by Fiona Lowe
Still, she needed something to eat to stop it from falling any further.
She reached for her tote bag and groaned, realizing it was still on the backseat of the car, where she’d put it before stowing the canoe. Pushing herself back onto her feet, she walked to the car, placed her fingers under the door handle and pulled. It didn’t open. She tried again. Nothing. She tried all four doors and the back—every one of them stayed firmly shut with her tote bag tantalizingly out of reach on the other side of the glass. Damn it. Will must have locked the car when she was distracted with that hat.
She slowly jogged to the trailhead, cupped her mouth with her hands and yelled, “Will.” She waited in hopeful anticipation for a return call.
It didn’t come. Of course it didn’t come—the man was probably sprinting the trail. She surveyed the parking lot, hoping to go beg a sugary treat from someone, but the two cars that had been there earlier must have driven out while they’d been loading the canoe. It was just her luck they’d come to a quieter part of the park. If they’d been at Lake McDonald, she’d have been set.
Puffing out a breath, she weighed her options. It wasn’t time to panic yet. She could stay here, wait and hope that Will didn’t linger at the top soaking in the view or she could go find him and get the key fob. The second option was more appealing, because at least she had some control. She started up the gravel path, walking quickly and calling out his name.
The path was thankfully in shade, because she was feeling hot and a little bit dizzy. With her auburn hair and pale skin, she knew better than to be out in the sun all day without a hat, but the force field that was Will sucked a lot of common sense out of her brain. She drank down the cool water until her thirst was quenched, and then she poured some into her hand and splashed her face. It felt so refreshing that she pulled the cap off her head and dumped the remains of the water over her hair, welcoming the coolness seeping through her. Using the cap as a fan, she kept walking and calling.
A hawk shrieked overhead, and she glanced up into the clear, blue sky, hoping to see it. Her foot hit a tree root and she stumbled. Adrenaline shot through her, making her legs tremble, and she stood, waiting for the shaky feeling to pass. She kept waiting, only it stayed with her.
Crap. She knew this sensation. With a sinking feeling, she pulled Dex out of her waistband just as it started beeping. She’d set the device on vibrate for the day, because she hadn’t wanted to have the I’m a diabetic conversation with Will, but now her low blood sugar had activated the hypo alert and it was beeping loudly. Forty-two and falling.
Double crap. She needed sugar fast. She frantically looked at the foliage around her. Why was it that on almost every hike she’d ever been on, she came home with red stains on her shirt from brushing against berries she never noticed, but right now when she needed their glucose there were none to be found?
“Wi-il,” she yelled, elongating his name and trying to keep the simmer of panic that bubbled in her chest from exploding into a full-scale boil. Freaking out didn’t help, but neither did Dex’s constant beeping and the accompanying double arrows that kept pointing ominously downward.
Keep going. She pushed forward on rubbery legs as sweat poured off every part of her. Her fingers slackened on the brim of the cap, and she was vaguely aware of it falling from her hand. Nausea joined in with the dizziness, spinning into her and making her gag. She struggled to see as the path danced in front of her, swinging up and dropping away as if it was a roller coaster. Her feet stilled and she squinted, trying to bring everything back into focus.
A tall tree with black bark jumped onto the path up ahead. No, that can’t be right. She rubbed her eyes, but when she took her hands away, she couldn’t remember what she’d been looking at. She wanted to sit down, but her legs wouldn’t move and she couldn’t work out how to get them to bend so that her butt was on the ground. More than anything, she wanted to sleep.
“Millie.”
Will’s surprised but pleased voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away. Was he in a tunnel?
“Cool. You decided to come after all.”
Will. She could hear herself saying his name in her head, but her jaw seemed disconnected from her mouth, and her tongue felt swollen and wouldn’t make the sound.
“Millie!”
Will’s voice no longer sounded happy but worried. She felt the pressure of his fingers on her shoulder blades and his thumbs on her clavicle. It almost hurt, and then his handsome face swam in and out of focus as he peered at her. “What’s going on? What’s that noise?”
