image of a golden prince came to mind.
Dismissing the fanciful thoughts, Josie made her way over to the bed. She placed the tray on the bedside table, but continued to hang on to the clothes she’d brought him. “It’s time to wake up,” she said. “Remember, I told you I’d have to wake you every hour? Well, it’s time again. I’ve got some aspirin, and I’ve brought some dry clothes for you to change into.”
Nothing. Not so much as a grunt or a flicker of an eyelid out of him.
Clearing her throat, Josie tried again, this time more forcefully. “You have to wake up now. I’ve brought you some aspirin to help your head and a change of clothes.”
Still, nothing. He didn’t move. Didn’t utter a sound.
Frowning, Josie reached over and gave his shoulder a nudge. He stirred, and she snatched her hand back. “You need to take some aspirin and get out of those wet things,” she said again, this time in her firmest schoolteacher’s voice.
He muttered something that she suspected was no.
Annoyed now rather than nervous, his response made her more determined. It also triggered what Ben had called her do-gooder streak, and what she liked to think of as her human streak—that “something” inside her that had made her rescue a stray, or stop in the middle of a storm to help a stranger. Since she’d saved the man’s life, he was her responsibility, she reasoned. Well, at least for the time being. And that meant making sure he didn’t catch pneumonia. The man was going to get into dry clothes—one way or another. Besides, she thought, humor making her lips turn up at the corners. He was only a man. She hadn’t managed to work as a teacher for nearly six years without learning how to exert some authority. It was the schoolteacher m her that made her put aside the clothes and sit on the bed. Slipping an arm behind his neck, she lifted him to a sitting position and with the aspirin in her palm, she tapped her finger against his lips. “Open up,” she ordered.
“What the—”
She shoved the aspirin between his lips, then quickly followed with water. Strong, powerful fingers locked around her wrist at the same time that he clamped his mouth closed and sent water dribbling down the front of his already-wet shirt. The muscles in his neck had gone stiff, and his body felt like corded steel beneath her fingers. Stunned, Josie’s gaze shot up to meet his. The dark eyes trained on her were just as hard as the rest of him... and wary.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, it’s only aspirin and water. Not poison.” When he still failed to respond or release his vicelike grip on her wrist she said, “Please. You need to swallow the aspirin. I know you must be in a lot of pain with that gash on your head. The aspirin will make you feel better.”
After a moment something inside him eased. His mouth lost some of the hard edge. Tipping her wrist, he drank deeply from the glass she held, but his eyes remained open, never once leaving hers. The intensity of his gaze reminded her of the wild kiss he’d given her out in the storm, and Josie felt that shivery heat spilling through her. By the time he finished the water and released her hand, she was feeling anything but calm and clearheaded. In fact, all of those female nerves were jumping inside her again.
With less-than-steady hands, she returned the glass to the tray, determined not to let him know how he had rattled her. “I’ll leave you to get out of those wet things. Just yell for me if you need anything,” she told him and started to leave. Then she noticed that his eyes were closed again. Frowning, she said, “Did you hear me? I’m leaving so you can change clothes.”
When he still failed to respond, she jabbed a finger at his shoulder. Again, no response. “Great,” she muttered. The man was obviously out cold again—either from exhaustion or from his injury or from both. Worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth, she debated what she should do. She didn’t have any options, she admitted. She was going to have to get him out of his wet things and into something dry.
Josie studied her patient and frowned again. Changing the babies’ clothes had been one thing. Changing their daddy’s clothes was quite another. After wiping her hands on her jeans, Josie moved toward the foot of the bed. She’d start with his boots, she decided, and as she reached for the first one, she fervently wished she’d taken the dirty things off him before they’d had an opportunity to become acquainted with her comforter. Maybe I’ll be lucky and he’ll wake up before I’ve even got the first boot off and finish the job himself.
She wasn’t lucky. He didn’t wake up. The man didn’t stir even after she’d made several attempts to get the blasted boots off. Finally the first one came free. Even wet, the deep brown leather was butter soft, expertly stitched and obviously expensive. From the size of the thing, she suspected he’d had them custom-made. “All right. One down. One to go,” she muttered. After dropping the boot beside the bed, she reached for its mate. She gave it one hard tug, then another, and on the third tug Josie went tumbling back and onto the floor with his soggy boot in her hands and a wicked-looking gun in her lap. Stunned, Josie dropped the boot and picked up the shiny black weapon.
Oh, my heavens! What kind of man carries a gun in his boot? An escaped convict? A bank robber? A government spy?
Stop it, she told herself, and slammed the brakes on her runaway thoughts. She stared at the gun in her hands, turning the thing over, studying it. It felt hard, cold, lifeless and sent a shudder through her. Oh for pity’s sake, she chided herself for her reaction. This was Texas. Half the men in the state owned a gun. Just because she didn’t particularly like the things meant zip, she reasoned. Besides, hadn’t she read somewhere that owning a gun was some sort of guy thing? That’s probably all this was, too—a guy thing. Walking over to the armoire, she tucked the gun inside a drawer and out of sight, then turned around and went toward the bed.
Besides, discovering that the man carried a gun was the least of her problems at the moment Getting him out of those wet clothes was. With nerves bouncing in her stomach like Ping-Pong balls, she reached for the button of his shirt.
By the time Josie had unfastened the last of his buttons and had wrestled the shirt off him, she wasn’t so sure that leaving him in his wet things would have been such a bad idea after all. Although he was about the same size as her former husband had been, there the similarities ended.
While Ben had been fair-skinned, this man appeared to have been kissed by the sun. And talk about shoulders! He had linebacker shoulders, and a well-toned chest to go with them. A silver medal lay against his chest, suspended by a chain from his neck. She started to reach for the disc to examine it, then decided she’d better not. Instead she directed her attention to the other major difference between this man’s body and that of her former husband‘s—chest hair. Ben’s chest had been as smooth as a baby’s bottom. But her patient had a swirl of deep gold hair that arrowed down the center of his chest all the way to the taut muscles that stretched across his abdomen and then vanished beneath the waist of his jeans. Heat curled in Josie’s belly as she looked at him, struck by the masculine beauty of his body. Surprised and embarrassed by her reaction, Josie reminded herself that she had a job to do. And that job didn’t include ogling the man’s body and thinking inappropriate thoughts.
Inappropriate or not, by the time Josie lowered his zipper and tugged off his jeans, her fingers were shaking. And if she were being honest with herself, her accelerated breathing had little to do with exertion and everything to do with the man who lay stretched out on her bed naked—save for a pair of black briefs. Fascinated, her eyes tracked that vee of dark gold hair that disappeared beneath the low-rise briefs. And the curl of heat inside her twisted, slid lower.
Get a grip, Josie, she told herself. Or else she was going to end up embarrassing the man and making a complete fool of herself. It was the
