She tried to conceal her confused emotions from Alex as she lowered her feet from the stool and blinked up at him.
Her heart was racing, and Macy heard a roaring in her ears. She hoped it was from exhaustion and not a sexual reaction to Alex Blocker standing there in her clinic. No, that couldn’t be. Macy Jackson didn’t have reactions like that. And had she really asked him to marry her? She almost groaned with embarrassment.
Everybody knew that Macy had more important things to do with her life than fool around with men. There had been that one exception five years ago with Alex. And she didn’t like thinking about it most of the time.
With Alex back in town, she’d have a hard time forgetting.
While she’d been woolgathering, Alex had gone back outside and retrieved the supplies. He reappeared in the doorway. “This stuff is heavy. Where do you want me to put it?”
Macy felt her face grow warm. Here she was having hot flashes about Alex, and he was standing there with his arms full of boxes. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “I’m so tired tonight, I can barely think.” It was a better excuse than the real one.
She was going to have to come to terms with their one little lapse from reality five years ago when she’d allowed herself to think they might have started something. No, she had to keep her mind on the task at hand. She’d have plenty of time to revisit her one night with Alex later.
She just wished it hadn’t happened. No, she didn’t. For one very wonderful thing had come out of that. And now that Alex was here, she was going to have to deal with the results of that night. And so was Alex, even if he didn’t know about it. Yet.
She pushed herself up from the chair. “I guess I should see what you’ve got. We’re in a lull right now, but it won’t last long if the last few hours are any indication. I’d better get as much put away as I can before I get another flood of patients.”
“Just show me where.”
Trying to ignore the sparks of attraction practically snapping between them, Macy peered into the top box in Alex’s muscular arms. “Those look like first-aid supplies. I suppose I should leave them out right where I can get to them,” she said, thinking out loud. “Pretty much all my patients tonight have been broken bones and lacerations.” She showed Alex to one of the two examining rooms.
Alex lowered the boxes to the floor near the exam table. “You want me to divvy this stuff up so you’ll have some in each room?”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? Was she really that exhausted, or did Alex’s mere presence keep her from thinking clearly? It had to be a little of both. “That’s a great idea,” she finally said. Alex didn’t comment on her delayed response, but went straight to work.
Grateful that Alex was distracted from her for the moment, Macy turned to one of the other boxes. These, too, could be divided up between the two examining rooms. Trying to ignore Alex’s too-charismatic presence, she concentrated on putting everything away.
“I assume your place is okay,” Alex said, trying to ease the heavy blanket of tension that had settled over them, after they’d worked for a while. “I hear the new part of town where all the town houses and apartments are wasn’t in the tornado’s path.” He assumed that Macy had set up house in one of the new, upscale neighborhoods rather than in an old one.
“Everything’s fine. Some limbs and a few trees down, but the tornado missed us.” Macy had been chagrined to realize that, at first, she’d thought the damage in her neighborhood was terrible before she’d seen what was left of the trailer park.
Alex started to say something, but the clinic door swung open.
“Dr. Jackson, I need your help outside,” a middle-aged man shouted frantically. “My son is hurt. Bad.”
Macy hurried outside to find a woman hovering over a boy, his face white with pain, stretched out in the back of a battered pickup truck. A strong gust of wind whistled through the pines overhead, showering everyone with cold drops of water, and Macy shivered with the unexpected drenching. “We have to get him inside.”
She leaned over the side of the truck and spoke to the boy, not one of her regular patients.
Alex stepped up behind her. “Do you have a backboard?” he asked quietly, his warm breath sending shivers of delight skimming down Macy’s spine.
It surprised her that he seemed to know instinctively what she suspected. The boy could have a back injury, and any wrong move could cause the damage to be more severe. She had to think. “Yes, in the storage area.”
Alex turned to go get it, and Macy climbed into the bed of the truck to get a better look at her patient.
A quick examination showed that the backboard was probably not necessary, but it would make the boy more comfortable when they moved him inside.
The technician who usually helped with the portable X-ray machine hadn’t made it in, so she was going to have to do everything herself. At least Alex knew something about first aid. She’d enlist his help, as long as his presence wasn’t too distracting.
“I’m not going to be able to do much for him here,” Macy told the boy’s parents while she waited for Alex to return with the backboard. “But I can make him more comfortable until we can get him to the hospital in Florence.”
The man nodded, apparently relieved that something could be done. “What can I do?”
“When Alex gets back with the backboard you can help carry your son in. In the meantime, I’m going to try to call the hospital in Florence and see if they can send an ambulance out to pick him up. Otherwise, you may have to get him there yourself.”
For now, she would do what she could.
BLOCK WATCHED as the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot of the small clinic, and he glanced at Macy. She had to be dog tired. He could see in the slump of her shoulders that whatever reserve of energy she’d been operating with was long gone. Her face was drawn, and dark smudges rimmed her eyes. Her curly chestnut hair, once pinned into a tidy ball, had long since escaped from its constraints and tumbled loose and wild around her shoulders. She sagged against the doorjamb, and Block wondered if that was the only thing that kept her from collapsing.
“Come inside,” he said, taking her fine-boned hand and trying to forget the sparks he felt every time he touched her. Her fingers were cold, and her grip was weak.
She nodded, but seemed not to have the energy to speak as she followed him into the clinic.
“You’re limping,” she said, seeming to have suddenly come awake.
“No, I’m not.” Damn. He hadn’t wanted her to notice.
“Yes, you are. Come here. Let me see.”
Block blew out a long exasperated breath. The last thing he needed was to have her touching him, feeling him, setting him on fire. “It’s just an old injury that’s been slow to heal. And it always bothers me when it rains.”
“Then more reason that I should take a look at it,” she said, brooking no nonsense. “You could’ve reinjured it.”
“It healed the first time. It’ll heal again.”
“No, it won’t. Take off your pants,” she said in a whiskey-sour voice that would have seemed sultry in different circumstances.
“Excuse me?” Just listening to the innocent command in that come-hither voice had a part of his body that shouldn’t be awake standing at full attention.
“Oh, puh-lease. I can’t examine your leg if you don’t let me look at it. I’m fully familiar with male anatomy,” she said primly. “I won’t swoon.”
Yeah, but maybe he would, Block couldn’t help thinking. Finally realizing that he didn’t want to aggravate his