Breaking Her No-Dating Rule. Amalie Berlin

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      “What about Jude?” Chelsea asked, letting him know what she was interested in talking about but not whether she’d heard him at all. Someone would have to repeat the information to her later.

      Anson straightened so he could address the group. “The storm has gotten to the point where it’s impossible for us to continue searching. I want to be clear: this is just a suspension of the search, not the end of it. I’m sorry we haven’t found your fiancé yet.”

      “Jude.” Chelsea repeated the name of the missing skier, stopping Anson with one hand on his arm.

      “Jude,” he repeated, his pulse kicking up a little higher. He knew why it was important to her, but saying the man’s name made it harder to maintain the distance he needed to be smart about this. “Just because we have to postpone going back out to look for Jude, it doesn’t mean it’s time to give up hope. So don’t get ahead of us, okay? You’d be surprised what someone can survive. Those mines are a pretty good shelter. There are also some rocky overhangs between here and where we found you. And some of those might actually be better.”

      “How could they be better? You’re closer to the snow,” one of the rescued asked.

      He contemplated how much to actually tell them about his experience with this kind of situation. I know these things, I killed someone with snow once wouldn’t inspire anyone to trust him. This had to be about them, not about his fear or guilt. “Small spaces hold the warmth your body makes better, and the wind can’t get into it as fully as it does in the mines, which have a bigger entrance and room for the wind to move around inside. He might still show up here before we get out to him, but as soon as the storm lets up we’ll get back out there. It’s not time to give up hope.” He repeated that, trying to convince himself.

      It was time to bandage Chelsea’s toes … and hopefully him moving on would make them take the hint not to ask more questions. He didn’t have any answers or much of a mind left for coming up with more empty words of comfort. He was too busy trying to ignore the similarities between this storm and his storm.

      Pulling off his cap and gloves, he squatted beside Ellory at Chelsea’s feet, struggling to hold his calm for everyone else. “Do you have some gloves for me to use?”

      Ellory ducked into the bag of supplies she’d packed and fished out the box of gloves. One look at them confirmed they wouldn’t do. Small. He could squeeze into a medium at a pinch, but large were better. “All right, this job has been passed to you.”

      To his surprise, she didn’t argue at all, just grabbed a couple gloves from the box and put them on. Crouched so close he was enveloped in a cloud of something fruity and floral. The woman looked like summer, and she smelled like spring. Warm. And distracting. He scooted to the side to give her room.

      “What is the job?” she asked, looking at Chelsea’s toes and maneuvering herself so she could gently cradle the patient’s heel in her lap.

      He handed the gauze to her and began ripping strips of tape and tacking them to the wheelchair, where she could get to them. “Part of the healing process is just keeping the site dry and loosely bandaged.” He gave short, quick instructions, and left her to it.

      She unrolled the gauze carefully and began wrapping. He watched, ready to correct her, but she did it as he would’ve: a couple of passes between the two toes to keep them separate, controlling the moisture level better, and then loosely around the two together.

      No matter how out of her depth she looked, she was anything but incompetent. There might even be some kind of medical training there. The cloud of floral scent stole up his dry, burning sinuses and almost made his mouth water like a dog’s.

      Awesome priorities. Reveling in attraction to some woman while the lost man was freezing. Maybe dying. He definitely didn’t have the warm comfort of a fireplace and a wench-shaped blonde to take his mind off his failure to get back to the lodge safely, didn’t even know his friends had been saved, so he suffered that additional torment—worry for them in addition to himself.

      An inferno of shame ignited in his belly.

      Hide it.

      At the very least he owed them all a confident appearance. Calm. Strength. Determination.

      Meltdowns were something to have alone—a luxury that would have to wait until he was no longer needed.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ELLORY HAD READ about frostbite treatment so she could anticipate Dr. Graves’s needs for that, but she had no idea what his other needs were. She’d kind of pegged the search and rescue team as attracting the kind of adrenaline fiends in it for the thrill, but Anson looked almost as devastated by returning empty-handed as Chelsea had.

      With the bandage applied, she switched off the hot plate, scooted it out of the way and stood. What came next? She didn’t know, but certainly there would be something she would need to do, and being on her feet would help her react that much faster.

      “They still hurt, I know,” Anson said to the woman, looking at the toes now hidden by the gauze, the patch of yellow skin surrounded by angry redness hidden. “But most of this might not even be frostbite. The yellow area is, but the good news is that we got to it in good time and it’s very unlikely to leave any lasting damage. I won’t be able to tell for a couple of days if it’s frostbite or the lesser version, which you all have on your fingers and toes … frostnip. We’re going to treat yours as if you have frostbite, just to be safe. I’ll see what kind of antibiotics Dr. Dupris has in her inventory, and some pain medication.”

      Good news. She’d take whatever kind of win they could get.

      Anson asked the standard allergy questions, got whatever info he needed, and nodded once to Ellory—a kind of do it nod. She had been promoted: triage to assistant, or nurse … or whatever that position was.

      “I can check with Mira. Which antibiotic do you need?” If she had to, she could no doubt find in Mira’s books which kind of antibiotic was good for skin infections, but she’d rather he tell her. She wasn’t a doctor. Not by a long stretch. But she knew enough to know that antibiotics were a tricky lot—some worked for everything, some worked best for specific things, and these days a frightening amount were resistant to stuff they used to be awesome at fighting.

      “I’m sure she’s got some of the broad-spectrum ones, but I don’t know how well the drug cabinet is stocked for anything obscure.” For some reason she wanted him to think well of her, and she felt more competent even saying the words “broad spectrum.” Like proving to him she wasn’t a complete idiot was important. Probably something to do with the lecture she’d gotten about her clothes …

      She didn’t even know the man, had never seen him before today, but as he spoke she became aware of something else: there was a rawness about him she couldn’t name. Something in that raspy timbre that resonated feelings primal and violent.

      He rattled off a few medication names that sounded like gibberish to her, and she didn’t ask him to repeat himself, just hoped she could remember them when she came face-to-face with a wall of gibberish-sounding drug names.

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