Passionate Protectors?

by Anne Mather

  ‘It’s not hurting at the moment. I was just going to see if I could stand on it.’ He saw relief, mingled with a little flash of regret in her beautiful dark eyes. Satisfaction swelled in his chest—the knowledge that she wanted him too made his blood sing.

  ‘Then let me help you.’

  Getting to his feet, he went to put his mug of coffee on top of the pine dressing table, his gaze inadvertently captured by a photograph in a delicately filigreed silver frame. It was Megan and a slim pretty blonde, clearly snapped in happier times. Both girls were beaming at the camera as if they hadn’t a care in the world, bare feet sinking in the golden sand of a beach somewhere, sun glinting off the sea in the background.

  Kyle honed in on Megan in particular—how could he not? Dressed as she was in skimpy white shorts, revealing long shapely tanned legs and a scooped-neck pink top that left little of her lovely shape to the imagination, she would stir the blood of any male with a heartbeat. He knew it was an outrageous thought but she looked like a Playboy centrefold or some seriously gorgeous movie starlet, while next to her her undoubtedly attractive friend simply paled into insignificance. Apart from her luscious physical attributes, Kyle also noted that Megan’s lovely face seemed relaxed and more at ease. There wasn’t that haunting sadness in her eyes that he detected there now.

  ‘That was taken just before I started college,’ she said lightly behind him. But, despite striving to keep her voice even, there was a slight quiver in it that made Kyle pivot, studying her with a laser-like intensity that left her with nowhere to hide.

  ‘Penny and I had a week in Tenerife before we both took up our studies. Penny was doing Fashion and Design and I was doing Fine Art. We had the best time—no responsibilities except to ourselves. I think it was the only time in my life when I felt totally free. No commitments to anyone and no boyfriend to mess things up.’

  A shaky smile hijacked her lips, but then Kyle saw the effort even that had cost her as in the next instant she wearily dropped her shoulders. He had to tamp down the sudden, almost overpowering urge to locate her feckless ex-husband and do him some serious damage. He wanted to see the girl in the picture again—the girl she’d been before a destructive relationship with a no-account bully had brought her so low.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better get myself sorted out. I don’t want to keep you from anything.’

  ‘You’re not keeping me from a damn thing.’ Suddenly he was at her side again, supporting her arm and back as she struggled to get to her feet. He breathed in the heady coconut and pineapple scent of her shampoo, the light indefinable something that was purely Megan. He felt the satinsoft glide of her skin beneath his fingers, tightening his jaw in a bid to clamp down an almost uncontrollable resurgence of desire.

  ‘Take it easy. There’s no need to hurry things along. Can you try putting your foot to the floor?’ His voice was hoarser than it should have been. Being so close and not allowing himself to touch her as he wanted was seriously testing all his powers of self-control.

  When her foot nervously made contact with the carpeted floor Megan almost broke out in a sweat because she was praying so fervently that it wouldn’t hurt. By some miracle, it didn’t. Biting her lip, she tried to relax it a bit and add a little more of her weight. Incredibly, there was still no pain. She turned her head to smile at the man by her side—a smile of such exquisite delight that it damn near broke his heart.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she told him, her voice unknowingly breathless. She was like a little girl who’d just been told she was going to get the puppy she wanted after all. Something squeezed Kyle’s heart right there and then and wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better try walking on it?’ he suggested, his tone brisker than he’d meant it to be. He saw the smile fade and uncertainty creep back into her huge dark eyes. He could have kicked himself. Still holding onto her arm, he automatically bore most of her weight as she gingerly put her foot forward in a cautious attempt to walk.

  She took one step, then another. Apart from the limp that was a given, everything seemed fine. Megan briefly closed her eyes to offer up a quick silent prayer of thanks. The possibility of a third operation receded a little further in her mind, like some ephemeral grey ghost she’d glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, now gone again.

  ‘I think I can manage now.’ Blushing a little, she waited for him to free his hold on her arm. When he didn’t, she blew out a little sigh, acutely conscious of the fact that she was dressed in nothing but her nightgown, her face unwashed and her hair uncombed. If that wasn’t ill prepared, she didn’t know what was. Even Penny rarely saw her like that.

