Page 23 of Amelia and Her Prince Charming
I nodded and he pressed his ear to my back, just above my bra strap. The bristles of his stubble rubbed against the sensitive, exposed skin near my spine. “Breathe deeply for me.”
I did so, feeling the burn in my lungs as I did.
“I’m going to pat your back pretty firmly for a few minutes. I can’t hear if there’s fluid in your lungs or not, but to be safe, I want to treat it like there is. And try to cough out as much as you can.”
I nodded. I brought my knees up and wrapped my arms around them to curve my back, and I stared at the flames. It was mesmerizing, the dance and flicker of the orange and yellow light.
Hudson cupped his left hand and patted my back. It was surprisingly relaxing. He stopped a few times so I could cough, splaying his large hand firmly across my back to brace me, and then he continued.
Time meant nothing in the quiet stillness of the island, and I found myself nearly drifting off with the steady beat of his palm. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a remote place before.” My words tumbled together in sleepiness.
“Me, Dylan, and Shiloh used to explore the islands around Winterhaven. When the Forresters moved to town and were looking for an island to build a cabin on, I told them about this one. I was worried someone else would buy it and tear down this cabin.”
“But you knew they wouldn’t?”
“I asked them not to. It’s always meant a lot to me.”
“Why?” I yawned, and his hand stilled on my back as he spoke, as if he forgot it was there. I hadn’t forgotten though. It felt nice. To be touched so casually. And not by just anyone, but by Hudson. I’d missed him so much.
“The idea of a love that intense and lasting … It’s the kind you only read about in books, you know? And what if the family evercame back, looking for it? I want it to be here for them, as a monument to that kind of love.”
“Hudson Blaire.” I smiled as I tilted my head to the side to look at him. “You’re a romantic.”
“The secret’s out,” he whispered. To my disappointment, he removed his hand from my back. He stretched out on the floor next to me, still cradling his right arm carefully against his stomach.
I peered closer at it and gently touched the skin at his collarbone to feel for swelling. I wasn’t a doctor, but I’d been married to someone who’d regularly been pummeled for a living and had grown accustomed to inspecting injuries for bruising or breaks.
It looked normal to me, but for Hudson to be showing any kind of pain, it must be really hurting. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” I asked him.
He shivered and closed his eyes, hiding the pain away. “Maybe a distraction.”
“Let me lay our clothes out to dry, and then I have an idea.”
Chapter 16
Hudson
Ifherideawasto make my heart pump faster with worry, then it was working.
Because as Amelia crawled toward our clothes, I noticed the cut on her foot for the first time. It looked like it needed stitches, and a thorough cleaning out if it wasn’t going to get infected. I swore under my breath.
“What?” She paused as she snatched the bundle of wet, bunched up clothes from the ground.
“Your foot.”
“Oh.” She looked down at it. “It’s fine.”
“Then why aren’t you putting weight on it?”
“Because I like crawling around in my underwear,” she quipped. Then her eyes widened, and she threw a hand over her mouth. “Let’s forget I said that.”
“Nope, sorry. Already logged in the long-term-memory bank.”
She threw a wet sock at me, and I was glad to see her looking more at ease. When she’d scrambled away from me earlier, she looked one wrong word away from panicking.
“What else do you like to do in your underwear?” I asked teasingly and another wet sock landed on my face. Was this too close to flirting? I always asked myself this when I teased her, but my walls were down too far for my filter to work.
Besides, when you had to take a breath between every word, it took the smoothness out of it, thus nullifying the flirtatious nature of a statement. It sounded official and therefore was true.
