Anna was some seriously potent medicine. One touch and he completely forgot about all his other aches and pains.
She gripped his arm firmly with one hand while she used her other hand to dab antiseptic on the scrapes along his forearm. He welcomed the cold, bracing sting of the medicine to counterbalance her heat.
His sudden hunger was a normal response to a lovely woman, he knew. It had been just too long and she was just too pretty for him to sit here without any reaction to her soft curves and silky skin.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” she said after a moment.
Oh, you have no idea. Max choked down the words.
“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered instead.
“I mean it. You don’t have to be some kind of tough-guy, stoic soldier. If this stings or I’m not careful enough, just tell me to stop.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said gruffly, though it was a bald-faced lie. He couldn’t tell her just how badly he wanted to close his eyes and lean into the gentleness of her touch.
What the hell was wrong with him? He had been fussed and fretted over by soft, pretty nurses for the last six months and none of them had ever sparked this kind of reaction in him.
He tried to tell himself it was just a delayed reaction to the adrenaline buzz of his fall—a sort of spit-in-the-face-of-death response. But he wasn’t quite buying it.
Her sweep of hair brushed his skin as she bent over his arm and he wondered if she could see the goose bumps rising there.
She didn’t appear to notice as she reached for a tube of antibiotic cream and slathered it on with the same slow, careful movements she seemed to do everything.
“You have a choice,” she said after a moment.
“Do I?” he murmured.
“I can leave it like this or I can put bandages on the scrapes to protect them for a few days. It’s up to you. I would recommend the bandage to keep things clean but it’s your decision.”
He wanted to tell her to stop but after he had spent several extra weeks in the hospital from a bad infection, he knew he couldn’t afford to take any chances.
“Go ahead and wrap it. I might as well look like something out of a horror movie.”
She smiled. “Wise choice, Lieutenant.”
She pulled out gauze from her kit and wound it carefully around his arm. “If you need me to rewrap this anytime,” she said as she worked, “I’ve got plenty.”
“Right.”
He figured he’d rather gnaw off his arm than endure this again.
He caught a flicker of movement in the room. Grateful for any distraction, he shifted his gaze and found Conan watching him with what looked like a definite smirk in his eyes, as if he knew exactly how tough this was for Max.
He gave the dog a stern look. Thanks for the backup.
When she finished his arm, she stepped back. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take care of your face while you’re here and all the stuff is out?”
“No. Thanks anyway.”
Just the thought of her touching his face with those soft, competent fingers sent shivers rippling through him.
“Anywhere else on you I need to take care of?”
Though his mind instantly flashed a number of inappropriate thoughts, he clamped down on all of them.
“Nope. I’m good. Thanks for the patch job. I appreciate it.”
He rose and took only one step toward the door when her voice stopped him.
“You were limping when you came in and you still seem hesitant to put weight on your left foot. What’s that all about?”
He turned back warily. “Nothing. I twisted my ankle a little when I fell but it’s really fine. Just a little tender.”
“You twisted your ankle and then you hiked back down to the trailhead and drove all the way here? Why didn’t you say something? We need to put some ice on it.”
He had to be the world’s clumsiest idiot and right now he just needed to put a little space between himself and the enticing Anna Galvez before he did something he couldn’t take back.
“It’s really not a big deal. I can take care of it upstairs. You’ve done enough already.”
More than enough. Or at least more than I can handle!
“Oh, stop it! How can you possibly take care of it when you can’t use your shoulder?” she pointed out with implacable logic. “I’m willing to bet your foot is swollen enough that you won’t be able to even take off your boot by yourself, even if you didn’t have your shoulder to contend with as well.”
He knew she was right but he wasn’t willing to concede defeat, damn it. He’d figure out a way, even if he had to slice the boot off with a hacksaw.
With his eye firmly on his objective—escape—he took another few steps for the door. “You can stop worrying about me anytime now. I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can. But you don’t always have to,” she answered.
He had no response to that so he took a few more steps, thinking if he could only make it to the door, he was home free. She couldn’t physically restrain him, not even in his current pitiful condition.
But Abigail’s blasted dog had other plans. Before he could take another step, Conan magically appeared in front of him and planted his haunches between Max and the doorway, looking as if he had absolutely no intention of letting him leave the apartment.
He faced the dog down. “Move,” he ordered.
Conan simply made a sound low in his throat, not quite a growl but a definite challenge.
“You might as well come back,” Anna said, and he heard a thread of barely suppressed laughter in her voice. “Between the two of us, we’re here to make sure you take care of that ankle.”
He gave Anna a dark look. “Are you really prepared for the consequences of kidnapping an officer in the United States Army, ma’am?”
She laughed out loud at that. “You don’t scare me, Lieutenant.”
I should, he thought. I damn well should.
Once again, he felt foolish for being so churlish when she was only trying to help. He could spend an hour trying to wrestle the boot one-handed or he could let her help him and be done in five minutes.
