by Julie Miller
“I don’t have an X-ray machine to check for internal injuries.”
Now he was the one swallowing hard to regain his equilibrium. “I know what a cracked rib feels like. I’m breathing fine. This is just a bruise.”
She pulled a tray of ice from the minifridge and wrapped the ice in a thin towel, placing it gently against his aching side. “You’ve been in a lot of fights?”
“A few.”
“I’m sorry.” She took his hand and placed it over the ice pack to hold it in place so that she could set up a tray with sutures. “That you’ve been hurt, I mean. I’m not sorry that somebody was able to put Silas in his place for once.” She tilted her eyes up to his. “Does that make me a bad person? That I feel like I should thank you?”
Maybe the woman was more bluff than any real experience with men. Since she wasn’t attached to anyone here, he could take advantage of her apparent interest in him. She seemed to be at odds with Henry Fiske, but she was part of his family. And, clearly, she had some kind of history with Danvers. She’d know everyone here and have access to most, if not all, of the facilities. And this conversation was giving him the feeling that he could get close to her, after all.
For a split second, Shayla Ortiz’s face superimposed itself over Melanie’s. He’d used her, too, to get close to her drug-dealing brother. And that had turned into the worst sort of disaster an undercover cop could face. He’d lost his focus on the case when he’d fallen in love. Shayla had betrayed him and blown his cover to protect herself, and he hadn’t seen it coming until it was too late.
But Duff was a decade older and wiser now. He didn’t have to trust Melanie Fiske—he just had to make her think he did. He had to make her believe he cared about her. He didn’t have the suave charm of his youngest brother to draw on, but how sophisticated could a woman who’d grown up in the boonies of Missouri be? She just needed somebody to be nicer to her than Danvers had been, and that wouldn’t be much of a challenge. If he paid attention to a few details, he could figure out what was important to her and pretend those things were important to him, too.
Melanie tucked a damp tendril behind her ear and held it there as her freckled cheeks colored with a rosy blush. “I guess that makes me a hypocrite—trying to stop the violence, yet wishing I could have done it myself.”
Duff realized he’d been staring long enough to make her uncomfortable—just the opposite of what he needed to be doing if he was going to woo her into becoming an ally. He ignored the stab of guilt that tried to warn him away from involving her in his investigation. “Has Danvers given you trouble before? Do you know how to fight?”
“So far I’ve relied on outwitting him. It isn’t that hard.”
Duff wanted to grin at her sarcasm, but the fact that the man who’d cut his arm open had threatened her, as well, didn’t sit well with him. “I could give you a few pointers on defending yourself.”
“You’d teach me to fight.” Now that was a skeptical look. “Like you were doing out there with Silas?”
Realistically, he doubted she could take Silas down the same way he had. But there were ways. “You just have to be smarter than your opponent, do the unexpected and be fierce about committing to the attack. I could show you escape maneuvers—and you probably already know some of the key targets if you want to incapacitate a man.”
Her gaze dropped down to the zipper of his jeans and up to the column of his throat.
“I see you already know a couple of vulnerable spots.” He really should feel guilty about saying things that triggered that graphic response on her skin. Instead, he was wondering what else he could say or do to make her skin color like that.
She quickly averted her face. “I’d appreciate that. If you have the time.”
Her hip brushed against his thigh as she inserted the first stitch. Duff turned his nose to the crown of her hair, inhaling the scents of baby shampoo and damp summer heat. “I’ll make the time for you.”
“You don’t even know your work schedule...” Before she made the next stitch, she tipped her face to his. Her breath caught with an audible startle at how close he was to her, but Duff made no effort to retreat.
Her eyes weren’t ordinary at all. Their cool brown color, spiked with flecks of amber, reminded him of the fine Irish whiskey he and his brothers liked to sip on special occasions. With her sweet scent and eyes like that, he wouldn’t have to pretend that this woman had some pretty about her, after all.
“When I say I’m going to do a thing, I do it.”
He lowered his gaze to the quiver of her lips and felt a twist of hunger low in his belly. He could kiss her right now if he wanted to. Maybe the bold move would shock her into kissing him back. Or she might just slap his face for doing without asking.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Her hands were suddenly very busy with the cut on his shoulder.
“I don’t.”
Yep. Busy, busy. She didn’t know what to do about her interest in him. She didn’t know how to hide it, either. As long as he didn’t spook her, he could give her a few lessons about how to indulge that awareness she was feeling. And, damn it, he was going to take advantage of that attraction. Because the mission required it.
But that meant ignoring his conscience and his errant libido, and taking it slow so he wouldn’t frighten her off before he had the chance to solidify a connection between them. So he dialed back his own curiosity about what her lips might taste like and thought about the vanishing man who’d shot his grandfather and the reason he was here in the first place. Duff set the ice pack on the bed beside him and captured a strand of Melanie’s auburn hair, pulling it away from the damp spot on her left breast. The kinky tendril was thick and soft as he rubbed it between his thumb and fingers, stirring up the scents he’d noticed earlier. She must use baby products for all her personal toiletries. If he needed any further testament to her innocence...
