Chapter Two
Skylar was floating, or maybe falling? All was dark. She clenched at fabric, the only solid hold she could grasp, to try and anchor her swirling mind, and slowly, the feel of warm muscles beneath the coarse material ebbed through her blackout into her consciousness. Her body undulated groggily, causing a low, stifled groan to growl softly up the throat of the man holding her. It reverberated through his chest, vibrating against her. Her hand snaked up to palm his chest. A steady heartbeat pounded rhythmically against her hand like a call to arms.
His fingers tightened, digging into her, as her own curled into his scrub top more firmly, grounding herself.
A commotion—fast, efficient—breezed closer, grating on her senses. Cart rattling across the floor, curtain raking back, button on the wall smacked.
“Dr. Glasser…Bay Twelve stat… Dr. Glasser…Bay Twelve stat…” the intercom garbled in her mind, and moments later, more footsteps rushed closer.
“Blood pressure dropping…in shock…” Words from the man holding her echoing.
He was clenching her so tightly, she felt his bruising squeeze inhibiting her breath. He shifted her weight in his arms, and the stethoscope chest piece in her coat pocket gouged into her ribs. His voice, so familiar. The baritone sounds played fiddle on the threads of memories in her mind. She knew this voice. Just like she knew this scent. She’d missed this voice.
“Did she present with any injuries?” Again that slightly husky, deep voice, clearer now, sent shivers through her body and wreaked havoc on her reeling mind.
“She refused care,” another man said. Think, Skylar! What just happened? “Reported no head trauma—”
“This bruise? What the f—hell?” Again, the familiar voice, protective, and this time, it sounded frustrated.
That was right. The airbag had deployed in the accident, popping against her face as blood had run unchecked from her nose, like the first time Patches had bucked her off into a creosote bush.
“Airbag. But her vitals check out and she reported nothing else notable. She said she’d make a compress at home. I can’t force care upon her if she refuses.”
Skylar finally blinked. Her eyes, she realized, had been closed this whole time.
The artificial lights were blurry rectangles that, after a moment, she realized were recessed panels in the ceiling. She was being jostled in the man’s grip, as if he’d adjusted his hold on her.
She blinked again. The blurring double chest against her face merged into one. Tucked against him, a hint of sandalwood soap, male musk, sweet, savory, filled her nose. So familiar. What was happening? A scent she hadn’t smelled in over fourteen years, but one she remembered in this instant as it blessed her olfactory senses again like rain on the dry desert. He clenched her weight to him, as if to protect her, like Travis had always done…
Travis… Travis!
Her eyes flew to his face and her grip intensified upon him. What in the hell? How was this possible? His gaze dipped down to hers at her sudden consciousness, her palm whipping up to grip his face and angle it toward her—his brow, so tight and firm; his lips, mere inches away; the corner of those lips against the heel of her palm. A healed welt had cut a gouge into his cheek, over the rise of his cheekbone. His face was firmer, chiseled, tiny wisdom creases at the corners of each of his sparkling obsidian eyes flecked with amber and gold and rich chestnut tones, that marked him as no longer that eighteen-year-old with the baby face who’d stolen her heart and carried it off to Afghanistan. Shaking her head, she pinched closed her eyes, willed her thoughts to clear.
Yeah, she was hallucinating.
She’d imagined what wasn’t here, what couldn’t possibly be here. He’d been killed in action. She had the news article to prove it. She had a hospital bill borne from that shock, which had gone unpaid for so long when she’d been scraping by on nothing, the emergency room near Texas A&M had dissolved the account.
But when she opened her eyes again, he was staring hard at her, as if a deer in high beams, as if just as surprised to see her as she was to see him—
He’s the orthopedist treating Brandon… Brandon!My God, she was the worst foster mom ever, to pass out when the kid needed her most, and she twisted for freedom.
“Put me down,” she squirmed.
“Nope.”
Travis’s viselike arms torqued around her instead, pulling her hard against his comforting, protective body, as if she belonged in his grip. She should bask in this miracle and not question celestial gifts, but dammit. On some primal level her body longed to remain close, but her mind had such a cascade of questions, she didn’t know where to start. Just this sliver of untimely perfection felt too good, too fleeting.
“Put her over here,” the attending said in the span of seconds, oblivious to the thoughts playing like a movie reel in her mind.
Travis eased her down on the triage bed neighboring Brandon’s as the nurse dragged back the curtain between the two bays to unify both spaces, taped a pulse oximeter on her finger, and began searching her hand for a prime spot for an IV while another RN snapped loose gloves from the box over the bed. Her feet were elevated. Cool air replaced the warmth of the cocoon his arms and chest had made, and so suddenly, she wasn’t ready for the connection to be severed. Yet Travis stayed beside her. A shaky breath leaked from her lips as she looked up into his face hovering over her, his earbuds dangling and brushing against her chest, his hands bracing her sides around her ribcage beneath her lab coat, thumbs beneath her breasts, her skin tingling at how intimate it felt in front of so many people.
She tried to sit up.
“Easy, babe—Sky—Skylar.”
He shook his head and blinked as if clearing his thoughts, a frustrated exhale following. His face twisted with a curse word he wasn’t saying, hardness ebbing from his face like a tide receding. She’d seen that twist on his face before, when he’d wanted to tell off his daddy—or hers—but had bitten his tongue instead. It was such a Travis gesture.
“Lie still for a moment,” he crooned, gentling, his hands still palming her sides but easing their hold and his thumbs sliding away from her chest. She took in his lips, always so soft and kissable even though his jaw seemed etched from granite. “Trust me. ’Kay?”