Drew had been seventeen when he became a parent to his brother. He had a sense of having grown up too fast and with too heavy a load. He was not interested in getting himself back into a situation where he was responsible for someone else’s happiness and well-being. He didn’t feel the evidence showed he had been that good at it.
“It was just a kiss,” she said again, a bit too dreamily.
It wasn’t just a kiss. If it had been just a kiss he would feel nothing, the same as he always did when he had just a kiss. He wouldn’t be feeling this need to set her straight.
“When were you cast in that role before? How come you stank at it?” she asked softly. He noticed that, impossibly, the flower had survived in her hair. Its bright red petals were drooping sadly, kissing the tender flesh of her temple.
“This is not the time or the place,” he said curtly before, in this weakened moment, in this contrived atmosphere of closeness, he threw himself down beside her, and let her save him, the way he had just saved her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, cold and clinical. “Any bumps or bruises? Did you hit your head?”
Thankfully, she was distracted, and considered his question with an almost comical furrowing of her brow.
“I don’t think I hit my head, but my leg hurts,” she decided. “I think I scraped it on a rock coming in.”
She rolled onto her back and then struggled to sit up. He peered over her shoulder. There was six inches of scrapes on the inside of her thigh, one of the marks looked quite deep and there was blood clumping in the sand that clung to it.
What was wrong with him? The first thing he should have done was check for injuries.
He stripped off his wet shirt and got down beside her. This was what was wrong with him. He was way too aware of her. The scent of the sea was clinging to her body, a body he was way too familiar with after having dragged her from the ocean and then accepted the invitation of her lips.
Becky was right. There was something exhilarating about snatching life back out of the jaws of death. That’s why he was so aware of her on every level, not thinking with his customary pragmatism.
He brushed the sand away from her wound. He should have known touching the inner thigh of a girl like Becky English was going to be nothing like a man might have expected.
“Ow,” she said, and her fingers dug into his shoulder and then lingered there. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “You did warn me what would happen if you took your shirt off.”
“I was kidding,” he said tersely.
“No, you weren’t. You were warning me off.”
“How’s that working for you, Drew?” he muttered to himself. He cleaned the sand away from her wound as best he could, then wrapped it in his soaked shirt.
She sighed with satisfaction like the geeky girl who had just gotten all the words right at the spelling bee. “Women adore you.”
“Not ones as smart as you,” he said. “Can you stand? We have to find a first aid kit. I think that’s just a superficial scrape, but it’s bleeding quite a lot and we need to get it looked after.”
He helped her to her feet, still way too aware, steeling himself against the silky resilience of her skin. She swayed against him. Her wet curves were pressed into him, and her chin was pressed sharply into his chest as she looked up at him with huge, unblinking eyes.
Had he thought, just an hour ago, her eyes were ordinary brown? They weren’t. They were like melted milk chocolate, deep and rich and inviting.
“You were right.” She giggled. “I’m swooning.”
“Let’s hope it’s not from blood loss. Can you walk?”
“Of course.”
She didn’t move.
He sighed and scooped her up, cradling her to his chest, one arm under her knees, the other across her back. She was lighter than he could have believed, and her softness pressed into him was making him way more vulnerable than the embraces of women he’d known who had far more in the curvy department.
“You’re very masterful,” she said, snuggling into him.
“In this day and age how can that be a good thing?”
“It’s a secret longing.”
He did not want to hear about her secret longings!
“If you don’t believe me, read—”
“Stop it,” he said grimly.
“I owe you my life.”
“I said stop it.”
“You are not the boss over me.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
He carried her back along the path. She was small and light and it took no effort at all. At the castle, he found the kitchen, an enormous room that looked like the kind of well-appointed facility one would expect to find in a five-star hotel.
“Have you got a first aid attendant here?” Drew asked one of the kitchen staff, who went and fetched the chef.
The chef showed him through to an office adjoining the kitchen, and Drew settled Becky in a chair. The chef sent in a young man with a first aid kit. He was slender and golden-skinned with dark, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that matched.
“I am Tandu,” he said. “I am the medical man.” His accent made it sound as if he had said medicine man.
Relived that he could back off from more physical contact with the delectable Miss Becky, Drew motioned to where she sat.
Tandu set down his first aid kit and crouched down in front of her. He carefully unwrapped Drew’s wet shirt from her leg. He stared at Becky’s injury for a moment, scrambled to his feet, picked up the first aid kit and thrust it at Drew.
“I do not do blood.”
“What kind of first aid attendant doesn’t—?”
But Tandu had already fled.
Drew, even more aware of her now that he had nearly escaped, went and found a pan of warm water, and then cleaned and dressed her wound, steeling himself to be as professional as possible.
* * *
Becky stared down at the dark head of the man kneeling at her feet. He pressed a warm, wet cloth against the tender skin of her inner thigh, and she gasped at the sensation that jolted through her like an electric shock.
He glanced up at her, then looked back to his task quickly. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I will try to make this as painless as possible.”
Despite the fact his touch was incredibly tender—or maybe because of it—it was one of the most deliciously painful experiences of Becky’s life. He carefully cleaned the scrapes, dabbed an ointment on them and then wound clean gauze around her leg.
She could feel a quiver within her building. There was going to be an earthquake if he didn’t finish soon! She longed to reach out and touch his hair, to brush the salt and sand from it. She reached out.
A pan dropped in the kitchen, and she felt reality crashing back in around her. She snatched her hand back, just as Drew glanced up.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure,” she said shakily, but she really wasn’t. What she felt like was a girl who had been very drunk, and who had done all kinds of uninhibited and crazy things, and was now coming to her senses.
She had kissed Drew Jordan shamelessly. She had shared all her secrets with him. She had blabbered that he was masterful, as if she enjoyed such a thing! Now she had nearly touched his hair, as if they were lovers instead of near