyes. It robbed her of any ability to speak.

Whatever she’d thought earlier about his motivation behind taking this kind of work, she was now certain: It had nothing to do with being an adrenaline junkie or any kind of fixation on the dream of being the big hero. This mattered to him. This
hurt
him.

She did the only thing she could, reached out and touched him. Tried to ground him here with her.

Contact of her palm with his stubble-roughened cheek sharpened his gaze, bringing him back from wherever he’d gone.

“Don’t worry about the wall. We’ll fix it. Everything will be okay.” She whispered words meant to soothe him.

It took him a few seconds, but his brows relaxed and he nodded, looking down at the bloody knuckles on his hand and then at the wall. “That was pretty stupid. She’s going to give me hell, isn’t she?” He mustered a smile while simultaneously pulling his head back from her hand.

He didn’t want her touching him... Okay. It’s not like they really knew one another, and some people just didn’t like to be touched.

It wasn’t about her. It wasn’t judgment on her.

Ellory pulled her thoughts away from the vulnerable nerve he’d accidentally struck and played along, faking a grin with her tease. “You have no idea. She’s going to make you cry like a baby.”

His smile was equally slight, but it was a start. And it reminded her of where she should make him focus. Sobering, she reached for his hand but didn’t touch him, a request, open palms. “Can I see it?”

Okay, that might’ve been a test.

She’d been rejected more times in her life than any person ought to be—it wasn’t anything new to her—but the second she’d found out that he was a doctor he’d become her partner in dealing with this and keeping Mira out of it. She needed him to actually connect with her and be her partner in it. And a good person didn’t abandon her partner when he was hurting.

When he placed his large, bloody-knuckled hand in hers, her relief was so keen she had to fight the urge to squeeze and wind her fingers in his. He didn’t shun her. Recoiling was about something else. He didn’t find her lacking.

Nice skin, and considering she hadn’t had any male contact since she’d come back from Peru it wasn’t surprising that she wanted to relish the contact a little bit.

She forced herself to examine his knuckles before he caught on, paying careful attention to the cracked and rapidly swelling skin. “Can you move your fingers for me?”

He made a small sound as he got his fingers going, but his fingers moved smoothly at the knuckle, despite the swelling. “Well, we both know that it’s an old wives’ tale that you can’t move something that’s broken. Can’t know for sure that it’s not, but it looks good. Sorry, have to do this...”

Still holding his injured hand for support, she stroked her fingers over the abused skin, just firmly enough to feel the structure. She knew it hurt, he stopped breathing until she stopped touching it. “Don’t think it’s broken. Everything feels intact. Could be some hairline fracture, though. Guess we’ll have to take a wait-and-see approach on this, along with poor Chelsea’s toes.”

Breathing resumed, and he pulled his hand back, nodding. “I don’t think it’s broken either, but I’m a fan of X-ray...”

“Come on. Let’s get this cleaned up, then we’ll get Chelsea’s medicine into her, and I’ll go and tell Mira what’s going on so she can join the fun later. While the storm is here, you two will keep watch over our patient guests in shifts so she can have time with Jack and you can have some rest. Welcome to your first rotation at Silver Pass Blizzard Clinic, Dr. Graves.”

“Time with Jack?” he asked, as she turned toward the door.

Ellory fished the keys from her coat pocket, unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping on one set of lights as she went. “The past six months have been really hard for Mira, not that she’d admit it to anyone. Her fiancé was a louse. They broke up and the universe rewarded her for choosing to take care of herself.”

“Jack from the avalanche, or do you mean her reward is having to do jack-all?”

Ellory peered at him. “Have you never heard the name Jack before?”

“I have and I’ve met a guest called Jack. But it’s also a noun or an adjective.” He followed her into the clinic. “Your manner of speaking is unusual. I’m looking for landmarks.”

She decided not to comment on that—he didn’t seem like a big talker and she had jobs before her. She talked strangely. She dressed wrong. Blah-blah-blah.

“I’ve been making notes of the supplies I took to the lobby. We’ll just write down whatever we need, I’ll go tell Mira and you can get the medicine for Chelsea. We should probably start charts for everyone too, but since your hand looks like hell, you tell me what you want it to say and I’ll do the writing.”

*

Anson followed her, enjoying the floral wake. The tropical scent reminded him she’d said something about Peru earlier. “Were you on a medical mission before you came here?”

She unlocked the drug cabinet and opened the doors, then flipped on a light above it and pointed at the bottles to direct his attention. “Medical mission? Oh, no. You mean in Peru. No, I was at a...” She looked sidelong at him, her expression growing wary. “I was at an ayahuasca retreat.”

The word was familiar somehow, but between the pain in his hand, the pain in his shoulder and the headache he’d been nursing since he’d decided to turn the group around he couldn’t place it. “I know I should know what that is, but it’s eluding me.”

“It’s a place you go to have...” She stumbled along, clearly hedging and not really wanting to tell him.

People who avoided a direct answer had something to hide, either because it embarrassed them or they expected disapproval. Which was when he remembered what ayahuasca was. “Ayahuasca is a hallucinogen, isn’t it?”

Her sigh confirmed it. “It’s not like LSD or hard drugs. It’s a herbal and natural way of expanding your consciousness. I went there for a spirit quest under the care of a shaman—someone who knows about use of the plant and how to make the decoction properly. Someone who could help me understand everything I needed to know beforehand. And before you say anything, I’m not a drug user. I don’t smoke anything. I only drink alcohol once a year—champagne on New Year’s with Mirry. And nothing else remotely dodgy the rest of the year.” As she spoke, her volume increased, along with the tension between her brows. “My body is a freaking temple, Judgy McGravedigger.”