“Yeah, sure. If you can walk, then do it. You need to get in the shower as fast as you can.”
“All right, all right.” She began struggling up the stairs, so he didn’t have to do all the work. “When I’m warm,” she added with a sigh, “I’m going to wrap myself in the comforter and sleep for days.” She stopped abruptly. “Wait. Did you lock the front door?”
“Yes.” He had, out of sheer reflex. On the very slim chance that Niki had survived the crash and somehow managed to make it back to the house, a locked door wasn’t a bad idea. It was unlikely that anyone could’ve been mobile after a crash like that one, but stranger things had happened. Why was it a drunk always walked away from a bad accident, leaving his victims dead while he shook his head and wondered what had happened? It was much the same for people strung out on drugs; he’d seen it many times over the years. God watched over fools and drunks, he’d heard. Didn’t make much sense to him, but some days it proved to be true.
“Bathroom?” he asked as he reached the top of the stairs.
“This way.” Lolly pointed, and he followed her lead to a door that opened onto a long, narrow bathroom that contained both a tub—standard issue, not a whirlpool—and a separate shower. These days it would be considered crowded and on the small side, but for its time this bath was quite a luxury. Gabriel didn’t care how small or large the room was, he only cared that there was a shower and plenty of hot water—as well as, hallelujah, a radiant gas heater built into the wall. He couldn’t think of many things that would be more welcome right now than that heater.
“We’re going to get you warm,” he said as he closed the toilet lid and sat Lolly on it. He placed the flashlight on the back of the toilet tank, standing it up so the light would reflect off the white ceiling. He reached into the shower to turn on the water and let it get warm. He just hoped he didn’t get the temperature too hot, because even though he’d been wearing gloves his hands were so cold he couldn’t really judge how warm the water was.
He turned around and saw that Lolly had closed her eyes again. “Wake up!” he snapped. “Lolly! Get your clothes off!”
She jumped like a startled deer, her eyes popping open. “Jeez,” she muttered. “All right. All I did was close my eyes for a second.”
“You can close them later, after you’re warm.” As she struggled out of her clothes he turned and lit the gas heater, turned it on as high as it would go, then held his hands before the flames to soak up the heat. Ah, God, that felt so good it hurt. He held them there for just a minute before turning his efforts to stripping out of his own clothes. “Stripping” was the wrong word, because it implied speed. He struggled out of them, just as Lolly was doing. The fabric was cold and uncooperative, his hands were cold and uncooperative, and his jeans were cold, uncooperative, and wet, which greatly upped the uncooperative factor. He could barely keep his balance, and finally he propped himself against the sink so he could finish. He’d have liked to sit down and close his eyes, too, but he was afraid if he did he wouldn’t be able to start moving again.
He half-expected Lolly to protest but she didn’t, either at taking her clothes off in front of him or him getting naked, too. He was trying to keep her alive and stay alive himself, and she was either practical enough to shove other concerns to the side, or she knew how close she was to being in real trouble. She was also human enough to dart a quick, troubled glance at his genitals.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her in a growl. “It’s drawn up so far I couldn’t find it with both hands and a flashlight.”
“Then I hope you don’t need to pee any time soon,” she retorted, and if he hadn’t been so cold he would have laughed at that. As it was, he couldn’t even manage a smile.
Before they got in the shower he checked out her fingers, stooped to look at her toes. They were blue with cold, but didn’t yet show any signs of the white that signaled frostbite. Then he pulled her from her seat on the toilet, clamped his arm around her waist again, and hauled her into the shower.
Lolly whimpered as the warm water sluiced over her. He couldn’t tell if the whimper was from pain or pleasure; she was so cold, either was possible.
Thank God the showerhead was set high on the wall, so he could get completely under the spray. He stepped under it, letting the water beat down on his head and melt the ice that crusted his hair. The water hit his cold skin like pellets; it was both pleasure and pain, and he all but whimpered, too.
“You’re hogging the water,” Lolly complained, and he solved that problem by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her against him, so the warm shower rained down on both of them. With a shuddering little sigh, Lolly put her arms around his waist, nestled her head on his chest, and closed her eyes again.
Now that they were actually in the shower, closing their eyes seemed like a damn good idea, so he propped his chin on top of her head and let his own eyelids drift down.
“God, this feels so good,” she whispered.
He wasn’t sure if she was talking about the heat or him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t care. He could feel the cold leaving him, draining away under the driving water pressure. He could feel his head warming, feel the pain receding.
A part of his brain—a dangerously small part—remained on alert, listening for anything he might hear over the sound of the shower. He hadn’t been able to go down the mountain and make certain Niki was dead, and as long as that uncertainty remained he couldn’t completely relax. He and Lolly were vulnerable here in the shower, but they had to get warm, and when he weighed the two factors against each other getting warm trumped everything else. He’d been so cold he was almost beyond functioning, beyond helping either Lolly or himself, and if Niki had come at them again he wasn’t certain he could have managed much in the way of a reaction.