hand stilled over the little pull chain in the small, semiprivate bathroom when she heard the door to her room open. “Nurse?” she called out in relief. “If you have a minute, I could really use your help.”
Without a sound, the heavy door swung open. Maggie gasped when she turned to find Cale instead of the nurse she’d been expecting.
His expression instantly shifted from concern to desire right before her eyes. The man was definitely good for her ego. Not five seconds ago she’d managed to convince herself she looked like an idiot incapable of doing something as simple as buttoning up a pair of Levi’s. Now she was only behaving like one as she stood and stared at him, shocked into utter silence by the not-unpleasant sensation of warmth uncurling in her belly and spreading outward with languid heat through her limbs.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he murmured as he spun around quickly to allow her a modicum of privacy.
Still feeling decidedly confused and definitely aroused by her reaction to him, she made a hasty grab for the towel she’d tossed on the edge of the sink earlier. With a hard snap, she swung her cast against the white porcelain. Tears sprang to her eyes as pain shot up her arm. She reached blindly for the wall to steady herself, but instead of touching the cool ceramic tile, her good hand came in contact with a solid wall of masculinity.
His arms were around her, steadying her and holding her close. Don’t cry, she thought.
But one whispered word of comfort, one large male hand gliding over the exposed skin of her back in a gentle, soothing motion, and tears of pain and frustration poured from her eyes like a busted water main.
“It’ll get better, Maggie. I promise you, it will.”
She pulled back slightly to look up at him. “How can you say that?” she asked around a sob. “You know as much about me as I do, and we’re not talking a wealth of knowledge here, either.”
His incredible smile was as kind as the expression that softened his intense blue eyes. “You’re in pain.” He slid the pad of his thumb across her cheek to dry her tears. “I’ll call the nurse.”
The tenderness he showed her stirred something deep inside her, a wealth of emotion she had no hope of truly understanding until she acquired at least some recollection of her past as a comparison.
She sniffled and shook her head. What she really wanted to do was scream. Between her faulty gray matter and the delicious tingling sprinting through her body, she figured she was more than a little entitled.
No doubt she was suffering with some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome. Cale might not be her captor, but she had come to depend on him, if only slightly. Although she’d actually started looking forward to his nightly visits, that little piece of reality saddened her. Did she really have no other person in her life that cared about her? Wasn’t there someone, somewhere, missing her? Parents, grandparents, an uncle or an aunt? What about siblings, an employer? A cat or a pair of goldfish?
She pulled in a steadying breath only to be swamped by the unique scent she’d come to associate with Cale. That sensual blend of spice and pure male any woman in her right mind, or not as her case might be, would have difficulty resisting.
She used the edge of the towel clutched to her chest to dry her eyes. “My mind is foggy enough.” She managed what she hoped was a brave smile and tried not to think about that musky, masculine scent giving her most feminine senses a sharp jolt. “Adding pain-killers to the confusion is the last thing I need.”
He didn’t look that convinced. “You were calling the nurse for a reason.”
Keeping the towel clutched to her chest, she took a step back. “I needed assistance.”
“Assistance…?” he prompted.
She let out a sigh. “Yes. With getting dressed.” Her gaze dipped pointedly to the bra lying on the tiled floor at her feet.
A questioning frown tugged his eyebrows low over his eyes a half second before they arched upward as realization dawned. “Ah,” he said. That killer smile returned to his handsome face, kicking her pulse rate up a couple of notches.
He stooped to pick up the bra and handed it to her. “Slip into it and I’ll fasten it for you.”
With the bra dangling from her fingertips, she stared at Cale in fascination. He couldn’t seriously be offering his services for something so…so intimate, could he? Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the man hadn’t only offered a total stranger a place to live, he’d bought clothes for her to wear and had even gone to the trouble of digging through her ruined garments to find out her sizes.
He turned around and stood with his back to her, giving her a sense of privacy. If she refused, she’d feel petty and foolish. The man wasn’t making a pass at her. He was offering to help her dress since she obviously couldn’t do it for herself. There wasn’t anything sexual about it. Well…hardly anything sexual about it.
She turned her back to him, dropped the towel and slipped into the bra. Holding the cups awkwardly in place, she said, “Okay.”
The first brush of his fingers against her sides as he took hold of the ends of the bra nearly had her jumping out of her skin. His touch was gentle and completely impersonal as he worked the fasteners, but that didn’t stop a delightful shiver from glancing down her spine.
He reached around her and bent to snag the navy-blue cotton top from the stool. “Arms up,” he ordered.
Oh, no. This part she could handle on her own. She took the top from him, knowing she’d go just a little more nuts if he put his hands on her body again. “Thank you,” she said, “but I think I can take it from here.”
“I’ll wait outside.” With one last look, he quietly closed the bathroom door behind him. Alone, she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her lips at the obvious disappointment in his gaze.
Once she’d finished dressing, she took a moment to check her appearance in the mirror. She might not know who she was or where she came from, but there was one thing she understood completely—sexual chemistry and attraction, especially since her hormones went into overtime whenever Cale was around.
CALE KNEW trouble when he saw it, and trouble definitely had arrived in his life in the form of the mysterious Maggie with her sexy little smile, eyes that changed color with her mood and rich cinnamon hair that had his fingers itching to touch the silky strands. Those reddish-brown tresses weren’t the only thing soft about her, either. His testosterone had shot through the roof for those few seconds his fingers had brushed against her silky skin.
He added a new shade of eye color to his list, too. Turquoise—the color of Maggie’s eyes when she was aroused. Always one of his favorites, this particular shade ranked at the top of his list, especially since he knew without a doubt he was solely responsible for it.
He paced around the hospital room while he waited for her to emerge from the bathroom. Like his brothers, he was no stranger to relationships, although he did like to think his held at least a modicum of meaning in comparison.
His little brother, Drew, hardly ever dated the same woman more than three times. In fact, Drew gave new meaning to the term little black book. He had more of a big black binder. He wasn’t cruel, and he never led a woman on, but no one doubted Drew’s bedroom did indeed boast a revolving door.
