by Fiona Lowe
Come on, come on.
Seconds ticked by, followed by a full minute and then another. The muscles of her upper arms burned. Why had she spent so much time in the office instead of lifting weights and working out at the gym?
Because your job was your life.
And hadn’t all of that worked out just dandy. Now she was out of her job, she had jelly arms and a widening butt, and she was trying to stave off an attacker. The burn moved, spreading across her shoulders and down along her arms. Pins and needles tingled in her fingers and the bath sheet felt loose over her breasts.
Come on. Where the hell was he?
The faint sound of boots against the polished maple floorboards increased in volume. She tried to tighten her grip on the flashlight but the numbness in her hands made it impossible to feel anything.
The door opened.
Now!
He moved past her into the room and she swung the flashlight toward the back of his now-uncovered head, planning to knock him out cold. With her screaming arm muscles and numb hands, she misjudged the distance and clipped him hard on the shoulder.
“Jesus.” He spun around fast, his left arm reaching for his right shoulder. “What the hell?”
He was so close she could see the shock in the depths of his wide, emerald-green eyes. She saw the exact moment his survival instincts kicked in.
He lunged. His left arm shot out, grabbing for her. She dodged, avoiding his grasp but his hand caught the edge of the towel. As it tumbled down her body, she brought her knee up hard into his groin.
With a sucking gasp, he staggered backward before slumping over. Taking advantage of his exposed position, she threw herself at his right shoulder, knocking him to the floor. The momentum took her flying over his head and she heard him grunt in pain. Good. Half a second later, her hip hit the floorboards with a bone-chipping thud.
“Argh.” She groaned as she lay sprawled chest-down with no air in her lungs. Agony ripped through her and silver stars danced in her head.
His hand locked around her ankle, his fingers digging into the small triangular space. “Are...you...done?” he asked, panting.
No way. She kicked out and connected with something hard that she hoped was his head.
“Fuck.” The word held every level of pain and his grip tightened.
If she had any time to think, she’d swear he had an accent.
“Listen, lady, I don’t know who you are or what your problem is, but you need to stop. Right now.”
He sounded utterly pissed but she didn’t care. If she could have moved, she’d have scrambled around and pummeled him with her fists. “Why, so you can hurt me instead?”
“No.” This time he sounded insulted.
“I don’t believe you.” God, she wished she could reach her towel. Right now he had a perfect view of her naked butt.
He breathed out a long, pained sigh. “Don’t you think that if I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it by now instead of lying here on the floor?”
His logic managed to sink into her fear. He had a point.
“So why haven’t you?”
“A, I don’t beat up women. B, I’ve seen you naked and you’re not my type.”
“Thank God for that,” she said, hating that despite the fact this stranger’s words should be reassuring her, they only made Jonathon’s vicious parting words this morning—I lowered my standards dating you—boom in her head.
He grunted. “And C, you dislocated my shoulder.”
She dug deep to banish the insecure little girl with red hair and freckles and tried to find her inner toughness. “If that were true, you’d be writhing in pain.”
“Believe me,” he ground out, “if I thought it was safe to let go of you, I would. But given your actions so far, you’d just kick me in the ribs.”
Was it possible that she’d really injured him? Trying to move so she could see him and yet at the same time not expose her breasts, she craned her neck.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and he looked extremely pale.
Jonathon suckered you. This guy will too. She pulled hard against his manacle grip but it only tightened. She could feel his nails pinching her skin and imagined the half-moon marks.
“We can stay here all night if you want,” he said, jerkily. “I’m not the one who’s going to get cold.”
With its towering ceiling, there was scant heat on the floor of the great room and just thinking about it made her shiver. “If you were a gentleman, you’d let me get my towel to cover myself up.”
He made a strangled sound in his throat. “If you were a lady instead of an armed assassin, I’d consider it.”
Armed assassin? “My only weapon was the flashlight and as you can see I don’t have it anymore. I’m hardly dressed to hide a weapon.”
He was silent for a moment except for jerkily expelled breaths that said all movement was excruciating. “If I’d known you were in the house...” he dragged in a breath, “...I would have knocked.”
Her teeth started chattering. “And what, then gone on to rob another house?”
He released her ankle. “Bloody hell, woman, I have a key.”
Taking her chance, she pushed to her feet. Keeping low, she scampered behind the furniture until she reached her towel, all the time listening for sounds that told her he’d risen to his feet to chase her.
The only sounds she heard were muffled groans.
She quickly wrapped the bath sheet around her and picked up the flashlight for protection before rechecking his position. He hadn’t moved off the floor and his right shoulder was definitely sagging, but he held up his left arm. Dangling from his ring finger was a set of keys complete with a moose key ring. An identical key ring to hers.
The contents of her stomach turned to stone. Oh, God, he’d been telling the truth.
“You’re not a burglar, are you?”
He grimaced and his square jaw tensed with pain. “And she finally gets it.”
