Читать книгу Murphy's Law - Rebecca Sinclair - Страница 5

Murphy's Law #2: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause

the most damage will go wrong first…

FIRE AND ICE.

Garrett felt both sensations equally as strong.

The former came from his right thigh—a burning pain that pulsed in time to his heartbeat and made his breath catch in his lungs. The latter emanated from everywhere else.

The phrase “cold to the marrow” took on a whole new meaning. He felt like he'd fallen asleep in the walk-in freezer at his father's grocery store. His left cheek was frigid and wet from the snow the wind kept blowing into his face. His right cheek…well, he couldn't feel that at all. It was a disquieting observation.

A noise grumbled in his ears. He frowned, concentrated, and realized it was actually two noises.

The first was the ratty chug-cough-chug of a car engine. Close by. The second was closer, and not easily recognized. It took him a second to recognize it as a groan; low, deep, scratchy. It took two more seconds to trace the sound back to himself.

The engine cut out. A car door opened, closed. Feet crunched over snow. Hesitated. Approached. The footsteps stopped close to his left side.

The heat of a body invaded his bomber jacket and denim-clad hip. Tensing instinctively, he felt a bolt of pain shoot up his right thigh. Higher. He groaned, and this time he knew he made the sound. Not that he cared. He hurt too much to care about much of anything.

A whisper of scent teased him. The aroma was subtle and soft. Soothing. Familiar, yet unplaceable. What was it…?

A full minute elapsed before something clicked in Garrett's naturally deductive mind and he pigeon-holed the smell.

Ivory Soap.

Ninety-nine point forty-four percent pure.

And it floats.

He sighed. All things considered, he must be in pretty bad shape indeed to be thinking about something so trivial at a time like this.

He cracked one eye open. It took longer than expected thanks to his lashes being wet, sticking together. His gaze was blurry; from pain, loss of blood, or the glare of a full moon on snow? He had no idea.

A movement out of the corner of his eye snagged his attention. Frowning, Garrett brought the stranger into focus.

A woman.

She looked fuzzy around the edges. With the moon at her back, he couldn't see much. Yet he saw enough. A quick glance assured him that: a) she was alone and, b) she wasn't armed.

He relaxed. Not a lot, but a bit.

Even her thick, baggy sweater couldn't conceal the feminine curves lurking beneath. Slender, but, he suspected, athletically firm. Since she was crouched beside him, it wasn't possible to tell her height. Intuition suggested she wasn't short, and his intuition was usually right on the mark.

“Where are you hurt?” Her voice, soft and a little too high, was edged with a ring of authority. He wondered if she was a school teacher, then just as quickly wondered why the hell he should care.

Where are you hurt? she'd asked. Everywhere, he wanted to say, but didn't. Instead, Garrett closed his eyes, concentrated on finding the root of pain that seemed to have no beginning or end, then replied through gritted teeth, “Right leg. Upper thigh. I was in a car accident.”

Even over the howl of wind, he heard her swallow hard.

“Can you walk?”

“Lady, do you think I'm laying here in the snow because it's fun?” He didn't need to see the woman's expression to feel her indignation; it surged over him in hot, palpable waves. If he wasn't so cold and in so much pain, he might have felt contrite. Then again, probably not.

“I can walk,” he said determinedly, forcing both eyes open.

She'd moved away a bit, and was sitting back on the snow-wet heels of her sneakers. Garrett's gaze locked on hers. Her eyes, he noticed, dominated her face; large, slanted at the outer edges, the color of dark green velvet.

“I can walk,” he repeated, wondering which of them he was trying to convince. “But you, um,” he glanced away briefly, “may need to help me up.”

His jaw hardened. Never in his life had Garrett Thayer asked anyone for help. To do so now rubbed him raw. Pity he didn't have a choice. If this woman didn't help him up, he wasn't going to get up. It was that simple. His leg was on fire, and he had no idea how long he'd been laying next to her car, unconscious. Long enough to freeze his muscles and tendons, he knew that much. And long enough to make standing unaided not an option.

The woman's gaze raked him. The slant of one dark brown eyebrow insinuated she'd already assessed his size as almost double her own. Under the baggy sweater, her shrug looked reluctant and forced. “I'll do my best.”

He winced when she wrapped her fingers around his upper arm. Christ, even that hurt! Must've been the way he'd fallen…one of the times he'd fallen. He'd fallen a lot. His aching body had been intimate with the snow-covered ground quite a bit since he'd wrapped the hood of his Jeep Cherokee around that tree.

Through the leather sleeve of his jacket, and the thicker sheepskin lining beneath, Garrett felt the woman's fingers tremble.

His earlier theory that she was stronger than she looked proved accurate by the way she planted her feet in the snow and, knees bent so most of his weight was not on her back, prepared to hoist him up.

Garrett felt a stab of admiration. She may be scared enough to be shaking, but she wasn't letting it stop her from doing what needed to be done. And doing it, he noted, with a composure that was as icy as the bed of snow he was laying on.

“Ready?” she asked tightly, leaning forward.

