Elizabeth Harbison - Beyond Business

He pointed at his head. “I was injured. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“Ah.” She put the key in the lock and clicked it open. “Good excuse.”

They stepped into the cool, air-conditioned foyer.

Evan looked around as if he was in a time warp.

“I know,” she said. “I have to redecorate. I just haven’t had time. You remember where the kitchen is?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Go on in and have a seat. I’ll run and get the first-aid kit, then meet you there.”

She rushed upstairs on legs that were shaking. Evan looked bad. He looked really bad. And it was all her fault, she thought, scrambling into the bathroom and throwing the cabinet doors open. Her father had always told her she had to be way more careful walking around downtown Chicago. He’d warned her over and over again that she was too lax about things like personal safety.

She, in turn, had told him he was paranoid, that she’d be fine and he just had to stop worrying so much.

She pushed around in the cabinet, moving cleaning supplies, curlers, half-used bottles of shampoo, until she finally found the white plastic box with the red cross on the front. It was about a thousand years old, but she doubted anything in it had ever been opened.

She grabbed a washcloth to clean Evan’s face, thought about the amount of blood, and put the washcloth down in favor of a full-size bath towel.

Thus armed, she hurried back downstairs to the kitchen, where Evan was sitting on a stool by the counter, shirtless, still looking around in a bemused way.

He’d already cleaned the blood off his cheek and while the wound was a bit less dramatic than she’d thought, it was still more dramatic than he’d indicated. He had folded a square of paper towels that he was using to alternately apply and release pressure.

“I threw my shirt away,” he said, in answer to her unasked question. “I figured it was less rude of me to sit here half-naked than to sit here in a disgusting bloody shirt.”

“Good call,” she said, but her mouth was suddenly dry.

His upper body was far more muscular and developed than it used to be, cut and contoured with sinewy muscle. His skin was bronzed from the sun of wherever it was he’d been this past decade, and he looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of a Sports Illustrated sun-and-surf edition.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, pouring antiseptic onto a cotton pad.

“It doesn’t tickle,” he said, eyeing the pad dubiously.

“Neither will this,” she said, gently pressing the antiseptic to the wound.

Evan cussed and drew back.

“I’m sorry!” Meredith stepped back. “It’s a necessary evil. You don’t want to get an infection.”

He gave a rueful smile. “I’m not sure about that. It might hurt less than this.”

“Yeah, until your face turns green and falls off. Come on.” She put her hand on his head, her fingers touching his dark hair for the first time in ages. She swallowed, took a quick, steadying breath and said, “On the count of three.”

“Don’t you want to say ‘this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me’?”

She smiled. “Sort of, but I’ll refrain.”

“Thank you.” He winced as she put the antiseptic to his face again.

Once it was cleaned up some, a closer examination of the wound revealed that it actually wasn’t quite as bad as Meredith had feared. It probably didn’t need stitches. “I think one of these sealing bandages will be good enough,” she said to Evan.

“I told you it wasn’t so fatal.”

She shrugged and took a bandage out of the first-aid kit and unwrapped it. “If it were me, I’d still go to the E.R. and make sure I don’t need stitches. You might end up with a scar.”

“My face isn’t as pretty as yours to begin with.” He grinned. “Besides, a scar would make me look more rugged, don’t you think? I’ll have to make up a story that’s a lot cooler than being outrun and sucker punched by a couple of punks, though. Maybe I could say I killed a guy defending a nun and a group of orphans. Ouch!”

“Sorry.” Meredith grimaced. “It wasn’t on smoothly.”

“Jeez, did any skin come up with that bandage?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got another one.” She smiled and put a new bandage on neatly. “There. Good as new. Almost.”

He reached a hand up to touch the spot and grazed her hand instead. For a moment they lingered, fingertip to fingertip, and something coursed through Meredith’s chest with the power of a freight train.

She drew her hand back and tried to look as if she hadn’t noticed the accidental contact or felt the intense reaction.

Evan touched the spot on his cheek. “Perfect.” He looked into her eyes. “You could have a future in nursing.”

“I hope not,” she said absently, still thinking about his touch. “I’m already working two jobs.” As soon as the words left her lips, Meredith clapped her mouth shut. How could she be so stupid? She was never that unprofessional. It was absolutely imperative that she keep her secrets under wraps. And Evan Hanson was the last person in the world she should let her guard down in front of.

There was so much he must never know.

“Two jobs?” he asked, of course.

She thought fast. “Yes, working for Hanson Media and working with you.” The explanation wasn’t hard to come up with, but trying to make her voice sound light and casual was almost impossible.

He laughed. “I see. I’m a whole additional problem, huh?”

She let out a tense breath. He’d bought it. Thank God. “I can’t believe it’s the first time you’ve heard something like that.”

“Hell, Meredith, it’s not even the first time I’ve heard something like that from you.”

Thank goodness he was good-humored about it, but she really hadn’t wanted to insult him. “I was only joking, Evan. You’re not that bad.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” His brown eyes caught hers again and held.

Meredith’s breath caught in her chest and lodged there like an iron fist. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even move, for fear of stopping something that she knew in her mind should never happen.

He was going to kiss her.

She wanted him to kiss her.

His gaze lingered one, two, three beats longer than she expected. Inside, she squirmed under it, hoping like a schoolgirl that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

Finally, without saying a word, he scooped her into his arms and put his mouth over hers.

A small voice inside of her resisted, almost begging her to pull back before it was too late. Meredith knew herself well enough to know that she had never been able to resist Evan, no matter how hard she’d tried. Though years had passed and granted her more self-control where Twinkies and pizza were concerned, it seemed she still had an irresistible weakness for Evan Hanson.

She sank against him and deepened the kiss, momentarily heedless of good sense. Lots of time had passed since they’d last met like this, and part of Meredith still held the energy of waiting for him. It was as if she was righting some long-standing wrong—even though she knew in reality she couldn’t do that.

Still, she could have kissed Evan for a week. A month. A year.

Twelve years.

Evan held a piece of her that had been missing all that time.

His mouth moved gently across hers, tentatively feeling for her reactions, clearly reaching the end of his ability to stop.

She didn’t want him to.

His tongue touched hers, and every nerve in her body tightened like strings on a dulcimer. She ran her hands up his back, languishing in the feel of his muscled back beneath her touch, until she reached his upper back and pulled him closer to her.