man did not sit comfortably in the same thought. Like was tepid and he was a person who inspired the more extreme ends of the emotional spectrum!
Sam stuck out her chin even though the defiant gesture was wasted on him. ‘It’s nothing to me why you’ve come here, but it doesn’t take a genius to see it wasn’t for the climbing or fishing, and you don’t look like someone looking for spiritual peace.’ If he was he’d taken the wrong turn somewhere, she thought, studying the uncompromising set of his jaw and the clenching nerve throbbing in his hollow cheek.
‘You speak with passion for someone who is so disinterested. You know, in my experience people who feel the need to sort out other people’s lives frequently have no life of their own.’
‘They do say that attack is the best form of defence. And actually I have a perfectly satisfactory life, thank you…not everyone needs a man to feel fulfilled.’
She stopped, annoyance flickering across her face as she realised she had already said too much.
‘My life is not the subject here.’ She injected ice into her reminder.
‘But nonetheless fascinating.’
The sarcastic drawl made her lips tighten. She fought to keep the antipathy—which was growing by the second—from her voice as she retorted bluntly, ‘If you carry on bleeding that way you won’t have a life either.’
She frowned, finding it pretty hard to be objective as she looked at the widening scarlet pool on the floor. ‘Ian keeps a first-aid kit in the Land Rover. I’ll go and get it.’
‘I do not need a ministering angel.’
Sam fixed him with a very un-angelic glare and promised, ‘Take my word for it, you do not bring out the angel in me.’
‘Who is Ian?’
Her hand on the doorknob, Sam, surprised by the question, looked back over her shoulder. ‘He’s the man you rented this place from.’
His darkly delineated brows set at an angle lifted towards his hairline. ‘You are on first-name terms with your boss?’
‘Oh, we’re a really egalitarian lot up here.’ The hauteur in his manner suggested he would not invite such familiarities with his subordinates. Despite his present dishevelled appearance, he acted like a man who was used to barking out orders and having people jump. ‘And you’d get on with Ian—he thinks I have no life either.’ Her blue eyes narrowed as she considered the well-meaning interference of her sibling.
His matchmaking tactics were never very subtle, but what Ian and other concerned parties—she didn’t include this stranger among their number—didn’t seem to appreciate was that she hadn’t thrown herself into work because her boyfriend had run off with another woman.
She threw herself into work because she enjoyed it.
She really was over Will. She wasn’t even mad with him any more. She was mad with herself because she had always known deep down that this gorgeous guy hadn’t really been in love with her. It hadn’t been respect that had stopped him jumping into bed with her before they were married, but a total lack of interest in her sexually.
And when she’d seen what sort of woman Will was interested in sexually she could she why. Gisela, the divinely fair Nordic beauty he had met and married all in the space of two weeks, was almost six feet tall and had a body that any man would lust after.
Still looking over her shoulder, Sam now watched the Italian search and find a tea towel that he proceeded to apply firmly to his wound.
‘It’s nothing to me if you want to hide away like some sort of bearded recluse.’ Sam was rather pleased at her wooden delivery—things had been getting far too heated and personal. Of course, if he had been able to see her flushed face it would have ruined the illusion of objective boredom totally.
But he couldn’t.
Again things hurt inside as she felt an unwelcome wave of empathic pain for his loss. She had already worked out that sympathy would only make him more pigheadedly uncooperative so she kept her tone flat as she admitted, ‘But I’m going to clean and dress that wound whether you like it or not.’
‘Bearded…?’
She almost wanted to smile as he lifted a hand to his face and looked surprised as his fingers slid across the stubble on his hard jawline. It was ironic really—there were numerous men out there who carefully nurtured their designer stubble in an effort to achieve exactly the look of dark, dangerous dissipation this man had without trying.
‘Call me selfish, but it would be bad for business if you went home feet first, and the estate is just about the only employer around here.’
‘So you wish to tend my wounds because it would affect the local economy, not because you are a ministering angel.’
His amused sneer made her see red. ‘If bloody-minded aggression and nastiness is a defence mechanism meant to keep the world at a distance, I have to tell you it works.’
A look of complete astonishment replaced the sneer. Then he threw her totally. The grin that revealed his even white teeth and some gorgeous crinkly lines around his eyes also ironed out the engrained lines of cynicism around his mouth.
The breath snagged in her throat as she stared at the transformation. Mercy, he’s gorgeous!
Then he completed the transformation by throwing back his head and laughing. The uninhibited sound was deep, warm and attractive.
‘You have quite a tongue on you.’
There was no mistaking the reluctant admiration in his voice. Sam found it more disturbing than his hostility. Brows knitted in consternation, she backed out of the door, unaware until she was in the open air that she had been holding her breath.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE first spatters of rain were falling from the already darkening sky as Sam ran towards the Land Rover to get the first-aid kit. She hoped the storm would hold off until she got back to Home Farm. A childhood incident had left her with an irrational fear of thunder, and heavy rain made the road back with its hairpin bends and dramatic drops a nightmare.
She was briefly tempted to get in and drive away, and delegate the task of helping this ungrateful man to someone else. But not going back in would have been admitting she was afraid of feeling whatever it was this stranger had churned up.
The kitchen, with its inglenook fireplace and flagged floor, was as big as a barn, but despite this Sam felt as if the stone walls were closing in on her as she stepped back inside. The stranger had a way of making any space seem confined.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ she asked. It was an invitation that Sam wouldn’t have minded accepting herself—her knees had the consistency of cotton wool as she approached him.
His expression was surly as he held out his arm towards her, peeled off the towel and snapped, ‘Dio mio, woman, just get on with it if you must.’
‘Is this the Italian charm I’ve heard so much about?’ Her voice faded when she saw the edges of the gaping wound he had exposed on his palm. ‘You really need
