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“Yeah, you’re fine and I’m Little Boy Blue.” He grunted as he shifted, needing to get his legs under him better before he lifted her. Kneeling like this made his thigh hurt.
“No-please!”
He paused. His shirt clung to his chest, wet with water from her very naked body. Her breasts—the breasts he’d been trying not to look at—just brushed his chest. His blood sang a hot, hot song.
“It’s the blood,” she said. “I can’t stand having that dried blood in my hair any longer, Seth. Please.”
This was a mistake. He was positive this was a mistake. So he was stern with her. “All right.” She was getting some color back in her face already. That was good. “I’ll wash your hair, though, not you. You took twenty years off my life when you went under like that. I won’t let it happen again.”
This Wouldn’t take long, he told himself. Her hair was already wet, so he just had to do the shampooing and then pour some water over her head to rinse. He dug around under the sink until he came up with an old mason jar to pour with.
Bracing her with an arm at her shoulders while he poured shampoo into the palm of his other hand was awkward. It brought him much too close to—well, to everything, all those warm, bare inches of her. Shoulders. Arms. Skin that looked even more delectable all wet, with little drops of water beaded on it, than he’d imagined it would.
“Seth? I can sit up.”
Did she sound any different? Uncertain? She wasn’t getting scared of him, was she? “Sure.” He took a quick peek at her face, which was flushed. But the bathwater was pretty warm. No wonder she was flushed.
She was also very close. His soap definitely smelled different on her.
He cleared his throat. “I guess you can’t tip over while I’ve got my hands in your hair,” he agreed, and straightened enough to use both hands to lather the shampoo into her hair.
Mistake. Oh, yes, this was a huge, glaring, enormous mistake. He hadn’t made one this large in years. He hurt. He was hard, and hurting, and he had to sound…normal. Unaffected.
“Almost done,” he told her with dreadful, forced cheer. He urged her head back and poured water over her sudsslick head, water that ran down her back, glistening with soap bubbles. Quickly he rinsed again. He ran his fingers through her short, water-darkened curls to check for lingering soap, doing his best not to look below her forehead in front, but that left his gaze traveling down her back, down her straight spine to her narrow waist and on to the round cheeks of her bottom.
His skin was too tight and too hot. His thoughts thinned and his hands lingered rebelliously at their task as the rest of his blood went south to that most willful, demanding part of his body.
Her wet hair was silkier than that old mare’s nose had been. Her eyes drifted closed and her lashes lay, long and pale, against the petal smoothness of her skin. Skin that was all pink and white, like blossoms. So pretty. Like her breasts, where the nipples now pointed out perkily.
Uh-oh.
His mouth opened as he stared at those hard little nipples. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He looked up.
Her eyes were open. They’d darkened from grass green to pure mystery. He heard her breath catch as their gazes locked. He reached out with one hand, brushing her cheek as gently as he knew how. “Don’t be scared,” he said. Don’t be frightened. I won’t let my scars touch you when I kiss you now, when I touch that wonderfully soft, wet-skin of yours and suck those perfect breasts and—
Rocky’s deep bark from directly behind him startled Seth so thoroughly he almost fell into the bathtub.
He pulled his hands back, clenching them into fists. Closed his eyes, and counted to ten. He’d been about to…very ready to…and his body still insisted on it, on the warmth and skin-to-skin closeness, and especially the part where he put himself inside a woman, inside this woman, and watched what happened to her shamrock eyes while he moved within her—
Rocky nudged his foot with her nose.
He opened his eyes.
Sophie hadn’t moved. She sat in the cooling bathwater and stared at him with big, trusting eyes, her face still flushed with desire, looking as vulnerable as a new-hatched chick.
Which, he told himself with painful honesty, is what she was, in a sense. She didn’t know who or what she was, had no memories to act as defense against the man-woman hunger that flared white-hot between them.
If, that is, she was telling the truth.
He thought she was. He didn’t see how anyone could lie so convincingly while concussed. But amnesia, the sort of complete amnesia she claimed, was as rare as whooping cranes. Which was all the more reason for him to back off.