Garrett shook his head. He'd landed mostly on his front, with the brunt of his weight on his left side. The woman was going to try to help him stand up from that same side. Bad idea. The logistics were all wrong. “Hang on, let me—son-of-a-goddamned-bitch it hurts!—turn over first.”

“Okay.” Her fingers left his arm, and she eased back a bit. “Let me know when you're ready.”

Garrett nodded. It was the only answer he could manage. Verbal skills were beyond him when he twisted his hips, trying to roll as carefully as possible onto his back. He almost made it. Unfortunately, no matter how slowly and gently he went, it wasn't slowly or gently enough. The smallest movement jarred his right thigh and sluiced hot spasms of pain up and down his leg.

He grunted, gritted his teeth. Sweat beaded on his brow, his upper lip. Equal parts of blackness and pain clawed at him, both struggling for dominance. He gave in to neither.

Levering himself up on his left elbow, he shifted again, rolled another fraction. The snow-packed ground under his hips felt as solid as a rock.

The world tipped and spun. For a split-second, Garrett clung to the hope that he wouldn't pass out again. He should have known better. The thought had no more entered his mind when it was washed away by a river of blackness.

THE MAN WAS out cold before the back of his head had a chance to slam onto the ground with a teeth-jarring collision.

Murphy thought that was probably for the best. Even unconscious, his face rivaled the snow for whiteness. The snow, however, didn't sport the same ashy undertones. His breathing was rapid and shallow. She didn't think the moisture coating his brow was melted snow.

At least he'd managed to flip himself on to his back. That was a start. Now, if she could bring him around long enough to get him into the house before they both froze out here…

She reached out, nudged the man's shoulder.

He didn't respond.

She stroked a palm down his sculpted cheek, over the hard line of his jaw. The latter was scratchy with whisker stubble.

Still nothing.

Murphy sighed. If worse came to worse, she could always put the time he was unconscious to good use by checking his wound, find out how badly he was hurt.

Blood.

The word echoed in her mind, and she grimaced. Oh, how she hated the sight of blood. More so lately thanks to the bad, too-fresh memories it evoked.

Her emotions warred. She didn't want to look at the man's leg, however what she wanted hardly mattered. She had to. While she knew it wouldn't do either of them a bit of good if she passed out in the snow next to him, it also wouldn't do much good if the stranger bled to death.

Her mind flashed her an image of the bloody puddles she'd spotted outside the cabin's front door. Murphy decided she must have a well hidden masochistic streak, because her gaze instantly picked out more splotches around her. Everywhere. There were over a dozen, all glistening an eerie shade of black in the moonlight. Clearing her throat, she looked away.

Snow.

Nature's remedy.

Why hadn't she thought of it before?

Scooping up a handful, she packed it firmly then ran the snowball over the stranger's wide, slightly creased brow. His cheeks were hard and high, moist from a combination of sweat and melting snow, she noticed as she stroked the snowball over them, then his jaw. His whiskers scoured her fingertips as she ran the snowball over his lips, the slightly dimpled curve of his chin, down his throat, lower…

He gasped. Shuddered. Winced.

Before Murphy could catch her breath his thick, sandy-colored lashes swept up. Her gaze was captured by arresting blue eyes.

He glared up at her. “What are you doing?”

“Waking you up.”

“What happened?”

“You fainted.”

His gaze flashed with annoyance, and his scowl suggested he wasn't pleased by her terminology. Maybe “blacked out” would have been better?

“How long?” he asked.

“How long what?”

“How long was I out for?”

“Oh. I don't know. Two minutes.” She shrugged. “Three at the most. Maybe five. Are you ready to try standing again?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course. If you'd rather you can lay out here until you freeze, or"—her voice rose a shaky pitch, and she averted her attention to the blanket of snow just above the top of his head—"bleed to death. Whichever comes first.”

“Hell of a choice.”

“Yeah, well, this is one hell of a situation.” Her gaze dipped, meeting his. Murphy could have sworn she saw a glint of agreement shimmer in his eyes.

Crouching next to him, she again reached for his arm. This time it was she who detected shivers—emanating from the hard bands of muscle hidden beneath a protective layer of leather and sheepskin. “Let's see if we can get you inside before you, er, black out again.”

It took five minutes to finally get the man onto his feet. Sort of. While at the end of that time he was standing, most of his weight was on Murphy…and she felt every virile pound of it! He didn't faint again, she was thankful for that, although there were a few tense seconds when she had to tighten her hold on him, because the way he grunted and swayed made her think he was about to.

It took ten more very long minutes to get halfway to the cabin's front door. At this rate, she wondered if they'd get across the threshold by Christmas.

At five foot eight, Murphy McKenna wasn't short, yet she felt tiny and slight compared to this man's ruggedly built frame. A shiver coursed down her spine. This time, she wasn't entirely sure it had anything to do with the cold.

The man stopped, forcing her to stop as well. Angling his head, he glanced down. The bottom of his chin scraped the top of her head.

Murphy's heart skipped a beat when she glanced up, and found herself ensnared by his iridescent blue eyes. His breath was coming fast and hard, it looked misty on the moonlit air; she felt the warm puffs of it sear her upturned cheeks, her mouth. Both tingled in response.

