Hired

by Lily Harlem

  “Managed to get them out?” I asked, swallowing a shake in my voice.

  “Yeah, nasty little bastards, they have a shot of poison in them, makes you feel like you’ve been hit by an electric shock. Got to get them out quick, otherwise they keep on pumping in their venom.”

  I glanced at the house, it was a good hundred yards away. “Would you go find some tweezers?” I asked. “And I’ll have a go at pulling them out.”

  “Why don’t you come up to the villa?”

  “No, it hurts too much to walk. I’ll wait here.”

  He scowled at my foot then looked up at my face. “Are you crying?”

  “No.” I swiped several tears from my cheeks. “Not at all.”

  “Come on,” he said with a frown. “Let’s get you back up there.”

  The next thing I knew, he’d wrapped one arm round my waist, the other beneath my thighs, swung me into the air and pressed me sideways against his hard chest. “Hey,” I said, pointing out my foot so there was no danger of it knocking against the other one. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you up to the villa. You said it hurts too much to walk.”

  He shifted me in his arms as though I was no heavier than a feather, forcing me to wrap an arm around the hot skin of his neck to support myself. No one had ever picked me up—well, not since I was a little girl and my dad used to swing me onto his shoulders so I could see where we were going. But I’d been tiny then, a fraction of the size I was now.

  “I’ll try to walk,” I said, fearing for the future stability of his spine.

  “Why?”

  “Because…because I’m heavy.”

  He let out a snort and his blue gaze captured mine. “No, you’re not.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Brooke, I’ve lifted heavier ice skates than you.”

  “But…”

  “You want me to run back to the villa to prove it?”

  “No, no,” I said, tightening my grip as he upped his already swift pace. “Walking is fine, really.”

  His warm skin and hard muscle against my body felt good, reassuring. As he trooped along in silence I became aware of his sweet coffee breath washing over me and his heart thudding steadily against my side. The loose curls that licked the back of his head tickled my arm, and my foot didn’t feel quite so bad.

  “Here you go,” he said, carefully lowering me onto the large four-poster I’d slept on the previous afternoon. “I spotted tweezers in my bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

  The second he stepped into the villa the pain returned with a vengeance. It spread around my foot, inside and out, shooting up my leg to my knee in mean little spurts. I gnawed at the inside of my cheek and hoped he wouldn’t be long. I just wanted to pull the needles out fast, get it over with.

  “Here we go,” Logan said, stepping onto the deck and holding up silver tweezers as if he’d won a trophy.

  “Thanks.” I held out my hand.

  “Let me do it.”

  “I can manage.”

  “I know you can but let me, I’ve done it before, you have to grip them right at the end otherwise you inject more bad stuff, it’ll hurt longer.” He sat on the end of the bed and reached for my foot.

  My muscles tensed as he rested it on top of his hard thigh. “You won’t hurt me?”

  “No.” His jaw clenched and a muscle in his cheek flexed as he looked me in the eye. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Warily I watched him hunch over my foot. He pressed one calloused palm on my shin to hold me still, the other hand holding the tweezers.

  “Ouch!” I said as he touched the longest of the barbs.

  “That didn’t hurt,” he said, glancing up and narrowing his eyes.

  “Yes it did.”

  He didn’t argue, just bobbed his head low again. He was so big he took up all the space around me and I could feel the warmth from his body seeping into my skin. I stared at a silvery scar on his scalp, no doubt the result of another “high stick” to the head.

  “There we go,” he said, holding up the first of the long black needles. “One little bugger out.”

  “I didn’t even feel you do it.” A wave of relief washed over me.

  “I know.” He grinned. It was the first time I’d seen him give a full wattage smile. It suited him. He had neat straight teeth and the smile went right up to his eyes, generating a sparkle in their pale blue depths and creasing the corners toward his temples. “Now look away and I’ll do the others.”

  Within minutes the other two needles were out. Logan went to drop them in the kitchen trash bin and when he returned he carried two mugs of coffee.