Hypo. “Hy.” Her tongue wouldn’t cooperate, and the edges of her mind clouded with black.
“Hi?” Will sounded puzzled. “Millie, what’s wrong?”
“Hy.” She swallowed and tried again. “Hypo.”
“Hypo as in you’re a diabetic hypo?”
She managed a nod.
“Shit.”
His expletive sliced through the air with unexpected vehemence, and a thought crossed her fuddled mind that she’d never heard him really swear before. She started to laugh but she didn’t know why.
“Millie, I’m picking you up.”
“Too heavy,” she said as his arms came around her.
“Rubbish.”
Her feet left the ground, and suddenly she was pressed up against hot skin and hard muscle, and she wanted to put her arms around his neck but they were too heavy for her to lift. He smelled like peppermint, sunshine and sweat, and his heart pounded hard and fast against her chest in a solid and reassuring beat.
Her head, which had been wobbling like the top scoop of ice cream in a cone, fell gratefully onto his shoulder, resting in the crook of his neck, and she sighed. You feel amazing.
“Try and stay with me, Millie.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. I’m not going anywhere.
Chapter 8
Will ran, sending up a vote of thanks they weren’t far from the car and at the same time blocking all unnecessary thoughts like, Jesus, Millie, why the hell didn’t you tell me you were diabetic? Those could come later when she was capable of stringing a coherent sentence together.
“Millie, I’m putting you down so I can get my bag out of the car. Can you stay upright?”
“Shh-ure,” she slurred.
He lowered her down to the ground and propped her up against the side of the car. She listed to the left. “Dex.”
He had no clue what she was trying to say, and he didn’t have time to find out. She was close to blacking out, and the risk of fitting was way too high. He wrenched open the back of the car, pulled out his medical kit, unzipped a compartment and hauled out an IV set.
The incessant ticking sound of a bomb so very close to exploding echoed in his head. He primed the IV tubing, willing the fluid to fill the plastic fast, because he needed to catch her before the fall. Sliding the tourniquet up her arm, he tightened it with a tug and pressed his fingers against her hot and sweaty skin, feeling for a vein. Come on, come on, find one.
Millie stared at the tourniquet groggily with a bewildered expression on her face, and then she was fumbling with her T-shirt. The next minute she’d pulled it up high enough so he caught the swell of the undersides of her breasts, which were covered—if covered was really an accurate description—in a sheer lace, mauve-colored bra. “Juz.”
He jerked his gaze away from the delectable curves and down to her soft, white belly where her insulin pump and her continuous glucose monitor were inserted into her skin. She’d tucked the handsets of both devices into the elastic waistband of her shorts. The pink one, which was her CGM, was now beeping and flashing in red the word LOW and the ominous number twenty-four. “Too late for juice, Millie.” It was a miracle she wasn’t unconscious right now.
He swept the swab down her arm, steadied the vein with his finger and pierced the skin with the large bore cannula. Millie sucked in a breath through her teeth at the sting and frowned at him as if he was a badly behaved child.
> He knew it would have hurt, because the needle was a big sucker, but he didn’t have a choice. Fifty percent dextrose solution was as viscous as a thick shake, and he needed all the help he could get to administer it fast and drive up her virtually nonexistent blood sugar. Taping the cannula firmly in place, he connected the drip, hung the bag from the car door and ran it fast to check the line. Millie needed sugar, but she didn’t need necrotic skin, which was what would happen if he shoved an ampule of D50 into a pierced vein.
Gripping the enormous plastic syringe, he pinched off the line above the port and inserted the needle, pushing down hard to move the tenacious and sticky gel into the vein. “You’re going to feel better really soon.”
She was shaking so hard he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. Her limbs trembled uncontrollably as each and every cell in her body fought to find the glucose it desperately needed to function. As soon as he’d administered all of the D50, he sat down next to her, throwing his arm around her shoulder. Pulling her close, he tried to absorb some of her violent shakes. Her head lolled and came to rest under his chin.
