like lemonade,” he murmured. His gaze lingered on her pursed lips. “Sweet is nice, but tart is better.”
She shook her head and sighed heavily in exasperation. But when she spoke, her request had his mouth going dry.
“Take off your clothes, Don Juan.”
He blinked and on a startled laugh replied, “Well, that certainly would be making the most of a bad situation, but gee, Ree, I hardly know you. I like to take a woman out to dinner first, maybe see a movie, before we spend the better part of the evening—”
He wasn’t able to finish the sentence before she tossed a crocheted afghan in his direction. It wound up draped half over his head.
“Your clothes are wet and filthy, Mr. Conlan,” she said. “You need to get out of them, and I’m afraid that afghan is about the only thing around here that’s going to fit you unless you’d prefer to wear my bathrobe.”
“Call me Dane. And, just for the record, I prefer to remove women’s garments, not put them on.”
She made a little humming noise that might have been the result of annoyance or reluctant amusement.
He scooted to the front of the chair and peeled off the damp shirt, using the cleanest edge to wipe up the blood drying on his arm.
“I’m messing up your upholstery,” he said and grimaced. “And your clothes. Hope that blouse wasn’t one of your favorites.”
Her expression seemed to soften. “Well, it’s not as if you planned to faint in my arms.”
Planned? No. He considered that a little side bonus given his lousy day. Still, he cleared his throat, feeling the need to clarify, “Men prefer the term ‘passed out.’”
He was pretty sure she was smiling when she turned her back to him.
“The rest of your clothes, please.”
Dane stripped down to bare skin, handing over the remnants of his favorite jeans with a sigh of regret, and then he wrapped the afghan around his body toga-style. When she was gone, he tried to stand without holding the mantel for support. He wasn’t quite successful, but he felt far better than he had an hour ago when he’d washed onto the beach, coughing up water, his arms, legs and lungs burning from the effort it had taken him to get there.
He hadn’t been teasing her about following the Victorian’s lights. They were all he’d seen, those and a light on some structure closer to the shore, beacons of hope that had kept him putting one arm in front of the other as waves tossed him and currents tugged at him with disorienting force. Now those lights were gone as well thanks to the storm. He shivered at the thought of what would have happened to him had the electricity failed earlier.
“I can get you another blanket if you’re cold.”
He hadn’t heard her return, but he glanced over to find her standing next to him, brows furrowed in concern. She’d changed into a pair of capri pants and a pullover that was probably some pastel shade, although he couldn’t discern its color in the firelight. Her feet were bare and the ponytail she’d swept her hair into exposed the graceful line of her neck. She looked younger, softer. And yet he still felt it, that insane blast of attraction that had him wondering if he’d struck his head harder than he’d thought.
“Dane?”
He realized he was staring and coughed. “No, I’m fine. The past few hours are catching up with me is all.”
“I’m sure. You had quite the ordeal.”
In her hands she held a first-aid kit and a bottle of painkillers.
He nodded toward the bottle. “Got anything stronger than ibuprofen?”
The smile she offered was sympathetic. “Sorry, no, but I had just opened a really good bottle of Chianti before you knocked at my door. I’m willing to share.”
“You don’t have anything with a little more…kick?”
As a general rule, he wasn’t one to wallow in the false comfort of hard liquor, but he could do with a good bracing belt of whiskey right about now.
“You probably shouldn’t even have wine,” she told him, sounding almost prim. “But I’m feeling indulgent. Sit.”
She didn’t wait for him to comply, but gently nudged him back into the chair and then knelt on the floor in front of him.
“Let me see your hand.”
Dane did as Regina instructed, deciding he could do with a little TLC and pampering after all he’d been through. Then he sucked in a sharp breath along with an oath when she dabbed the cut on his palm with enough stinging antiseptic to kill half the bacteria in the free world.
“God! Blow on it or something,” he begged between gritted teeth.
“That would defeat the purpose of disinfecting it.”
His eyes were watering. His hand was on fire. “I’ll take my chances. A nasty case of gangrene has to be less painful.”
He leaned over to blow on it himself. When he looked up afterward their gazes held. The air seemed to sizzle as he watched the firelight reflected in her dark eyes. She had questions, too. He saw them there. And it came as a huge relief to discover that he wasn’t the only one mired in this odd, instantaneous need.
The moment stretched before she finally looked away and muttered, “Men are such babies.”
“You’re not going to start in with that argument about how if it were up to us to give birth the human race would have ended with Adam, are you?”
No hint of feminine interest remained, but he felt sure he hadn’t imagined it. She smiled at him with the same smug superiority he’d often seen on his sisters’ faces.
“No. We both know which one is the weaker sex. Why rub it in?”
Then she ran the cotton swab of antiseptic over his broken skin again.
Dane decided to change the subject. To take his mind off the pain, he asked, “So, what have you got against developers that makes you keep a shotgun handy?”
“You mean besides the fact that the one I’ve had to deal with lately is greedy and unprincipled and only interested in buying Peril Pointe so he can tear down my home and put up condos or another high-priced resort that will make that snooty Saybrook’s on Trillium look like a pauper’s retirement community?”
She was affixing butterfly bandages across the ravaged skin of his palm during her vehement response and Dane grimaced. No way in hell he was going to admit to her that in the most basic sense of the word he was a developer or that he and his two sisters actually owned the resort she’d referred to as “that snooty Saybrook’s.”
So, when she finished her minidiatribe, he worked up what he hoped was a charming smile.
“I’ll take that wine now, please.”
CHAPTER
