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She didn’t even know the man, had never seen him before today, but as he spoke she became aware of something else: there was a rawness about him she couldn’t name. Something in that raspy timbre that resonated feelings primal and violent.
He rattled off a few medication names that sounded like gibberish to her, and she didn’t ask him to repeat himself, just hoped she could remember them when she came face-to-face with a wall of gibberish-sounding drug names.
Then she’d come back here and keep an eye on the good doctor with the terrible name, because alarm bells were ringing in her head.
Chelsea suffered the whole situation with more dignity than Ellory could’ve mustered, and directed the conversation back to what she really wanted to talk about. “If I got frostbite in the mine and I wasn’t in the snow, Jude’s going to have it for sure, isn’t he?”
“Nothing is ever certain.” Ellory said it too quickly. It sounded like a platitude. She shook her head and tried again with better words. “You can’t compare your situation to his for a couple of reasons: women don’t hold heat as well as men do, and your boots are different. Even if they are the same brand, the fit will be different. If his have more room inside than yours they’ll hold heat better. If he’s taken shelter in a smaller space than you did, like Anson … Dr. Anson … was saying, he could just be warmer …”
Anson pulled out the footrests on the wheelchair and carefully positioned Chelsea’s feet on the metal tray. “Find a pillow for her.”
Ellory knew he was speaking to her, even though he didn’t look at her. She hurried to the main desk and the office behind, where she knew she’d find some. When she presented him with two slender pillows from the office, he put one under Chelsea’s feet and rose. “Would you like the other pillow to sit on?”
“Yes.” She made as if to rise and Anson put his hands out to stop her. “No walking. No standing. When you need to go to the bathroom, someone’s going to have to go with you. Right now, I’ve got you. Luckily, you weigh about as much as a can of beans …” He caught her under the arms and lifted. Ellory slid the pillow beneath and then stood back as he returned Chelsea to her seat, lifting a brow pointedly at him when she saw his shoulder catch again and a wave she could actually name cross his handsome features: pain. His shoulder definitely hurt.
She really had to stop thinking about how hot he was. It wasn’t helping at all. It wasn’t breaking her resolution to think that the untouchable doctor rescue guy was hot, but it might lead her to other thoughts. It also wasn’t her fault that his eyes looked like moss growing on the north side of a tree … deep, earthy green blending to brown. Was that hazel or still green if she looked …?
He was staring at her. It took a couple of nervous heartbeats for her to realize that it wasn’t because he was a mind-reader.
Oh, yeah, she’d made the Ahh, your shoulder does hurt face at him. Because it did. He’d made the pain face, she’d made the ahh face, and now he was making the scowl face.
He didn’t know she was sexually harassing him in her mind.
While she was trying to decide what she was supposed to be thinking, the man pivoted and walked straight through the archway leading to the rest of the resort.
Where was he going?
Crap.
She should have gone after the medicine by now.
He was going to disturb Mira, maybe make her leave the love nest and come down here.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Chelsea,” she babbled, and rushed after him in a flurry of flowing skirts and jingling bracelets, but she was too late to see which direction he’d headed. The elevators all sat on the bottom floor, where she was.
The man was a ninja. A cranky, frosty ninja.
Ducking into the stairwell, Ellory tilted her head to listen, hoping he wasn’t outside earshot. The plush carpeting that blanketed the hallways and stairs made it hard to tell which way he’d gone. “Anson?” Tentative call unanswered, she stepped back into the hallway.
Okay, so he didn’t go upstairs by any means, he wasn’t heading for Mira and Jack’s suite.
Mira’s office? He did want antibiotics for Chelsea. She turned to the right, the shorter hallway, gathered her skirts to her knees so they’d stop the damned swirling, and ran. No yelling. Yelling disturbed people. And every single person in the lodge, except for maybe the two upstairs sheltered from all this information overload in their love nest, were disturbed enough with the current situation.
One turn and then another, she reached the final hallway just in time to see Anson reach the end and turn toward the wall outside the clinic.
Before she could call out to him, he reared back and slammed his fist through the drywall.
The loud slam and cracking sound stunned her into staring for a couple of seconds. Long enough for the pain to reach his brain and make him pull his hand out of the hole while the other gripped his poor shoulder. If it hadn’t hurt before he’d done that …
“You broke the wall,” she muttered as she trotted forward, no longer running. She was not at all sure how to respond to this masculine and aggressive display. She didn’t know anyone who hit walls when they were upset. Generally, she kept company with people who avoided violence. “I have the keys to Mira’s office, we can get whatever you need for Chelsea. I’ve been keeping an inventory of supplies.”