  ‘Does it often get as bad as last night?’ Kyle asked grimly.

  Megan glanced away. Those curiously golden eyes of his were making it difficult for her to think straight, let alone speak.

  ‘Last night was…particularly bad. But, yes, sometimes it’s not what you might call pleasant.’

  ‘Can’t anything be done?’

  ‘Apart from painkillers, you mean?’ She was already shaking her head, eyes as big as swimming pools. ‘The orthopaedic surgeon who operated on me the first two times said it wasn’t healing as well as he’d expected. I might be facing another operation if it doesn’t improve soon. I really need to get myself into a more positive frame of mind to stop that from happening. One—because it’s a hideous prospect, and two—I don’t want to have to take any more time off work.’

  She could just imagine Lindsay’s face if she had to go to her with the news of a further operation—not to mention at least six weeks’ recuperation afterwards. The woman was not going to be sympathetic.

  ‘Is there a problem there?’ His expression on a knife-edge of self-control, Kyle held onto her arm as if he had no intention of letting it go until he was completely satisfied with what she told him.

  With her free hand, Megan tucked her dark hair behind her ear. ‘Not a problem, exactly. My boss just doesn’t like me taking time off.’

  ‘He knows what happened with your leg, I presume?’

  ‘She. Not the details, but she knows it was a bad break.’ Megan sensed Kyle’s warm breath skimming across her skin and tried desperately hard not to meet his hungry, questioning glance.

  ‘I don’t think you should be working anyway. You clearly haven’t recuperated enough. What does your doctor think?’

  ‘More or less the same as you. But I don’t want to risk bad feeling at work if I take more time off. It’s not worth the heartache.’

  ‘Damn it, woman, we’re not just talking about a common cold here!’ Finally, the bounds of self-control snapping completely, Kyle jerked her towards him and helplessly, mindlessly, hungrily, crushed her mouth beneath his own.

  Megan didn’t even have time to protest. Instead, sensation overpowered her like a sultry summer storm, abandoning her to its primal elemental fury, taking her willing prisoner.

  Kyle’s chest was a hard granite wall, grinding deeply against her breasts, his hands spanning her waist almost roughly as his arousal pressed hard against her pelvis—leaving her in no illusion as to the depth and breadth of his desire. Meanwhile his tongue was claiming the soft warm recesses of her mouth with impossible heat and sensuality, and a carnal lust so primitive, so hungry that it made her head swim.

  Long-suppressed need slammed into Megan with all the finesse of a battering ram—stealing her breath, making her gasp into his mouth, the taste and sheer animal heat of him unravelling every damn thing she’d ever believed about herself. She’d never felt this aroused, this needy, not in all the long, difficult years of her marriage and certainly not before it…Maybe that was why Nick had accused her of being frigid?

  With a savage curse, Kyle suddenly wrenched his mouth from hers, pressing her deeply into his chest as he drove his fingers possessively into the long silken strands of her tousled hair. She felt his heartbeat throbbing against her cheek, the warm, impenetrable strength of his hard-muscled torso reaching out to envelop her, to pull
her in, to hint at a promise of possible shelter from any storm she might find herself in…

  It was almost too seductive to be borne.

  ‘Megan.’

  His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was gruff and unsteady, composure or any semblance of it totally and utterly gone.

  ‘Yes?’

  With her cheek flat against his chest, intrigued by the clean, profoundly sensual scent and erotic contact of toned male flesh against her own softer textures, Megan allowed her hand to play against his back. Her fingers instinctively found the slight indentation just below his waist and massaged it gently through the thin protection of his T-shirt.

  Kyle took a moment to steady the sudden rapid acceleration of his heartbeat. The woman was turning him inside out with just a touch.

  ‘You’re hurting…and I don’t want to take advantage.’

  She lifted her head at that, gazing up at him with bottomless dark eyes that tugged at his soul.

