“Okay.” She seemed satisfied with that answer. Pulling the white plastic box from the lower cabinet, she told him, “You’ll need to take off your shirt so I can clean the area around the wound.”
Following nurse’s orders, Jax reached back behind his neck and filled his fist with the black cotton material. In one long pull, he removed the ruined shirt and tossed it into the open hamper nearby.
“I think this will work fine,” Poppy looked inside the kit to assess its contents as she walked over to where he sat. “There’s some betadine in here, so I’ll start with that and—”
She stopped in her tracks, her words ending sharply when she looked in his direction.
Ah, yes. She hasn’t seen me without my shirt.
Jax was well aware of how he looked. He took great pride in his body, working diligently to keep it in tip-top shape. The physical training was engrained in him, starting with boot camp, and had continued throughout his entire career as a SEAL.
Once he got out of the Navy and returned to civilian life, he’d been bound and determined not to let himself go like some of the other guys did. Not because he was a conceited asshole who wanted the attention, although he did get plenty of that.
No, the main reason Jax had kept up with his grueling workouts was because his work as a P.I. sometimes got a little hairy. He needed to be at his best when that happened.
It also didn’t hurt that, thanks to his current state of undress, Poppy was staring at him with a blatant, wanton need.
“You good, Kitten?” He couldn’t help but play into their current situation.
After all, he was working off a massive adrenaline rush, too.
“Huh?” Poppy blinked before shaking her head as if to physically clear it. “Um, yeah. I’m good.” Back in nurse-mode, she went straight to work.
While she cleaned his arm with the gentlest of touches, Jax took the opportunity to get to know her better. Sure, Ivan’s background had revealed the basics of her life. But sitting here with her hands on him—even in a professional manner—he found himself wanting to know more.
I want to know everything.
“So why nursing?” He watched as she expertly tended to his wound.
Poppy waited a beat before answering with a cryptic, “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll think I’m silly.”
“Try me.”
Tossing the soiled gauze she’d used to wipe away the blood, the tempting woman bit her bottom lip before releasing it with a soft sigh. “When we were ten, Cam and I were walking around our neighborhood. Times were different then, you know?” A soft smile lifted her sweet mouth. “Anyway, we were a few blocks away from my house when we heard this big crash. Being curious kids, we ran toward it to see what had happened.”
“Wreck?”
Poppy nodded. “An old man who had no business driving ran a stop sign and ended up t-boning this lady. My parents wouldn’t let me have a cell phone at that age, so I sent Cam to a nearby house to get help. While she was working on calling for an ambulance, I went to the drivers to see if they were hurt.”
“And were they?”
“The man was shaken up, but otherwise okay. But the woman had smacked the side of her head against her doorframe upon impact, and there was a quarter inch cut in her scalp that was bleeding profusely.”
“That freak you out?”
“That’s just it. It didn’t.” Poppy chuckled. “Cam came running back and nearly threw up when she saw all the blood.”
“But not you.” No, even imagining her as a kid, Jax could almost see a ten-year-old Poppy doing whatever she could to help someone else. That’s simply how she was built.
Same as me.
“Nope.” She pressed a sanitary bandage over his cut. “I used a small windbreaker that had been tossed in the woman’s back seat to press against her head. I’d seen something similar done on one of the cop shows my mom used to watch, so I figured I’d try it, too.”
“So that’s what made you want to go into nursing?”