heard a choice curse word before a male head abruptly blocked out the light. The man was little more than a huge outline against the bright sun and then he went down on bended knee, leaning over her.
If she’d thought she was breathless before it was nothing compared to how she felt staring up into eyes so strikingly blue she could still have been staring at the sky. Combine those with chestnut hair that curled forward over his forehead, a square jaw, and strong nose and he had the kind of face Carly bemusedly thought she could look at for ever.
‘Don’t move.’ He had quite the voice too. Deep and low with just the right amount of authority to it. Which surely explained why she did exactly as he bade.
It wasn’t until his large hands ran down her arms and over her legs that she tore her eyes from the way his black leather jacket hugged his wide shoulders and impressive chest.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Checking if you’ve broken anything.’ The cold censure in his voice immediately put her back up.
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘No.’
She hadn’t really expected that he would be—she’d never met a doctor encased in black leather before. ‘I’m fine,’ she huffed, not really sure if she was but, heck, she was a doctor!
‘Keep still,’ he growled as she struggled up onto her elbows.
‘I said I’m fine.’ She pushed at his hand on her leg and he rocked back on his heels. Carly could feel her heart beating hard behind her chest as he silently surveyed her.
‘Good,’ he finally said, standing up so that he once again towered over her. ‘Perhaps you can explain what the hell you were doing running across the road like that. You could have been killed.’
Carly glanced at the sleek motorcycle waiting in the middle of the road like something out of a Batman movie. A flash of the motorcycle skidding in a graceful arc right before hitting her made her stomach pitch. The man had been riding that thing as if he were in the Indie 1000—or whatever that silly race was called—and now he wanted to make it her fault?
‘Really?’ she murmured pleasantly. ‘If I could have been killed it was only because you were driving like a maniac on a narrow, unpaved road.’
Dare gazed down at the redheaded goddess spitting fire at him from eyes that were too grey to be green and too green to be grey. Olive perhaps.
‘I was hardly driving like a maniac.’ He’d barely been pushing fifty.
‘Yes, you were and you were also on your phone!’
She said the last with wide eyes as if he’d been traversing a high wire at the same time.
‘Don’t get hysterical,’ he told her. ‘I wasn’t on the phone. I was checking my GPS.’ And in complete control the whole time.
‘You had a phone in your hand while you were on a motorcycle! That’s illegal!’
‘Calm down, would you? I handled it.’
‘Only just. And it’s still illegal!’
Dare glanced down at her skimpy attire, a smile entering his voice. ‘So what are you going to do? Arrest me?’
She glared up at him as if she’d like to do exactly that but not in the way he’d just been imagining. ‘Who are you anyway?’ she said haughtily.
He felt like saying the big bad wolf, given her snooty tone, but a better question was who was she? He glanced again at her cut-off denims and bright pink swimsuit that should have clashed with her bright hair but somehow didn’t, immediately dismissing the notion that she was his elderly grandfather’s guest. She looked more like the pool girl. The very hot pool girl. ‘Who’s asking?’
Her lips pursed into a flat line. ‘I am.’ She went to push up to her feet and paused when Dare automatically stuck his hand out to assist her. It didn’t surprise him when she tried to ignore his offer of help but Dare was in no mood to put up with some holier-than-thou woman who had just taken a few years off his life when she’d come flying out of the trees and into his path.
‘Take it,’ he growled, grabbing onto her elbow as she tried to avoid him.
The way she wrenched her arm out of his grip as soon as she was vertical made his teeth gnash together.
‘I don’t need your help.’
‘Listen, lady, it’s only thanks to my quick reflexes that you’re still here at all. You could show a little gratitude.’
‘Don’t you “lady” me. It’s thanks to your crappy driving that I now have a sore—’ She stopped as his eyes followed her hands to her bottom as she brushed it off.
He arched a brow. ‘Behind?’
‘Never mind,’ she said primly.
‘How did you not hear the bike anyway?’
‘This is a private lane and I was chasing after a dog.’ She gave his bike a contemptible glance. ‘I was hardly expecting Evel Knievel to come barrelling down the road.’
‘A dog, huh?’ Dare unzipped his jacket and planted his hands on his hips. ‘What kind of dog?’
He noticed she was staring at his chest, then his flat abdomen, and finally his zipper and heat poured through him as if she’d actually touched him.
As if sensing his visceral reaction to her she started inching away from him as if he were some would-be rapist and he scowled.
‘Yes.’ Her voice had grown husky and she cleared it. ‘A very big dog, if you must know.’
If she used her brain, Dare thought with rising annoyance, she’d realise that if he was going to grab her he wouldn’t be standing around arguing with her.
But even as he thought it his eyes dropped to her high breasts pushing up against the straps of her one-piece suit and those long, lightly tanned legs shown to glorious perfection in cut-off denims. He’d seen many girls dressed similarly on a hot summer’s day in his youth but he was quite sure he’d never seen legs as good as hers.
‘What are you looking at?’
His eyes lifted to hers. Moss green, he decided, and full of awareness of how appreciative he had been of her figure.
‘Your legs.’ He smiled. ‘You have them on display. You can hardly blame a man for looking.’
‘Excuse me?’ Her eyes shot daggers at him and he supposed he deserved it. He wasn’t here to come on to the pool girl and he was hardly desperate for female company.
‘Listen—’
‘How dare you?’ She stabbed a slender finger at his chest. ‘I’m wearing a bathing suit because it’s hot and I’ve just been for a swim.’
‘And you were looking for a dog. I get it. But—’