  ‘I know that. But you’re not taking advantage of me. I—I liked it.’ And with that she extricated herself reluctantly from his embrace to limp slowly but determinedly towards the en-suite bathroom. When she reached the door, she carefully turned round again, her hands nervously smoothing down the folds of her nightgown, her pink naked mouth wrestling with a smile. ‘You don’t have to stay. It’s Saturday. I know you must have a hundred things to do.’

  ‘You know that for certain, do you?’ Kyle’s dark brows lifted in amusement.

  Megan’s heart went bump. The man looked so good he was bad. With his darkly brooding features, tousled just-got-out-of-bed hair and tight-fitting jeans barely concealing honed hard muscle, he looked like a man who knew how to give a woman a good time in bed.

  But that wasn’t all she wanted, was it? Damn it—she didn’t need to go there right now. After last night’s agony she had other more pressing things to be concerned about than a potential future relationship. And who said he’d want a relationship with her anyway? Apart from a professional one? Even if sexual sparks were flying between them, it didn’t mean Kyle might want anything more than a couple of quick tumbles in her bed, and that was something she’d never been up for—with anybody. But still, that shattering kiss of his had fuelled an ache deep inside that would be nigh on impossible to ignore…

  ‘It was very good of you to come and help me last night, but I don’t want to take up any more of your time than is necessary.’

  ‘Did you do that?’

  ‘What?’ Megan saw him glance at the little seascape that was hanging on the wall above her bed in its plain undistinguished brown frame—the one she’d been so charmed by in the park. It perturbed her slightly that he was frowning as he stood regarding it, his arms folded, tanned biceps taut as tempered steel.

  ‘I didn’t paint it. No.’

  ‘Good. It’s terrible.’

  Megan’s stomach flipped defensively. ‘No, it’s not. I like it.’

  ‘Terrible is perhaps too kind a description. It’s got no soul. It’s like something copied from a cheap postcard. Not even a good copy either.’ He turned his head and fixed her with a stare. ‘I hope your own aspirations are a lot higher than that.’

  ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’ For some reason she felt chastised by his disapproval of the little painting. She remembered the girl with the nose-stud who’d painted it, standing in the rain trying to sell her work to mainly uninterested passers-by, and felt an unexpected kinship.

  ‘Not when it comes to painting. I speak as I find. If you’re going to make it as an artist you’ll have to be able to take criticism as well as praise.’

  ‘I know that.’ Megan coloured a little and glanced away. Did he think she wouldn’t be able to withstand a little criticism? After ten years of Nick he couldn’t know she was a past master at receiving it. The fact that she was still living and breathing surely said something for her tenacity?

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’ His voice dropped to a husky undertone, his eyes eating her up with their golden fire, eliciting a melting ache deep in the very core of her that made her limbs feel outrageously weak—boneless.

  ‘You didn’t. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get washed and dressed.’ Her voice tailed off, every nerve-ending in her body acutely aware of the undercurrent of need that was ebbing and flowing between them like radar.

  ‘Go and shower, or do whatever it is you’re going to do. When you’re ready, I’ll be in the kitchen cooking us some breakfast. I take it you have some food in the fridge?’

  Even though he was smiling, Megan lifted her chin a little. No matter how difficult things got, she always managed to put food in the fridge.

  ‘I think you’ll find there’s plenty of everything. But I don’t expect you to cook.’

  She thought of his pristine show-home kitchen and tried to give him a get-out. The truth was, she couldn’t give a tuppenny damn if he could cook or not. The man had come to her rescue at the drop of a hat and she wasn’t about to search for flaws. As far as Megan was concerned he’d played the role of knight in shining armour to the hilt—even staying over until the morning to make sure she was all right. She should be the one making him breakfast.

  ‘Sweetheart, you don’t expect a whole lot, do you? Perhaps it’s time you did.’

  Rooting her to the floor with an indescribably hot glance that stripped her of every stitch, he strode past her, pulling the door softly closed behind him.

  Megan showered, wrapped herself in her soft white terry robe, then spent ten hot and flustered minutes drying her lustrous long hair with a dryer that sounded like a jumbo jet taking off. She didn’t use hairdryers as a rule, preferring to let her hair dry naturally, but because she knew a certain someone was pottering about in Penny’s kitchen—doing God only knew what—she felt a certain urgency to present herself as soon as possible.

