“I know how he thinks.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“If I was in any position to hurt someone, I would have stayed and dealt with Jake.”

She seemed to be weighing that, as if it was reasonable.

“Okay. I have first aid training. You have to have it out here, and I teach kids.”

“You know what to do with a bullet wound?”

She laughed. She actually laughed. “I do. They trained me. Because...you never know out here. It’s the Wild West. I just didn’t think I’d end up with an actual outlaw in my house.”

“Lady,” he said, flipping his hat back off his head. “You have an overactive imagination.”

“Says the bullet-riddled man on my couch. Hang on...”

She swept out of the room and he looked up at the ceiling. What the hell was happening? Was he hallucinating? Why else would he have ended up in the house of an angel rather than dead in a rain-filled ditch.

The worry was that he was dreaming. That this was a dream. That she was a dream.

She returned a minute later. “Get your muddy boots off my couch.”

And without thinking, he swung his feet right down to the floor. He wasn’t dreaming. In his dreams the pretty angel wouldn’t be worried about his muddy boots.

She sat down on the edge of the couch, right by his head. “Can you... I... I can’t see where you’re hurt.”

He sat halfway up and started to shrug his coat off. Dammit all, he was wet and muddy and peeling the fabric off was tantamount to torture.

“I can’t,” he said, lying back, his brow covered in a cold sweat, his heart pounding hard.

This was lowering.

Clayton Everett had never said “I can’t” in all his life.

“I...” She breathed out hard, and then her hands went down to the bottom of his T-shirt and he...

Hell. His body responded.

Not with the enthusiasm it might have if he weren’t bleeding and in insurmountable pain, but it wasn’t neutral. Maybe because it knew it was dying.

So it was thinking it might as well have a few more jollies.

And she was...

Well, she was exceptionally pretty. So close like this, his vision—which was dark around the edges—honed right in on that. On her.

Dark eyes, dark lashes. She had freckles on her cheeks, and her lips were a natural sort of rosy pink.

Her face was shaped like a heart, her hair sleek and glossy.

She smelled like something sweet and nostalgic he couldn’t name, along with soap and skin.

She pushed his shirt up and he could tell that her hands were shaking. “Sorry,” she said. “Never undressed a man before.”

He sat up as best he could to help her get the shirt up over his shoulders and he groaned as he lifted his arms to get it off the rest of the way.

But getting the shirt off exposed the wound fully, and he let out a vile curse when he saw it.