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A shattering crash from the next room, quickly followed by a sharp curse, and Jack was in the room in a flash.
Mac was seated on the sofa, with Phryne curved over her cradling Mac’s bloodied hand, the fall of her dark hair obscuring her face.
“Oh, Mac!” Phryne murmured.
“The damned vase!” Mac said. “Oh, it’s a shallow cut, Phryne, don’t fuss –”
Phryne was dabbing gently at the wound with a cloth. Jack moved closer. To his eye, it looked shallow enough, though the edge of the palm was a nasty place for a cut.
“Here,” he said brusquely, and produced his handkerchief.
Phryne smiled gratefully at him and took it, finishing her cleaning of the wound and wrapping Jack’s handkerchief tenderly around Mac’s palm in a makeshift bandage.
Mac grunted. “Thanks for the loan,” she said, eyes flying to Jack. “But what I could really do with is a stiff drink.”
“Of course,” Phryne said promptly. “Jack, if you could …?”
“Of course,” he repeated, and hied himself to the bar cart where he poured three drinks just to be safe. On second thought, he went back and brought over the whole bottle.
Sure enough, Mac downed her glass in one go. He obediently refilled it.
“You must be sure to take care of yourself,” Phryne chided, still fluttering over the patient.
“Yes, yes,” Mac said testily. “I’m quite capable, thank you very much.”
“Doctors truly are terrible patients,” Jack commented wryly.
Mac shot him a look, but subsided. Smiling at him, Phryne finally accepted her own glass, and ensconced herself next to Mac on the sofa.
She said, tenderly, “Mac, you must know you’re quite the most capable, fearless individual that it’s my pleasure to know.”
“Well,” Mac said, mollified, her cheeks pink.
Phryne bent her dark head again, and pressed a delicate kiss to Mac’s bandaged hand.
From where he stood halfway across Phryne’s fancy imported rug, Jack heard Mac’s sharp inhale of breath.
Bending to Mac’s ear, Phryne murmured something far too low for him to catch. Mac’s eyes went wide, and her gaze snapped to his.
His breath was trapped in his throat.
“Inspector,” Phryne said, looking up at him, those luminous eyes of her glittering. “Jack. Come and give Mac’s poor injury a kiss.”
“I beg your pardon,” he managed, heart firing up in his chest like a rattling automobile engine.
Mac gave him a slow, welcoming kind of nod. Phryne just smiled, a beautifully unreadable sphinx.
“Of course,” Jack found himself saying, moving towards the sofa. Phryne caught the glass in his hand, and set it on the side table. He leaned over where Phryne was holding up Mac’s bandaged hand to him like an offering carefully wrapped in his own kerchief. He pressed his lips to the bandage on Mac’s palm, his nose catching the scent of the clean-smelling soap Mac used mingling with the heady perfume on Phryne’s wrist.
“Perhaps,” Phryne said, her voice low, rippling through Jack’s body like a sensual wave, “the good doctor prescribes bed rest?”
“The good doctor does indeed,” murmured Mac, and the two of them rose from the sofa as one and held out their hands to him. And Jack, half stupefied by disbelief, helplessly, gratefully, followed.