Matt watched the parade of emotions passing over Sarah's face. She was attracted to him and that attraction frightened her. The chivalrous part of him, the gentleman, wanted to reassure her. But he couldn't quite separate the need to reassure from the need to hold her. She was pretty and sweet and a breath of fresh, air. And his own emotions seemed to be rocking. It was true, he genuinely liked all kinds of” women, but the fact of the matter was he only played with the ones who knew the rules. He doubted Sarah Troyer would even realize it was a game. Still, he didn't see the harm in flirting with her a little.

Her fingertip was still lingering in the foam along the bow of his upper lip, teasing him, tempting him. He caught her delicate wrist and drew her hand downward so that the finger in question skipped over his upper lip and landed firmly on the lower one. He drew his tongue across it, watching with pure male satisfaction as Sarah's eyes widened and darkened, and her cheeks flushed with the unmistakable color of desire. The look of panic that followed that automatic sexual response hit Matt like a whip and he released her hand.

A teasing light sparkled in his eyes as he said, “When I was a kid, I always thought this stuff would taste like whipped cream. It tastes like Styrofoam.”

Sarah made no comment, but set about the business of shaving him, alternately worrying she might cut him because her hand was less than steady and entertaining thoughts of deliberately doing him in for unleashing such raw desires in her.

Of course, it wasn't his fault she was not content with her life, she reflected as she carefully avoided the stitches on his chin. She couldn't see that it was anyone's fault really; it just was. She hadn't asked to have this yearning to learn or to experience or to want excitement. It was something that had always been in her, something she had had to struggle to subdue her whole life. Matt Thome set it off like a match struck to dry tinder, but that wasn't his fault.

Her father would have something different to say on the matter, she was sure. His opinions of the English and their evil, tempting ways were well-known. But then, she had no intention of telling him about Matt Thorne or her desires. The less he knew about her job at Thornewood Inn, the better. He was already unhappy about it. Thankfully, the money she was contributing to the farm had diluted his dislike so far.

“Sarah?”

The sound of her name jolted her from her thoughts. She stared at Matt, knowing he had asked her a question that she hadn't heard. “I'm sorry. What?”

“I asked how you came to work here. I admit I don't know much about the Amish, but I wouldn't have thought Amish girls were allowed to work outside their own community.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, making light of what was a very touchy issue among her people. “We can take jobs so long as they don't go against the teachings of the church.”

“But your people don't believe in using electricity or indoor plumbing, do they? You use those things here. Doesn't that go against the church?”

“We don't have those conveniences because we believe they act as corrupting influences on the family, but we don't claim they're evil nor do we begrudge others having them,” she explained. Personally, she had never understood how a toilet could corrupt anybody, but she kept her opinion to herself. “Hold still now or you'll be short a nose.”

It was only after she had finished shaving him that Sarah brought up the one question she had been wanting most to ask Matt. She sat back with the damp towel wound around her hands. She knew she should move to the chair beside the bed, but she had grown comfortable sitting next to him, and in truth she enjoyed the small tingle of pleasure that came from her hip brushing against his leg.

“Ingrid told me you'd been injured in some kind of attack, but I didn't understand.”

That makes two of us, Matt thought. He considered himself sophisticated, worldly, experienced. Still he had a difficult time dealing with the senseless violence of gang warfare. He couldn't imagine how he was going to explain it to Sarah. He wasn't sure he wanted to. But she sat beside him, waiting patiently, looking so eager to learn something about the Big World.

“I'm in charge of the emergency room at a hospital in the Cities,” he began. “Its a county hospital in what has become a very bad part of town. We see a lot of victims of crimes, a lot of criminals.” He broke off, frustrated. “Do you know what street gangs are?”

She nodded solemnly. “I read about them in Ingrid's Newsweek magazine.”

The idea of Sarah reading Newsweek threw him for a moment, but he shook it off and went back to his explanation. “Well, gangs have been growing in the Minneapolis area over the last five or six years. Gangs from Chicago and Los Angeles are moving in, calling it 'Moneyapolis' because of the potential for profit they see there. Consequently, we're starting to see a lot of gang-related crime and violence.

