Page 23 of Unpacking Secrets
“Look, I know you don’t like me, but you’re injured. Please let me help you.”
At my careful tone, the tears she’d been fighting spilled over, rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t protest, though, just nodded again and lowered herself onto the rock. Blue stuck close to her side and I could tell her presence was a comfort as she sat beside my unexpected patient. Juliet laid a hand on the dog’s head, dropping her gaze to the ground.
“I didn’t picture you as a dog person,” she said after a moment.
“This fact probably won’t surprise you, but I find dogs less complicated than humans.”
When she met my eyes, I smiled gently before I knelt down beside her and rummaged through the small black bag strapped to my waist, sorting through my stash of first aid supplies. I didn’t carry much with me, but it would be enough to clean the blood from her face, at least.
“Is that . . . a fanny pack?” she asked faintly.
“It most certainly is not. This, Ms. Morrison, is a lumbar pack.” I shot her a sharp look as I adopted an attitude of mock outrage. “Hikers wear lumbar packs.Touristswear fanny packs. There’s a very clear difference. I suggest you learn it if you’re going to keep hiking around here.”
Juliet snorted, momentarily distracted from her injuries by my teasing. “Clearly. I’ll study up before my next hike. Which will probably be . . . never, after this.”
When I found the packet of gauze, I glanced up and studied her face for another moment. She seemed steadier now, her responses more fluid, so I decided to stick with humor as the antidote to her shock.
“I have to ask this, for the sake of my own safety. If I touch you now, Juliet, are you actually going to break every bone in my hand?”
With a grimace of embarrassment, she managed a shrug and a tiny, apologetic smile as she said, “Ah, no. I’m sorry about that.”
“Look, I’m sorry I was such a prick. You didn’t deserve that.”
Now was as good a time as any, even if this wasn’t how I’d imagined my apology would go. I pulled out a bottle of water and poured some onto the gauze, but I paused to meet her eyes before I spoke.
“Outside the restaurant that night, what I was trying to do was apologize, not antagonize you further. Obviously my brain and my mouth work independently of each other sometimes. I have no excuse for my behavior, but I really am sorry. Change is hard, I guess.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,”Juliet muttered under her breath, but I only grinned in response.
When I dabbed carefully at her temple with the wet gauze, she flinched. Blue laid her chin on Juliet’s uninjured knee, so she turned her attention back to stroking the dog’s ears while I cleaned up the streaks of blood. The cut didn’t look serious, and though it had obviously bled freely for a while, the flow had stopped.
As I gently swiped at the dried blood and dirt on her cheek, Juliet resolutely avoided meeting my gaze. I couldn’t blame her for that. She barely knew me, and what she did know was unflattering, to say the least.
While I didn’t want to take advantage of her current state, this might be my only chance before we butted heads again.
“Can you forgive me?” I asked quietly.
At last she met my eyes, that startling blue of hers standing out vividly against the smears I couldn’t quite remove with one small square of gauze. For a moment, she looked so lost, so vulnerable, that hot shame burned inside me. This woman had lost her motherandher grandmother, and she still had the courage to pick up and move across the country on her own.
Asshole that I was, I’d only made things harder for her. I opened my mouth to apologize again, but she held up a hand to stop me.
“I’m sorry, too,” she replied.
My shock must have been evident, because the damned woman laughed. The sound was low and musical, with a husky, breathless quality that I wasn’t sure was characteristic of her laughter or simply a result of all she’d just been through.
Either way, it sent a bolt of warmth tumbling through me, curling comfortably inside my chest. As her lips curved and her eyes brightened, I had the sinking suspicion that life in Spruce Hill was never going to be the same again.
Ten
Juliet
Henrylookedsosurprisedby my apology that I started laughing, though maybe exhaustion, pain, and dehydration were taking their toll. It fizzed up inside me until I had to let go of the dog to clap a hand over my mouth.
All the while, he stared like he’d never seen me before.
I tried to bottle up the ridiculous giggles shooting out of me like champagne bubbles, but when his lips quirked, I let them run their course. To make the situation even more awkward, this all went down with his face mere inches from my own.
“Look, Henry, I don’t . . . dislike you,” I said when I finally caught my breath.
