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“If I wanted her that bad I would have done something about it. ”
Mac shook his head. “You’re a lousy liar, my friend. ”
“Stop bitching, Mac, you’re starting to sound like someone’s father,” Jethro growled.
“As long as I don’t sound like mine,” he snarled, pausing once again at the bathroom door and tapping at it lightly. “It’s safe, Keiley. ”
The door opened slowly. Her eyes went quickly over Mac, then turned to Jethro. She swayed, any color she could have possessed leeching from her face as she stared at the blood.
“It’s just a flesh wound. ” Jethro started in surprise at the horror that washed over her. “It’s okay. ”
“Just a flesh wound?” she snapped, lifting her gaze to meet his. “For God’s sake! You’re bleeding all over my house. At least try to act concerned. ”
19
Keiley stood in front of Jethro as he sat at the kitchen table, the first aid supplies laid out on the table as she cleaned the wound on his arm.
“You need to go to the doctor,” she said fiercely. “You need stitches. ”
He was as stubborn as Mac. He had refused to go to the hospital or to allow her to call the paramedics.
“Slap a bandage on it and stop fussing over it,” he had ordered uncomfortably, as though her concern made him edgy.
And it probably was. He kept shifting in his seat worse than a kid eager to get back outside and play. Or a grown man determined to rejoin a fight.
“You’re not Superman. ”
“I’m not bleeding to death, either. ”
She looked in his face then, her lips trembling at the tenderness of his expression, the gentle light in his blue eyes as he reached up and cupped her cheek.
“You and Mac are driving me insane, you know,” she informed him, attempting to chastise him for his recklessness. “I’m not a doctor or a nurse, and patching up grown men who should have enough sense to see one makes me irritable. ”
“I wouldn’t want to make you irritable,” he assured her, his voice filled with a hesitant gentleness.
Jethro didn’t have the first clue about how to handle the emotions that were raging between them. Not that Keiley claimed to know how to handle it herself, but Jethro’s attempts to get a handle on them were endearing. And, unfortunately, only made her own seem stronger.
If his expression of male confusion and wariness was anything to go by, he was still struggling to hold them back, despite Mac’s awareness of them. And that made her wonder how he would eventually handle the other emotions that could end up cropping into this relationship Mac had orchestrated. Especially the emotions she knew Mac would have a hard time dealing with.
“Are you a jealous man?” she finally asked, feeling her fears of the future edging into her voice.
“I would kill any man but Mac who dared to touch you. ” He sighed, his thumb touching her lips as they trembled again. “He was wrong, though, when he said I was half in love with you before he won your heart. I wasn’t. I already loved you fully, Kei. ”
“Don’t say that. ” She tried to keep her voice firm, her emotions under control. “The two of you ask too much of a woman. ”
“Yeah. We do,” he finally agreed, his gaze hooded, intense. She had always felt that Jethro, like Mac, saw too deep into her soul.
Mac was sneakier than Jethro, though. He hid that dangerous part of himself behind layers of control and charming smiles. A person could sense the danger lurking beneath his quiet exterior, but as with all illusions it eased beneath the carefully controlled façade he presented.
Jethro, on the other hand, had never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he was. Dangerous to anyone who dared get in his way, an emotional risk to any woman who dared love him.
Until now.
Now, the cool purpose that had once been in his brilliant blue eyes was gone. In its place she could see the charisma he kept hidden, the emotions he tried to deny even to himself.
She breathed in shakily before applying a coat of antibiotic salve to his arm and wrapping the gauze over a wide folded bandage. The white of the gauze glared against the sun-darkened flesh of his arm while the muscle beneath flexed experimentally.
“Stay still,” she ordered quietly. “You’ll start bleeding again. ”
