Page 174 of Our Little Secret

She started climbing off the chair.

“Careful!” he warned.

Too late! As she stepped off the chair, she tripped slightly, and down she went, the chair clattering loudly.

Shep, startled, scrambled to his feet, barking.

As Brooke landed, she saw Eli standing on the other side of the window, as if he’d been standing there for a while, as if he’d watched her plant the camera.

“Brooke! For the love of—” Neal knelt down next her. “Are you okay?” he asked, his forehead furrowed with worry.

“I—I think so.” She stood with his help, then limped to the couch. “Nothing broken, pretty sure.”

“But a sprain? Geez, I’ve heard those can be worse sometimes.”

“I just twisted my ankle again, the same one as last year.” The ankle that had been injured in her fight with Gideon on his boat and she’d lied that she’d tripped while running.

As if he read her mind, Eli smiled behind the cold glass.

Footsteps pounded from upstairs and Marilee rushed into the room. “What happened?”

Before she could explain Leah had hurried back to the living room. She was barefoot but already changed into a long tunic with gold threads through the creamy fabric. “Brooke,” she said with some real empathy in her voice.

“Took a tumble,” Brooke explained. “Just adjusting the lights.” She hitched her chin toward the tree. “But . . . but I’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” Marilee said, her deftly plucked eyebrows drawn together in worry.

Neal scooted the offensive chair toward the couch where she was sitting and set a throw pillow on it. “Keep your ankle elevated. I’ll get some ice.” He set the repaired but still bloodied Joseph on the mantel and dashed to the kitchen.

As Leah surveyed the scene, Eli entered. She offered him a weak smile, then asked Brooke, “So . . . you can still go to midnight mass? Right?”

Of course not.Brooke shrugged, tried to appear disappointed. “Don’t think so.”

“A shame,” Eli said, his brown eyes assessing, a hint of sarcasm in his words.

Neal returned with a Ziploc bag of ice and a kitchen towel. He helped her off with her boot and sock and she felt Eli’s sheathed knife press against her opposite calf. “This Christmas has been a real comedy of errors,” he remarked.

You don’t know the half of it, Brooke thought, but just sucked in her breath as he pressed the makeshift ice bag to her ankle.

“Doesn’t seem to be swelling,” Neal observed.

“Not yet.” Brooke adjusted the bag. “Maybe it won’t if I elevate and ice.”

“The RICE method,” Eli said with a nod. Was that a reassuring smile? Or a smirk within his beard-shadowed jaw. “Rest. Ice. Compress. Elevate.”

“I think I saw an ACE bandage upstairs.” Marilee spun and flew up the stairs. Shep, still excited, chased after her. In less than a minute they both returned and she handed the elastic wrap to her father.

“Let me,” Eli said and snagged the bandage from Neal’s hand. “I do this for a living, you know.”

Right. He was supposed to be some kind of athletic trainer.

As Leah watched her fiancé, Eli sat in the chair, lifting Brooke’s leg gently and placing her heel over his thigh. He wrapped the bandage around her leg as if he’d done it a thousand times. Every time his fingertips touched her bare skin she forced herself not to react. Not to pull back. Not to show that she was repulsed. From the outside it seemed normal. Quick. Efficient. But she felt every brush of his skin on hers and once, when he glanced up at her to ask, “How’s that?” she saw that his pupils had dilated slightly.

She held his gaze.

“Good. It’s good.”

“Then let’s go,” Leah said. “The ferry leaves in less than thirty minutes.”

---