He finally turned to look at her and she saw it again—he wasn’t just upset. She saw desolate, blind torture in his hollow eyes. It robbed her of any ability to speak.
Whatever she’d thought earlier about his motivation behind taking this kind of work, she was now certain: It had nothing to do with being an adrenaline junkie or any kind of fixation on the dream of being the big hero. This mattered to him. This hurt him.
She did the only thing she could, reached out and touched him. Tried to ground him here with her.
Contact of her palm with his stubble-roughened cheek sharpened his gaze, bringing him back from wherever he’d gone.
“Don’t worry about the wall. We’ll fix it. Everything will be okay.” She whispered words meant to soothe him.
It took him a few seconds, but his brows relaxed and he nodded, looking down at the bloody knuckles on his hand and then at the wall. “That was pretty stupid. She’s going to give me hell, isn’t she?” He mustered a smile while simultaneously pulling his head back from her hand.
He didn’t want her touching him … Okay. It’s not like they really knew one another, and some people just didn’t like to be touched.
It wasn’t about her. It wasn’t judgment on her.
Ellory pulled her thoughts away from the vulnerable nerve he’d accidentally struck and played along, faking a grin with her tease. “You have no idea. She’s going to make you cry like a baby.”
His smile was equally slight, but it was a start. And it reminded her of where she should make him focus. Sobering, she reached for his hand but didn’t touch him, a request, open palms. “Can I see it?”
Okay, that might’ve been a test.
She’d been rejected more times in her life than any person ought to be—it wasn’t anything new to her—but the second she’d found out that he was a doctor he’d become her partner in dealing with this and keeping Mira out of it. She needed him to actually connect with her and be her partner in it. And a good person didn’t abandon her partner when he was hurting.
When he placed his large, bloody-knuckled hand in hers, her relief was so keen she had to fight the urge to squeeze and wind her fingers in his. He didn’t shun her. Recoiling was about something else. He didn’t find her lacking.
Nice skin, and considering she hadn’t had any male contact since she’d come back from Peru it wasn’t surprising that she wanted to relish the contact a little bit.
She forced herself to examine his knuckles before he caught on, paying careful attention to the cracked and rapidly swelling skin. “Can you move your fingers for me?”
He made a small sound as he got his fingers going, but his fingers moved smoothly at the knuckle, despite the swelling. “Well, we both know that it’s an old wives’ tale that you can’t move something that’s broken. Can’t know for sure that it’s not, but it looks good. Sorry, have to do this …”
Still holding his injured hand for support, she stroked her fingers over the abused skin, just firmly enough to feel the structure. She knew it hurt, he stopped breathing until she stopped touching it. “Don’t think it’s broken. Everything feels intact. Could be some hairline fracture, though. Guess we’ll have to take a wait-and-see approach on this, along with poor Chelsea’s toes.”
Breathing resumed, and he pulled his hand back, nodding. “I don’t think it’s broken either, but I’m a fan of X-ray …”
“Come on. Let’s get this cleaned up, then we’ll get Chelsea’s medicine into her, and I’ll go and tell Mira what’s going on so she can join the fun later. While the storm is here, you two will keep watch over our patient guests in shifts so she can have time with Jack and you can have some rest. Welcome to your first rotation at Silver Pass Blizzard Clinic, Dr. Graves.”
“Time with Jack?” he asked, as she turned toward the door.
Ellory fished the keys from her coat pocket, unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping on one set of lights as she went. “The past six months have been really hard for Mira, not that she’d admit it to anyone. Her fiancé was a louse. They broke up and the universe rewarded her for choosing to take care of herself.”
“Jack from the avalanche, or do you mean her reward is having to do jack-all?”
Ellory peered at him. “Have you never heard the name Jack before?”
“I have and I’ve met a guest called Jack. But it’s also a noun or an adjective.” He followed her into the clinic. “Your manner of speaking is unusual. I’m looking for landmarks.”
She decided not to comment on that—he didn’t seem like a big talker and she had jobs before her. She talked strangely. She dressed wrong. Blah-blah-blah.
“I’ve been making notes of the supplies I took to the lobby. We’ll just write down whatever we need, I’ll go tell Mira and you can get the medicine for Chelsea. We should probably start charts for everyone too, but since your hand looks like hell, you tell me what you want it to say and I’ll do the writing.”
Anson followed her, enjoying the floral wake. The tropical scent reminded him she’d said something about Peru earlier. “Were you on a medical mission before you came here?”
She unlocked the drug cabinet and opened the doors, then flipped on a light above it and pointed at the bottles to direct his attention. “Medical mission? Oh, no. You mean in Peru. No, I was at a …” She looked sidelong at him, her expression growing wary. “I was at an ayahuasca retreat.”