  “I guess you need a fresh one,” he said, nodding in the direction of my abandoned mug.

  “Yeah, I’ll get that before the tide comes back in later.” I reached gratefully for the coffee he held out, took a sip and rested back on the pillow, relieved my morning ordeal was over so quickly and my peaceful center was returning—all thanks to Logan.

  He walked around the other side of the bed, rearranged a couple of pillows and sat next to me with his coffee, his long legs stretching out way beyond mine and his weight dipping the mattress.

  It should have felt weird sitting on a bed with a man I barely knew but it didn’t. I guess we’d just been so physically close in my moment of trauma that it didn’t matter. And now he didn’t seem quite as unenlightened as he had when I’d first met him. He had a softer side, even if it was beneath a hard layer.

  “So tell me, Mr. Logan Taylor,” I said, looking at the dusting of sand on his big feet. “How come you’re so good at removing anemone needles?”

  He sipped his coffee and stared at the waves. They’d increased in energy and were rolling and curling with rising gusto, pounding and frothing enthusiastically against the beach. I wouldn’t be able to bob around on my back today if this kept up. “Tina and I used to have a house in Key West. The little bastards were everywhere, we always had to wear those plastic shoes if we went swimming from the back terrace.”

  “Who’s Tina?”

  His brow furrowed. “My ex-wife.”

  “How ex?”

  He let out a tight sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

  “I told you,” I said, tipping my head to look at him. “I’m not interested in hockey, I don’t follow it so I have no idea what’s in your past. I’m not some rink bunny who has a scrapbook on you.”

  He glanced at me, the frown etching an even deeper line between his brows. “It’s old news.”

  “Old news,” I said in a softer tone, “that I haven’t heard.”

  A palm swaying in the breeze sent shadows flickering over his face. “Oh, what the hell,” he said, looking back out to sea. “She left me just over a year ago for her hairdresser.”

  “She left you for a hairdresser?”

  “Yeah, her hairdresser, Charlene.”

  I just about choked on my coffee. “Charlene! As in, a woman?”

  “Yep, that’s right.” His jaw tensed. “Logan Taylor’s wife left him for a woman. She’d had enough of macho stuff, hockey, my loud mates…me. Said I always took everything to the extreme and she wanted a quiet life.” He shrugged. “But it’s who I am. If I was satisfied with anything less than one hundred percent effort and result in every aspect of my life I wouldn’t be much of a sportsman, would I?”

  “I guess not.”

  He let out a long, low sigh. “But can you imagine the ribbing I got in the locker room? The guys wouldn’t let it drop, the jokes were endless and trust me, they milked it big-time. They were relentless, always on about it, how I’d turned a woman off the entire male species. Bastards.” He snorted in amusement. “Then one day I took Brick’s feet from under him and threatened to pulverize his sorry ass if he said another word. They all got the message then and it stopped.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, wondering what sort of a mother would call her child Brick. “I’m sorry.
”

  “Don’t be, it’s not your fault.” He shrugged.

  “No, it’s not my fault, but still, I’m sorry if it hurt you.”

  “It hurt here for a while.” He banged a fist to his chest. “But it hurt my damn wallet a whole lot more and for a whole lot longer. She took me for all she could—she had to, how much does a fucking hairdresser earn? Certainly not the bucks I get. Tina had to see herself right off our divorce because she’s never worked a day in her life and never intends to.”

  “Does she have the house in the Keys?”

  “Yep, all part of the deal her smarmy lawyer worked out. But I got the big one, just down the coast from Sarasota. It’s great, I’ve had it all refurbished. It’s a real guy’s place now, no more girly frills or dried fucking flowers.”

  I scowled at him. “Do you have to do that?”

  “What?”

  “Curse all the time.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do and it’s shocking you don’t even notice yourself doing it.”

