looked down at his big hand covering hers. Only temporary. Just like the guy in the photo.
James removed his hand and watched the way she touched the picture with a strange kind of loving reverence. ‘Your dad?’
Helen nodded, still staring down at the photo.
‘Is he…?’
She glanced up at him as he trailed off. His hair was sleep-tousled, his wavy fringe flopping across his forehead, and she was pleased that the coffee-table was between them. ‘No. He’s very much alive and roaming some highway somewhere.’
He saw the love in her eyes as she gazed at the picture but heard the bitter note in her voice. Obviously her father aroused intense emotions. It also explained how she knew about Harleys. And maybe it even explained her desire to stay grounded.
‘Anyway,’ she said, becoming aware of his intense gaze and the building silence and belatedly the fact that she was in her pajamas, ‘are you going to be OK?’
He nodded. ‘I’m just going to watch some telly until the painkillers start to take effect.’
Helen rose and backed away, still clutching the frame. She was suddenly acutely aware of her state of undress. How bare her thighs were. How braless she was. How her shirt barely covered her rear. How…interested he seemed.
‘See you in the morning.’ She took a deep breath and turned at the last moment, praying that he wasn’t watching her.
But he was. James caught a brief glimpse of firm cheek as the shirt flared when she whipped around. And leg. A lot of leg. Suddenly his time in Skye had become very interesting indeed.
He was living with someone who was as sexy as hell underneath her ponytailed primness and knew about Harleys.
Suddenly she seemed more and more his type.
CHAPTER THREE
HELEN didn’t dare come out into the main part of the house until she was dressed the next morning. She’d lain awake for an hour, thinking about James’s heated gaze and how liquid heat had pooled low in her belly. She knew that even after a day in his company she was treading on dangerous ground.
She was attracted to him. Not such a bad thing to admit to, she supposed, except for the fact that he was way out of her league. The regular attentions of Skye’s bachelors paled into comparison with one hot look from James. She’d do well to remember he was only there for four months and she’d never had a casual relationship in her life.
When she was dressed she made her way out to the lounge room to find James fast asleep where she’d left him. She stopped in mid-stride and almost tripped. The man was utterly gorgeous. A dark shadow adorned his jaw and his broad chest rose and fell in hypnotic splendour. His jet-black hair lay thick and luscious across his forehead.
His leg was raised on some cushions. His other leg positively exuded testosterone, its well-defined quadriceps and calf muscles complemented by a perfect covering of dark hair. His large bare foot seemed oddly out of place with his sexy he-man image, made him seem vulnerable somehow, and the nurturer in her wanted to go get a blanket and cover him up.
She gave herself a mental shake and ordered herself to stop gawking like a teenager. She turned away and headed for the kitchen. Damn him for lying around her house, looking sexy and vulnerable all at once. She got two slices of bread and jammed them into the toaster. She pushed the lever down harder than required and hoped he had almighty backache this morning. If she had to trip over his barely covered body every morning, it was going to be a long four months!
James awoke slowly. He could hear music and noises coming from the kitchen and the mouthwatering aroma of toast teased his nostrils. He grimaced as he sat up and rubbed the crick in his neck. There was a slight ache in his leg but it was feeling much better than it had last night when his midnight wanderings had disturbed Helen.
A vision of her in her sleep shirt played in his mind again and he smiled to himself. Maybe it had been the medication, maybe it had been seeing a scantily clad Helen in the middle of the night, but something had fuelled some fairly erotic dreams and he felt his loins heat as he recalled the images.
He rose awkwardly, using his crutches for support. He needed a shower. A cold one. But given how logistically impossible that would be, he’d settle for coffee instead. He hoped Helen owned some decent stuff, not some horrible instant brand.
Even on the road he made sure he carried a supply of freshly ground coffee. Life was too short to drink the instant stuff. In fact, that was pretty much his motto for life. Life was short, grab it by the horns and ride it for all it was worth. He’d grown up seeing his parents waste their lives stuck in a situation they hadn’t wanted to be in, and he was damned if he would.
He drank good coffee. He went where he wanted. He followed his own rules. He worked wherever the road took him and kept his relationships short and sweet. And even if his heart did occasionally yearn for something more, he hadn’t been in a place yet or met a woman yet who could ground him. In fact, he seriously doubted either existed.
He swung into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Helen was standing at the sink, her back to him, eating toast as she bopped along to a country song playing on the radio. Her head was moving to the beat, her hips were swaying and her feet tapping.
He leant heavily on his crutches for support. She was back in her uniform again, her hair tied back in its prim ponytail, not a hair out of place. But it didn’t stop the leap of interest in his groin or a pang of something he couldn’t quite name hitting him in the chest. He knew she probably had some lacy concoction on under that prim white blouse, knew the contours of her hips from the cling of fabric last night, knew that her bottom cheeks were cute and perky as hell.
She could be the one. James clutched the handles of the crutches harder as the insidious voice invaded his head. Preposterous! Yes, he fancied her. He was a man, for crying out loud, and she was a very attractive woman. But that was it.
For God’s sake, he’d only known her for a day. OK, it had been a tumultuous day. She had, after all, rescued him and his broken leg from the bush, but there was no need to let his imagination get carried away.
The funny feeling he’d got in his chest when he’d looked at her just now was easily explained. It was lust. The tantalising stirrings of sexual attraction. The allure of possibility. And that was all. He was a thirty-five-year-old man. He was in charge of his life—not his hormones.
He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose you have any decent coffee in this neck of the woods?’
Helen jumped. She hadn’t heard him approach. She turned. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said accusingly, talking around her last mouthful of toast.
He grinned. ‘Sorry. I was enjoying the show, though.’
Helen swallowed the remnants of her breakfast. How long had he been standing there? She straightened and gave him a don’t-mess-with-me look. ‘Show’s over.’
He shrugged. ‘I prefer rock music anyway. Does the local radio station play any of that?’
‘Sure. Country rock.’
James chuckled. ‘About that coffee?’
Helen
