He raised a brow. “I didn’t strip you down the first time.”
“You stripped me with your eyes, Logan, and you know it.”
“True enough.”
She flashed him a wicked look, twisted slightly by pain, then offered up her arm. He pushed up the short, capped sleeve, seeking the welt. He edged her out of the shadows, and once the sun hit her arm he saw the black dot of the stinger. He scraped it out with a flick of an edge of a credit card.
She said, “You’re very good with your hands.”
“At your service, darling.”
She frowned at the spot. “It looks bigger than last week’s sting.”
“Size matters,” he teased, but his attention was diverted by a splotch on her throat.
“You brought antihistamine this time, right?”
She blinked, looking sheepish. “Um…maybe?”
His breath hit the back of his throat. “You don’t have any.”
“I meant to pack it.” She tilted her head. “I’ve had a few other things on my mind this week.”
He took a good, hard look at her face, irritation rising, at her, and at himself. He was probably overreacting. He’d overreacted so much in the months after the incident in the Amazon, he’d stopped diagnosing patients altogether. That pink splotch on her throat could be anything. Atypical dermatitis. Blotching from the heat and humidity. Stubble burn.
“Okay, I get it.” She pulled a grimace. “I’ll take some as soon as I get home.”
“Not good enough, Red.” He pressed back of his hand against her forehead. “Are you feeling hot?”
She gave him a sexy grin. “Sure am.”
“Jenny.”
“What?” She laughed. “You’re so intense and serious all of a sudden. Is this your doctor face?”
He forced his face neutral as she absently scratched at her throat again, making the alarm bells in his head clang a little louder.
“It’s just muggy and hot,” she said, “And I’m within a few inches of a sexy guy, so of course I’m feeling warm.”
“Sit down—back in the shade.” He led to the damp, crumpled picnic blanket, where he urged her down to sit
“Are these hives?” She frowned at her thighs, blotched faintly in spots, as she glanced down. “I haven’t had hives since I was ten years old and ate some crab cake in Marseille. It sucked. I had to take oatmeal baths for a week.”
The ground squelched beneath as he pressed a knee into the ground and began yanking stuff out of his backpack. He carried a small first-aid kit everywhere—old habits die hard—but his heart kicked an uneven beat, and a rapid pulse beat in his brow, as he tried to find it, struggling to contain a rising anxiety. He was overreacting, he was sure of it. Even if she was breaking out in hives, she would probably experience no other symptoms beyond hives. Later tonight, he would rub ointment over her body to ease the itch and discomfort and she would laugh about it, ask him to kiss his way across the welts. Hives were a common allergic reaction, nothing to be concerned about. The only throat swelling too tight right now was his own.
He closed his hand over the first-aid box with an exhale of relief. Snapping it open, he rifled around the samples for a packet of antihistamine tablets, wishing he had his other doctor’s bag, the one with the adrenaline shots, the tourniquets, the Epi-pens—no, he wouldn’t need any of that once he got medicine in her. He found the oral antihistamines with a grunt of victory.
“Here,” he said, holding them out. “Take these right now.”
She stopped itching long enough to pluck the packet out of his palm. Ripping it open, she shook out the pills and tossed them in her mouth. He handed her a bottle of now-warm water and watched as she washed the meds down. Tendrils of her fiery hair lay against her temple and neck. The color of her cheeks intensified.
With a sink of his stomach, he knew her change in color wasn’t from the sex, or the swim.
“Damn it, Jenny.” The words came out harsher than he intended. “You shouldn’t be out in the woods without proper medicines.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Doctor, sir.” She set the bottle on the ground and swiped her forehead. “Fortunately, I have you here to help me. Though this itching is driving me crazy, can you do something else about that?”
“The meds will kick in soon.”
He turned away on the excuse to rifle again through the first aid kit, but he knew he’d find nothing there that was of any use. He just didn’t want her to see his rising, irrational panic. Stop seeing Zebras instead of horses, Logan. Stop acting like a first-year medical student, diagnosing melanomas in common freckles, predicting cardiac arrest instead of gas pains, and anaphylactic shock in every fire ant sting. Yet his mind raced forward to all the worst possibilities. He glanced at his phone to check the time. In thirty minutes, the antihistamine would seep into her blood stream and reduce the body’s overactive immunological response. The meds would kill the swelling, reduce the possibility that her airway would be blocked, if she didn’t go into anaphylactic shock first.
“Logan.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “You have a terrible bedside manner.”
“I’ve been told that before.” He turned his face to stone as he took her wrist in his hand. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers. Her eyes fluttered close for a moment, and she swayed back.
Panic surged. “Jenny?”
She opened her eyes then gave her head a shake, her eyes unfocused. “Maybe we should pack up and get out of here.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
She frowned, touched her temple, and then flattened a hand behind herself to brace upright. “The world is…spinning a little.”
With black spots exploding in front of his own eyes, he heard it, then: The damning wheeze. That tell-tale sign of her lungs laboring to suck air through narrowing channels.
In that blistering second, he stopped trying to push down his panic and
