AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her eyes met mine, and I immediately began moving in her direction. Coming to a stop, relief swept over her expression.
The moment she was close enough to touch, I reached my hand out to her arm and curled my fingers around the back of it. Before I had the chance to say anything, she lamented, “I’m so sorry. I thought I was going to get here and find that you had already left. I convinced myself you were going to assume I’d stood you up.”
“It’s okay. What happened?”
After Daisy glanced down at her feet briefly, she returned her attention to me and asked, “Remember when I fell after I thought I’d successfully gotten off the lift yesterday?”
I nodded to confirm that I did.
She sighed. “Well, apparently, I did some damage.”
My eyes widened. “You told me you were okay.”
Daisy nodded. “I was. I mean, it was a bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
Recalling the look I’d seen on her face as she’d been making her way toward me, seeing the way she was standing now, one thing became clear to me. “You can’t ride.”
Disappointment washed over her. Shaking her head, she replied, “I tried so hard to get my foot back into my snowboard boot, but once I took it off last night, everything changed. My foot ballooned up, and I had to spend the entire night hopping around my room on one foot.”
“Did you ice it?”
“Yeah. And I thought it’d be okay by this morning, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my foot back into my boot.”
Daisy seemed to be more concerned with not being able to snowboard than she was about the actual state of her foot. “Don’t worry about snowboarding. Did you have your foot checked out?”
“No. I figure it’s just a sprain. Once the swelling goes down, I should be fine.”
I thought for a moment. “Let me take you to get it looked at. Hopefully, it’s just a sprain, but if it’s worse than that, if you broke something, you don’t want to wait to get it in a cast.”
“Oh, Forrest, I can’t ask you to do that. This is your vacation.”
Tipping my head to the side, my eyes searched her beautiful face. “I hate to break it to you, Daisy, but until I know that you’re okay, I’m not going to be able to have a good time on this trip. Please. I’m begging you to let me take you to get your foot looked at. There’s a clinic not even ten minutes away, once we get to the base of the mountain.”
She considered my offer. “Are you sure? I feel horrible about this.”
“I’m positive. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
Looking around, I did my best to come up with a plan. “Are you okay to stand here for a minute on your own?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I’ll be back in one minute.”
At that, I released the hold I had on her arm, took my board, and moved to the ski rack. I rested my board there, pulled out the lock I had for it, and once it was secured to the rack, I moved back to Daisy.
Without giving it a second thought, I bent at the waist, put an arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees. Then I lifted her in my arms.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
Once I was upright with her nestled perfectly in my arms, I explained, “I saw you take those few steps earlier. You can hardly walk, so I’m going to carry you to my truck.”
“How far away is that?”
I shook my head. “Not far.”
“Am I too heavy?”