Melanie pulled away at the same moment he forgot that touching her was supposed to be an act.
“Give me a sec.” She exited the room for a minute or so, and came back in, sans the blush, tying a rubber band around the long braid that hung over her shoulder. Without another word, she pulled on a new pair of sterile gloves and prepped the needle for the next stitch. Her tough-chick armor was back in place.
But Duff wasn’t about to surrender the opportunity to get closer to her. “That’s a shame, winding up all that wild hair like that.” He reached out and twisted the heavy braid between his fingers, using it to tug her into the vee of his legs. “I liked it better down.”
Chapter Four
“You liked...?” Melanie caught her breath when the back of Tom Maynard’s knuckles brushed across her breast as he played with the braid of her hair. The caress tingled over her skin, tightening the tip into a tender pearl. Was that an accident? Or had that touch been intentional? She cringed at the sound of denim rasping against denim. She was nestled between his thighs and she wasn’t making any effort to move away from the warmth surrounding her.
“Are you hitting on me?” With an awkward push and a nearly stifling amount of embarrassed heat creeping up to her cheeks, she stepped around his knee. A half-sewn suture linking her hands to his shoulder kept her from bolting across the room. “You’ll make me mess up this stitch.”
She’d been stripped down to wet undies that were transparent to the skin an hour or so ago and hadn’t felt as exposed as she did fully dressed with Tom Maynard. Of course, no one had touched her, accidentally or otherwise, when she’d been swimming in her skivvies. And this man seemed to keep finding reasons to touch her. Where was that sharp tongue she’d used to tell off Silas and her uncle? Was she really so starved for some tender attention from a man that she’d forget her vow to steer clear of any entanglements on the farm?
She stopped herself from reaching inside her pocket again to touch he
r father’s watch. It was a superstitious habit, really, thinking that holding on to the busted watch could bring back either of her parents. The scratched-up piece of gold couldn’t really channel her father’s spirit and give her clarity and reassurance when she needed it. She had to be smart enough to remember all the life lessons her widowed father had taught her right up until the night he’d died.
Except that she’d been a girl of eleven when Leroy Fiske had drowned. And, somehow, the lessons she’d learned as a little girl never included how she was supposed to react to a man who stirred things inside her. Even when he didn’t mean to. Or did he? She’d been secretly cheering for Tom Maynard when he’d stood up to Henry and Silas’s authority. They’d had to gang up on Tom and pull a weapon to turn the tide of power back in their favor. For a few moments, she thought she’d found her hero—the perfect ally—a way out of the nightmare unfolding around her these past few months. No wonder she’d been so eager to defy her uncle’s authority and step into the middle of a fight.
Then she realized he was going to be like the other men here—overlooking her uncle’s lies and accepting his questionable dictates in exchange for a share of the farm’s profits—or whatever a man like Tom needed.
But the promise of a hero must have lingered inside her because she’d been ogling Tom’s imposing chest and the T-shaped dusting of brown hair that tapered into a line that disappeared beneath his belt buckle, imagining being held close to all that muscle and heat again. Did her reaction to his touch mean she liked Tom? Had catching her admiring the muscular landscape sent her patient the message that she wanted to be touched? If so, how did she change that message? Because it really wasn’t in her plans right now to...to what? Make a friend? Have an affair? Completely embarrass herself by revealing that she’d reached the age of twenty-five with more experience fishing than kissing?
“Hey, Doc, you okay?” His voice rumbled in a drowsy timbre. “You got quiet on me.”
She hated how her skin telegraphed every emotion, putting her at a disadvantage when she couldn’t read whatever Tom was thinking or feeling. “I did?” She cleared her throat to mask the embarrassingly breathless quality of her own voice. “I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”
“Why you tamed all that hair into a braid like this. You’ve sure got a lot of it.” Was that supposed to be a compliment? Or a remark about how the Missouri humidity could wreak havoc on too much naturally curly hair? And, goodness, was he still twirling the tail end of her braid between his fingers?
She couldn’t summon her father’s spirit to guide her, but she could muster up a little common sense. Melanie pulled the braid from his fingers and swung it behind her back. “It’s not practical to have it flying all over the place when I have to do work like this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to cut it all off.”
“Now that would be a shame. It’s like earthy fire.”
Melanie lowered her needle and tipped her gaze past the brown stubble dusting his jaw to meet his smiling green eyes. “Is that your best line? That is a line, isn’t it?” She understood a brute like Silas pawing at her and barking orders more than she ever had men who pretended she was pretty or special so that they could get something from her. And this man with his neat military haircut and unshaven face, his mature body and boyish grin, his eagerness to fight and flirt, definitely wanted something. “You give people nicknames because refusing to use their real name is a way to put distance between you. I’m not a doctor, so stop calling me Doc. You told Henry that you wanted to get away from people, and yet you’re trying to make friends with me. I need you to watch where you put your hands, and my hair is earthy fire? What does that even mean? If you want to say something, just say it. I don’t understand why men can’t be honest.”
He put up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, sweetheart. I think I just got lumped in with some bad history. You don’t even know me. Not all men are dishonest.”