“This time it happened right in my emergency room—with me in the middle of it. The Disciples and the Vice Lords got into a little disagreement over a drug deal.” He pointed to the bruise above his left eye. “I got hit here with the butt of a shotgun. This is where I connected with the edge of a cabinet,” he said, indicating the stitches on his chin. “I've got three cracked ribs, and the bandage on my leg is hiding a nice big bullet hole.”

His account was a much-tidied version of the explosion of violence and hatred that had rocked the ER that night. He deleted the blood and gore and the fact that a sixteen-year-old Vice Lord had ended the evening as a corpse. He didn't tell Sarah that an innocent child had been wounded by flying glass from a broken cabinet door or that he himself had sustained a concussion and a bruised kidney in addition to his other injuries. He could see that the G-rated version had upset her enough.

Sarah felt herself go pale as Matt calmly tallied his injuries. He was so matter-of-fact about it. The idea of that kind of violence shook her to her very core. That one human being could do such terrible things to another was beyond her understanding. She had lived such a sheltered life, a life narrowly structured around faith and family. And she had wanted for so long to escape that rigid structure and explore the world beyond. It frightened her something fierce to know such awful things happened in that world she was so eager to discover. She tended to think of it in wonderful terms, that it was full of amazing things to learn and experience, when it undoubtedly held equal amounts of suffering and evil. Whenever that realization struck her, she felt naive and foolish, and now she felt fear for Matt as well.

“You could have been killed,” she murmured, shivering at the thought.

Matt looked at her with sympathy for her now-sullied naivet6. “Yeah,” he said softly, reaching out to cover her small hand with his.

Funny, he thought, that he was the one who had been attacked, but it was Sarah who needed comforting. And it was odd how good it felt to give that little bit of comfort. He had been trying so long to make a difference in the world by patching up the wounded and sending them back out into the war. Yet just this one small gesture made him feel better. Maybe he had given up thinking the world could be saved by his meager efforts. Maybe he had seen too much of people who had lost all re spect for humanity. He had certainly seen far too much of needless suffering and senseless death. And here was this one simple, sweet Amish woman, touched by his pain. He wanted to kiss her just for caring.

Hell, he just plain wanted to kiss her.

“You know what I could use, Nurse Troyer?” he said softly, trying to coax a smile out of her.

Sarah shrugged, too shaken to trust her voice.

“Some breakfast. I'm starved.”

She nodded and managed a tiny smile. “Ya, a good big breakfast. You need your strength for healing.”

She moved to rise, but the pressure of Matt's hand on hers kept her seated beside him. Her heart did a little flip as she looked down at the sight of her small hand engulfed in his. His was wide and capable looking with blunt-tipped fingers and neatly manicured nails. It felt warm and gentle, and she suddenly couldn't remember the last time she'd been touched that way.

Seemingly with a will of its own, her hand turned over and rubbed palm against palm with Matt's. The friction generated a heat that sizzled through her, burning her breath away in her lungs and igniting fires in all her most secret womanly places. It should have felt for bidden, but it didn't. It felt good. She felt alive.

She could sense Matt's dark eyes searching her expression, and she made a little face and pulled her hand back to the relative safety of her own lap.

“You have no calluses,” she said quietly. It came out sounding like an accusation, as if it were a wicked, sexy secret he had deliberately kept from her.

“I get paid a lot of money to keep these hands as soft as a baby's,'

“It seems strange to me,” she admitted. “Most of the men I know are farmers. Even their wives have calluses.”

“I can't afford them. As a doctor my sense of touch has to be sensitive, acute. I have to be able to read people with my hands,” Matt said. “Here. Ill show you.”

Sarah sat as still and wary as a doe, watching him as he lifted his hands to cup her face. He closed his eyes, thick dark lashes sweeping down like lace fans. His fingertips stroked along the surface of her skin like a whisper, following the ripe curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. The pads of his thumbs brushed the outer corners of her mouth, and her lips parted in unconscious invitation.