Helen sprang from her bed as the noise pulled her out of her sleep. James? Had he fallen? She dashed outside pushing her sleep-mussed hair out of her face.
She snapped on the light, flooding the lounge room in a fluorescent glow, putting her hand to her eyes at the sudden pain stabbing into her eyeballs. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
James squinted, too, the pain in his leg still gripping unbearably.
‘Are you OK?’ Helen asked, slowly removing her hand as her eyes adjusted.
He nodded. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
James’s eyes came open slowly and he wondered if the pain and the medication were making him delirious. Before him stood a very different Helen Franklin. Gone was the prim ponytail. Her hair was down, a deep rich brown tumbling in sleep-mussed disorder to her shoulders. It made him want to put his face into it, glide his fingers through it.
Gone was the shapeless uniform. She was wearing some kind of silky sleep shirt the colour of a fine merlot, which barely skimmed the tops of her thighs and clung in interesting places. It left him in no doubt that her pert breasts were no longer encased in pink lace. In any lace at all. He could see the jut of her hip and the curve of her waist and a whole lot of leg.
A sudden image of her riding on the back of his Harley dressed as she was right now, her breasts pushed against his back, stormed his mind and he was rendered temporarily mute. That medication he’d been given was powerful stuff!
‘Oh, no!’
James roused himself at her plaintive cry and tracked her progress with eyes that seemed to be seeing in slow motion only. Her body moved interestingly beneath her silk shirt.
She was kneeling beside the coffee-table, gathering some broken glass from a photo frame, before he registered what had happened.
‘Oh, hell. Sorry. I didn’t realise I’d broken anything. I’ll replace it.’
Helen looked down at the broken glass that had framed a picture of her at fifteen and her father on his Harley. ‘It’s OK,’ she said dismissively, tracing his devil-may-care smile. ‘It’s just glass. I can replace it. I should remove my pictures anyway. I’ve been here by myself for so long I kind of took over.’
‘No, please, don’t.’ He placed a hand on hers. ‘I’m only here temporarily, it would be silly to put them away.’
Helen looked down at his big hand covering hers. Only temporary. Just like the guy in the photo.
James removed his hand and watched the way she touched the picture with a strange kind of loving reverence. ‘Your dad?’
Helen nodded, still staring down at the photo.
‘Is he…?’
She glanced up at him as he trailed off. His hair was sleep-tousled, his wavy fringe flopping across his forehead, and she was pleased that the coffee-table was between them. ‘No. He’s very much alive and roaming some highway somewhere.’
He saw the love in her eyes as she gazed at the picture but heard the bitter note in her voice. Obviously her father aroused intense emotions. It also explained how she knew about Harleys. And maybe it even explained her desire to stay grounded.
‘Anyway,’ she said, becoming aware of his intense gaze and the building silence and belatedly the fact that she was in her pajamas, ‘are you going to be OK?’
He nodded. ‘I’m just going to watch some telly until the painkillers start to take effect.’
Helen rose and backed away, still clutching the frame. She was suddenly acutely aware of her state of undress. How bare her thighs were. How braless she was. How her shirt barely covered her rear. How…interested he seemed.
‘See you in the morning.’ She took a deep breath and turned at the last moment, praying that he wasn’t watching her.
But he was. James caught a brief glimpse of firm cheek as the shirt flared when she whipped around. And leg. A lot of leg. Suddenly his time in Skye had become very interesting indeed.
He was living with someone who was as sexy as hell underneath her ponytailed primness and knew about Harleys.
Suddenly she seemed more and more his type.
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