“That dog’s always hungry these days,” Seth growled as he grabbed the big towel he’d left on the ledge beside the tub. “Come on, get out before you catch a chill.” He didn’t actually lift her out. Didn’t trust himself enough. Just slid his arm around her and held on while she got her legs under her. Together they got her sitting on the ledge again.
He promptly shrouded her in the big, blue towel. “How’s that? Better?” Definitely better for him, with her all covered up like this. He started drying her hair with a second towel, which was another improvement. Now he couldn’t see her at all. “Rocky’s appetite is something these days. But then, she’s probably eating for eight or ten, judging by the size of her stomach.” He tried to wrap the towel around her head, turban style, so she wouldn’t get chilled. “It looks as if those puppies are going to pop right out of her skin.” Did he sound as stupid as he felt? He hadn’t talked this much in months.
“Seth-”
“Ready to get back in bed? Hold on one more minute, and I’ll have a clean shirt for you.” How in the hell would he keep his hands off her while putting a shirt on her? How would he keep himself from learning the feel of those hard little nipples and the soft skin around them?
She touched his arm. “Seth?” Her band was small and warm and much too welcome. Her eyes searched his—lovely eyes, a little eager, a little scared.
He made his expression harden. He couldn’t afford to let her find whatever she was looking for in his face.
She glanced away, at the dog who’d plopped down beside him. “I didn’t know you had a dog.” She pushed the towel turban out of the way when it slipped down, and gave him a shaky smile. “It’s all right. I know you’re not going to ravish me or anything.”
She sure as hell knew more than he did, then. “Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s get you back in bed.”
Seth was a bully. An oversize, gentle, worrywart of a bully. Sophie figured this out by the time he stuffed another pillow behind her and told her to behave and be still while he got her some more juice to drink with the supper she was finishing. He wouldn’t let her get out of bed. He’d barely let her feed herself. He hadn’t let her bathe herself…
Oh, but she couldn’t regret that. She should, shouldn’t she? She ought to be ashamed of the way she’d felt about having him look at her body—all hot and luscious, like melted fudge flowed in her veins instead of blood. Eager.
She wanted to feel that way again. Wanted him to look at her. Wanted…him. Was she the kind of woman who was casual with her body, then? The kind who, when she saw a man she wanted, thought that was reason enough for intimacy?
Or did she just want Seth?
He was back with her juice. “You haven’t finished your soup.”
“It’s delicious, but my appetite is a little off.”
He studied her, then took the almost empty bowl away. “All right. But you’re looking tired,” he said in his definite way. Bossy. “You need some more rest.”
“I’m not sleepy, Seth. I’ve slept for most of the past forty-eight hours.”
“You were unconscious for fifteen of those hours, and you get dizzy when you try to do anything. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like a concussion to me. You need to stay in bed.”
She ignored the last statement. “What are you, then? You’re not a doctor, but you seem to know what you’re doing.”
He hesitated, then set the bowl down. “I’ve had some paramedic training. These days, though, I’m a student.” He tried to pull the covers up.
She swatted at his hand. “You are not tucking me in again. What are you studying? Medicine?”
“No. They don’t offer medical degrees through correspondence courses.”
Correspondence courses? “Yet you think you can boss me around.” She tipped her head to one side, pleased when it didn’t feel as if it were going to fall off. “I know. You’re getting a degree from The Terminator School of Nursing, right?”
“No.” But for all the terseness of his reply, his face relaxed. He was almost smiling.
Had she seen him smile? Since he rescued her and her memory started, had she once seen him really smile? She wanted suddenly, urgently, to know what he looked like when he was happy. “Ah,” she said. “I’ve figured it out. You’re embarrassed to admit it because you’re a man, but you shouldn’t be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cooking.” She gestured at the bowl on the table beside her. “You’re taking cooking courses, and you’ve been practicing your lessons on me.”
He shook his head. His hair swung loosely around his face, and she wondered if the scarred side was as sensitive as the other, if that skin felt the tickle of hair as acutely as unmarked skin. She wanted to find out. To touch him, and learn where he was sensitive…
His thin, cleanly shaped lips almost turned up. Almost. “Not cooking or nursing.”