  He shrugged against the pillows. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll forgive you,” I said with a smile. “Seeing as you’ve just saved me from the evil sea anemone.”

  He raised one thick brow at me.

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the parasol and we both twisted our necks and watched it wobble in its slot before becoming still again.

  “You want to walk to the cafe up the beach?” Logan asked. “Fergal says they do a mean brunch.” He gestured in the opposite direction of the rocky outcrop.

  “I don’t know.” I looked at my foot. He’d put a small flesh-colored Band-Aid over the three tiny holes. “It might not be wise to walk.”

  “It’ll be fine now, I promise. Try to stand.”

  I tugged my bottom lip with my teeth.

  “Okay, I’ll let you off for a bit.” He jumped up. “I’ll go for a run and a shower and you can have another hour to recover.”

  I nodded. “Would you just reach me the magazine by my bed?” As soon as the words fell from my mouth I realized how cheeky I’d been. I couldn’t ask Logan Taylor to do my fetching and carrying.

  “Sure,” he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. His bare feet padded over the decking and once again I admired the way his body moved. He didn’t waste energy, it was stored up in his muscles, like a full battery of power waiting to be unleashed.

  He returned one minute later with the latest copy of Nursing into the Future. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you a nurse?” He took my empty coffee cup.

  “No, not yet, hoping to be though.” I shrugged. “I’ve got the entrance exam in a few weeks. Fingers crossed I’ll pass and then I’ll get an interview with a chance to start in September.”

  “Don’t they teach you all this in school?” He twisted his head and squinted at the cover with its headlines, “Autonomy in nursing—is it being threatened?” and “New guidelines for CVA management.”

  “Sure, but it’s good to be able to talk intelligently about the current issues affecting nurses when I go to the interview.”

  “I think you’ll do just fine.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.” He tipped one corner of his mouth in a half-smile. “You seem like the type of girl, I mean, woman, who can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “I do?”

  Flattening his mouth, he nodded. “Yep, definitely.” His gaze drifted down my face and my throat, settling on my bikini top. “When Fergal said I was sharing with a girl doing college exams,” he said, his eyes still lowered and his lashes creating tiny shadows on his cheeks, “you were the last thing I expected.”

  I wondered why now I felt caressed by his gaze instead of ogled at. “You thought I’d be a rink bunny,” I said quietly.

  His gaze came back up to my face. He didn’t look in the least remorseful that he’d quite blatantly studied my breasts. “Yeah, I also thought you’d be some spoiled little rich kid whose daddy did everything for her. Any friend of Fergal’s is bound to be loaded or powerful or both, especially a friend who gets favors like using this place.”

  What could I say? My fictional daddy was not a good topic of conversation. I flipped open the journal and crossed my legs.

  “What’s he do, your father?” Logan folded his arms, rocking back on his heels.

  “This and that, you know, business stuff.” I hated telling lies, I hated telling lies like I hated Halloween, it was so bad for my karma.

  “What business?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, a bit of everything,” I said on a sigh as if the subject was beyond boring because I’d discussed it so many times with so many different people.

  “Like?” His eyes bored into mine. They were the color of the shallowest part of the water surrounding the island, a stunning clear aqua. But I couldn’t hold his gaze, not when I was busy forcing a pile of false statements from between my lips.

  I shrugged. “All sorts, real estate, investments, you know…” I pretended to take great interest in a reader’s letter on faulty colostomy bag seals. “I don’t take much notice of what he’s up to.”

  “And your mother, is she a nurse?”

  I felt a stab of pain behind my breastbone and my stomach tensed. “She was,” I said truthfully. “But she died in a car crash.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.” I looked up at him looming next to me in the dappled sunlight and spotted his aura for the first time, it was a rich scarlet with spiky streaks of black. “Old news,” I said, forcing a tight smile. “Anyway, I thought you were going for a shower?” I needed to end this conversation. It was throwing my entire cosmic balance off center.

  “I am,” he said. “Then we’ll go eat.”

