‘I don’t think so.’
He frowned fiercely at the calmness of her reply. ‘You don’t?’
Stephanie smiled unconcernedly in the face of the fury she could see he was trying so hard to restrain. ‘This is your brother’s home, not yours, and the fact that Lucan gave me a key to get in shows he has no problem with me being here.’
Jordan drew in a harsh breath. ‘I have a problem with you being here.’
She smiled slightly. ‘Unfortunately for you, you aren’t the one paying the bills.’
‘I don’t need a damned housekeeper!’ he repeated, frustrated.
‘As I said, that’s questionable,’ Stephanie teased lightly as she moved to dry her hands on a towel that also looked as if it needed to come face to face with some hot soapy water—or, more preferably, disinfectant! ‘Stephanie McKinley.’ She thrust out the dry hand. ‘And I’m not a housekeeper.’
A hand Jordan deliberately chose to ignore, breathing deeply as he looked down at her from between narrowed lids. Probably aged in her mid to late twenties, the woman had incredibly long, dark lashes fringing eyes of deep green, and the freckles that usually accompanied hair as red as hers were a light dusting across her small uptilted nose. Her lips were full, the bottom one slightly more so than the top, above a pointed and determined chin. She also had one very sexy body beneath the casual white T-shirt and denims, and—as he was now all too well aware—a tongue like a viper!
No one—not even his two brothers—had dared to talk to Jordan these last few months in the way Stephanie McKinley just had…
‘How do you know Lucan?’ Jordan probed suddenly.
‘I don’t.’ With a shrug, the woman allowed her hand to fall back to her side. ‘At least, not in the way I think you’re implying I might.’ She gave him another mocking glance.
Jordan had been standing for longer than he usually did, and as a result his hip was starting to ache. Badly. A definite strain on his already short temper! ‘Is paying a woman to go to bed with me Lucan’s idea of a joke?’
Stephanie smiled in the face of the deliberate insult—at the same time as she wryly wondered whether the coldly remote man she had met the previous week even had a sense of humour! ‘Do I look like a woman men pay to go to bed with them?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ Jordan scorned.
‘Implying you don’t usually need to pay a woman to go to bed with you?’ That was something she was already well aware of—Jordan Simpson had trouble keeping women out of his bed rather than the opposite!
‘Not usually, no,’ he ground out.
Stephanie realised that he was deliberately trying to unnerve and embarrass her with the intimacy of this conversation. He was succeeding, too—which wasn’t a good thing in the circumstances.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I assure you I would have absolutely no interest in going to bed with a man who is so full of self-pity that he’s not only shut himself off from his family but the rest of the world, too.’
Jordan’s face darkened ominously. ‘What the hell would you know about it?’ he snarled viciously. ‘I don’t see you suffering pitying looks every time you so much as go outside, as you stumble about with the aid of a cane just so that you don’t completely embarrass yourself by falling flat on your backside!’
Stephanie hesitated slightly before answering. ‘Not any more, no…’
Those golden eyes narrowed to dark slits. ‘What exactly does that mean?’
Stephanie calmly met that furiously glittering gaze. ‘It means that when I was ten years old I was involved in a car crash that left me confined to a wheelchair for two years. I couldn’t walk at all for all of that time, not even to “stumble about with the aid of a cane”. You, on the other hand, still have mobility in both your legs, which is why you won’t be receiving any of those pitying looks from me that you seem to find so offensive from the rest of humanity!’
Ordinarily Stephanie didn’t tell her patients of her own years spent in a wheelchair. She saw no reason why she needed to, and wouldn’t have done so now, either, if the challenge in Jordan’s tone hadn’t touched on a raw nerve.
‘You were lucky enough to get up and walk so now you think anyone else who finds themselves in the same position should do the same?’ he said.
‘So you’ve had the bad luck to receive injuries that have left you less than your previously robust and healthy self. Either live with it, or fight it, but don’t hide yourself away here, feeling sorry for yourself.’ She was breathing hard in her agitation.
Jordan looked down at her with sudden comprehension. ‘If Lucan didn’t send you here to go to bed with me, then who the hell are you? Yet another doctor? Or perhaps my arrogant big brother now thinks I’m in need of a shrink?’ His top lip turned back contemptuously.
Stephanie McKinley quirked dark brows. ‘I had the impression from reading your medical notes that your skull escaped injury when you fell?’
‘It did,’ he bit out tightly.
She raised auburn brows. ‘Do you think you’re in need of a psychiatrist?’
He scowled darkly. ‘I’m not playing this game with you, Miss McKinley.’
‘I assure you I don’t consider this a game, Mr Simpson—’
‘You know who I am?’ Jordan interjected.
‘Well, of course I know who you are.’ Irritation creased the smooth creaminess of her brow. ‘You’re a household name. Obviously you’re feeling less than your usual…suave and charming self,’ she concluded tactfully, ‘but you’re still you.’
Was he? Sometimes Jordan wondered. Until six months ago he had enjoyed his life. Living in California. Doing the work he loved to do. ‘Suave and charming’ enough to be able to go to bed with any woman who took his interest. Since the accident all that had changed. He had changed.
‘In that case, Miss McKinley, what I need is for someone to find a screenplay that calls for a male lead who limps! Know of any?’ Jordan growled his frustration as he moved away from her, favouring his right side as usual, as the damaged muscle and bones in his hip and leg protested at the movement. Hell, he hurt no matter if he moved or not!
‘Not offhand, no,’ the redhead said tartly. ‘And you wouldn’t need one if you concentrated your energies on getting back the full use of that leg instead of wallowing in self-pity.’
‘Damn it to hell!’ Jordan gave a groan of disgust, his eyes lifting to the heavens in supplication. ‘You’re another sadistic physiotherapist, aren’t you? Come to pound and massage until I can’t stand the pain any longer.’ It was a statement, not a question; Jordan had had one physiotherapist or another working on his leg and hip for weeks, months, since the surgeon had finished putting his shattered bones back together. None of them had succeeded in doing more than sending him to hell and back.
‘The fact that the leg still hurts could be a positive thing, not a negative one,’ Stephanie McKinley retorted.
‘I’ll be sure to think of that at two o’clock in the morning, when I can’t sleep because the pain is driving me insane!’
When Lucan St Claire had warned Stephanie that his brother was ‘a lot aggressive’, he had forgotten to add that he was also stubborn and unreasonable! ‘In this case pain could be a good thing—it could mean the muscles are regenerating,’ she explained patiently.
‘Or it could mean that they’re dying!’
‘Well, yes…’ No point