Small-Town Redemption

Neat trick, that.

Straightening slowly, as if her inner voice wasn’t screaming at her to leap back and run like mad, she gave him her haughtiest look, the one she reserved for unruly, rude or pain-in-the-rear patients.

He definitely qualified for the latter.

“Did you injure your left arm?” she asked, her cool tone daring him to make another comment about the night she’d gone to his apartment.

In answer, he held it out. She gently wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm, unwound the stethoscope from her neck and inserted the ear tips. After taking his blood pressure, she removed the cuff and checked his pulse. Typed all three figures into his file.

“Any allergies to medications?” she asked. He shook his head. “What about tape? Latex? Iodine?”

“No.”

“Are you currently taking any medications?”

He shook his head then winced.

She opened a drawer and pulled out tubing. “I’m going to get your IV started, get you something for the pain. Could you straighten your left arm for me?” she asked, pulling on sterile gloves.

She tightly tied a thick rubber band around his forearm just under his elbow, found the vein she wanted to use on the back of his hand, then disinfected the area. While it dried, she peeled open the catheter.

“You ever do this before?” Kane asked, his tone wary enough to make her glance at him.

He was staring at the catheter in her hand with what could only be described as trepidation. What was that about? She’d had plenty of people—young, old and in between—who were terrified of needles, more that weren’t thrilled about them, but could handle a shot or IV being inserted as long as they didn’t watch it piercing their skin. But Kane had tattoos. Several intricate, rather large ones, which would have taken hours upon hours to complete.

That’s when it hit her, the realization swift and producing a giddy sort of triumph. He wasn’t afraid of needles.

He was afraid of her.

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU LOOK HAPPY,” Kane grumbled, not liking the small smile playing on Red’s mouth.

She made a humming sound, pure contentment and satisfaction. “Do I? Must be because I’m loving my job at the moment.”

“Loving that you get to poke at me a few dozen times. Literally. With a very sharp object.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”

But her grin, just this side of mean, said otherwise.

He shouldn’t think it looked good on her.

He shifted. Pain stabbed his ribs, shot up his side. He held his breath, kept his face expressionless, but that didn’t seem to stop eagle eye from noticing. She didn’t frown—her usual expression around him—but there was no ignoring the concern in her eyes.

“You okay?” she asked.

She was doing her job, and that was all he wanted from her.

He exhaled carefully. Slowly. Inhaled the same way. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Just as he didn’t answer hers.

She noticed but didn’t call him on it.

“What question?” she asked, poking and prodding the back of his hand again with her finger, the sharp point of the needle closer to his skin than he would have liked.

He didn’t mind needles, could handle pain just fine. Though he’d rather avoid it if possible. Mostly he didn’t like the idea of her using him as a pincushion. Not when he was having a hard enough time keeping himself together. Acting calm and collected when all he wanted was to jump off the bed and get as far from this place, with its institutionalized smells and windowless walls, as possible. Before he completely lost it.

“Have you done this before?”

She raised her head, blinked at him as innocently as a newborn babe. “Once or twice. I’m getting really good at it, too.” Leaning forward, she lowered her voice, her blue eyes wide. “With my last patient, it took me only six or seven tries to get it right.”

She was messing with him. She had to be.

He hoped.

Before he could find out, someone knocked at the door, and Charlotte excused herself—like the polite little nurse she probably was with every other patient—to see who was there.

A reprieve. He was smart enough to be thankful.

Then again, the more she stabbed at him, the longer his mind was occupied and he didn’t have to think about anything else. Such as how much it hurt just to breathe. Hell, he’d gladly forgo the process altogether if it wasn’t an instinctual, and necessary, act to remain alive. How pain swamped him with every movement, no matter how slight or how slowly done, making his stomach turn. How the mother of all headaches pounded at the base of his skull, blurring his eyesight and making him want nothing more than to go home, down a few shots of whiskey and slip into a dreamless, painless sleep.

Too bad he’d given up drinking.

But the physical discomfort was nothing compared to the memories.

The familiar sights and sounds of the hospital threatened to drag him back to the past. Reminding him of the accident that had almost cost him his life.

That had almost taken away the most precious thing in his world.

And it had been all his fault.

“Sorry about that,” Red said as she returned to his side. “Okay, here we go.” She bent over his hand and that’s when he realized her hair was different. Short, like a pixie, the red strands loose and waving slightly. “Slight pinch,” she murmured, inserting the needle into his vein.

He barely felt it.

And he’d let her rip off his good arm and beat him over the head with it before he admitted it.

She taped the port to his hand then gave it a gentle pat. “You were very brave,” she told him soberly. But her eyes gleamed. “Want a lollipop?”

She smiled. A real smile, one that reached her eyes and made a dimple in her left cheek form. A sudden, vicious craving swept through him, a hunger for something sweet.

Something like skinny, small-chested Charlotte Ellison.

He must have hit his head harder than he thought.

In answer to her smart-ass question, he scowled. But that only made his head hurt more, so he stopped.