  * * * * *

  An hour later Logan and I ambled along the beach to the cafe. My foot felt fine, though I was careful not to walk in the waves and dampen the Band-Aid. We picked a table overlooking the small harbor and watched the boats bob as we gorged on ham and cheese served on bread still warm from the oven.

  The local fishermen were busy tightening down hatches and securing colorful boats to brightly painted posts. Women scurried about in floral headscarves, clutching wicker baskets stuffed with produce, children and dogs trotted along at their feet.

  Logan had on a pale blue shirt with a small embroidered anchor on the breast pocket. The breeze was getting stronger and flattened the material against his wide chest from time to time. I wished I’d brought a band to tie back my hair, it was lifting around my face, tickling my neck and getting in the way of my breakfast. I was glad of the long-sleeved red cardigan I’d put over my halter-top and the three-quarter trousers I’d slipped into. The breeze wasn’t cold, but something about its increasing strength gave my skin a chill.

  “We close in five minutes,” the short round waitress said, topping up our coffee for the third time. “There’s a dry storm rolling in, I gotta get home and pen in me chickens.”

  “No problem,” Logan said, reaching into his wallet. “How much do we owe you?”

  She scribbled on a pad and dropped it on the table.

  “I’ll get this.” I plucked cash from my pocket.

  “No, you won’t.”

  I scowled. “Well let me pay half, we’ve eaten loads.”

  “Absolutely not.” He handed the waitress several notes. “I invited you out to brunch.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t like a date or anything.”

  A strong gust flapped the tablecloth upward like a stingray’s wings. “Wasn’t it?” One side of his mouth twitched and thick strands of his hair lifted. “That’s a shame, I was kind of hoping it was.”

  A tingle that had nothing to do with the wind traveled over my skin.

  “And I made a big effort not to curse,” he said, leaning over the table, eyes twinkling as if he were sharing a secret. “’Cause I thought it was a date. Didn’t you notice?”

  N
ow I wondered if he was teasing me. “Yes, I did notice, it suited you much better.” I grabbed my hair into a ponytail to stop it whipping my cheeks. “Come on, we ought to go. I’m not sure what a dry storm is but it’s going to be wild judging by the way the locals are strapping everything down.”

  We headed back along the sand at a speedy pace. The waves were roaring now, six-foot-high tunnels of angry sea rolling in from the jagged horizon. Great swathes of energy boiling and frothing. The wind could no longer be described as a breeze, it was a gale and we were facing it head-on as we made our way down the deserted beach.

  I ducked my head and hunched my shoulders to battle against it. Even the smallest grains of sand were streaming over the surface of the beach, hitting my shins like tiny bullets, stinging and nipping. The deep, dry sand made each step an uphill struggle and my legs soon ached with the effort.

  “Here,” Logan said, holding out his hand. “Come on, I’ll pull you.”

  I looked up. He seemed unaffected by the wind whereas it just about blew me over when it punched out an extra strong gust. But he just stood there, shirt and black shorts flapping wildly and the sheets of sand sliding around his calves and feet like water slipping around a boulder.

  I reached for his hand, glad of the support. But as soon as our flesh connected I wondered just what I’d done. My stomach lurched and my heart fluttered. A sensation stronger than any sea anemone shot up my arm. His hand squeezing and tugging mine was like yin connecting with yang, two magnetic poles reaching for one another. And the feeling didn’t stop there, it spread over my shoulder, seeped down my back and settled deep in my chest.

  I couldn’t deny it. I was attracted to Logan Taylor. There was something about his manner, his raw maleness, his aura that appealed to my feminine side. His conversation over the last couple of hours had been intelligent and witty, his smile infectious, and the fact that he’d tried not to curse was sweet.

  “Nearly there,” he shouted over the wind as the villa came into view.

  A palm tree overhead creaked ominously and I scurried closer into his side, wrapping my other hand around his thick biceps as I glanced upward.