It took a while to get back to his car, as Nick had anticipated. Jennifer seemed wary of him, still, though she let him hold her around the waist to help her walk. She was warm under his touch. Small and lithe but powerful, he could tell. Her arms and the parts of her legs he'd seen were toned with strong muscle. But what a slim, strong woman was doing in a dress in the middle of the woods was beyond him. His mind was spinning with more and more ridiculous possibilities.
Finally, they made their way out of the woods to the parking lot. Jennifer hesitated slightly, but she did not say anything.
"That's my car there," he said, pointing to the silver sedan. He usually drove the ute on days off, but he'd decided to take the sedan today. He wasn't sure why. But this would be much more comfortable for Jennifer.
Nick helped her in the car and got into the driver's side. He glanced over to her and saw that she was extremely tense. He turned the key and she jumped at the sound of the engine.
"Alright?" he asked, putting the car in gear.
"I'm not used to cars," she explained.
He frowned. "How do you mean?"
She hesitated. "I've never been in a car before."
"You've never been in a car before?!"
"That's what I just said," she snapped.
Such a thing seemed far too fantastical to Nick's mind. How could a person never have been in a car? He glanced over to her again as he drove. If he had to guess, he'd say she was probably in her thirties. Slightly younger than him, probably. Certainly a proper adult. And she spoke like a regular person. But she was in the woods with a pretty dress and she wouldn't let him take her to the hospital or to her home and she'd never been in a car? Who was this woman!? Nick was starting to feel like taking her to his own home was a very bad idea.
"You haven't told me your name," she said, breaking the awkward silence.
He couldn't help but smile just slightly. "You didn't ask."
"I'm asking now."
"Nick," he told her. "Nick Buchanan."
"Thank you for helping me, Nick Buchanan."
The sudden softness of her voice took him by surprise as much as her fierceness had before. He looked over to her as they reached a stoplight. She really was quite lovely.
She spoke again. "Why were you in the woods today?"
"Birdwatching," he admitted, wondering what her reaction to that would be.
But strangely, she smiled. "Oh yes, that makes sense."
"Does it?"
"Well you found me by following the bird. Why else would you have followed a strange bird if you weren't looking for birds already?"
"Yeah, I guess so. And what were you doing in the woods?"
"I'm always in the woods," she replied cryptically.
"Dressed like that?"
"What's wrong with the way I'm dressed?"
"Nothing, just doesn't seem very practical for being out in the woods."
She shrugged but did not answer.
"So…does that mean you live in the woods?" he asked, hoping her answer would not be yes.
Thankfully, she said, "No, I don't live in the woods."
"Well that's probably good."
"I think so," she agreed.
Nick turned onto his street and parked in front of his house. "This is me," he told her.
She looked out the window and gazed in slight awe at the brick façade. "You live here?"
"Yep," he replied.
"Do all people have houses like this?"
That was a strange question. He answered as best he could. "In this neighborhood they do. But some places have bigger houses and some have smaller, I guess."
Jennifer just hummed in response.
Nick got out of the car and went to open the door for her. He put his arms around her waist to help her up and practically carried her up the front steps of his porch. Now that they were out of the park, he noticed that she smelled like a garden. There was a light floral scent of honeysuckle tempered by the earthy fragrance of dirt. Perhaps that was from when she'd fallen out of the net and gotten a bit dirty. But it was an extremely attractive combination.
When they got inside, Nick took her right into the kitchen. The light was best there and he could clean up easily. The first aid things were in the bathroom, but he wanted to get her a bit settled first.
"Right, sit up on the table here and keep your leg on the chair," he instructed. She did as he said, wincing in pain as she maneuvered her leg. "Let me go get some things. I'll be right back," he told her.
She just nodded.
Nick hurried to the bathroom to find the antiseptic and the bandages. He really hoped he was right about the cut not being so deep as to need stitches. He couldn't do stitches. In a dire emergency, maybe he could ty his best—Nick was not a particularly squeamish person and tended to be calm in a crisis—but this was not a dire emergency and if he had to, he'd force her to go to the hospital for proper medical care.
Upon returning to the kitchen with his arms full of supplies, he found that Jennifer had already unwrapped the blood-soaked strip of fabric from her leg. "Bleeding's stopped," she informed him.
"That's good," he replied. And it was good. If the bleeding had already stopped, the cut couldn't have been too deep at all.
He sat down on the chair and awkwardly apologized as he took her leg in his hands. He had some antiseptic cleanser on a cotton pad and started to wipe away the dried blood. It did not escape his notice that her skin was soft and seemed to glow with a golden tan. There was a shimmer under the bright kitchen light that gave him pause. At first he thought it was just some lotion or something—he once dated a woman who had some sort of cream she put on before bed that left a shimmery shine to her skin and got all over the sheets of Nick's bed—but he realized that it wasn't a lotion. And it wasn't Jennifer's skin. It was almost as if…almost as if it was her blood that was shimmering. But of course that couldn't be it. There must be something else.
Before he could think too much about that, however, he'd cleaned her leg and realized that the profusely bleeding cut he'd looked at in the woods was now barely more than a long papercut on her calf. Certainly no need for stitches. And the bleeding had definitely stopped. She didn't even really need a proper bandage.
For good measure, he'd taken some elastiplasters from his first aid kit. Just two of those and the cut on her leg was all taken care of. "There you are, Jen," he said softly.
"Thank you, Nick."
He looked up when she spoke. And time stopped. She was smiling at him with perfectly formed lips. Her turquoise eyes shined so beautifully, seeming to look straight through to the heart of him. That gorgeous scent on her was making him lightheaded. And his hands were still holding her bare leg. He did not want to look away or stand up or move away from her. He was trapped under her spell, utterly fascinated by all the strange things he'd learned about her in such a short time.
But that spell was broken when his mobile gave a loud chime. They both of them jumped in surprise. Nick let go of her and stood up swiftly, fishing the phone out of his pocket. It was just Duncan asking if he wanted to go out on Saturday. Nick texted back saying 'Sure.'
"Nick?"
He turned back to her. "Yes?"
"Could I have some water, please?"
"Oh sure." He went to the cabinet for a glass and filled it up from the sink. Tap water was perfectly safe, and he hoped she wouldn't mind.
She accepted the glass of water without question and thanked him softly before taking a long sip. She must have been stuck up in that net for a while. That would make anyone a little dehydrated.
"Here, let me clean this all up. I'll be back in a second," he said. He gathered the first aid materials to return to the bathroom.
Nick could not have been gone more than a minute. All he did was throw away everything that had been used to clean up the blood, wash his hands, and put the bandages back in his first aid kit. Barely any time passed at all. But when he returned to the kitchen, all that was waiting for him was an empty glass on the kitchen table.
Confused, Nick called out her name and looked in the living room and dining room in case she'd wandered off. She didn't answer. He didn't see her. He hurried to the front door and looked down the street in each direction. Not a single sign of her.
Somehow, she'd left. He'd not heard the door open or close. But she had utterly disappeared. Hadn't even said goodbye. Well, at least she'd thanked him. Hopefully she wouldn't get herself into any more trouble, wherever she went.
There was a pit of disappointment settling in Nick's stomach. It was weird to feel disappointed. He didn't know this woman at all. She didn't owe him anything, of course. But he had so many questions about her, so much he didn't understand. Well, odds were that he'd never see her again. He could just chock this whole experience up to a weird afternoon in the woods, an odd story that would drift into his mind sometimes in the future.
Nick went to the fridge to grab himself a beer. He took off the cap and took a long swig as he walked into he living room. He sat down on the sofa and drank beer and watched the end of a rugby match.