Dance Away with Me(27)

He heard Tess order Rebecca into the kitchen to scrub her hands. They passed each other in the doorway. Eli was stretched out on the dining room table, one of the couch pillows under his head. Tess had cut away his jeans, leaving him in a T-shirt and a pair of superhero briefs she was telling him she envied. Paul paced across the room by the bookcase windows.

Ian set the first aid kit next to her and, making sure Eli couldn’t hear, let Tess know Eli’s medical care would end with her. “They weren’t going to take him to a doctor.”

She gave a quick nod. The baby moved in his arms and screwed up her face until she looked demented. Predictably, she started to cry. Tess’s head momentarily lifted in response, but she immediately returned her attention to Eli. “Let’s see what’s going on here.” She spoke soothingly as she began untangling the shirtsleeve tourniquet. “I love adventurous kids. What was it that got you? A bear? Or . . . don’t tell me. . . . A zombie squirrel?”

Eli offered a teary smile. “It wasn’t either one.” He began telling her about the moonshine still and Ian’s rescue. Tess appeared to be fascinated, but Ian could see her true focus was on what she needed to do. As he repositioned the baby, Rebecca came back from the kitchen, and Tess asked her to unwrap one of the gauze pads from the first aid kit. “I’m going to take a look now,” she told Eli. “I hope I don’t barf.”

Eli gave another teary smile. “I don’t think you will.”

“I’d better not.” She dropped the blood-soaked shirt to the floor, made a quick survey of the wound, and pressed the pad to stanch the fresh flow of blood. “I thought you said this was serious.”

“It’s not?”

“Serious is when your leg’s hanging off. This is a lot easier to fix.”

“The metal that cut him was rusty,” Ian told her.

“And it’s been two years since he had a tetanus booster.” Rebecca glanced toward her husband, who was still pacing by the windows. “We’ll have to get him another shot.”

“I don’t want a shot!” Eli cried.

Tess gave him a reassuring smile. “I don’t think you’ll need one.” She glanced at Rebecca. “It’s not the rust that causes trouble so much as the type of bacteria that forms on it. But if he had a booster two years ago, he should be fine once we get this cleaned up. The bad thing, Eli, is that I have to get all the cruddy stuff out of the cut. I’ll be super gentle, but I’m afraid it’s still going to hurt. Crying is okay. Ian cries all the time, and look how big he is.”

Ian suppressed the urge to contradict her.

“My dad doesn’t cry,” Eli said earnestly, “but my mom does.”

“Miss Tess isn’t interested in hearing about that,” Rebecca said quickly.

Ian knew Miss Tess well enough by now to suspect she was very interested, but she hid it well.

Tess had Paul carry Eli to the kitchen sink, where she began cleaning the wound under gently running water and rinsing it with a Betadine solution. Eli did remarkably well, considering how painful it must be. Even the baby quieted, only to kick up again. He remembered what Tess had said about skin-to-skin contact, but he damn sure wasn’t taking off his T-shirt.

When the wound was cleaned to Tess’s satisfaction, she had Paul move Eli back to the dining room table. There, she smeared it with antibiotic ointment and closed it up with a large, unusual-looking surgical bandage made up of hinge-like strips of adhesive. “This is a relatively new type of wound dressing some doctors are using instead of stitches,” she explained, as she helped Eli sit up. “I’ve heard good things about it, but I’ve never used it, and I’d feel better if you had a doctor look at this. I suspect he’ll end up with a smaller scar if he has stitches.”

“Scars don’t matter,” Paul said. “As long as he’s going to be all right.”

Tess didn’t press. She instructed them on wound care and the signs of infection to look for. “Bring Eli back in a couple of days so I can check on him, will you?”

“Thank you!” Rebecca impulsively threw her arms around Tess. “I don’t know how we can ever thank you enough.”

“You tell us what we owe you,” Paul said stiffly.

Ian stepped in. “I already negotiated for you, Tess. I know how you like to keep your food natural, so I figured you’d appreciate having Eli bring you some of their fresh eggs when he feels better.”

She shot Eli a comically incredulous look. “Seriously? You’d do that?”

Eli nodded vigorously, then looked at his father. “Is that okay, Dad?”

Paul gave them a stiff nod. “Sure.”

After they’d left, Tess began cleaning up. “I’ll do it,” Ian said, thrusting the baby at her as if she were contagious.

Tess put her back in her sling. She repacked the first aid kit she’d assembled while Wren was in the hospital, but all the time, she was conscious of Ian working efficiently to bundle up the bloody shirt and gauze, then wiping down the table. She looked over at him scrubbing the sink. “It was a nice thing you did for Eli.”

“Did you think I’d leave him there?”

“Hard to tell.” She readjusted the sling, watching the economical way he moved and puzzling over who this man really was. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “You could have hired any of a dozen competent nannies. Why didn’t you pick someone else? You don’t even like me.”