  As she sat on the bed, her gaze kept flicking to the seascape that had so charmed her and that Kyle clearly loathed. Perhaps it wasn’t as good as she’d first thought?

  She chewed her lip, switched off the dryer and sighed heavily. There she went again—worrying in case her judgement was skewed and he was right. But at the end of the day, what did it really matter? Megan had bought the picture because she loved the sea. It didn’t have to be a work of art for her to feel a sentimental tug towards it, did it?

  There was a sudden loud rap at her door. She went as still as a statue, then called out, ‘What is it?’ with a thumping heart.

  ‘Breakfast will be on the table in five minutes,’ the brisk reply came back.

  Megan threw the dryer onto the bed and stood up. ‘Okay. Thanks. I’m almost ready. I’m just getting dressed.’

  ‘Need some help?’ came the husky rejoinder.

  ‘No. I’m—I’m fine,’ she stammered, catching sight of her flushed cheeks and huge brown eyes in the dressing table mirror as she spoke.

  She looked just like a frightened doe, she thought impatiently. Any other woman might have laughed off the teasing suggestion, but not her. She didn’t have a sophisticated bone in her body when it came to men and the kind of games they played. No wonder she had been such a pushover for Nick. But she wouldn’t think about her ex-husband right now. Not with a possible contender for Sexiest Man in the World standing right outside her door.

  ‘Pity.’ She heard the smile in his voice as his footsteps receded, and, flustered, tugged the belt around her robe a little too tightly for comfort, so that she had to quickly loosen it again in order to breathe.

  Disregarding her usual weekend garb of jeans and sweat-shirt, she rifled through her chest of drawers to find the red Chinese silk halter-top that Penny had brought her back from a trip to Hong Kong. It was comfortable, stylish, and extremely flattering to a figure she normally tried to conceal rather than play up, but after the drama of last night she was certainly in the market for a confidence boost.

  Teaming the pretty red silk with a brown and red full-length skirt dotted with
little gold fleur-de-lis, she completed her ensemble with a touch of kohl around her eyelids and a quick gloss of dark red lipstick. It was early spring and the weather was inordinately mild—almost summery, she assured herself, heading anxiously towards the kitchen. Anyway, she’d be far too warm in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Then she sniffed, her nostrils unexpectedly assailed by the distinct aroma of eggs and bacon. Her mouth watered. When Kyle had offered to make her breakfast, she’d had visions of a bowl of cornflakes and maybe some toast and marmalade—but real cooked food? She got the feeling he was about to blow another ill-judged assumption straight out of the water.

  He’d opened both windows to divert the cooking smells, while at the breakfast bar Penny’s best blue and white crockery along with Megan’s stainless steel cutlery was laid out in readiness for two—side by side. To disconcert her even further, Kyle had tied one of the girls’ blue and white striped aprons round his lean hard middle, and was busy ladling perfectly formed fried eggs out onto a hot plate as though he’d been born to the task.

  Megan stared. Miraculously, the kitchen didn’t look as if a bomb had been dropped on it. It was as tidy as ever, the sink full of hot sudsy water ready for the washing up, the stainless steel drainer wiped clean. Not only could the man cook, he was clearly domesticated, too. In all the years of marriage to Nick, her ex had never so much as boiled an egg for her—or himself, come to that. What was this astonishing man going to surprise her with next?

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked, without turning his head.

  Megan’s stomach growled in response. It had been a long time since the bowl of bland vegetable soup and two bread rolls she’d consumed for dinner.

  ‘Starving,’ she said honestly, ‘I never could resist bacon and eggs.’

  This time he did look round. He put down the ladle he’d been using to slide the bacon out of the frying pan onto a plate, then smoothed his hands carefully, slowly, down the striped apron. The room was already warm from the cooker, but in the next few seconds it grew significantly hotter. The fire in Kyle’s hazel eyes all but made her sizzle.