“It hurts?” He looked down at her leg and then back into her eyes.
She nodded this time, sucked down a breath and fisted her right hand in his jacket, gripping it tightly.
Lowe tried to be gentle as he felt his way up to her knee, gauging her reaction. She didn’t tense or cry out. He worked his way lower again and the moment he neared her ankle, she yelped and kicked him with her good leg, catching him hard on the chest and knocking him back.
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.” Her blue eyes widened in horror as he rubbed at his sternum, clearing a muddy boot print from his checked fleece shirt.
“My fault.” He gazed down at her ankle, a frown knitting his eyebrows. “Not sure whether it’s a sprain or worse.”
“It’s a sprain,” she said, her voice a little too bright, as if she was trying to make herself believe that, or she could somehow twist fate to make it be a sprain and not a broken bone.
He removed his shirt and her eyes only widened further.
“What are you doing now?” Her gaze darted over his chest as he reached over behind him, gripped the back of his white T-shirt and pulled it off over his head.
“Field dressing.” He let the T-shirt fall onto his knees and put his shirt back on, was quick to button it and not only because of the cold. The feel of Cameo’s gaze on his bare chest wreaked havoc on him, had him heating to a thousand degrees and his skin feeling too tight. He looked around them and huffed when he realised he had used all the good sturdy wood for the fire. “Binding it will have to do for now. Might help a little.”
He tore his T-shirt into two pieces.
“Wait.” She sat up straighter and leaned forwards, pulled her gloves off and set them aside. “I’ll help. I’m trained in this kind of thing.”
“Trained in it?” He flicked a glance at her, lingered as her eyes locked with his and firelight danced over the right side of her face.
Damn, she really was beautiful.
She nodded. “One of the first things I did when I became a ranger.”
A ranger.
A lot of things about her suddenly made sense, except the fact there were men after her. That suddenly made a lot less sense for some reason. He couldn’t imagine why a park ranger would have armed men chasing after her.
She helped him with the bandage, pretty much took over and did it for him, and stopped just short of admonishing him at one point, which stopped him from pointing out that he didn’t have fancy training in the art of field medicine. It didn’t stop him from feeling a little less confident around her though.
He took over again when she fought a grimace, rolling the leg of her trousers back down and slipping her boot back on for her.
“Let me take a look at that arm.” He jerked his chin towards it and she didn’t fight him, shifted his coat from her shoulders and placed it over her legs, and then unzipped her own one.
Lowe moved around to her left side, kneeled and helped her slip her right arm free of the jacket and then eased it down her left one. He placed it over her legs as another layer of warmth and peered at the buff-coloured sweater she wore, one that was pure wool by the look of it. The little ranger really had come prepared, meaning she had known there was a high chance that escaping those men that were after her would end with her trekking through the woods.
He bet that the pack she had lost had everything she could possibly need to survive in the wild in it.
She tensed and looked away when he fingered the slit in her sweater, one that darted across her upper arm. “Is it bad?”
Lowe peered at the wound. “Just a graze. You got lucky. Bullet barely touched you. I’ll bandage it to keep the dirt out but it should heal nicely.”
The bleak look she gave him said she didn’t feel lucky, and when she looked at him like that, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders and she was too tired to bear it, he wanted to hold her close.
“I swear, Cameo, I’ll keep you safe. Nothing… or no one… is going to hurt you while I’m with you.”
She swallowed and nodded, her fair eyebrows furrowing as she looked deep into his eyes, reached her right hand up and touched his where it lingered on her left arm. “Thank you, Lowe.”
His gaze fell to her lips and then he forced it down to her arm. He busied himself with binding the wound before she could even think about removing her sweater. It was better she stayed in it, and not only because he didn’t want her getting colder than she already was. Her proximity was driving him crazy again, had him firmly skirting the edge and feeling desperate for some air as his bear side goaded him, trying to make him give in to his impulses.
It wasn’t going to happen.
He had sworn he would keep her safe and not try anything, and he meant to keep that promise.
But her hand lingered on his, the feel of her skin against his too much for him to bear, and for some godsdamned reason he couldn’t bring himself to make her stop, to make her take her hand away.
He stared at the bandage on her arm when he had finished tying it, savoured how good it felt to have her touching him, how right it felt.
“Cameo,” he started.
Lifted his eyes to hers.
Somehow found the strength to shut down the urges running rampant through him.
“You should get some rest.”
Not the words he had wanted to say to her, and not the ones she had wanted to hear judging by how she looked away from him and her cheeks coloured.
He took his hand away from hers, helped her back into her jacket and placed his one over her front to keep her warm. On a long sigh, he twisted and sank onto his backside beside her, coming to rest against the cold wall of the cave.
“I don’t think I can sleep,” she whispered and glanced towards the mouth of the cave.
He had wanted her to be nearest the fire to keep her warm, but now he could see that had been a mistake. She felt vulnerable being the one closest to the mouth of the cave. He stood and moved around her, eased to his ass on her right side, and looked at her.
“Is that better?” His eyes searched hers, some soft part of him hoping it was.
She nodded and surprised him by resting her head on his arm. Lowe risked it, couldn’t deny the urge that ran through him. He lifted his arm and placed it around her shoulders, tucked her against his chest and held her.
Watched over her as she drifted off to sleep.
Keeping his promise to her.
He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Whoever was after her would have to go through him to get to her.
Even if they brought an army and all the guns in the world.
He would protect her until his last breath.
Chapter 5
Cameo woke slowly, sleep refusing to release its grip on her. She huddled into the warmth of the jacket wrapped around her and her eyes shot wide open when she realised it wasn’t only a jacket draped across her shoulders. Lowe’s arm was too. His hand gently gripped her left shoulder, just above where the bullet had caught her, and the shock that rolled through her only grew more intense as she realised something else.
She had been sleeping with her head against his chest. Her heart drummed discordantly to his as it beat against her right ear, picking up pace as she tried to think of something to say. She wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to curse, hoped she hadn’t drooled on him, or that he wouldn’t make a big deal about the fact she had used him as a pillow.