Kincaid rose and nodded. “Just go over to the bed and sit down. I can grab supplies if you have them so you don’t get more blood all over the floor.”

“Thank you.” Ash hobbled to the side of the bed, his foot screaming at him, and cocked his head toward the bathroom door. “I have a travel bag under the sink. There should be a little first aid kid in there. And if you could grab my boxers off the top of my suitcase, that would be great.”

“On it,” she said a little too brightly. “I’ll grab some bandages and some boy panties, and we’ll get you fixed right up.”

Fixed. Sure. If only he could slap a bandage on his life as easily as he could on his foot and say the same.

* * *

Kincaid rummaged around in Ash’s bathroom cabinet, fishing for supplies and trying to gather her senses. Beyond the panic of walking into an apartment and thinking a stranger was about to attack her, the shock of Ash standing there half-naked in front of her had been a whole different kind of jolt.

Her first reaction had been one borne of pure female instinct. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from staring and taking in the view. Growing up, Ash had been her best friend, and she’d always thought of him as cute in his unique, adorably bookish way, but she hadn’t let herself think about his looks any further than that. They’d been best friends. There had been lines not to cross.

At least there were supposed to have been lines not to cross.

As an adult, she’d gotten to see him almost every Christmas at the Lowells, dressed in his skinny jeans and his buttoned-up shirts and his dark-rimmed glasses, always with a polished woman on his arm. So she knew he’d grown into a good-looking guy—even though she had to bite her tongue not to tease him about becoming some New York hipster writer. But she had not been prepared for Ash in all his shirtless, tattooed glory. Her body had tingled with something very not okay considering (a) he had a fiancée, and (b) he was the boy who’d broken her goddamned heart like no one in her life before or since.

No way in hell. Look. Away.

Kincaid repeated those words in her head as she gathered what she needed from the bathroom and grabbed a pair of boxer briefs from the top of his suitcase. She would not let herself be distracted by the fact that Ash was gorgeous. Hot guys were a dime a dozen. She could go find one to spend time with if needed. Ash was off-limits in so many ways, he might as well have been wrapped in caution tape and surrounded by a moat. She needed to get him bandaged up and then get the hell out of there.

She handed Ash his underwear and promptly turned her back. She flicked her wrist where he could see it. “Go ahead. Get decent.”