Ben tapped his clipboard and nodded, and then turned for the door. “I’ll get to the paperwork, then.”
“So what have we got here?” she asked her patient. Wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Spence’s right arm, she leaned over the grimacing man and carefully drew back the blanket that covered his left hand.
The area across the back of his hand and halfway up his forearm was red and blistered, but Delia was relieved to find it looked no more serious than a second-degree burn, something she could treat here at the clinic.
Spence grimaced and Zach moved to his side, laying his large, reassuring hand on Spence’s shoulder.
“Hang in there, buddy,” he murmured gently.
Delia felt a wave of emotion reach her throat at the kindness in his words and actions. She was completely unprepared for the sizzling epiphany that reached both her heart and her head at the same time.
Zach wasn’t the boy she had left behind.
He was a man now, and not just in the way his lanky teenaged frame had filled out with solid muscle, either. For whatever reason, he volunteered his time and capability in a career dedicated to helping others. It wasn’t his usual self-centered M.O., or at least it hadn’t been, and she realized it would take her awhile to change her perspective. She’d grown up—she was far different from the teenager she’d been when she left.
Perhaps Zach was different, too—maturing into the man standing with her now.
She hoped her observations about Zach had at least some basis in truth. Riley needed a good, stable influence from his father, not the hot-cold, on-again/off-again relationship she feared might happen.
Had Zach changed—or was it just that paramedic work provided the adrenaline that he so craved? It was still too soon to tell.
“How did this happen, Spence?” she queried gently as she unwrapped the wound.
“I was boiling water,” Spence explained, wincing. “The twins’ favorite meal is spaghetti.”
Delia smiled and arched her brows as she closely examined the red and blistering skin. Keeping a patient talking kept his mind off the pain. “I didn’t know you had children. Boys? Girls?”
“Boys. Matty and Jamey. They just turned three and they’re a real handful, let me tell you.”
Delia thought of Riley at age three and had to agree, if only to herself. Obviously she couldn’t say what she was thinking out loud.
“Really cute little buggers,” Zach confirmed with a grin, though he didn’t look at Delia when he spoke. “They’re both on the junior T-ball team I coach every spring. They’ll be ready to move up into the major leagues pretty soon.”
Zach was a coach?
For a kid’s team?
She was equally relieved and flustered by the new information, but she’d learned a long time ago the necessity of compartmentalizing her thoughts and feelings when she was dealing with a patient. Right now her mind had to be on her work.
“So your burn is from the water?” she asked, turning Spence’s hand over to examine the palm.
“Yeah, that and the steaming pot. One of the twins screamed and I lost my focus—just for a moment. When I turned back to the stove, the water was overflowing. I scrambled to take the pot off the burner bare-handed, without even thinking about what I was doing.”
“Looks like you scalded yourself pretty good, buddy,” Zach said in a gentle, teasing voice.
Spence grimaced. “Pretty stupid, huh?”
“No, of course not,” Delia replied. “Accidents happen. Don’t worry. I can fix you up.”
Just for a moment, her gaze met Zach’s. His eyes were surprisingly full of compassion.
“Happens to the best of us, big guy.” Zach winked at his neighbor. “I’ve had my fair share of accidents myself.”
That was an understatement if Delia had ever heard one.
Zach Bowden was an accident waiting to happen, and Delia wasn’t positive she was any more prepared for him this time around than she had been as a teenager.
She continued to examine Spence without blinking an eye, but internally she was in turmoil. She might be able to fool the others but she could never fool herself. Today’s encounter with Zach had changed the playing field entirely, and she didn’t know what to do with what she had learned.
She didn’t know the man Zach Bowden had become.
Worse yet, she wasn’t over him.
Chapter Two
On the outside, at least, Zach kept his attention on his ailing neighbor, but, surreptitiously, he watched Delia work, his heart drinking in the presence of the woman who had once been his whole life like a man who’d spent years in the desert with no water.
In a way, that was exactly what he was. He had told himself a million times that he wouldn’t care if he ever saw Delia again in his life, but he now knew that was a flat-out lie.
How could he not care when she had taken his heart and smashed it into thousands of pieces?
Time hadn’t healed his wounds, nor had it changed the way his heart leaped out of his chest every time their eyes met. It shook him to the core to discover that despite the anger and bitterness he felt toward her, his attraction to her had only deepened with the passage of time.
She was beautiful.
She’d always been pretty, but now there was a new maturity shining from those huge sapphire-blue eyes of hers. Her black hair, which she’d worn shoulder-length as a teen, now flowed in thick, glossy waves down her back. Her rich alto voice had matured to be smooth as silk, wrapping around a man’s senses like a warm wind.
“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you can imagine, how do you feel?” Delia asked Spence in a soft, reassuring tone.
“Still about a five or six,” Spence said with a groan. “Man, this really hurts.”
“That’s actually good news,” Delia informed him, and Zach silently concurred. “When you really start to worry about a burn is if it doesn’t hurt at all.”
“Great,” Spence muttered.
Delia chuckled.
Zach squeezed the man’s shoulder as Delia added additional morphine to the IV and efficiently prepared a cart for dressing the wound.
“It looks worse than it is,” he assured Spence. “Right, Delia?”
“Absolutely. You’ll need to change the dressing a couple of times a day and take the antibiotics I’m going to prescribe you, but this should heal up just fine. I’ll clean up the wound a bit and you’ll be as good as new.”
Spence’s gaze widened perceptibly, but he clenched his jaw and nodded gravely as he resolved himself to endure the discomfort.
Zach felt for him. Burns really hurt, even the small ones, and even though Spence’s burn wasn’t life-threatening, he’d still have to struggle with the pain.
“Do you feel the narcotic kicking in yet?” Zach asked as the tension left Spence’s shoulders.
Spence’s eyes grew dilated and hazy, and he laid his head back on the pillow and sighed. “Yes, thankfully.”
“Just keep your eyes on me, man,” Zach suggested. “This will all be over in a minute. You can trust Delia. She’s a great doctor.”
Delia’s surprised gaze flew to Zach, and it was no wonder. In truth, he had no way of knowing what kind of a doctor Delia