Voracious - Alice Henderson [39]
As she finished dressing, he knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she said.
Noah entered, then leaned against the doorframe. “Looking good. Want me to check that bandage? You’ve bled through it.”
“Okay.” She looked at herself in the wall mirror. Blood had seeped through the white gauze, and she pulled the bandage aside. The cut on her head looked aggravated and red, the surrounding tissue a dark blue. An image of the tree trunk hurtling toward her head flashed through her mind.
Noah picked up the small bundle of bandages and first aid tape the EMT had given her and joined her by the mirror. He tore open one of the sterile packages. He removed the gauzy patch and gently placed it on her forehead. “Can you hold this in place?”
She reached up and pressed her fingers to the pad.
Quickly he tore off several strips of white first aid tape and affixed the bandage to her skin.
“It looks a lot better already,” he said. “Does it hurt much?”
She gazed at herself in the mirror. “Not really,” she lied, her head still throbbing dully.
“Let’s eat. I’ve got some cheese and crackers … not much, but it’s the only food we’ll find around here at this hour.”
“Sounds delicious.” And it did, too. After hiking, even the simplest food always tasted incomparably good. Cold processed lunchmeat on a flabby slice of white bread became a savory dinner cooked in a French bistro.
He paused at the bedroom door and motioned her through. As she passed him, she caught an alluring scent, along with something else—some indescribable connection—electricity in her stomach diving down to her toes and back up. She glanced back as he closed the door and caught him staring at her. Quickly, he averted his eyes.
From his backpack he’d pulled a small wheel of smoked gouda and some butter crackers in a plastic bag. Rummaging through the pack again, he pulled out a pocket knife. She wondered about the other knife that lay in the pack, the strange silver spike with the elaborate sheath. The temptation to ask him grew as he unfolded a blade and set the cheese on the small wooden table.
“Sorry,” he said with a sheepish grin. “It’s the best I can do.”
“Looks terrific.”
“If I’d known I’d be entertaining a beautiful woman, I’d have brought wine and made my special pasta with mushrooms and cream sauce.” He smiled, his eye contact intense.
“Well, if any beautiful women show up, we’ll just have to let them down gently.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
Instantly she regretted saying it, but having someone call her beautiful was so rare and strange. Usually they desperately tried to avoid her, except George, thankfully. But of course Noah didn’t know about her “gift” yet.
She watched as he leaned over the table, muscular arms slicing away at the cheese, strong hand working the knife, cropped blond hair giving way to his lean, tanned neck—
“Thick or thin?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you like your slices thick or thin?”
“Either way.”
“Gosh, you’re so picky,” he said, grinning at her over his shoulder. “My clothes aren’t good enough, my cheese isn’t the right thickness. Give a guy a break once in a while.”
She laughed and walked over to the table, eager to nibble at the feast. He returned to slicing, and she peered over his shoulder longingly as he placed a slice on a broken cracker.
He turned his head slightly, inhaled. He stopped moving. “You smell good.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“It’s the scent of your skin, your breath. You smell—” he leaned forward, breathing her in, “ambrosial.”
“Ambrosial?”
“Mmmmm.”
“Isn’t that what people eat to become Greek gods?”
“Hmm …”