He liked being teased, she decided. He wasn’t giving anything away, but he liked her teasing. The knowledge sang through her veins like a heady liquor. “Magic,” she said softly.
He looked startled.
“I’ve figured out your secret. The five sides to your cabin give you away. You’re a warlock, or at least you will be one when you graduate from Dr. Faust’s Correspondence School of Magick. I’ll be able to prove it,” she added, “if I can find your gramarye.”
“My grammar?” His lips twitched. “Do warlocks worry a lot about dangling participles, then?”
“Gram-ar-ee. You know, a magician’s occult knowledge. A book of spells.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Ah, you must not read any fantasy.”
“Do you?” he asked casually.
“I—” She stopped. Blinked, and fumbled mentally through the clouds that hid her memory, and came up with handfuls of fog. “I was going to say that I used to,” she said slowly. “It was there for a minute, the knowledge that I used to read fantasy. But it’s gone.”
Thank goodness…
“But for a minute you knew,” he said softly. “That proves your memory will come back.” He supported her neck with one of his big, fascinating hands while the other urged her to lie back on the nest of pillows he’d built for her. “All you have to do is take it easy. Everything will come back in time.”
He probably thinks he won that round, Sophie thought as Seth pulled the covers back up, his hands gentle, his face far too controlled. After all, she was lying down again, resting, like he wanted.
But that wasn’t because of anything he’d done. Her own mind had distracted her after the glimpse of her past vanished back into whatever limbo it came from.
I was glad, she thought, bewildered, as Seth left on quiet feet. I was glad I couldn’t remember who I was.
What was wrong with her? What kind of person was she? She craved a man she didn’t know. And apparently she would prefer anything—or nothing—to reclaiming her own identity.
Three
In the morning after breakfast, Seth excused himself to go up on the roof and check out possible storm damage since, he said, the radio had reported the passing of the storm cell that had dumped all that rain on them. His guest managed not to comment on the foolishness of a man with a bad leg climbing around on the roof. At least he didn’t seem to be limping today.
She took advantage of his absence to check something else out.
“Sophie.” She said the name out loud, weighing it on her tongue. She smiled. “Sophie,” she said again. A friendly name. Comfortable.
Her hand went to the delicate chain around her throat and the locket suspended there, with that name engraved in flowing script. She liked the feel of the dainty necklace, liked that one tangible link with her past.
Surely “Sophie” was a diminutive of some other, longer name. “Sophronia?” She had to smile at that one. Surely not. “Sophia,” she tried, but the name sounded heavy and formal, and she couldn’t summon any recognition.
She felt decidedly ambivalent about her name hunt. Part of her wanted to know. Part wanted to hide, wanted to lie here in Seth’s bed where she felt safe and curiously free.
A loud clatter overhead recalled her to what she was supposed to be doing, and she started unbuttoning the shirt she’d slept in. Seth’s trip to his roof gave her privacy to change into another of his shirts and the pair of panties that he’d washed out for her.
Why did she find the idea of Seth washing her panties more embarrassing than the idea of Seth washing her?
Sophie sighed as she drew the blue cotton down her arm. It was a nice arm, she thought. A little scrawny, maybe. Pausing with the shirt half off, half on, she made a muscle and giggled at her nonexistent biceps.
Apparently she was not into bodybuilding.
She glanced up. Continued sounds reassured her that Seth was still busy with his roof. In the bath last night she’d been so aware of Seth looking—or studiously not looking, at first—that she hadn’t especially taken note of her body herself.
Sophie slipped the shirt all the way off and looked.
Her breasts were small. Her nipples were rather large, a sort of blushy tan color, but. the breasts themselves were definitely on the small side. Oh, well. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about sagging when she got older.
She frowned. Someone had said that to her. Someone, a woman quite a bit older, when Sophie was…was…but the thought trailed into a wisp. Vapor.
Maybe she was already “older.” What an unsettling idea!
She stretched a leg out. She had pretty good muscle definition in her legs, she thought, but that didn’t give her much of a clue as to her age. A dedicated runner or aerobics teacher might stay fit and firm well into her forties.