Now she no longer feared for her life, she took a moment to really look at him. He was dressed top to toe in black bike leathers but he didn’t look scary or terrifying. Sure, his tousled, sandy-brown, sun-kissed hair needed a cut and his jaw sported a three-day growth but instead of that making him look like a thug, it gave him a rakish look. In fact, the lines around his mouth indicated that when he wasn’t rendered incapacitated, he probably smiled widely and often.
She bit her lip at the horrible thought she may have attacked a member of the Rasmussen family and her minutes in this lovely house were numbered. “Who are you and where are you from?”
His jaw tightened, giving him an intransigent look. “Do you think we could do the pleasantries after you’ve put my shoulder back into its socket?”
She stared at him, not having anticipated the request and feeling completely out of her depth. What if she did him even more damage? “Shouldn’t you go to the emergency room?”
“Probably, but this will end the pain faster. You can follow instructions, right?”
She pursed her lips at the implication she was dim-witted. “Yes.”
“Good. I’ll tell you what to do.”
She bit her knuckle, feeling squeamish. “Won’t it hurt?”
The left side of his mouth drew down. “Don’t worry. It’s only going to hurt me.”
A surge of resentment pierced her guilt. “I didn’t mean—”
“You’re going to have to come closer to me to do it and I’d appreciate it if you put down the lethal weapon first.”
“Right, of course.” She placed the flashlight on the coffee table, tugged the towel super tight across her breasts and walked over.
His cheeks were pale under his tan but the pain seemed to have made his vivid green eyes even brighter. There was something
about his direct and uncompromising gaze that made her feel— What, exactly? Intimidated? No, that wasn’t it. She was no longer scared of him, but whatever it was, it definitely made her feel uneasy.
“Hold my right hand and lift up my arm,” he said.
His hand was wide, warm and calloused. The slight roughness of it surprised her and she realized she’d become used to the soft touch of men whose jobs meant their hands only worked with phones and computers. Men who paid for other men to do the chores that coarsened hands. For some reason, as she gripped his, she remembered her father’s hands. Just like her dad’s, this guy’s hands dwarfed hers.
The moment she raised his arm, the skin around his lips blanched and she hated that she was causing him more pain. “You should take something first...” she thought about the Westerns she’d watched as a kid, “...a slug of whiskey?”
“No.” His eyes glazed over and he closed them for a second. Surprisingly long, chocolate-brown lashes brushed his cheeks. “Just put your foot in my armpit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your foot. My armpit. Now.” He ground out the instructions, each word hitting her with the velocity of a bullet. “Listen,” he continued after her foot was in place, “no matter how loud I yell, keep pushing down with your foot and pulling my arm toward you. Use your entire body weight.” His voice dropped to a mumble. “At least I lucked out there.”
His jibe at her weight bit hard, lessening her sympathy. It was only her guilt that she’d injured him that kept her from dropping his arm and telling him where to go.
“Push. Pull. I got it. Ready?”
“Not really. I know what’s coming.” His eyes fluttered closed again. “Just do it.”
She breathed in. “One, two, three.” She hauled as hard as she could while at the same time pressing her foot deep into his armpit.
His roar of visceral pain exploded around her, gaining volume and echoing back off the high ceiling before spiraling through her, carrying both culpability and blame. As much as he’d ticked her off, it felt so wrong to be hurting him so much. She had to work hard against the overwhelming desire to stop.
Just when she thought she couldn’t bear his pain a moment longer, she heard a pop and the tension suddenly changed.
“You can stop now,” he said, panting hard.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s back in place.”
Relief swept through her. “Thank goodness.”
He stared up at her silently, his face impassive and his intriguing chocolate-fringed eyes devoid of any readable emotion.
A prickle of sensation started at her spine and spread outward until it raced all over her, leaving her hot, bothered and confused. If the circumstances had been totally different she might have said she was aroused, but she knew that given everything that had happened to her today, including the past ten minutes, that was utterly impossible.
Feeling rattled, she broke the silence. “What?” she said more curtly than she intended.
His nostrils flared. “You might want to go and put some clothes on.”
His quietly spoken words rocked through her and she wanted to die on the spot. Her body burned with embarrassment as she realized that the way she was standing gave him a completely unobstructed view of everything nestled between her legs. Everything she rarely showed anyone, let alone a complete stranger. She’d never felt so exposed in her life.
She jerked her foot away fast, desperate to leave. “I...um...I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Take your time,” he said, his voice raspy. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And that’s what worried her.
Chapter Three
Ben heard her retreating footsteps and blew out a breath. Screaming pain combined with an uninterrupted view of a curvaceous naked woman with curly red hair both on her head and on her map of Tasmania, had his body so confused he couldn’t see straight. Let alone think. How was it possible to be in absolute agony and aroused at the same time? It must be some sort of nervous system overload-meltdown thing, because getting hard hadn’t happened in months. Hell, he’d been the only guy in the strip club in Vegas not to see stars when a woman sat on his lap, grinding herself against him and rubbing her boobs in his face.
