"So I'm not special, is what you're saying."
"Ha. Not exactly."
The words had just left my lips when Tucker wrapped his palm around the back of my calf, his skin on mine for the first time since I met him. It was an innocent touch, meant so that he could carefully set my heel on the ground.
I was so grateful that I hadn't been in the middle of a sentence, that there wasn’t things I was trying to say, because they would've dried up in my mouth like sawdust. Goosebumps popped along the entire length of my legs, from the tips of my toes straight up to my belly button. I wanted to scrape my hands along the surface of my skin, run the flat edge of a knife over the bumps until they disappeared.
I had no business getting goosebumps over this man.
Because I didn't like him, even if I didn't hate him anymore.
And he had a girlfriend, as the drive to the trail taught me. Which was fine, because I didn't particularly like him.
His faceless girlfriend and her flowery-ass southern name could have him, I thought firmly.
My legs might not have known that, but they could easily be ignored. Those legs hadn't been touched in a year and a half by anyone other than my gynecologist. And my last boyfriend hardly knew what to do with them as it was.
The guys conferred quietly about how to get me back to the car, and I gingerly pulled my boot back up over my ankle.
Tucker stood and propped his hands on his hips. "Do you think you can stand?"
Grady held out his hand for me, and I took it, putting all my weight on my good foot. Carefully, I set my other leg down. It hurt, but it wasn't broken.
Then again, all I was doing was standing in one place.
"Standing is a bit different than walking," I said with a grimace. "But I can probably hobble along, as long as you two aren't clocking my progress. In fact, I'll make my way back. You two go."
Grady pulled his hat off his head and ran his hands through his messy hair. "I don't know."
"No way," Tucker said at the same time.
"I'm fine," I insisted. "I might not be setting any land speed records, but I'm fine."
Tucker crossed his arms over his chest and for the first time since I saw him roll down that window in his truck on the pretty stretch of road where he found me, Tucker glared at me.
"If you think we're dumb enough or mean enough to let an injured woman walk a mile by herself, then you've lost your mind."
I did some arm-crossing of my own. "So it's a woman thing?"
"No," he said, all patience and steady gazes and giant arms still folded across his giant chest. "It's a common-sense thing. I wouldn't let anyone walk back alone if they were injured. I could call for a Ranger to come help you back, but it's hard to say how long it would take them to get here. They've got just a few acres to cover and I'm not letting you sit here with an injured foot for who the hell knows how long."
I tilted my head. "Not letting me?"
Grady whistled under his breath.
Tucker leaned his face closer to mine. "I don't know who or what is coming down that trail next, and the first thing people need to know about being out in the mountains is that you get very little say about it. You're not sitting here alone for God knows how long, and you're not walking back to that parking lot by yourself."
Everything about that tone should have set the hairs on the back of my neck to standing. Everything. It should have had me imagining creative ways to stomp on his balls. Punch him in the throat. Jab him in the eyes.
Except it didn't.
It didn't do that at all.
Something twirled weightlessly at the base of my stomach. A fluttering where there shouldn't have been. A tingle where I didn't want one.
I huffed. The huffiest huff I'd ever huffed in my life, and I damn well knew it was to stop myself from popping more damn goosebumps at his bossy-ass declaration. "It's not your choice what I do."
Grady swiped a hand over his mouth. When he dropped it, he shook his head at me. "I don't know how this is possible, but I think you're more stubborn than you were three days ago when I last saw you."
Tucker lifted his chin and stared up at the trees, like they'd help him deal with me. When he looked down again, I blinked away, because something inside of me refused to look at his face where he towered above me. He was so tall that he was blocking the sun coming through the trees.
"What's my option?" I asked. "It's not like someone's going to chopper me out because I twisted my ankle a mile down the trail."
Tucker regarded me carefully, then nodded like he'd come to a decision.
"What?" I asked him.
"Hop on up," he said, turning to present me with his back, wide and strong and absolutely capable of bearing the weight of one gimpy girl.
"No freaking way," I said immediately.
Nope.
Not happening.
Not ever.
I clamped my teeth together and took a timid step on my bad foot.
It hurt. But it wasn't like I was bleeding to death.
I heard one of them sigh, probably my brother, because he knew better than to argue with me.
One more step, and then another, and another, keeping the majority of my weight on the uninjured leg.
Sweat was popping along my hairline when I reached the fallen tree. I sat down on it, closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. At this rate, I'd be back to the parking lot by midnight.
Someone hopped over the tree, and I knew it was Tucker from the scent that waived past me. It was the same scent from his truck,
