Hunter's Quest

Chapter Five

She understood his attempt to lose himself in the plot as she began to sponge the blood-encrusted shirt loose from his arm. Other than an occasional flinch, quickly suppressed, his narrowed eyes and firmly set mouth gave the only indications he felt her efforts. His stoicism helped. The blood and the ugliness didn't bother her. She'd been cleaning up similar messes for years. What she couldn't get used to was causing someone else pain. She had to steel herself to touch the area.

It took almost ten minutes of rinsing and gentle pulling to get the shirt off his arm. She sucked in a breath when she finally got a look at the wound.

A commercial interrupted the car chase on the television, and Jason turned to look down at his arm, studying the wound. "What a mess." He moved his gaze from the injury to her face. "I'm sorry. I'm asking a lot."

Damn it, she didn't need him to act thoughtful and kind. Guilt trips could only complicate the mess. Especially with her hormones responding to him at ninety miles an hour. The man was bad news and she wanted kiss him so badly she had to clench her fingers into fists to resist the temptation. She released her lower lip from the grip of her teeth. "You're the one has to put up with my fumbling."

"You're doing great so far."

"We've barely begun. Cleaning this isn't going to be any fun." She rolled his arm to get a better look at the wound. The bullet hadn't penetrated, but its grazing passage had gouged a six-inch furrow along the skin of his inner arm just above the elbow. She waited until the program started again before she began to wash it out. Jason kept his eyes locked on the screen and his face rigid, but he winced and bit his lip occasionally. She persisted in rinsing and wiping until she felt confident the wound was as clean as she could get it.

"Brace yourself. This stings." She poured on the disinfectant.

Jason sucked in a breath and pressed his lips more tightly together.

Then she smoothed a soothing antibiotic ointment over the furrow, put a pad over it, and began to wrap gauze around the wound.

She was tackling the abraded area on his temple when the program ended. As the commercials began to roll, Jason turned his attention back to her. He twisted the arm one way and the other, wincing as he did so, and examined the bandage. "Looks like a good job. You've had some practice at this."

Kristie put down the washcloth and reached for the disinfectant again. She debated whether to tell him, but a weird sense of inevitability took hold. "I used to patch up my mother and brother all the time."

"Both of them?" His look of puzzled concern gently prodded her to continue.

She sighed and bit her lip. His warmth leaked past her wall of reserve. And it might distract him again. "My dad used to beat them up pretty regularly."

He flinched in response to her words, not the ointment she smeared across his temple. "Your father beat up your mother?"

"He..." God, did she really want to admit this to a virtual stranger? "He drank a lot. And he didn't hold it very well. If he got frustrated or angry, he used whatever target was most convenient."

"Why didn't your mother leave him? He beat up your brother, too? And you?"

"Not me. He hit me occasionally but not very often. He had to be really out of it before he'd go for me. I think he saw something of himself in Charlie, my brother, and he didn't like what he saw."

Jason gave her a troubled glance. "I can't believe your mother would put up with it. Not just letting him beat her, but her children?"

"She did try to protect us from him. She just couldn't always manage it."