Page 179

“Hold on.” His arm stayed firm around my waist as his gaze dropped to my right foot, which I was still instinctively keeping off the ground. “You’re not even putting it down. Give it a second before you try putting weight on it.”

“It’s only a twist.”

I lowered my foot anyway, determined to prove it was nothing.

A sharp stab of pain made me suck in a breath.

Lachlan’s concern deepened. “All right, Mouse. Sit down for me and let me look at it.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“Maybe, but I’d rather know that before we keep going.”

There wasn’t much to argue with in that, so I let him guide me to a broad boulder nearby and shrugged off the backpack.

Lachlan knelt in front of me and reached for my boot.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. Give me your foot.” He started to loosen the laces. “Let me see the ankle.”

This man ran a nightclub in Manhattan. He belonged to a syndicate of mafia men, carried guns as naturally as other men carried wallets, and had killed without hesitation to get me out of the compound. Yet here he was, on his knee in the dirt because I had turned my ankle.

I chewed on my lip as he worked. Somewhere between one lace and the next, my thoughts jumped ahead to what might actually happen if we made it out of El Salvador.

Lachlan had a life waiting for him there. His fancy club. His brother. His mafia world. Probably some beautiful apartment filled with expensive things, and no shortage of sophisticated women who knew exactly how to move through his world. Women who wore beautiful clothes, understood nightclubs and business deals, and all the ordinary freedoms I had only ever watched from a distance.

The possibility of actually reaching that world suddenly made my own future feel much less abstract and much more terrifying.

Lachlan had somewhere to go back to.

I had no idea where I belonged.

He eased my boot off carefully, supporting my heel in one hand before slipping off my sock.

His fingers moved slowly along the outside of it, firm enough to locate the injury but careful not to press harder than necessary. When his thumb reached a tender spot and pressed, I flinched.

“There?”

“Yes.”

He gently tested the movement of my foot, watching my face.

“I don’t think anything’s broken. You’ve still got good movement, and it isn’t swelling yet. Probably a mild sprain, but I’m giving it some support before we keep going.”

He reached for the backpack, pulled out the towel and my knife, then set the pack on the boulder beside me. He nicked one edge of the fabric and tore off a long strip.

Clever man. Lachlan never seemed to make a production out of solving a problem. He simply figured out what needed to be done and did it.

He tucked the knife and what remained of the towel back into the backpack, then crouched in front of me again. He slipped my sock back on and began winding the strip firmly around my foot and ankle. His hands looked enormous there, all rough fingers and battered knuckles moving with surprising care as he adjusted the wrap until it supported the joint without binding it too tightly.

I liked having those hands on me.

The realization wasn’t exactly shocking. I’d already spent far too much time thinking about his mouth that morning, and his hands had now joined the list.

These were hands capable of violence, but there was nothing rough about the way he handled me. Watching those big fingers move over my ankle made it far too easy to wonder how they would feel on the rest of me when taking care of me wasn’t the only thing on his mind.

My attention followed his hand as he finished the wrap, and that was when I noticed the large scar cutting across his palm.