He sighed. “I would appreciate it if you would help me take off the boot. I can handle the rest from there. I’ve got ice upstairs.”
“Of course. Come back and sit down.”
He ignored Conan’s look of triumph as he slowly returned to his spot on the sofa. Instead, he cursed his stupid arm and shoulder all over again.
If not for the crash and his subsequent injury, none of this would be happening. He would still be carrying out his duty, he would be flying, he would be in control of his world instead of here in Oregon wondering what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life.
She knelt on the floor and worked the laces of his hiking boot. Her delicious scent swirled around him again and he told himself the fact that his mouth was watering had more to do with missing dinner than anything else.
Conan seemed inordinately interested in the proceedings. The dog plopped down beside Anna, watching the whole thing out of curious eyes.
The dog was spooky. Max couldn’t think of another word for it. Though he felt slightly crazy for even contemplating the idea, he was quite certain Conan understood him perfectly well.
Throughout the day he had carried on a running commentary with him and Conan barked at all the proper places.
He was trying to distract himself, thinking about the dog. It wasn’t quite working. He still couldn’t seem to avoid noticing the curve of Anna’s jawline or the little frown of concentration on her forehead as she tried to ease his tight hiking boot over his swollen ankle.
He jerked his gaze away and his attention was suddenly caught by an open doorway and the contents lined up on shelves inside.
“You kept…” His voice trailed off and he realized he couldn’t just blurt out his surprise that she had kept his aunt’s extensive doll collection without revealing that he
knew about the collection in the first place.
“Yes?”
He couldn’t seem to hang on to any thought at all when she gazed at him out of those big dark eyes.
“Sorry. I, um, was just thinking that it, uh, looks like you’ve kept the original woodwork in the house.”
“Actually, not in this room. There was some old water damage and rot issues in here and the trim was beyond saving. I was able to find a decent oak pattern that was a close imitation, though not exact.”
“You wouldn’t know it’s not original to the house.”
“I have an excellent carpenter.”
“You must have to keep him on retainer with a house of this size.”
She made a face, tugging a little harder on the stubborn boot. “Just about. It helps that he only lives a few houses down. And he’s marrying Julia Blair, the woman who lives on the second floor.”
As she spoke, she finally managed to tug the boot off his ankle.
Before he could jerk his foot away, she rolled the sock down and then gasped. “Oh, Max. That looks horrible! Are you sure it’s not broken?”
His entire ankle was swollen to the size of a small cantaloupe and it was already turning a lovely array of colors. He felt like a graceless idiot all over again.
“It’s only a little sprain. I just need to wrap it and everything will be fine. Thanks again for your help.”
He was determined this time he would make it out of the apartment as he picked up his boot and leaned forward to rise to his feet.
“Max—” she started to argue, and he decided he just couldn’t take another word.
Driven by the slow, steady hunger of the last half hour and his own frustration at himself, he bent his head and captured her mouth with his, knowing just a moment’s satisfaction that at least he had discovered an effective way of shutting her up.
Okay, it was just about the craziest thing he had ever done in a lifetime of crazy stunts but he couldn’t regret it. Not when her mouth was soft and slightly open with surprise and when she tasted like cinnamon and sugar.
Before this moment, he would have thought a kiss where only two sets of lips connected would lack the fire and excitement of a deep, full-body embrace, when he could feel a woman’s soft curves against him, the silky smoothness of her skin, each pulse of her heart.
But standing in Anna Galvez’s living room with every muscle in his body aching like a son of a bitch, simply touching her mouth with his was the most intense kiss he had ever experienced.
He felt the electrifying heat of it singe through him like a lightning strike, as if he stood atop Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain with his arms outstretched in the middle of a thunderstorm, daring the elements.
Hunger surged through him, a vast, aching need, and he couldn’t seem to think straight around it.
This wild heat made no sense to him and contradicted every ounce of common sense he possessed.
If she wasn’t a con artist, she was at least an opportunist. She struck him as tight and contained. Buttoned-down, even. Very much not the sort of woman to engage in a wild, fiery romance with a wounded soldier who would be leaving in a few weeks’ time.
Despite what logic was telling him, he couldn’t ignore her reaction to his kiss. Instead of jerking away—or even slapping his face—she made a breathy kind of sound and leaned in closer.
That tiny gesture was all it took to send his control out the window and he pulled her closer, suddenly desperate for more.
Chapter Seven
Some tiny, logical corner of her brain that could still function knew this was completely insane.
What was she thinking to be here kissing Harry Maxwell—she barely knew him, he was her tenant, and right now the man couldn’t even stand upright, for heaven’s sake!
Usually she tried to listen to that common-sense corner of her mind but right now she found it impossible to focus on anything but the heat of him and his strong, commanding mouth on hers.
