Linc had never had such a question put to him and for a moment it took him aback. All these years he’d thought of himself as the cousin, the one standing just on the outside. And it wasn’t because Ross or Seth or Victoria had tried to make him feel that way. In reality it had been quite the opposite. Tucker’s children had treated him as though he’d been one of Tucker’s offspring, too. But there was no escaping facts. He wasn’t one of them. And yet he loved them just as much or more than if they had truly been his siblings.
“Yeah. I guess I do,” he murmured.
“I’m glad. Because she thinks you’re just about the next best thing to pajamas.”
Glancing away from her, he said, “I didn’t do anything special. Anyone would have gone in after those horses. I just happened to be the first one at the barn.”
That wasn’t the way Nevada had heard it. Victoria had told her that several of the ranch hands had been at the barn and they’d tried to hold Linc and keep him from running back into the burning building. They had not been able to stop him, and by the time Linc had emerged from the flames, the entire group had begun to think he was dead.
“Well, I’m sure your horses are happy about it. But I’ll bet they miss you.”
“Dr. Olstead won’t let me go near them. Bacteria, he reasons,” Linc muttered. “Hell, they’re cleaner than I am. The stalled ones get a bath every day.”
Nevada smiled with understanding. “Dr. Olstead is right. You don’t want to risk getting any sort of infection. It’s not that he thinks the horses are unclean, but there’s other things around a barn that might harbor bacteria. Like flies and things like that.”
“Yeah. I understand. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“No. You don’t have to like it,” she agreed.
Reaching for the scissors, she began to cut away the bandages on his hands. This task took longer, but Linc didn’t mind. In spite of all his protests it was more than nice to have this lovely woman touching him so gently, touching him as though she really cared about his health and well being.
Don’t start thinking along those lines, Linc. Just because a woman acts sweet and gentle on the outside doesn’t mean she’s all goodness on the inside.
His hands had been burned even worse than his arms and Nevada clicked her tongue with misgivings as she unwrapped each finger. “God, this must have been painful. Does any of it still hurt you?” she asked. “If it does, just let me know. I have painkillers in my bag.”
“No. None of it hurts. In fact, it mostly doesn’t have any feeling at all,” he told her. “If I touched your arm, I doubt I’d feel it.” At least not in his fingertips, Linc thought. But the rest of his body darn sure would.
She nodded soberly. “The nerve endings in your skin were burned.”
“Will it always be that way?”
Her brows pulled together as she gave her head a little shake. “I’m not sure about that, Linc. I think that problem will get better in time, but I can’t make you any promises. I’m just an RN not a doctor.”
She proceeded to clean his hand and arm and then slather it with the yellow goo. Once she had every spot of his limb covered with the stuff, she began to wind clean gauze around his arm.
“I guess there’ll be plenty of scars once the skin heals,” he mused aloud. “What about the hair on my forearms? Will it ever come back?”
She looked up at him and gently smiled. “I’m not totally certain about that either. I’d say probably. At least part of it. But who cares whether you have hair on your forearms? You can always wear long sleeves. They look more masculine to me, anyway.”
He drew in a deep breath and pushed it out. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
She shot him an annoyed look, then laughed softly. “Look, Linc, I’m going to be honest with you. A few scars or a lack of hair is nothing to what you could have had. It’s a miracle you’re alive. So you’d better be thankful.”
He glowered at her. “You think I need your preaching to tell me that?”
“You haven’t heard preaching from me—yet,” she warned.
“Hmmph,” he snorted. “For someone so little you’re sure full of sass.”
“That’s to make up for my size,” she reasoned pleasantly.
As far as Linc was concerned, he didn’t see a thing wrong with her size. Everything was put together perfectly. Too perfectly for his peace of mind.
“Can I wiggle my fingers?” he asked as he forced himself to focus on anything but her.
She raised up from ministering to his arm. “Sure. Wiggle all you want.”
Linc attempted to flex his bare fingers, which still looked like sticks of watermelon to him. “All the time I was in the hospital, I kept thinking how good it would feel to bend my fingers. But it—well,” he grimaced as he tried to close them into his fist. “It doesn’t feel all that good. They’re stiff.”
“That will soon change,” she promised. “I’m going to bandage each finger lightly so you can move them around and maybe use them just a little. But I mean very little.”
He looked at her with surprise. “You mean I don’t have to go around with my hands plastered against boards?”
She gave him a happy smile. “Nope. Now, isn’t that good news? And aren’t you sorry about all this whining and griping?”
The expression that stole over his face was mostly sheepish, but the upward curve of the corner of his lips told her he was definitely pleased.
“Maybe I have been a little cranky,” he admitted.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Is that normally your nature?”
He frowned. “Why do you ask that?”
Nevada made a palms up gesture. “Because I don’t know you, Linc Ketchum. I don’t know if you’re usually grouchy or cheerful or sweet or mean or what.”
“You’re not here to analyze my personality,” he reasoned. “And you don’t need to know any of those things just to doctor my hands.”
Nevada was going to be doing more than doctoring his hands, she wanted to point out, but she didn’t say that to him. She could see that it was disturbing to this man to have her here in the house. So far she’d tried to keep everything as light and playful as she could. And she hoped she could keep their time together on that same track. It wouldn’t do for both of them to get serious.
“Well, I guess I’ll learn for myself,” she said as she picked up a roll of gauze and started one end of it around his thumb. “Do you think you can tell me what you like to eat? Or is that a secret, too?”
“You don’t need to worry yourself about that either,” he told her. “Marina will be bringing up supper from the big house each evening.”
This was news to Nevada. Victoria really hadn’t had time yesterday to discuss some of the details about her stay here or her duties to Linc. She’d expected to be preparing some sort of meals for him and herself.
“That’s nice. But I hope she’ll allow me to do breakfast and lunch.”
He studied her through drooped lids and for the first time in Nevada’s life she felt her whole body react to a man in a purely sexual way. Heat filled her cheeks and she felt as though her whole body was soon going to be glowing like a firefly.
“What does a nurse know about cooking?”
Nevada drew in a bracing breath and told herself not to look at him. She couldn’t look