She wanted to believe that. But, after a few run-ins with her uncle and Silas, she doubted it. She got a sense that even this one who’d protected her from Silas’s knife was lying about something.
“And I’ll start keeping my hands to myself once you stop putting yours on me,” he said.
“I’m treating your injury.”
“That’s not all you’re doing, Doc.”
Melanie groaned as he teased her with the nickname again.
“Sure, I’m trying to be friendly,” he said. “We’re going to be seeing each other almost every day, right? And giving you those self-defense lessons? Trust me, they’ll go easier if you don’t think of me as the enemy. You gotta give me a chance.”
She knocked his left hand down and moved closer to sew another stitch. “No, I don’t.”
His arm flinched against his side and he swore. “Easy, Doc—er, Mel. Melanie. Miss Fiske.” That snippy tone of mockery she understood. “That one pinched.”
She stopped before cutting the end of the suture, appalled that she’d let this man’s teasing and touching, and her own distrustful thoughts, get in the way of her doing her job with the care and accuracy in which she prided herself. No matter what her issues were with her uncle, she had no right to take her frustration out on a patient. “I’m sorry.” She quickly analyzed the neat row of stitches to make sure she hadn’t aggravated his injury. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’ll live. But I felt the tug.” He dipped his square jaw to line up his gaze with hers. “Why are you so mad at me? I figured you’d be grateful.”
“For what?”
“Danvers was more than happy to cut you, as well as me. I got you out of there.”
“I thought I got you out of there.”
“You do like to argue a point. How is that any different than me giving you a nickname? You’re workin’ awfully hard to keep your distance from me, too.” He scrubbed his fingers over the top of his hair, leaving a trail of short spikes sticking up in a dozen different directions. “When I think you might actually like me.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
He traced her collarbone around the neckline of her T-shirt. “That blush creepin’ up your neck.”
Melanie’s hand flew to her throat as he pulled his finger away, grinning at her inability to hide the truth. “I don’t know you well enough to decide whether or not I like you.”
He sat back on the table. “You’re not even going to give me a chance to find out if we can get along?”
“I thought you told Henry that you were here for peace and quiet—that you wanted to be left alone.”
Grim lines appeared beside his eyes as his teasing smile faded. “I get a little paranoid in a crowd—but I do pretty good one-on-one.”
What kind of good was he talking about? A good friend? A good boyfriend? The wannabe nurse or doctor in her tempered her determination to resist him. This man was a veteran, after all. With the few hints he’d dropped already, he was probably suffering from some degree of post-traumatic stress. Maybe he was reaching out to her because he felt safe with her. Maybe he saw some kind of kinship with her already because she’d jumped in on his side of the fight when no one else had. It kind of made sense. He probably didn’t see her as any threat. “That’s all you want? A chance?”
“That’s all a man ever wants.” The angry lines softened. And though the teasing smile didn’t reappear, he dropped his voice to a growly whisper that indicated some sort of intimacy. “Unless he’s one of those jackasses who’s lied to you.”
Men didn’t talk softly to her. And they certainly didn’t share anything that resembled intimacy. The hard walls of defense she’d lived with every day since finding her father’s watch crumbled just a little bit. Remembering the professional training she prided herself on, Mel placed the ice pack in Tom’s hand and guided it up to the violet-red mark on his cheekbone. “All right, then. We can try
to be friends. But maybe you shouldn’t talk for a while. I’ll finish faster if you let me concentrate on my work.”
“In other words, zip it?”
He held her gaze until she nodded. Then he looked away, ostensibly taking in every corner of her mismatched but clean treatment room. A crooked smile softened the square line of his jaw, and she had to tamp down those little frissons of infatuation that tried to take hold of her again. She wouldn’t say Tom Maynard was handsome, exactly. But he was overtly male in a way that woke up feminine impulses inside her that she’d ignored for a very long time.
But ignore them she would. She was agreeing to a trial friendship—nothing more. Making sure to gentle her touch, Melanie sewed in the last few stitches until the blood oozing from the wound had completely stopped. She inspected the neat line of the mended cut and cleaned the area again before opening the antibiotic ointment and prepping the gauze and adhesive tape to cover it.
“Out of all the men you’ve ever known, every last one of them has lied to you?”
Tom’s deep voice startled her as much as the probing question. Melanie fumbled the roll of tape she’d been using and it rolled away underneath the sink. Glad she could move away from the distracting body heat that even the air-conditioning couldn’t seem to diminish, she got down on her hands and knees to retrieve it. “In my experience, they say what they want you to hear. Or else they make stuff up because they think it’s what I want to hear. Like saying I’m pretty when I know I’m not.” She stood and returned the tape to its spot inside the barren storage cabinet. “Half the men around here think that sweet-talking me will get them closer to Henry. Or to my cousin, Deanna. Every single man here has his eye on her. And why not? She’s gorgeous and outgoing, easy to like. She eats up the attention.”
“Danvers was hitting on you when he mentioned that dance.”
“He was asserting his authority and assuaging his pride. If he thought dating one of the dairy cows in the south pasture would secure his position with Henry, he’d do it.”
