I unzip the funnel neck of my top, and the cowboy tugs on the left sleeve so that I can pull out my arm and lift it up and over my head. He then pulls, flipping the right sleeve inside out just as he had with my jacket.
“Shit,” we both say at the same time.
“I think I might need some ice,” I whisper as we both stare down at my already swollen wrist, hand, and fingers.
“I think you might be right. Good thing we have a whole county full of the stuff at our disposal.”
I look up at him, finding his eyes fixed firmly on my chest, and with my left hand, I pull his beard so that his eyes face my damaged arm.
“Oww, what the—”
“You think it's broken?”
“Can you wiggle your fingers for me?”
I wiggle my sausage-looking fingers, and they move slightly.
“A bit.”
“I think it might be severely sprained. Stay here while I get some—”
He stops speaking as he takes in the ink on my arm. I have a full sleeve on my left arm, which continues across my left shoulder, across my back, and around my right hip. It then travels all the way down my right leg—not that he knows that.
His eyes seem to dart over every inch of inked skin visible to him. I watch his throat move as he swallows, and I think I may actually have rendered him speechless—without even opening my mouth.
He clears his throat as his golden eyes meet mine. “Ice. I’ll get some ice.”
“You do that.”
Purely to take my mind off the throbbing pain in my wrist, I focus on his magnificent arse moving around his kitchen as he collects a tea towel from the drawer and heads towards a very large, very modern stainless steel side-by-side fridge freezer.
He scoops ice out of a drawer in the freezer and wraps the tea towel around it before heading back towards me and placing his makeshift ice pack gently on the back of my wrist.
“Hold this in place,” he orders. I do as I’m told—which, with a lot of concentration, this is something I amoccasionallyable to do.
I continue to watch him as he repeats his movements from earlier, only this time he slides the ice pack under my wrist.
He then proceeds to retrieve what I assume are a couple of painkillers from a box he takes from the pantry. He hands them to me, and I put them in my mouth before accepting a bottle of water he pulled from the fridge.
“You drugging me?” I question.
“Yep. They’re magic pills that stop you from talking, but they only work on beautiful girls. Not sure if you qualify.”
“Oh, and he’s a fucking comedian as well as a first aider. What other skills can you impress me with, Cowboy?”
He scratches at his beard and gives his head a slight shake. “You have a smart mouth for a little-bit, anyone ever tell you that?”
All the time.
“And you should quit with the cussing. It doesn’t become you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Charming.”
We stare at each other in silence for a few seconds, and I feel a bit mean for being rude. He didn’t have to help me out with my arm, but he did, and he did it with a gentleness that surprised me.
“So, where’d you learn the first aid skills?”