The word was familiar somehow, but between the pain in his hand, the pain in his shoulder and the headache he’d been nursing since he’d decided to turn the group around he couldn’t place it. “I know I should know what that is, but it’s eluding me.”
“It’s a place you go to have …” She stumbled along, clearly hedging and not really wanting to tell him.
People who avoided a direct answer had something to hide, either because it embarrassed them or they expected disapproval. Which was when he remembered what ayahuasca was. “Ayahuasca is a hallucinogen, isn’t it?”
Her sigh confirmed it. “It’s not like LSD or hard drugs. It’s a herbal and natural way of expanding your consciousness. I went there for a spirit quest under the care of a shaman—someone who knows about use of the plant and how to make the decoction properly. Someone who could help me understand everything I needed to know beforehand. And before you say anything, I’m not a drug user. I don’t smoke anything. I only drink alcohol once a year—champagne on New Year’s with Mirry. And nothing else remotely dodgy the rest of the year.” As she spoke, her volume increased, along with the tension between her brows. “My body is a freaking temple, Judgy McGravedigger.”
Anson lifted both hands, trying to put the brakes on the situation before she got really angry. Obviously he’d hit a nerve, she’d gone from quiet and somewhat babbly to angry because he’d called it a hallucinogen. “I’m not judging, but I am curious. And I agree your body is a temple.”
Smooth.
When she turned back to her task he focused on the cabinet again and the array of medicines, and changed the subject. “Well stocked.”
She went with it and didn’t comment on his completely unacceptable remark about her body. “Mirry’s a planner. She likes to be prepared for anything. She’s always been good like that, never lets anyone down.” A clipboard hung inside the cabinet, but where he’d expected to see an inventory sheet had been clipped a single piece of notebook paper, a list of supplies in a scrolling, extravagant script. She picked it up and began writing again.
Mirry? Always been?
Ellory wasn’t a nurse …
Sister? “Are you Ellory Dupris?” Anson put the two names together as he plucked one bottle of antibiotics from the shelf and set it on her clipboard so she could get a good look at the spelling and dose of medication.
“Ellory Du …? Oh, no. My name is Ellory Star.”
She scribbled down the medicine then put the bottle into a little plastic basket. “You look for any other medicines, I’m going to get the supplies to clean your knuckles up.” Before she headed away she turned back to him with a little pinch between her brows. “I’m sorry I made fun of your name. It wasn’t nice. But in my defense it’s kind of a terrible name. You should change it. Pick something more positive.”
Pick something? “You picked Star, didn’t you?”
“Yep.”
Okay … He’d think about that later. “You do work here, though.”
“Licensed massage therapist, which is my primary occupation, I guess. I’ve completed training and passed boards to be a physiotherapy assistant in Texas, but I haven’t done any office work on it or taken boards here. The closest I came was a mission where the leader had back trouble and I helped her with the daily exercises her actual treatment prescribed … helped her handle being out in the field,” she answered, fishing a badge from under her sweater and answering the question that he’d been working toward.
Anticipating. She really was perceptive. And the occupations fit. But then again, she could’ve said artist, pagan priestess, or tambourine player and he would’ve believed her. So, a massage therapist who called the owner’s daughter and resort doctor ‘Mirry.’
He plucked another medication from the cabinet, the mildest prescription-level pain medicine Mirry … Dr. Dupris … had in stock, and put it on the clipboard. “I put another medicine there for pain for Chelsea. Frostbite pain is monstrous.”
Shrugging out of his coat, he pushed his sleeves up and stepped over to the sink to wash his hands, paying special attention to the puffy and bloody knuckles. He gave his fingers a few more slow flexes. Burning. Tenderness. But no bone pain. He knew about bone pain, just as he knew about frostbite pain. So she was right, even without having that information at her disposal. Good eye.
“Oh, my God, that’s all you …”
He turned away from the sink, hand still under the water. “What’s all me?”
“I was hoping that the coat was puffier than it seems to be.”
He briefly considered not asking her for clarification, but he needed all the information he could get to keep up in conversation with this woman. “Why were you hoping my coat was puffy?”
“You’re seriously beefy. Shoulders a mile wide, muscled. It’s going to make working on you hard. I was hoping that some of that was your gear, your coat … I’ve got pretty strong hands and upper body, but you’re going to be a tough case.” She’d put a tray on the table, an array of antiseptics, gauze, tapes and ointments on it, and then went to write the medicine on her special clipboard.
“No, I won’t. I don’t need to be worked on.” He didn’t mention the compliment. Best ignore that attraction she’d all but said was mutual.
“How’s it feeling?”