As he pulled her closer, she wrapped her arms around his waist. This was a little like she imagined it would feel to stand in the midst of the battering force of a hurricane, holding tight to the hard, immovable strength of a centuries-old lighthouse. His body was all heat and hard muscles and she wanted to lean into him and not let go.
She closed her eyes and savored the taste of him, heady and male, and the thrum of her blood as his mouth explored hers.
The house faded around her and she was lost to everything but the moment. Right now she wasn’t a struggling businesswoman or an out-of-her-league homeowner. She wasn’t a failure or the victim of fraud or an unwilling dupe.
She was only Anna and at this frozen moment in time she felt beautiful and feminine and wanted.
She didn’t know how long they kissed, wrapped together in her living room with the sounds of their mingled breathing and the creaks and sighs of the old house settling around them.
She would have been quite willing to stand there forever. But that still-functioning corner of her mind was aware of him shifting his weight slightly and then of his sudden discordant intake of breath.
Awareness washed over her like the bitter cold of a January sneaker wave and she froze, blinking out of what felt like a particularly delicious dream into harsh reality.
What was wrong with her? He was a stranger, for heaven’s sake! She’d known him for all of twenty-four hours and here she was entangled in his arms.
She knew nothing about this man other than that he could be kind to her dog and he disliked being fussed over.
This absolutely was not like her. She always tried to be so careful with men, taking her time to get to know them, to give careful thought to a man’s positive and negative attributes before even considering a date with him.
And wasn’t that course of action working out just great for her? a snide little voice sneered in her mind.
She pushed it away. She barely knew the man. Not only that, but he was injured! He could barely stand up and here she was throwing herself at him. She couldn’t even bring herself to meet his gaze, mortified at her instant, feverishly inexplicable reaction to a simple kiss.
Why had he kissed her, though? That was the real question. One moment she had been urging him to take it easy with his sprained ankle—okay, nagging him—and the next moment his mouth had been stealing her breath, and whatever good sense she possessed along with it.
This sort of thing did not happen to her.
Still, she found some consolation that he looked as baffled and thunderstruck as she was.
In fact, the only one in the room who didn’t look like the house had just imploded around them all was Conan, who sat watching the two of them with an expression that bordered on smug delight, oddly enough.
Max was the first one to break the awkward silence.
“Well, your nursing methods might be a little unorthodox, but I suddenly feel a hell of a lot better.”
Her flush deepened. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what…I shouldn’t have…”
He held up a hand. “Stop. I was trying to make a stupid joke. I completely started it, Anna. I kissed you. You have nothing to apologize about.”
She tried to remember the steps in the circle breathing Sage was always trying to make her practice but her mind was too scrambled to focus on the calming method. She also still couldn’t quite force herself to meet his gaze.
“I was way out of line,” he added. “I don’t know quite what to say, other than you can be sure it won’t happen again.”
“It won’t?” Now why did that make her feel so blasted depressed?
“I don’t make it a habit of accosting people who are only trying to help me.”
“You didn’t accost me,” she mumbled. “It was just a kiss.”
Just a kiss that still seemed to sing through her body, moments later. A kiss she could still taste on her lips and feel in her racing pulse.
“Right,” he said after a moment. “Uh, I’d better get out of your way and let
you get back to…whatever you were doing before we showed up.”
She fiercely wanted him gone so she could try to regain a little badly needed equilibrium. At the same time, she couldn’t help worrying about his injuries.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to make it up the stairs?”
“Unless Conan stands in my way again.”
“He won’t,” she promised. If she had to, she would lock the dog in her bedroom to keep him from causing any more trouble.
He paused at her door. “Good night, then. And thank you again for all your help.”
A shadow of something hot and intense still lingered in the hazel depths of his eyes.
She told herself she shouldn’t be flattered by it. But her ego had taken a beating the last few months with the trial and Gray Fletcher’s perfidy. She felt stupid and incompetent and ugly in the knowledge that Gray had only pursued her so arduously to distract her from his shady dealings at her company—and that she had been idiot enough to fall for it.
Harry Maxwell didn’t work for her, he didn’t want anything from her. He seemed as discomfited by the heat they generated as she was.
At the same time, the fact that this gorgeous man was at least interested enough in her to kiss her out of the blue with such heat and passion was a soothing balm to her scraped psyche.
He grabbed his boot and headed into the foyer. Though she knew his ankle had to be killing him, he barely limped as he headed up the stairs.
Abigail would have followed him right upstairs with cold compresses and ibuprofen for his ankle, no matter what the stubborn man might have to say about it.
But Anna wasn’t Abigail. She never could be. Yes, she might invite the man over to breakfast to make him feel more welcome in Cannon Beach and she might fill his room with guidebooks and put a little first-aid ointment on his scrapes.
But Abigail had possessed unfailing instincts about people. She didn’t make the kinds of mistakes Anna did, putting her trust in the completely wrong people who invariably ended up hurting her….
Though she knew he wouldn’t appreciate her concern, she waited until she heard the door close up on the third floor before returning to her living room.
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