“I don’t want to be forty,” she muttered. She wasn’t supposed to be forty. She was—well, she didn’t know, but surely not forty.
She had to smile at herself. How absurd. She was more upset at the possibility of having passed her fortieth birthday than at her missing memories. Did she know on some level that she wasn’t that old yet? Or was she feeling a purely human resentment at the passing of years?
She managed to squirm into her panties without making her head explode, and the bit of throbbing the movement excited eased off quickly. Pleased, she studied both legs.
Well, she thought, flexing one knee, she did have rather nice legs, whatever her age was. Her thighs were firm, and her calves…she ran a hand up from the ankle, and grimaced. Good muscle definition, but bristly. Maybe she could borrow Seth’s razor later.
Or maybe she could borrow it now.
She glanced guiltily at the roof. She really shouldn’t borrow his things without permission, but if she asked he’d probably insist on carrying her. She wasn’t sure if the injury to his leg was temporary or permanent, but she didn’t want his overly developed sense of chivalry making him hurt himself. Besides, she needed to be alone. It wasn’t just a razor she wanted to find in the bathroom.
She needed a mirror.
She swung her legs off the bed. If she took it slow, she reasoned, walking to the bathroom shouldn’t be too hard. Her head was much better today.
She scooted to the edge of the mattress and stood. The room moved.
It was a strange sensation. She clasped her hand to her head as if she could stop the slow gyrations of the room by clutching her head. Maybe it worked. After a moment, the world did steady itself and she started moving.
Her legs were mushy. Spaghetti al dente. She decided it would be wise to have something to hang on to, and swerved to take advantage of the furniture that lay between her and her goal. She paused to catch her breath, gripping the back of the couch where Seth had slept last night. Ridiculous to be all winded from such a tiny bit of exertion, but the room chose that moment to do its dance again. Black fluttered at the edges of her vision while the floor stood itself up on end and smacked itself against her outstretched hand, then knocked the breath from her lungs.
“Sophie!”
She didn’t think she passed out again, but there didn’t seem to be any time between hearing Seth cry out her name from the doorway and feeling him gather her up tenderly against him. Cursing her the whole time.
“…what the hell you thought you were doing? Of all the fool ideas—does that hurt?” He ran his hand up her legs. “You’re a complete idiot, you know that?” He gently eased her head back against his shoulder to study her face intently. “Your pupils look the same,” he muttered.
She wished he’d go back to touching her legs. The shivery sensation she’d had when his hands skimmed up her bare calves was fading. But this position had possibilities, too. His dark hair was tied back, emphasizing the elegance of the bones that underlay both sides of his face, the smooth and the damaged. His face was so near, with her head pillowed on his shoulder. He’d hardly have to move at all to…
To kiss her. Seth couldn’t believe he was thinking about kissing her when one minute ago she’d nearly killed herself, toppling over just as he came inside. Lord, but he’d probably lost five years off his life. She’d scared him that badly. But right now her body was warm and soft against him and her lips were so near, gently rosy and curved up in that smile of hers, as if she knew what he was thinking and liked it, liked the idea of his mouth on hers. Her eyes had the slumberous look of a woman who wanted a man.
The thought that she might actually want him jolted through his body, making him instantly hard and throbbing.
Her hand crept beneath his hair to the back of his heck, where her fingertips skimmed a hesitant circle.
His body responded to the uncertain caress with pure, ravenous hunger. “Good Lord,” he breathed, and jerked back.
She blinked, but if his sudden rejection stung it didn’t show. Unless the huskiness in her voice came from hurt feelings instead of arousal. “That was really weird,” she said. “The room went haywire on me all of a sudden.”
“Try ‘stupid’ instead of ‘weird.’” He shifted her so he could stand. “Didn’t you know I would help you if you needed to use the bathroom?” He interrupted his scolding to grunt as he stood, bringing her up with him.
“Oh, Seth, don’t. Your leg-”
Great. She’d noticed him limping. “It’s fine. Now, do you need to go to the bathroom?”
She ignored his question. “I’m fine, too. Or almost fine, anyway. I can walk. You might have to help me a bit, but I can walk.”