The fact that he’d just got hard didn’t bother him as much as the fact it had happened because of a woman who’d attacked him and won. He shuddered as he thought about the hit his masculinity had taken and hated that he’d still got aroused. He didn’t want to be one of those sick bastards who got off on being dominated. It wasn’t him. Never had been and never would be. No, he was chalking it up as a pain-induced aberration. Thank God he was a long way from home and his brothers wouldn’t hear that he’d been flattened by a girl who was shorter and weighed less than him. He’d never live it down.
So what if they did find out? This is nothing compared with what Lexie did to you and you’re never going to live that down.
For months he’d done a good job not thinking about Lexie and now, twice in a few hours, she’d invaded his thoughts. It had to stop.
Holding his right arm close to his body, he managed to sit up and rest against the back of the couch. The scent of expensive leather surrounded him. Over the past nine months there’d been times when he’d found himself in some real fleabag dives but not once had he ever been attacked. Obviously luxury was dangerous.
He wanted to stand up but his head spun and he didn’t want to risk falling over. He hurt like hell already without causing another injury, or even worse, more humiliation. Whatever-her-name-was, she sure knew how to inflict some damage. It hadn’t escaped his notice that first Red had given him a hard time and now a redheaded woman had added injury to the list. From the start, he should have known that a town that celebrated weddings had to mean trouble.
As if the act of thinking about her had summoned her, she reappeared. Her tight, spiral curls played around her peaches-and-cream face, giving her an innocent if slightly deranged look—a kind of Shirley Temple on meth. It wasn’t helped by her crumpled black skirt and soiled blouse, which she’d mis-buttoned to cover what he knew to be deliciously ample breasts. Shame.
He reminded his wayward body that not only was he on a hiatus from all women, she’d done a number on him and seriously dented not only his ego but his shoulder. “Did you miss laundry day?”
She jerked her chin up and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve had an extremely difficult day, a very long drive, and although it’s nothing to do with you, my clothes are still in my car.”
Even in his befuddled state her clipped words didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. “So you celebrated your arrival here by running around the house naked?”
“No, of course not,” she snapped, her plump lips flattening into a disapproving line. “I was in the tub when I heard you arrive.” She shot him an accusatory glance. “You gave me the fright of my life.”
“Oh, right, and you didn’t scare me one little bit?” His brain ached. “Why would you have a bath before you unpacked?”
“None of this is relevant,” she said in a tone that hinted she was used to quickly dispatching things she didn’t want to discuss. “I looked up dislocated shoulders on my phone and you need a sling. I thought we could use this pillowcase.”
“Thanks.” The automatic response came out despite him not wanting to be anywhere close to being grateful to her. After all, she’d created the need for a sling. “Do you know how to put it on?”
“How hard can it be?” She kneeled down next to him and leaned in, her spiral curls brushing his face as she pressed the cut material against his chest.
The sweet and exotic smell of ripe, luscious mangoes rushed him, instantly taking him back to his childhood in Queensland and the taste of sweet decadence. He and his brothers would climb the mango trees
in the backyard, pluck the ripe fruit straight from the branch and bite into them. The juice would dribble down his chin and the velvety pulp would float on his tongue before sliding down his throat and filling him with bliss. It was his first erotic experience and it had happened years before he had any idea that the taste and feel of a woman was even better.
He found himself taking a deep, deep breath. His tongue flicked out over his lips.
What are you doing?
Shocked, he stopped himself millimeters away from licking her ear.
Her hands fumbled with the makeshift sling and she bumped his shoulder.
Pain flared. “Shit. Be careful.”
She stiffened. “I’m doing my best but I never said I had any medical training.”
A small part of him conceded that but most of him was still pissed that she’d attacked him. Even more of him was pissed at his reaction to her. Keep your distance. “So what do you do when you’re not dislocating shoulders?”
“I’m a...” she seemed to hesitate, “...I’m a lawyer.”
“Are you sure about that? You don’t sound very certain.”
With a jerk, she tightened the knot she’d just tied at his neck and said with equal crispness, “Does that feel better?”
The material took the weight of his arm and it made a surprising difference to his level of pain. “It does,” he said grudgingly.
“You’re welcome.” She leaned back and studied him with a wary and serious gaze. “I’m Amy, by the way.” She stuck out her hand.
He flicked his gaze from her round face and intense gray eyes, down to her hand and back again. “Ben Armytage. Forgive me but I won’t be shaking your hand.”
Her brow creased in an insulted frown and then a bright red flush started at her pale throat and rushed her cheeks. Her hand shot back by her side. “Sorry. Automatic action. Where are you from, Ben?”
“Australia.”
“Oh, wow. You’re a long way from home.”
For the first time since he’d met her, her voice didn’t sound quite so clipped. She even smiled.
