Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

one of his boots, that he realized one thing— how quick she was to thaw. And it was a damn good thing he hurt too much to feel anything else, because what he wanted to feel—what he thought about feeling—would be next to impossible to accomplish in his condition, much less in this time and place.

She had both of his boots unlaced and loosened before she looked up and fully met his gaze. "Do you want to tell me about the gun?"

Uh, no, not really. He really didn't want to talk at all. "What do you want to know?"

"Why you have it." His first boot hit the floor.

"Protection." Simple enough.

"From what? Gangbangers? Drive-bys?" Her fingers were deft and comforting. "That's not a gun you'll find used out here to take down coyotes or rattlesnakes."

Gangbangers and drive-bys. Interesting how those were the first directions her mind traveled. "You're not from around these here parts, now are you, ma'am?"

His second boot joined the first on the floor. She went to pull off his socks, was stopped by the sheathed knife and the empty holster strapped above his ankles. "About as much as you are. Mate."

"Hey, I'm only here for the mule deer." A lame effort at allaying her suspicions, one he followed up with a breath so deep it reminded him of the condition of his ribs.

"Right." She removed both items, tucked them into his boots, and set the lot on the side counter that ran the length of the room. "Mule deer. Afghani rebels. Jackrabbits. Palestinian guerillas."

He sobered slightly and remained unmoving while she rid him of his socks before she moved to his head. Once there, she raised him up enough to slide off the cords of his hat and sunglasses, letting him fall back rather too roughly. And he only winced once and hissed twice when she jarred his shoulder too hard.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"You sure?" She was standing above him now, her face close but not closed. In fact, what he saw was a sort of terror that gave him pause. "Felt like that was the closest you could get to knocking the crap out of me for carrying that gun."

She added the sunglasses and hat to the boots on the counter, came back with a pair of scissors sporting nine-inch blades. "I know that gun. Or at least ones like it. That's not a gun anyone has reason to carry. Unless they're involved in preventing or committing crimes."

She had a history with the sort of weapon he carried, one he wasn't sure he wanted to take the time to pry free. Not when he would be gone from here tomorrow, if not later today. "Then let's say I'm just passing through and leave it at that."

"Fine."

She said it much less gently than she slipped one blade of the scissors into the sleeve covering his bad arm and snipped her way to the neck. She repeated the process on the other side, then moved to his waist and sliced upward from the hem to what remained of the band of fabric at the base of his throat. That done, she peeled his shirt away. . . and blew out a very loud and long breath.

He didn't need a mirror to see what he looked like. Her expression was mirror enough. "You think that's some-thing, wait till you see the rest."

"Oh, my god, Mick." She brought a hand to her throat. "Has Ed seen this?"

He shook his head. "Not yet, but he'll be back. And I'll live. I'm just bruised and battered and banged to the back of beyond."

Her gaze roamed the canvas of his torso, and he would've liked to think she was admiring the view when he knew if she was admiring anything, it was the palette of colors. Purple and red that would soon enough turn green and blue, and eventually morph into healing yellows and oranges for a complete wreck of a rainbow.

She touched him lightly then, unexpectedly, her fingertips grazing the skin of his abdomen, the one place with very little surface damage. It was an exploratory touch, the contact minimal, nonsexual, lacking in any sort of heat. But there was warmth. Kindness and concern. Caring. The look in her eyes unnerved him. Mick Savin. Unfazed by a monster pair of scissors. Unnerved by a woman's unshed tears.

Focus, Savin, focus. Get up, get moving, get gone.

His mantra, of course, would've worked better if he'd remembered to add the last part. The "get over it" part. But Neva had shaken off her glazed look, abandoned her study of his personal Picasso, and had moved her hands to the fasteners of his pants.

"Uh, Neva?" he began, really wishing she was close enough and he was well enough for him to play with the waves in her hair. He wanted to know what it felt like, what it smelled like. It reminded him of Indian silk. "Why don't we let the doc take it from here?"

"You know my name," she said, her voice soft though she frowned as her fingers paused.

He nodded, the metal surface beneath him growing suddenly cold. "Neva Case. You told me when you saved me from death by overgrown weeds. Besides, I paid attention when you were talking to the doc."

"I wasn't sure you heard everything." She tucked both hands into her jeans pockets. "You were pretty out of it."

He nodded again, overcome with all he needed to say. He tried to blame his reaction on the pain, his exhaustion, near dehydration. He was hard-core, trained for scenarios he'd never even faced. He shouldn't be maudlin or sappy and soft. But in the end he knew it went a lot deeper than any of that. That he'd reached the point where he was beginning to remember the value of being alive.

"Thank you." He cleared his throat. "You saved my life."

She tried to blow it off with a breezy, "All in a day's work."

An explanation which he didn't even dig into his