Free All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel) by Kimberly Kincaid

and hard-moving footsteps to hone in on the flash of bright greensilk beneath the chaos. Ava lay curled on the mahogany floorboards like a slender question mark, and panic laddered up the back of Brennan’s throat.
    Focus. Assess the situation. Breathe.
    “Ava?” Her name got lost in the din of Adrian’s zero-tolerance commands, the sloppy shuffle of feet over hardwood, and Trotter’s sputtering protest growing farther away by the second as the furious chef steeredhim toward the front door. A stern voice—their waitress, Annabelle, maybe?—cleared a wide berth of space at the bar while issuing a no-nonsense warning against anyone taking photos with their cell phones.
    “Ava,” Brennan tried again, leaning in. Trotter might have a face like a weasel, but he was built like a damned linebacker, and he’d hit Ava with the full force of his body weight. Althoughit was uncommon, blunt force trauma to the chest could have nasty implications if the blow landed in just the wrong spot, and Brennan couldn’t tell if she’d hit her head during the fall. He reached out for Ava’s shoulder to gently pull her upright for a better look.
    But the second his hands made contact, she went completely rigid, snatching herself backward as she jerked into an impenetrableball.
    “Whoa! Hey, hey, it’s me. Brennan,” he corrected, his heartbeat ratcheting higher. What the hell would make her react like that? “I want to help you. Just let me see if you’re hurt.”
    “Oh.” Ava blinked, her green eyes going wide, but then realization washed over her face as she clumsily pushed herself up to sitting. “No, no, I’m . . . ow.”
    “Did you hit your head at all?” he asked, fingersitching to travel over her in search of injuries, but she seemed spooked, so he settled for letting his eyes do the job. She was alert and reactive, although clearly rattled, and Brennan revisited the urge to introduce his fist to Trotter’s smug-bastard face.
    “No. I don’t think so, anyway. I’m fine.” One hand fluttered up to the center of her blouse, accompanied by a sigh of pain as she struggledto get her feet beneath her. But looking okay and being okay weren’t always the same beast, especially if she might’ve also hit her head. There were half a dozen injuries that could be lurking beneath her “fine” exterior.
    “Do you feel short of breath or dizzy?” Brennan palmed her shoulder to get a better visual on her eyes, and jeez, he felt her trembling all the way down his arm.
    “No.” Sheaimed the word at her lap, but it came through loud and clear. “Really, I just want to get up.”
    The request came at the same time Teagan arrived at Ava’s side, her eyes doing the exact same tour for injuries as Brennan’s had not twenty seconds before.
    “Hey, Ava. I’m a paramedic. I want to take a look at you, just to see what’s what, okay?”
    Ava’s cheeks went from pale to pink in less thana second. “I promise, I’m fine.” She shifted to an awkward stand, but rather than stepping back to give her space, Brennan slid his shoulder under Ava’s arm to help steady her feet beneath her.
    “No LOC, no visible injuries, breathing seems okay, but the jackass popped her pretty hard in the sternum before she fell and she might’ve hit her head on the way down,” he told Teagan, already guidingAva toward the pass-through to the kitchen.
    Teagan’s brows shot skyward, but she kept up with him, stride for stride. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go up to the office so I can do a quick RTA.”
    Brennan nodded in a single lift of his chin. “Couch’ll work.” It would be a hell of a lot more comfortable to do a rapid trauma assessment there than on the floorboards in the dining room.
    Ava huffedout a breath of protest. “I don’t need a . . . whatever that is. Seriously, I just got knocked down. It’s no big deal.”
    “I know,” Teagan agreed, cutting off both Ava’s argument and the protest Brennan was brewing to fight