He strode through the kitchen, noticing with a frown that it looked as if an intruder had been having a party. A couple of unwashed dishes were stacked on the counter and the table was covered in bags. Following the direction of the scream, he took the stairs two at a time and reached her in under a minute.
She was flattened against the wall of the shower, naked and shivering. Her body was gleaming wet, droplets of water clinging to the rosy tip of her breasts.
“Christ.” Distracted by the lean lines of her glorious body, Zach banged his head on the low door frame and saw stars. He remembered too late that he’d done the same thing the last time he’d set foot in Castaway Cottage.
She’d been naked then, too. At the time he’d taken the blow to the head as punishment for his sins, which had been considerable.
This time the sin was all in his head, but the pain was real enough.
Her gaze connected with his as she finally registered the identity of her rescuer.
“Zach! What the hell are you doing here?”
“You screamed.” It took effort, but he hauled his gaze up to her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Shivering, she pointed to the corner of the bathroom.
“That.”
He turned his head from smooth, golden limbs and raw temptation and saw the thong on the floor. He’d seen more substantial dental floss. Heat uncurled inside him. “You dropped your underwear?” And then something moved and he saw the problem. An intruder, but the not the sort he’d been expecting. “It’s a spider.”
“I know what it is.” She spoke through her teeth. “Get rid of it. Please.”
If he hadn’t been trying to will his libido into sudden death, he would have laughed. He’d never met a woman more capable of looking after herself than Brittany. If a man had broken into her house, she probably would have knocked him unconscious with the nearest heavy object, but a large insect left her quivering and helpless.
Forgetting his intention not to look at her again, he shifted his gaze back to her. “So it’s still spiders.” He noticed that her hair was longer. Or maybe it just seemed that way because it was wet. It lay over one shoulder in a dark heavy mass, leaving the other bare. “You always were scared of them. Nothing else. Just spiders.”
“If you don’t stop talking and catch the damn thing it will run away and then I’ll have to move out because there isn’t room in this house for both of us.”
It wouldn’t make any difference if he looked away because the image of Brittany’s naked body was imprinted on his mind.
He wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to end up in a small, steamy bathroom with his naked ex-wife but he was sure he deserved every moment of the punishment.
That brief glance had been enough to show him that she’d lost the angular lines of girlhood, the awkwardness of inhabiting a body that developed at its own time and pace. It had been right here in this house that he’d taught her what her body could do, used his skill and experience to extend her education into areas not covered by school.
As in everything, she’d proved a quick study.
She’d been an eager pupil, lying on the bed with her hair spilling over her naked body, doing everything he’d demanded of her and more.
If he’d been filling out her report card, he would have given her top grades.
Her reward had been a broken heart.
He dragged his eyes from sun-kissed skin and lean muscle and focused on the spider. To be fair it was too big to fit comfortably under a teacup, which he knew to be the favored way of dealing with anything born with more than four legs. “Probably thinks it’s a good place to raise a family.”
“You’re not funny. Please get rid of it.”
The fact that she hadn’t even reached for a towel told him how freaked out she was.
For his own sake, he grabbed the nearest towel, threw it to her and dealt with the spider.
When he returned to the bathroom, she was still in the same place, the towel clutched to her chest with her good hand.
Turned out it was a hand towel, and she didn’t seem to realize that clutching it across her breasts left most of the lower half of her bare. Or maybe her priorities were elsewhere.
Her teeth were chattering. “Is it dead?”
“No.” There were plenty of humans he would happily have flattened under his boot, but when it came to animals and insects he preferred a more sympathetic approach. “Didn’t see the point in killing it. I relocated it somewhere it might be more welcome and comfortable.”
“That means it’s going to find its way back into the house.” She took a step back, and he turned his head, desperately searching for a bigger towel.
“Last time I looked, spiders didn’t come equipped with GPS. They don’t have spiders in Greece?”
“Not ones that size. Or maybe I managed to avoid them.” Distracted, she pushed damp hair back from her face. “What are you doing here anyway?”
Finally, now the crisis was averted, she was registering exactly who had come to her rescue. He had a feeling that up until that point he could have been anyone. “You left your backpack. Thought you might need it.”
“But how did you get in? I locked the doors—” Her voice faded and her eyes widened. “You broke in? Why would you break in?”
“You screamed.”
And he was trying not to examine the reason he’d felt the fierce need to protect something that wasn’t even his to protect.
She stared at him, lips parted, breathing shallow. “Right.” Her mouth closed and she swallowed hard. “I guess I should be grateful breaking and entering is still one of your party tricks.”
It had been years since he’d used anything other than a key to open a door, but he knew there were many who would have shared her assumption. Usually it didn’t bother him. People could believe what they wanted to believe; the only difference was that in the past she’d been the first one to defend him.
He could hardly blame her for recalibrating her expectations.
And if part of him was unsettled by how quickly he’d been driven to gain access to a locked property once she’d screamed, he ignored it. He’d believed her to be in trouble. Any man would have done the same.
Silence, tense and awkward, spread between them.
Her body was lightly tanned, the bronze glow of her shoulders intersected by paler strap marks. The uneven marks told him she’d gained that color while doing the job she loved, not by lying on a beach, soaking up the sun.
Now that the spider had gone, there was nothing between them but the past and the electricity that shimmered and crackled in the air. The way she stayed flattened to the bathroom wall made