She swallowed dryly. Her right arm was wrapped around his waist, her side and hip taking on as much of his weight as she could. Her left hand, she noticed only now, was splayed casually over his chest. Even through the padding of his jacket, she felt the beat of his heart pounding a strong, steady rhythm against her abruptly over-sensitive palm.

He leaned toward her. She grunted as she planted her feet in the snow and took on still more of his rock-solid weight. It wasn't the unwieldy burden she though it should be.

“Are you all right?” she asked, concerned. “You're not going to fai—pass out again, are you?”

He hesitated, as though even he was unsure of the answer. Squaring his broad shoulders, he shook his head. “Not if I can help it.” Tearing his gaze from hers, he again focused on the front door. On a goal that seemed, even to Murphy, to waver several miles away instead of the few feet it actually was. “Let's keep going.”

MURPHY STOOD in the doorway to her nephew's bedroom, her attention rooted indecisively on the stranger.

His brawny body was sprawled over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bedspread covering the bottom bunkbed. That the man was laying on a bunkbed at all, no matter what the print on the bedspread, looked incongruous and more than a little comical.

She had to give the guy credit; true to his word, he hadn't fainted again…until she'd eased him onto the bed. Then he'd gone belly up.

It was going to take more than a fistful of snow to bring him around this time. Again, she thought that was just as well.

It was time for the hard part. Time to muster her courage and take a look at his injured leg.

Murphy suppressed a groan. No matter how much she stalled, she couldn't avoid it forever. The stranger said he'd been in an accident. He was obviously bleeding. A lot. Since he was unconscious, and probably wouldn't be of much help even if he wasn't, the chore of stopping the bleeding fell to her.

What was the saying from that stupid cartoon her brother loved? Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Such was the price of being a good Samaritan. There was partial compensation in knowing she'd done what had to be done. She'd gone back for the man when she could have driven away. On that score, her conscience was clear. When push came to shove, she'd taken the only course of action she could live with.

That course of action, however, was double edged. It also carried with it a heavy weight of responsibility.

Her unspoken, yet nevertheless real, obligation to this man didn't end with going back for him. Or even with her somehow managing to get him into the house, sheltered from the storm. Oh, no, she wasn't that lucky.

That had been the easy part.

The hard part was still ahead.

Did she have the stomach—never mind the resolve and skill!—to staunch the bleeding in the man's thigh? Maybe. One thing she didn't have was the tools.

Packed in the trunk of her car was a first-aid kit that she'd never used. Murphy was only sketchily acquainted with its contents. There was a rudimentary emergency care pamphlet, but if she remembered correctly, the booklet was only twelve pages long.

She doubted Johnson & Johnson had gone into detail about what to do when one encountered a stranger in the middle of a blizzard who'd been in a car accident and was bleeding to death.

Still, profuse bleeding was profuse bleeding, right? Every emergency handbook worth its copyright covered that.

The man grunted.

Murphy's gaze snapped to him. His face was alarmingly pale. The hollows under his cheekbones were more pronounced. His lips were thinned, rimmed white, and his sandy brows were furrowed in a pain-pinched frown. His breathing was still ragged, but a bit more even. As far as she could tell, he was still out cold.

With a sigh, she turned on her heel and left not only the room, but the house. In less than a minute she returned with the first-aid kit in one hand and, draped over the crook of her other arm, a loudly purring Moonshine.

The latter was deposited on the living room sofa, the former she carried with her over to the phone. She picked up the receiver, held it to her ear. The dial-tone buzzed in her ear.

That was the good news. It took less than half a minute for a husky-voiced male operator to assure Murphy that a rescue team would indeed be sent out. The bad news, he said, was that in this storm there was simply no way to tell how long it would take the rescue workers to reach the cabin.

Still, knowing help was on the way made her feel better.

Murphy brought the first-aid kit into her nephew's bedroom. She flipped the wall switch. The combination light-and-brown-wicker-and-wood, five-blade ceiling fan overhead bathed the room in a soft white glow. That, mixed with the vibrant blues, greens and yellows of the pillowcase beneath the man's sandy-blond head, made his face look even paler.

He moved.

Murphy's gaze narrowed as she watched him drag the tip of his tongue over his lips. The muscles in her abdomen convulsed, and she chastised herself for the inappropriate reaction even as her attention traced the broad shelf of his shoulders, his flat stomach, lean hips, lower…

A whimper trapped in her throat.

The cartoonish pattern on the bedspread was no longer visible; it was obscured by dark, wet bloodstains.

Her stomach flip-flopped, and her fingers tightened around the white plastic first-aid kit. Her knees threatened to buckle as her mind raced backward to the last time she'd seen this much blood…

No, she was not going to think about that! Not now. She couldn't. Instead, she'd concentrate on stopping the man's bleeding as best she could until the rescue workers arrived. Until then she wouldn't allow herself to concentrate on anything else.

Murphy jerked her gaze from the bloodstained bedspread, her stomach churning. Her mouth set in a grim, determined line, she closed the bedroom door and slowly approached the bed.