She smelled of almonds and the fresh, crisp scent of pine needles, and a curl tickled his nose. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to press his face into her hair and breathe in deeply. Her curls cushioned his cheeks, and her scent raced up his nostrils, imprinting itself on his brain.
Whoa! What are you doing? Patient, remember? He reluctantly lifted his head just as her right hand splayed across his chest, the heat of her fingers branding him.
She looked up at him with those unusual-colored eyes of hers with their ring of coppery gold, and he could see her struggling to focus. Two deep creases of concentration etched themselves between her eyes, and a moment later they faded as she smiled.
He’d seen her smile lots of times—ironic smiles, guarded smiles, bemused smiles, teasing smiles and at work the occasional nervous smile—but this one was different. It was free of all restraints, and it broke over her cheery, round cheeks in an open, joyous, deeply dimpled beam. “You’re wonderful.”
Her husky and breathy words shot into him, firing his blood and arcing it straight to his groin. He gazed down at her, desperate to kiss her. He wanted to capture those pink, plump lips with his and own them. He wanted to trace the place where her top lip, with its enticing peak, joined her lush bottom lip, and then explore it all the way from one side to the other. He wanted to feel her lips open, inviting him in.
A shot of heat fired deep inside him at the thought. He wanted to explore her mouth slowly, millimeter by millimeter—feel the scrape of her teeth, the yielding softness of her cheeks, the raunchy roughness of her tongue, and more than anything, he wanted to be flooded with her sweet and salty taste. He wanted to kiss her until she moaned into his mouth with that guttural, base tone that said, I want you, too. He wanted to feel her hands gripping his head so hard that her fingers dug into his scalp, leaving crescent moon marks—branding him as hers. Her legs would wrap around him and she’d haul her body up his chest, her breasts caressing him with her hard, peaked nipples until she was sitting on his lap, her ass gyrating hard against him, and then she’d push him to the ground and kiss him in return.
His breathing kicked up, and his blood, already hot and heavy, pulsed around his body with aching, throbbing need, seeking and demanding satisfaction. He was beyond hard, and hell, he was ready. Ready like he hadn’t been in a very long time.
You know you want it so take it. Kiss her.
His head fell forward, lips tingling, his entire body desperate to connect with hers.
Charlie’s image rose up sharply in his mind, standing in a doorway with his long arms high above his head and his fingers gripping the doorframe. Exactly how many times do I have to tell you this, mate? It’s never going to happen. She’s not that into you. Hell, she’s not into you or your gender at all. More importantly, she’s barely conscious.
Charlie shook his head back and forth slowly and meaningfully as if he couldn’t believe what his twin was about to do. It’s creepy, bro, seriously creepy. The only reason she thinks you’re wonderful is because she’s disoriented from lack of sugar and you’re her attending doctor.
Her doctor.
An adrenaline blast shot Will’s blood back to his brain, and this time he pulled back from Millie so hard and fast he wrenched his neck. He winced as the stinging, brutal pain burned hot and radiated to his shoulder. It was a metaphorical slap across the face from a woman who wouldn’t welcome his advances. Only worse, because to hit on a woman socially was one thing. To hit on a patient was another thing entirely.
First, do no harm. What the hell was wrong with him? Jesus, not once in his career had he come close to doing anything so unethical. In her current hypoglycemic state, Millie was incredibly vulnerable, and he’d been half a second away from kissing her. On a logical level, it didn’t make any sense at all. A. She was Millie. B. She was a mate. C. She was gay. It was as if his body had completely separated from his brain, and he wasn’t used to it doing that. He always had a very cerebral approach to women—he chose from the many who offered themselves to him, but lately he hadn’t been accepting any offers. Was this the problem?
He was in the midst of a long dry spell, and he’d been fine with that right up until now. If not having sex for a few months meant he was fantasizing over Millie and almost jeopardizing his medical license, then he was officially losing his mind. He had to prevent this from ever happening again, and that meant he had to end this self-imposed dry spell and fast. The next willing woman he met whom he liked and whose company he enjoyed, he was jumping into bed with her. He hoped he met her really soon.
