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“Looks to me like it’s beginning to swell,” she said as she put the towel and washcloth on the counter. “Maybe you should go see a doctor.”
He grimaced. “Nah. It’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right,” he said jokingly.
Her eyes met his in the mirror. “I have to admit it’s very uncomfortable being on the same side as you.”
He chuckled. “It’s definitely a switch. But maybe I’m not the bad guy you want to believe I am.”
“And maybe you’re setting me up.” She held out her hand. “Give me your shirt. I’ll throw it in the laundry and grab some bandages.”
“What a cynic!” He pulled his shirt over his head and noticed how quickly she averted her eyes once it came off.
“I’ll be right back,” she mumbled and blindly took it from him.
While she was gone, he washed his hands, face, neck and chest. He even took the opportunity to snoop around in her medicine cabinet and bathroom drawers. While he knew that wasn’t polite, he was becoming so curious about her that the temptation proved too great.
He found the usual. Makeup. Blow-dryer. Tampax. No birth control, but maybe she kept it elsewhere.
Or she wasn’t sexually active.
That was interesting—more interesting than he wanted it to be.
Then he noticed a theme. Ellen used products that were as eco-friendly as possible. She had a bamboo toothbrush, pure-castile soap in the shower and one of those organic shampoo bars that were popular among hipsters. She cared more about the environment than most people in Coyote Canyon, hardly any of whom even bothered to recycle. The “hard-nosed bitch” who’d come to town seemed far more concerned about the people and things around her than he would’ve expected.
He closed the cabinets when he heard her tread in the hallway and was just finishing drying off when she returned with a giant backpack.
This time she set her shoulders and didn’t look away from him. She moved her finger in a circular motion to indicate she needed him to turn around. “What?” he said when he’d shown her his back.
“No other injuries?” she responded.
He felt guilty for going through her bathroom while she was gone. She already had trust issues, especially when it came tohim, since he was fairly certain she believed he “stole” her father away from her. “You expected more?”
“You had so much blood on your shirt...”
“All of which belonged to Jordan. Noses tend to bleed a lot.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “What if you broke his nose? Aren’t you worried that he might file charges against you?”
“He attacked you first. I don’t think a dentist—someone who has a reputation to protect—will want to risk having this go any further, do you?”
“That’s why you let him off so easy?”
“Although at the time I wanted to do more, a lot more, now I think he was probably adequately punished.” He shrugged. “If we let it go, he and I can both walk away. Why? Do you think he deserves a greater punishment?”
“I don’t know how far he would’ve gone if you hadn’t interceded, so that’s tough to say.” She set the giant backpack on the counter and dug through it until she came up with some antiseptic, which she dabbed on his scraped and bruised knuckles before wrapping them in gauze.
“That’s an extensive first aid kit,” he commented as she secured the gauze with surgical tape. “I doubt very many people have something like that in the house. Were you considering becoming a paramedic before you decided to start your own drilling business?” He dropped his voice meaningfully. “Or have you only ever been after my job?”
He was teasing—something he’d never done with her, which was probably why she didn’t seem to know how to react. “It’s come in handy on more than one occasion,” she said, ignoring the last part of his statement.
“For you or for someone else?”
“Both. Drilling can be dangerous, as you know. I keep it in my truck.”
That she could handle such a tough job and do it well enough to compete with him was beginning to turn him on now that he was stepping away from his own emotional involvement enough to look at it objectively. He’d never known another woman like her. She was taking business away from Fetterman Well Services, and yet he was impressed with her drive and determination.
