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“We need to bandage that up,” he said, ready to sprint into action. She’d skinned up her knee pretty badly, or so it appeared. “Where do you keep your bandages?”
“Through the guest bedroom,” she said.
It was a small cottage-style house, but there was something cozy about it. He noticed that as he rushed through the front bedroom and into the bathroom. The bathroom was attached to the master bedroom on the other side. Jack-and-Jill style, he’d heard it called.
He immediately found what he was looking for in a linen closet in the bathroom. A plastic container was on a middle shelf, surrounded by towels or sheets. A box of assorted adhesive bandages was squeezed in behind a bottle of alcohol. Grabbing some cotton swabs and a dark-colored washcloth that he wetted, he headed toward the living room.
By then, Gracie had somehow landed on the couch next to her dog mom and was snuggled up to her side. Charity had her hand on the dog and a smile on her face as she sat, eyes closed, head resting against the cushion behind her.
“I’m no nurse,” he said. “But I watched my mom clean up more than a few scrapes when we were kids.”
Charity’s eyes popped open, her gaze landing on the items he was setting on the coffee table. “I can do that. I just need to catch my breath, and I’ll be able to get on my feet again.”
“Sit. Stay.” Nic held out a hand, but she and Gracie both stared at him wordlessly. Since she wasn’t speaking, he took the opportunity to kneel in front of her and gently press the washcloth to her scraped knee. “It’s a superficial wound. I think it just got the top layer. It’ll probably hurt for a few days.”
Why was he saying all this? She’d had scrapes before. Everyone had.
“I feel like the world’s biggest klutz,” she said. “But all I could think, while I was lying on the ground, was that I can’t afford to be injured. Not during my busy season at work.” She laughed. “I was actually estimating how much of the work I could hand off to my assistant.”
She had an assistant? That was the first he’d heard of it. It made sense, he supposed, as busy as she seemed to stay.
“Do you have rock salt?”
When she lifted her head, her frown told him the lightheadedness must be lessening. “Rock salt?”
“So I can melt the last of the ice off your sidewalk.”
She waved her hand in the air dismissively. “It’ll melt off on its own by tomorrow night. I’ll wear my snow boots when I leave in the morning. Thank you, though.”
After seeing her bond with Holden Pryce’s daughter and learning what a great guy he was, Nic had already made up his mind to pack up and get out first thing in the morning. He’d trudge through whatever snow was left on the ground once he got to Lexington.
Yeah, he didn’t want to know if Holden and Charity got together and lived happily ever after. In fact, he’d go back to avoiding town when he visited his parents to keep from ever finding out.
That was his original idea—get out of town and never look back. But now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he should stop by in the morning and sprinkle some salt on her sidewalk. Yes, she was a grown woman, but he couldn’t help worrying about her, wanting to take care of her.
“It’s not as bad as it looked at first.” He pointed toward her knee. “I cleaned off the worst of it.”
Now that he could see what was beneath the blood and debris, it was just a patch. The injury was only a couple of inches wide. There were also a couple of scratches on her knee.
“This might hurt, though.” He set the washcloth aside and reached for the alcohol, unscrewing the cap and grabbing one of the cotton balls. It was his least favorite part as a kid, but it was also the most important. “It’ll only hurt for a few seconds. I’ll blow on it.”
Nic had looked away to return the alcohol bottle, and when he turned back around, she was gaping at him. “You’ll what?”
There was no stopping the smile that spread across his face. “It’s something my mom used to do. You’ll see.”
If there was something even slightly flirtatious about blowing on someone’s knee, though, it was lost here. She was wincing and saying, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow” by then. She didn’t even notice his attempts to shorten the time of the sting.
“I don’t think you have a bandage that’s going to fit exactly.”
He pulled out the biggest one and held it over the area. It looked like it might fit, but the last thing he’d want was for the sticky part to adhere to the damaged area.
“It’s okay.” Charity waved her hand dismissively in the air again. “I’ll just drive up to Sawyerville and grab something from the drugstore in the morning.” She lifted her leg again and looked at the area. Then her gaze shifted over to him. “Thank you.”
The gratitude in her eyes went straight to his heart, making him feel like she didn’t expect someone to care for her. But she needed that. She needed someone to share her life with. Someone who planned to put down roots in Misty Mountain.
Someone like Holden Pryce.
That thought acted like a bucket of ice water over his head. He sat up straighter, took a deep breath, and looked around.
