He lifted one leg, his uninjured one, and she slipped the pants over his bare foot, up over his sinewy shin and calve.
“Now, the other,” she instructed, and realized that this time, in an effort to keep her voice calm and neutral, she'd over compensated and sounded cold and demanding.
Garrett grunted, leaned back, slowly lifted his right foot. Murphy had scissored off that pants leg all the way up to the waistband, making it was easier to work it up to his knee. He sighed—with relief?—and put both feet flat on the floor.
“The rest will be easier if I stand up,” he said.
She nodded, refusing to glance upward.
With effort, he slowly, painfully pushed himself up and off the bed. She only wished the twisting inside her stomach was a sympathy pang for the agony she knew he must be going through. It wasn't.
That Murphy should immediately have stood when Garrett did was apparent the second she realized where her gaze now rested.
Garrett's jockey shorts were intriguingly tight, the white cloth intimately hugging the bulge between his legs. The thin cotton left little to the imagination. That was probably just as well—Murphy had a very fertile imagination.
She tried to gulp, but there was no moisture left in her mouth to do it. Her fingers convulsed around the waistband of his jeans; it was a wonder her fingertips didn't bite right through the cloth, her trembling grip was that tight.
Garrett swayed.
“P-put your hands on my shoulders,” she instructed, her voice hoarse.
He did. The warmth of his fingers seared through the thick knit of her sweater, into her skin, into her bloodstream.
Her heartbeat accelerated as she carefully slipped the pants up over his heavily muscled thighs, his hips. Garrett sucked in a ragged gasp when her knuckles grazed his bandaged wound, but she was being as gentle as she could. She would have told him as much, if she'd had a voice. She didn't. It had clogged somewhere in her dry, tight throat, right along with her pounding heart.
The skin on his stomach felt hot, the muscles beneath tight as she eased the waistband into place. Murphy's fingers shook against the snap, and she knew there was no way she was going to be able to fasten the jeans, never mind zip them. It was with relief that she felt his hands brush hers aside. He completed the chore himself.
“Ready?” he asked huskily.
She stood on watery legs, and noticed her equilibrium was slightly off. Hoisting one of his arms around her shoulder, she coiled the other around his waist and nodded. “Ready.”
Garrett seemed to be trying to put as little weight on her as he could, but the fact was, walking was extremely painful. As they made their way toward the bedroom door, he seemed to be leaning more and more heavily against her.
This was the second time tonight she'd taken on the majority of this man's weight. The muscles in her back, arms and shoulders reminded her of the fact by aching in protest. She didn't complain. Her three-night-a-week aerobics class at the local Y had taught her that burning muscles, labored breathing and sweat were not fatal. “I'll get you into the car, then come back for our things, okay?”
His answer was a clipped nod.
It took forever to reach the front door. When they finally did, Murphy stopped and glanced up at Garrett. She would have been hard pressed to say which of them was breathing heaviest. Sucking in a shaky breath, and still trying to balance the majority of his weight, she kicked the front door open.
A blast of cold air slapped them in the face as, clinging to each other, they ventured into the snowy night.
THEY'D BEEN on the road for fifteen minutes. In that time, if they'd covered a mile, Murphy would have been surprised.
Not that she would be able to tell, even if she could afford to take her eyes off the road for the second it would take to check the mileage. Her speedometer had broken last month and she hadn't had a chance to fix it. As for the mileage do-hickey, that hadn't worked from the day she'd bought the car.
Murphy considered asking Garrett if a car minus those options was legal—if he was really a cop, he'd know, wouldn't he?—then decided against it. Driving in and of itself was eating up all her concentration.
&n
bsp; Trying to navigate the car with only one operating windshield wiper, during a severe snow storm, with no heat…well, all of it made a bad situation worse. It didn't help that the windshield kept frosting over on the inside, and she was constantly forced to slow down and wipe away the misty condensation with the sleeve of her coat.
Her nerves were raw.
Garrett's sneeze startled a gasp out of her.
Apparently, it also startled Moonshine, who'd curled up on Garrett's lap in the passenger seat.
“You know, I really wish you hadn't brought this thing along,” Garrett said. His voice was nasally, his nose stuffy despite the allergy pill she'd made him swallow down with a handful of snow scarcely ten minutes ago.