Good. She wasn’t going to push the subject. “Nothing broken but the wall and my self-control. Bruised. Some abrasions …” He dried his hands on paper towels and wandered toward the table. “Maybe a mild sprain.” He’d hit the wall hard.
“After you give the medicine to Chelsea, I want you on my table.”
“Ellory, I don’t need it.”
“Suffering for no reason doesn’t make you tough, it makes you stupid.” She made a noise he could only consider a verbal shrug, “Your shoulder needs working on. If you want that thing to heal up so you can get back out there to find Jude when the snow lets up, let me help you.”
He should’ve seen that coming. Her vocation was one hundred percent hands on, and from what he could tell by having observed her, she was on a mission to take care of the world.
The idea had some appealing qualities. Not the least of which the prospect of having her hands on his body … She might be dressed like a crazy person, considering the season and latitude, and conversing with her might be like running a linguistic obstacle course, but strangely neither of those things made her unappealing. And neither did the revelation about her spirit quest.
But he didn’t really deserve comfort, and it was possible that his shoulder would calm down on its own in a little while.
“Maybe later. I should stick around the lobby. Keep a watch on them and the weather.”
“Have you seen the radar? The storm is going to be with us for a while, hours and hours. We’ll leave one of the radios with your people in the lobby and they can call us if …” The lights flickered, stopping her flow of words and her hands. When the power steadied and stayed on, she continued, “We’re going to lose electricity.”
“Maybe. We should see about making preparations, on the off chance …”
“It’s not an off chance, Anson. It happens in every bad storm that hits the pass. Summer. Winter. Doesn’t matter what kind of storm. It’s not the whole town, but the lines to the lodge are dodgy, always breaking or going out for some reason. Tree limbs. High winds. Accumulation of heavy snow or ice …”
“I thought you were just in Peru.”
“And before that Haiti. And before that the Central African Republic. Before that Costa Rica. But I was born and raised in Silver Pass. I needed to come home after my retreat, and Mira offered me a place to work. I have a history with the lodge. I know what I’m talking about. Nothing ever changes here. The power will go out.”
“What does a massage therapist do in those places?”
“Dig ditches. Build dams. Distribute food, clothing, or whatever the mission is. And I help at the end of the day when people are worn out and hurting from all the manual labor.” She disappeared into the office, and after some mucking around in there came out with a file folder, some forms, and another clipboard. “And there have been a few projects where I ended up with the same project leader, and I think she took me along as much to help keep her on her feet as to help with the actual project.”
She left him to clean and dress his hand and made some notes in Chelsea’s chart.
She’d grown up at the lodge, which explained why she was on such intimate terms with the owners. “You knew Dr. Dupris growing up?”
“Yes, and before you dig further she’s my best friend. I love her more than anyone else in the whole world and if I’m upsetting you by making you help with the skiers, or making you let me help you, you’re just going to have to get over it. She’s having some much-needed downtime, and I’m going to take care of her people. Right now you’re one of them, Dr. Graves. So suck it up, get the medicine into Chelsea and meet me at the massage therapy room. It’s three doors down. There’s a sign.” She locked the drug cabinet and then turned and tossed her keys to him.
He instinctively caught them with his right hand, and regretted it. The combination of flying metal hitting his throbbing palm and the quick jerk of his arm tweaking his shoulder doubled the pain whammy that followed.
“Fine.” Not fine. Annoyed. But as annoying as it was, she had a point, and if she could help, he’d make use of her.
“Lock the door when you leave. And turn off the lights. No wasting fossil fuels.”
At least she didn’t gloat.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN ELLORY KNOCKED on Mira’s door, she wondered if she would be interrupting something she didn’t want to interrupt.
Not usually one to be shy about sex, Ellory could only blame her squeamishness on the fact that being around Anson was making her think naughty thoughts, and now she was acutely aware that she wasn’t allowed to follow through with them.
She hadn’t specifically said her resolution not to date included no hook-ups, but she was trying to break that cycle as she’d spent her adult life sublimating her desire for love with lots of sex. Safe, sterile sex. So in the spirit of the resolution it had to include hooking up with handsome, inexplicably surly, dog-owning doctors—because Anson and his mile-wide shoulders were the best Fling Contender in Silver Pass.
She scrambled out of the stairwell on the top floor, already avoiding the elevators so she didn’t get trapped when the power went off, and jogged down the corridor to Mira’s Stately Pleasure Dome.
In the plus column, Anson would never want to date her, so her Stupid Resolution wasn’t in danger. He’d already remarked on finding her strange—unsurprising as most people who didn’t move in her circles found her odd. Add to that him now thinking she was someone who would use the spirit quest as a reason to go to the rainforest and take drugs …
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