He obviously shouldn’t have given in to her pleas that morning to be allowed to make it into the bathroom on her own two feet. It had given her delusions of health. “You are one damn fool woman. Now which do you want—back to bed, or to the bathroom?”
She sighed. “Bed.”
Sitting with her on the bed was easier on his knee than bending to lay her down. He certainly didn’t do it because the trusting warmth of her body, or the arms she’d wrapped around his neck as he carried her, were already dear to him. Desire was understandable. Predictable, under the circumstances. “Dear” was—well, ridiculous.
“Why were you up?” he asked, scowling. She sat right up against his thigh, much too close. He’d have to move, in just a second. “If you didn’t need the bathroom, why were you heading that way?”
Her teeth gnawed on her lower lip. She looked away. “I wanted to borrow your razor.”
He stared. “You wanted to what?” He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe she’d risked herself over something so trivial. “How could you be so stupid? And if you absolutely had to shave your legs, why didn’t you wait until I came back in so I could help you?”
“Because I didn’t want you to help me! Because—” Now she turned her face to him. Her eyes glistened like rainsoaked grass. “Because I wanted to find a mirror. I don’t know what I look like, Seth, and I wanted—I wanted to be by myself when I found out. I don’t know why.”
Oh, Lord. He ran his hand through his hair.
She didn’t know what she looked like. What an idiot he was, not to have realized she’d need to see her face. “There’s no mirror in the bathroom.”
“But when you shave—”
“I don’t need a mirror to shave.” He didn’t need to look at her, either, when he talked to her. So he didn’t. “There’s a mirror in the pickup. I’ll take you out there. But I’ll let you be alone to look. I won’t intrude.”
“Seth,” she said, sounding as if she was about to cry. He felt like more of a fool than ever. He should have anticipated this. “Oh, Seth,” she said again, “do your scars bother you that much?”
His gaze jerked back to her.
Her lips trembled into a smile. “I’m sorry. I guess you don’t like to discuss it, but learning that you don’t have a mirror in your house, well…” She lifted her hand and touched him on the left side of his face.
He couldn’t move. He tried, he could have sworn he tried to move, but her fingers were kitten-soft. Then she moved. Drew closer. And brushed her lips across his cheek in a gentle kiss.
He carried her out to the pickup. As they crossed the porch, Rocky sighed a gusty canine sigh and heaved herself to her feet. She’d assigned herself two jobs when she moved in with Seth last month: chasing deer and rabbits away from his gardens, and accompanying him whenever he went outside. She obviously didn’t consider advanced pregnancy reason enough to shirk her duties.
Sophie gave him a hard time. She wanted to walk, but he pointed out how muddy the ground was, how she might slip, and how he was already carrying her and had no intention of putting her down, so she might as well quit being so bossy and relax.
“Me, bossy? You’ve got to be kidding. You’re the one who’s studying with the Terminator School of Nursing.”
She went on to explain to him exactly how bossy he was as he and the dog skirted the biggest puddle, and he nodded agreeably. Her fingers still clutched at his shirt too tightly, but the hint of panic fluttering around behind her eyes had eased off as soon as she started arguing.
He knew just how frightening it could be, having to face your image in a mirror for the first time. Of course, her situation wasn’t like his had been, but the fear might be similar.
He opened the pickup’s door and slid her onto the seat. “It’s dirty,” he said apologetically. “I use it to haul stuff.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Her tone was as absent as her straight-ahead gaze, and she still clutched his shirt.
“I’ll let you be alone now,” he said, and patted her hand to remind her that he couldn’t leave until she turned him loose.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said suddenly.
He waited.
“I don’t want you to leave me alone.” She looked at him. “Stay with me?”
In answer he gently scooted her over and sat down behind the steering wheel.
She took a deep breath, reached for the rearview mirror and angled it toward her.
Seth tried not to watch her. She might have changed her mind about doing this alone, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be staied at. He bent and scratched Rocky behind the ears, and he waited. But Sophie was quiet for so long he had to look.
She held her head tipped so she could study the left side of her face, where the scabbed-over scratches made ugly tracks. Her fingers traced those scabs anxiously.