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“I’ll do you one better and cut the whole damn finger off,” she said, retreating back to where she’d been carving the turkey and grabbing the long carving knife. “How about that?”
He continued to smile. “You’re the only person I’d trust to do it.”
“Not even thedoctoroutside?”
“She’s high as the space station, I wouldn’t trust her to put jam on a cracker right now.”
Rayma set the knife back down and approached him. “Fair enough.” She pulled his hand down from the sky and brought it in front of her. “Let’s take a look at the damage.” Lifting her gaze, she pinned it on him. “I swear to fucking God, though, Lassie, if we need to go to the hospital, I will be pissed. I really will chop the damn thing off. Because we can’t leave the kids here with the Snoop Dogg wannabes out there. So then we’d have to figure out a way to pack eight children with us to the hospital.”
“We could just call an ambulance?”
The look she shot him said,You want to call an ambulance for a cut finger?
Yeah, he could never do that. Even if his finger was literally hanging off his hand by a string of skin and nothing else, he’d still probably drive himself to the ER.
Slowly, she peeled away the paper towel which was now drenched in bright red blood. A flap of skin hung precariously off his knuckle, and blood pooled in the wound, but for the most part, it looked like a superficial injury, and no stitches or re-attaching of digits would be needed. It was also his left hand and he was a righty.
Her sigh of relief was emphasized by her relaxing shoulders as she dabbed at the pooling blood. “Doesn’t look as bad as I feared,” she said, pressing the paper towel back to his finger. “Hold this on it, and keep it over your head. I’ll go get the first aid kit.” Then she took off toward the bathroom.
Jordan glanced out the window to where the adults all lay on the grass, some of them pointing upward. Heath was still wearing his high-tech enemy eluding mask, while his daughter, Eve who was four lay on his chest and pointed at clouds.
Zoe was sitting next to her mom, Krista, and reading to her from a novel, even though Krista’s eyes were closed, and Connor—Chase and Stacey’s son—who was eleven like Zoe, was with the other little boys, playing soccer at the far end of the yard.
All in all, the chaos was rather contained.
Rayma returned with the big red first aid kit bag and sat down at the kitchen table. “All right, give me your hand.”
Smiling, he brought his arm back down and wandered over to the table, taking the seat adjacent to hers and resting his palm on the table so she could unwrap the paper towel. “Reminds me of the time you uh—”
“I remember,“ she said, opening up the first aid kit. “I’m hurt but not concussed. I still have my memories about when we were together.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“That was a fun weekend. Despite my uh—abrasions.” Her gaze flicked up to his and her lips hitched up into a smile on one side.
“A lot of fun,” he agreed.
“When times were simpler.” She started cleaning up the area even though the blood continued to gush.
“We could go back to that time, you know?” With a fortifying breath, he moved his free hand to her thigh and squeezed. “Let me apologize to youproperly.”
She wasn’t immune to him. Far from it.
Thank God.
The line of her throat moved on a hard swallow and he could feel her body temperature rising beneath his touch. And she hadn’t told him to remove his hand, either. That had to be a good sign.
Her movements paused and she just stared at his hand on her knee.
He tightened his grip, curling his fingers toward her inner thigh. “Please, Rayma …”
She swallowed again, cleared her throat and dabbed a cotton pad with antiseptic onto his open wound making him suck in a sharp breath from the sting. She rolled her lips inward to hide her smile.
“You enjoyed that too much,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
“Rayma …” He squeezed her thigh which forced her to look up at him. “What can I do to show you how sorry I am? How badly I want you back? I’m not above groveling.” He glanced at the floor. “You want me to slide to the ground and kiss your feet? Because I will.”
