“Seth-”
“Ready to get back in bed? Hold on one more minute, and I’ll have a clean shirt for you.” How in the hell would he keep his hands off her while putting a shirt on her? How would he keep himself from learning the feel of those hard little nipples and the soft skin around them?
She touched his arm. “Seth?” Her band was small and warm and much too welcome. Her eyes searched his—lovely eyes, a little eager, a little scared.
He made his expression harden. He couldn’t afford to let her find whatever she was looking for in his face.
She glanced away, at the dog who’d plopped down beside him. “I didn’t know you had a dog.” She pushed the towel turban out of the way when it slipped down, and gave him a shaky smile. “It’s all right. I know you’re not going to ravish me or anything.”
She sure as hell knew more than he did, then. “Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s get you back in bed.”
Seth was a bully. An oversize, gentle, worrywart of a bully. Sophie figured this out by the time he stuffed another pillow behind her and told her to behave and be still while he got her some more juice to drink with the supper she was finishing. He wouldn’t let her get out of bed. He’d barely let her feed herself. He hadn’t let her bathe herself…
Oh, but she couldn’t regret that. She should, shouldn’t she? She ought to be ashamed of the way she’d felt about having him look at her body—all hot and luscious, like melted fudge flowed in her veins instead of blood. Eager.
She wanted to feel that way again. Wanted him to look at her. Wanted…him. Was she the kind of woman who was casual with her body, then? The kind who, when she saw a man she wanted, thought that was reason enough for intimacy?
Or did she just want Seth?
He was back with her juice. “You haven’t finished your soup.”
“It’s delicious, but my appetite is a little off.”
He studied her, then took the almost empty bowl away. “All right. But you’re looking tired,” he said in his definite way. Bossy. “You need some more rest.”
“I’m not sleepy, Seth. I’ve slept for most of the past forty-eight hours.”
“You were unconscious for fifteen of those hours, and you get dizzy when you try to do anything. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like a concussion to me. You need to stay in bed.”
She ignored the last statement. “What are you, then? You’re not a doctor, but you seem to know what you’re doing.”
He hesitated, then set the bowl down. “I’ve had some paramedic training. These days, though, I’m a student.” He tried to pull the covers up.
She swatted at his hand. “You are not tucking me in again. What are you studying? Medicine?”
“No. They don’t offer medical degrees through correspondence courses.”
Correspondence courses? “Yet you think you can boss me around.” She tipped her head to one side, pleased when it didn’t feel as if it were going to fall off. “I know. You’re getting a degree from The Terminator School of Nursing, right?”
“No.” But for all the terseness of his reply, his face relaxed. He was almost smiling.
Had she seen him smile? Since he rescued her and her memory started, had she once seen him really smile? She wanted suddenly, urgently, to know what he looked like when he was happy. “Ah,” she said. “I’ve figured it out. You’re embarrassed to admit it because you’re a man, but you shouldn’t be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cooking.” She gestured at the bowl on the table beside her. “You’re taking cooking courses, and you’ve been practicing your lessons on me.”
He shook his head. His hair swung loosely around his face, and she wondered if the scarred side was as sensitive as the other, if that skin felt the tickle of hair as acutely as unmarked skin. She wanted to find out. To touch him, and learn where he was sensitive…
His thin, cleanly shaped lips almost turned up. Almost. “Not cooking or nursing.”
He liked being teased, she decided. He wasn’t giving anything away, but he liked her teasing. The knowledge sang through her veins like a heady liquor. “Magic,” she said softly.
He looked startled.
“I’ve figured out your secret. The five sides to your cabin give you away. You’re a warlock, or at least you will be one when you graduate from Dr. Faust’s Correspondence School of Magick. I’ll be able to prove it,” she added, “if I can find your gramarye.”
“My grammar?” His lips twitched. “Do warlocks worry a lot about dangling participles, then?”
“Gram-ar-ee. You know, a magician’s occult knowledge. A book of spells.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Ah, you must not read any fantasy.”
“Do you?” he asked casually.
“I—” She stopped. Blinked, and fumbled mentally through the clouds that hid her memory, and came up with handfuls of fog. “I was going to say that I used to,” she said slowly. “It was there for a minute, the knowledge that I used to read fantasy. But it’s gone.”
Thank goodness…
“But for a minute you knew,” he said softly. “That proves your memory will come back.” He supported her neck with one of his big, fascinating hands while the other urged her to lie back on the nest of pillows he’d built for her. “All you have to do is take it easy. Everything will come back in time.”
He probably thinks he won that round, Sophie thought as Seth pulled the covers back up, his hands gentle, his face far too controlled. After all, she was lying down again, resting, like he wanted.
But that wasn’t because of anything he’d done. Her own mind had distracted her after the glimpse of her past vanished back into whatever limbo it came from.
I was glad, she thought, bewildered, as Seth left on quiet feet. I was glad I couldn’t remember who I was.
What was wrong with her? What kind of person was she? She craved a man she didn’t know. And apparently she would prefer anything—or nothing—to reclaiming her own identity.
In the morning after breakfast, Seth excused himself to go up on the roof and check out possible storm damage since, he said, the radio had reported the passing of the storm cell that had dumped all that rain on them. His guest managed not to comment on the foolishness of a man with a bad leg climbing around on the roof. At least he didn’t seem to be limping today.
She took advantage of his absence to check something else out.
“Sophie.” She said the name out loud, weighing it on her tongue. She smiled. “Sophie,” she said again. A friendly name. Comfortable.
Her hand went to the delicate chain around her throat and the locket suspended there, with that name engraved in flowing script. She liked the feel of the dainty necklace, liked that one tangible link with her past.
Surely “Sophie” was a diminutive of some other, longer