DREW LOOKED AT Becky English. Sprawled out, belly down in the sand, she looked like a drowned rat, her hair plastered to her head, her yellow shirt plastered to her lithe body, both her shirt and her white shorts transparent in their wetness. For a drowned rat, and for a girl from Moose Run, Michigan, she had on surprisingly sexy underwear.
She looked like a drowned rat, and she was a small-town girl, but she sure as hell did not kiss like either one of those things. There had been nothing sweet or shy about that kiss!
It had been hungry enough to devour him.
But, Drew told himself sternly, she was exceedingly vulnerable. She was obviously stunned from what had just happened to her out there at the mercy of the ocean. It was possible she had banged her head riding that final wave in. The blow might have removed the filter from her brain that let her know what was, and what wasn’t, appropriate.
But good grief, that kiss. He had to make sure nothing like that ever happened again! How was he going to be able to look at her without recalling the sweet, salty taste of her mouth? Without recalling the sweet welcome? Without recalling the flash of passion, the pull of which was at least as powerful as those waves?
“Becky,” he said sternly, “don’t make me your hero. I’ve been cast in that role before, and I stunk at it.”
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