That’s more like it. Charlie’s image faded away, and Will was stuck by the irony of Charlie being the one to step in and be moral guardian. It wasn’t a role he’d attributed to his brother, who’d pushed the boundaries of what he could get away with every day of his life.
Millie’s limbs still trembled against him, although the violent shaking had lessened somewhat. He eased her fingers off his chest. “I have to do a blood sugar check, Millie, okay?”
“Hmm.” She moved her head, and he got another face full of coconut-and-almond-scented hair, her springy curls clinging to his stubble as stubbornly as the tentacles of an octopus.
His nostrils flared and he blew the hair away as a zip of arousal tried to wreak havoc. Millie is a patient. Millie is a mate. Millie is a lesbian. Millie is a lesbian mate, and patient.
His blood cooled. There you go. Remember that combination.
Millie still needed him for support, but he dropped his arm from around her shoulder and let her lean against him as he found the lancet and glucose monitor. “You’ll feel a jab.” He released the lancet into the side of her fingertip and gently squeezed, watching a red droplet form, staining the white of her skin.
“It better have some sugar in it,” Millie said wryly as she struggled to sit up.
Thank God. It was the first full and coherent sentence she’d spoken since he’d found her. The D50 was working. “You coming back to the land of the living?”
“I guess I am.” She rubbed her eyes as if she’d been sleeping rather than battling a deadly low blood sugar. “What’s the number?” she asked as the monitor beeped.
“Seventy-one.”
She checked her CGM and then fingered the cannula in her arm. “Dex shows double arrows pointing up, so time to take this baby out.”
“No.” He shook his head hard as if to emphasize the word. “You were damn near dead five minutes ago and I don’t want to risk a rebound hypo.”
“I’m the diabetic,” she said, her tone defensive and irritable. “If that IV bag is five percent dextrose and you leave it in for too long, I’m going to spike way too high. I already feel like crap without adding that into the mix.”
So much for him being wonderful. He knew her grumpiness was part and parcel of the hypo, but he didn’t like the glint in her eye that said he was suddenly the bad guy.
“What you need is a proper meal. How far away’s the closest restaurant?”
She took a moment, as if thinking was still hard. “Just outside the park gates.”
“That tiny joint we drove through with the Native American designs painted on the buildings? The one you said was part of the Blackfeet Reservation?” She nodded and he started calculating. “So, it takes what? Twenty-five minutes to drive there?”
“Yes, which is why we need to take the IV out now.”
They’d eaten all of the lunch, and he didn’t have any snacks in the car. “Do you have any food?”
Her fingers started peeling back the tape around the cannula. “I’ve got a granola bar in my bag.”
“Wait.” He realized he was grinding his teeth. “Is your pump still giving you insulin?”
Her gaze was still slightly unfocused and her movements clumsy. “I’ll check.” She pulled out the pump and fiddled with the settings. “I’ll leave it off until we’re at the restaurant, so now can you take the drip out?”
“After you’ve eaten and I’ve checked your blood sugar again.”
“I’ll test it.” She picked up her CGM, fiddled with the settings and checked the screen. “Dex says sixty, so we’re heading in the right direction. I usually feel best around one hundred ten.” She suddenly lurched to her feet, and her already-pale face drained of all remaining color.
“Bloody hell, Millie.” He sprang to his feet and caught her by the waist. She sagged against him, hot, soft and curvy. The thought of hugging her close tempted him more than most things in the last few weeks, but he wasn’t letting his body set the agenda again. He set her back from him, still holding her upright but allowing cool air between them.
“Is it at all possible for you to follow any of my advice? You’re not ready to stand up.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, her quivery tone not quite matching up with the words. “I’ll sit in the car and eat while you drive us for food.”
He wasn’t used to patients bargaining with him. “Millie, ten minutes ago you were almost unconscious, and your blood sugar still isn’t optimum. That affects your judgment, so how about you let me make the decisions?”