She’d already bitten into her sandwich. “This is heaven on earth. I’ve never tasted anything so good.”
Cody watched her chew with lips that were full and warming up. To distract himself, he took out a thermos he’d filled with the last of the second pot of coffee Mom had made this morning. He’d doctored it with plenty of sugar and cream. He poured half into the lid cup and handed it to her.
“It’s barely warm,” he warned.
She accepted it and took two gulps. “It’s wonderful.”
He poured the rest into the cup and tried to get her to take it, too.
“No. You drink it.”
“I brought it for you.” When she hesitated, he ordered, “Drink.”
She did, sipping this time while she ate the rest of her sandwich. When she finished eating, she brushed crumbs from her lap, her fastidious behavior at odds with the reality of her soaked, mud-covered clothes. Cody hid his smile.
She sighed. “That was the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.” Her smile warmed him to his toes. All these years later and she was so much lovelier than he could have imagined. All of her realized potential was a miracle, while he’d lost his.
Don’t go there. Concentrate on getting her out of here.
While he ate, Cody took in his surroundings.
“Going up to the ridge here isn’t an option. It’s too steep.” He could do it alone, but not with Aiyana on his back. He kept that last part to himself. “So we’ll follow the ravine along the river until we reach a shallower incline.”
She’d been watching him make his assessment. “You could leave me here and walk out for help.”
She was being brave. His protective instincts kicked him in the ribs. True, in the past, they’d gotten him into trouble—Stacey came to mind—but there was no way he was leaving Aiyana alone.
“Nope,” he said, rejecting her idea.
“Just like that. No argument?” She’d stiffened. “You’re being stubborn. You can’t carry me out of this ravine.”
He set his jaw. “I can and I will. I’m not leaving you. If anything happened to me on the way back, you’d be out here alone for another night. I’m not taking that chance.”
Her mood shifted as if being out here another night alone terrified her. She nodded and said, “Okay. Thanks.” Beneath that simple word hovered profound relief.
Again he disliked the way she looked at him as though he were some kind of hero. He wasn’t. He hadn’t been worthy of that kind of designation in years, not since he’d left his hometown.
He’d left Accord to attend school in California. Many times since then, he wished he’d taken another road, one that had led to a different destination. He should have made better choices.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
Let it go, Jordan. Concentrate on this, the here and now.
He roused himself. Now was a time for action, not thought.
“First things first,” he said, rummaging in the bag. He pulled out sweaters and a pair of pants.
It was obvious she’d sensed his withdrawal, but she smiled gamely. “What is that? Some kind of magician’s bag? It seems to be bottomless.”
He grinned, but it probably looked fake. He hated that he’d come to deal with people on only a surface level. When was the last time he’d been himself with someone? Truly himself?
“Now that you’re fed, we need to get you out of those wet clothes and into dry ones.”
Her dark-eyed gaze slid away. “I’m—I’m going to need help. With the shape my shoulder’s in, I don’t think I can get out of these.”
He liked her shyness. “I can help. Let’s start with your jacket.”
After only one touch, he realized how difficult the task was going to be. “You’re hurt pretty bad everywhere, aren’t you?”
“It was a hard fall.”
Five minutes later, with great care, he’d managed to take off her jacket and sweater. He reached for the buttons of her blouse.
She brushed his hands away. “I can at least do that.”
When she’d finished, he took over because she couldn’t shrug out of it without using her shoulder. Underneath, she wore a mauve bra. A livid, dark, round bruise colored her chest between and onto her breasts. Cody hissed in a breath. “How did that happen?”
“I landed on my camera, on the lens.”
“Christ, that must have hurt.”
Her cheeks, he noticed, were pink against the slowly warming gray of her skin. In college, he’d had plenty of girlfriends. Seeing a woman in her bra was not a big deal for him. Being in front of him in her underwear was apparently a big deal for Aiyana. Obviously, showing herself to a man was not something she did often, or casually.
“It hurt.” An understatement, he was sure. “I couldn’t breathe for a long time after I hit bottom.”
He palpated her bruised shoulder, tested it to see how far she could move it. Not far. “This will be cold, but it has to be done.”
He took her damp sweater, ran back to the rushing stream and dunked it into the icy water then returned and pushed her bra strap aside to place the wet sweater on Aiyana’s shoulder. She flinched.
“I know, it’s cold.”
“It isn’t that.” She hesitated before pushing the sweater aside. “It’s...this.”
A red slash across her upper arm looked sore. “A sharp tree branch on the way down?”
She bit her lip and glanced away.
His hair stood on end. “What is it?”
A lungful of air gusted out of her. “I didn’t want to say anything, but...it’s a graze from a bullet. Someone shot at me.”
“What?”
“I said someone shot at me.”
“I heard you.” He’d said it too sharply and moderated his tone. “What do you mean, someone shot at you? That’s not possible.”
“It is. It happened, Cody.” Her expression had closed, flattened.
He rummaged in the first-aid kit and dabbed at the graze with a sterile wipe. She winced. “Gunshots? Out here? That’s outlandish.”
“It happened.”
He went cold.
She could have been seriously hurt, or killed. “It must have been hunters. They need to be more careful. Why didn’t the guy apologize, or even help you? Maybe because he would have been hunting illegally.” He covered the cut with antibiotic cream and taped gauze into place. “There shouldn’t have been hunters in the park. It’s illegal, especially given the heavy foot traffic this place gets. This is exactly what the law is meant to protect against—someone being shot by accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
He’d been checking out her arm, front and back, but stopped to sit back and look into her eyes. Everything inside him stilled. He was afraid to think what he was actually thinking—that someone shot this woman on purpose. “What are you saying?”
“I thought it was an accident, too, until the man started chasing me. He shot at me more than once, but luckily missed.”
Icy, icy breath caught in his lungs. “In the name of God, why?”
“I