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“Not at all.” She knelt again, holding his injured leg with her right hand and using the flashlight with her left. “It’s swelling fast,” she said, running her thumb gently over the abraded skin to loosen the largest of the gravel pieces. “Are you sure we can’t call an ambulance?”
When she looked at him, they were on eye level. Even without the flashlight, she could see the way his whole body tensed. “No ambulance,” he croaked.
She put the phone back in her pocket and used both hands on either side of his knee. “I think you should keep it straight while I’m gone.” Then she moved her thumbs above his knee and squeezed. “Does it hurt up here, too?”
“Cate?” His voice sounded funny.
“What?” she asked, absently stroking his lower thigh.
“Please stop touching me.”
She sucked in a breath, frowning. “Why?”
Harry was leaning back in the grass, supporting himself with one hand. With his free arm, he put his hand behind her neck, pulled her close and kissed her gently. “Because I can only handle one crisis at a time,” he said, the words husky and low.
Cate froze. Like a deer on the highway caught in a car’s headlights, she was afraid to move. And she was still holding Harry’s leg.
The kiss was over so quickly, her stunned brain wondered if she had imagined it. “Oh.” That single, scintillating syllable was all she could manage. “Okay.”
She peeled her fingers away from his warm, lightly hair-dusted skin one at a time, as if trying not to detonate a bomb. Then she lurched to her feet, turned her back on him and ran.
Cate made it to the house and back in forty-two minutes. It wouldn’t have taken that long, but the crutches had to be wiped down. And she realized Harry probably needed water.
She downed half of a bottle herself so she wouldn’t have to carry two. It crossed her mind to take first aid supplies, but then decided it made more sense to get her patient back to air-conditioning and a comfortable seat before she started cleaning up his knee.
Jogging—or fast walking—whatever you wanted to call it, was not easy carrying two moderately heavy crutches and water for her patient. Her Lycra pants accommodated a phone, but not the plastic bottle.
When she made it back to where she had left Harry sitting on the ground, she was sweaty and out of breath. She found him flat on his back, a fact that caused alarm until she realized he was resting. Asleep? Or maybe unconscious?
Her imagination went wild until Harry sat up and said, “Water. Oh, good.” When she handed the bottle to him, he downed it all in one go, the muscles in his throat working. “I needed that.”
“You’ll have to use me this time,” she said, eyeing the poor little tree that now brushed the ground.
“Useyou?” Harry’s response sounded odd.
“To stand,” she said impatiently. “Once we get you upright, I’ll shove one crutch under your arm. Then we’ll add the second one.”
When she leaned over and offered her arm to help him, he waved her away. “Give me a minute.”
“Ohmigosh, Harry. Quit being such adude. Let’s get this over with.” She took his arm, settled it across her shoulders and tried to stand. Her back screamed in protest.
With one leg out of commission, Harry was ill-prepared to participate in his own rescue. “Just wait,” he said. “We’ll have to use the crutch to lever me up, or you’re going to throw out your back.”
“My back is fine,” she lied.
“Give me the damn crutch.”
Hurt and cranky. A lovely combination.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Harrington.”
Her sarcasm didn’t even register. He was too busy planning his moves. While still on his butt, he tucked the crutch under his right armpit. He waved his left arm at Cate. “I think this will work.”
This time, she squatted, let him put his arm across her shoulders and nodded. “I do, too.”
Slowly, they rose—two, three inches at a time. They were both huffing and puffing. Harry was like a turtle on his back, and Cate didn’t have near the upper body strength she needed for this exercise.
They almost made it upright when Harry instinctively tried to balance with his right foot. His yelp of pain when he put weight on the injured knee made Cate wince in sympathy.
