But now she was looking at him with something more than concern. “Okay, that’s it, we need to go to the hospital now. I think you have a concussion.”
“I don’t,” he said immediately, though of course he couldn’t be sure.
“Then you’re crazy and in need of psychiatric help. Evan, you’re asking me who the president is!”
“I know, I was kidding. Sort of. It’s just that I could swear you’re driving me to …” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. She’d pulled up right in front of it.
Her parents’ house.
Looking exactly as it had the last time he’d seen it, twelve and a half years ago.
Prom night.
The night he’d left Chicago and the girl of his heart, and thought it was for good.
Chapter Ten
When seeing Evan in the office, Meredith had managed to somehow separate her memories of him from the reality they were living today.
But pulling up outside the house she’d lived in when she’d dated him in high school—a house she’d only been back in for a short time now—she felt as if she were time traveling.
From the look on Evan’s pale face, he was clearly feeling the same thing.
“I bought the place from my mother when she moved to Florida last year,” she explained.
He looked relieved. “For a minute there, I thought I was going nuts.”
She took the keys out of the ignition and said, “For a minute there, I thought you were going nuts, too.”
“Thanks.”
She loved his dry humor. “I should have put a Pixies CD on and asked how you did on your term paper,” she continued. “As long as we didn’t pass a Hummer or something, I probably could have had you going.”
“You’re cute,” he said, getting out of the car. “Real cute.”
“Uh-oh, I’ve been demoted.” She singled out her house key as they stepped onto the front porch. “A few minutes ago you said I was beautiful.”
He pointed at his head. “I was injured. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Ah.” She put the key in the lock and clicked it open. “Good excuse.”
They stepped into the cool, air-conditioned foyer.
Evan looked around as if he was in a time warp.
“I know,” she said. “I have to redecorate. I just haven’t had time. You remember where the kitchen is?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
“Go on in and have a seat. I’ll run and get the first-aid kit, then meet you there.”
She rushed upstairs on legs that were shaking. Evan looked bad. He looked really bad. And it was all her fault, she thought, scrambling into the bathroom and throwing the cabinet doors open. Her father had always told her she had to be way more careful walking around downtown Chicago. He’d warned her over and over again that she was too lax about things like personal safety.
She, in turn, had told him he was paranoid, that she’d be fine and he just had to stop worrying so much.
She pushed around in the cabinet, moving cleaning supplies, curlers, half-used bottles of shampoo, until she finally found the white plastic box with the red cross on the front. It was about a thousand years old, but she doubted anything in it had ever been opened.
She grabbed a washcloth to clean Evan’s face, thought about the amount of blood, and put the washcloth down in favor of a full-size bath towel.
Thus armed, she hurried back downstairs to the kitchen, where Evan was sitting on a stool by the counter, shirtless, still looking around in a bemused way.
He’d already cleaned the blood off his cheek and while the wound was a bit less dramatic than she’d thought, it was still more dramatic than he’d indicated. He had folded a square of paper towels that he was using to alternately apply and release pressure.
“I threw my shirt away,” he said, in answer to her unasked question. “I figured it was less rude of me to sit here half-naked than to sit here in a disgusting bloody shirt.”
“Good call,” she said, but her mouth was suddenly dry.
His upper body was far more muscular and developed than it used to be, cut and contoured with sinewy muscle. His skin was bronzed from the sun of wherever it was he’d been this past decade, and he looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of a Sports Illustrated sun-and-surf edition.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, pouring antiseptic onto a cotton pad.
“It doesn’t tickle,” he said, eyeing the pad dubiously.
“Neither will this,” she said, gently pressing the antiseptic to the wound.
Evan cussed and drew back.
“I’m sorry!” Meredith stepped back. “It’s a necessary evil. You don’t want to get an infection.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I’m not sure about that. It might hurt less than this.”
“Yeah, until your face turns green and falls off. Come on.” She put her hand on his head, her fingers touching his dark hair for the first time in ages. She swallowed, took a quick, steadying breath and said, “On the count of three.”
“Don’t you want to say ‘this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me’?”
She smiled. “Sort of, but I’ll refrain.”
“Thank you.” He winced as she put the antiseptic to his face again.
Once it was cleaned up some, a closer examination of the wound revealed that it actually wasn’t quite as bad as Meredith had feared. It probably didn’t need stitches. “I think one of these sealing bandages will be good enough,” she said to Evan.
“I told you it wasn’t so fatal.”
She shrugged and took a bandage out of the first-aid kit and unwrapped it. “If it were me, I’d still go to the E.R. and make sure I don’t need stitches. You might end up with a scar.”
“My face isn’t as pretty as yours to begin with.” He grinned. “Besides, a scar would make me look more rugged, don’t you think? I’ll have to make up a story that’s a lot cooler than being outrun and sucker punched by a couple of punks, though. Maybe I could say I killed a guy defending a nun and a group of orphans. Ouch!”
“Sorry.” Meredith grimaced. “It wasn’t on smoothly.”
“Jeez, did any skin come up with that bandage?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got another one.” She smiled and put a new bandage on neatly. “There. Good as new. Almost.”
He reached a hand up to touch the spot and grazed her hand instead. For a moment they lingered, fingertip to fingertip, and something coursed through Meredith’s chest with the power of a freight train.
She drew her hand back and tried to look as if she hadn’t noticed the accidental contact or felt the intense reaction.
Evan touched the spot on his cheek. “Perfect.” He looked into her eyes. “You could have a future in nursing.”
“I hope not,” she said absently, still thinking about his touch. “I’m already working two jobs.” As soon as the words left her lips, Meredith clapped her mouth shut. How could she be so stupid? She was never that unprofessional. It was