Good God, that smile was lethal, and could disarm her unhappiness at having him here. She didn’t want to disarm anything. “I’ll just read to myself.”

“You sure?”

What she was sure about was that he needed to leave the room. Now. “Positive. You can go.”

Wistfulness crossed his features. “Rach, you know I can’t yet-”

“I meant for right now.” But how nice to know that he was even more eager than she to get out of here.

With a slight nod, he turned away.

“Ben?”

His shoulders tensed, making her realize she wasn’t the only uptight one tonight. “Thanks,” she whispered, then waited until she was alone again before reaching for the historical romance lying by her drawing pad.

One of the nurses in the hospital had given it to her, and she hadn’t known how to say she didn’t typically read romances. Now, in the middle of the night, she opened the only book she could reach and lost herself in a story about a lusty pirate and his wild and sexy prisoner…


WHEN SHE WOKE NEXT, it was morning and her biggest heartbreak was standing at the foot of her bed staring at her grimly, looking as alive and virile as ever.

He was leaning against one of the bedposts, his hands in the pockets of soft, worn jeans. He wore a dark-blue T-shirt that made him look both tough and sexy, an image complemented by the silver earring shining in his ear.

Her pirate, she thought with an inane urge to giggle, and shot the historical romance on her chest a dark look.

Ben stepped close and picked up the book, which happened to be opened to a scene that had steamed her reading glasses last night. He read a few lines silently and his brow shot up his forehead, disappearing into the hair falling over his eyes. “Throbbing manhood?”

“Romance novels are empowering,” she said primly.

“I’ll bet they are.” His voice sounded a little strained as he read a bit more. “Wow.”

“Are you here for a reason?”

“Yeah.” He set the book aside and let out a careful breath. “You need any help getting up?”

She pictured his hands on her, the way his breathing always shallowed when he helped her get dressed, and how her body reacted. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Let me at least get you into the bathroom.”

“I said I’ll be fine.” Her voice came out far sharper than she intended, but he was messing with her head. “Please. Just…go.”

His jaw was granite. “We’ve already established I won’t.”

But he had once. Damn him, she had the insane, juvenile urge to punish him for that still, to make him want to walk away now, again. But one thing she knew about Ben Asher was that he was quite possibly the most stubborn man on the planet. He’d promised to stay, for now at least, and because of it, he wasn’t budging.

Instead of leaving, he hauled off her covers, exposing her in the silky bathrobe she’d managed to get herself into the night before. Before she could so much as draw another breath, he’d slipped his arms around her and scooped her from the bed. “Bathroom first?” he asked calmly, as if he held her every day. “Sponge bath? Or just clothes?”

He had one arm around her back, his fingers curled just beneath her breast. The other arm beneath her thighs.

Did he know she wore nothing beneath it, nothing at all?

“Sponge bath,” she managed. “But-”

“Let me guess. You can do it yourself.” Striding into her bathroom, he set her on the closed commode, then turned on the tub. “Stay.”

Did she have a choice? She wondered why on earth she’d thought a nurse such a bad idea. A nice female nurse would have been good right now. She could have stripped off her robe in front of a female nurse, sat gingerly on the edge of the tub with a female nurse, maybe even could have gotten in-

“Here.” He was back, once again hunkering in front of her. He had plastic trash bags and duct tape, and before she knew what he meant to do, he’d jerked open her robe to the tops of her thighs.

“Hey-”

“You’re going to be thanking me soon enough when the warm water hits your body, trust me.” Without looking away from his task, he slid one of the bags over the cast on her left leg, smoothed it around her thigh with his big hands, then secured it with duct tape. Leaning forward, he used his teeth to rip off the duct tape.

She stared down at his head between her legs, feeling his hair brush over her flesh, and didn’t know whether to splay her thighs open farther or kick him.

Kick him, she decided, because she was quivering and not just from the pain.

With a surprised yelp, he fell to his butt on the tile. Watching her with a wary eye, he came back up on his knees and put his hands on his hips. “You feel better now?”

“Um, yes,” she admitted. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” He gently pushed back the flowing sleeve of the robe and gave her left arm the same treatment as he’d given her leg. “There.”

Around them, with hot water running into the tub, the bathroom became steamy. Closed in.

Standing, Ben let out a tight smile. “So. How are we going to do this? The easy way or the hard way?”

She clutched the robe to her chest. “I can manage from here.”

“The hard way, then,” he muttered. “Great.” He tossed her the pretty pink loofah hanging from the shower head and turned his back to her-his broad shoulders, wavy, wild hair and attitude all mocking her. “Manage away.”

She glanced at the full bubbling bath and the loofah in her hand. She could just dip it in and wash her body, and it sounded like heaven. But… “Not with you standing right there.”

With a long-suffering sigh, he dropped his head between his shoulders, defining an irritated male. “My eyes are closed.”

“Yes, but-”

“But nothing, Rachel. You want to wash or not?”

She looked at the glorious steam rising from the tub. Did she want to get clean? Only more than her next breath. “Yes.”

“Then do it. You’re shaking like a damn leaf on the first day of autumn.” He craned his neck and looked at her. “And no, I’m not leaving. I want to make sure you don’t fall.”

Concern filled his eyes. She wondered if he even knew it. “Just keep your eyes closed.” She managed to pull herself up to a stand and dropped her robe, watched it pool at her feet. Black dots danced in her vision, but she blinked them away, imagining her hair soft and silky from a real washing, her skin smooth and clean from the tip of her head to her toes. Naked, anticipating, only a few breaths away from collapsing, she went to sit on the edge of the tub.

But it was terribly awkward, and put too much pressure on her healing ribs and pelvis.

“What’s the matter?” His back was to her, eyes still closed.

She knew this because she kept peeking at his reflection in the mirror to make sure he wasn’t cheating. “Nothing.” She tried again, and wanted to cry. Damn it, only a month ago she was in the finest shape of her life! “Ben…”

He whipped around so fast she got even dizzier, and as if he already knew, Ben grabbed her. Embarrassment chased anger, chased a bombardment of sensations…like did the man’s hands feel good on her body, which brought her back to anger because they were Ben’s hands, and it wasn’t sexual, it was survival. He had her naked body plastered to his fully clothed one, and was completely supporting her weight. She felt her face heat, felt her throat heat, felt everything heat.

He had one arm across her back, one lower, across her bare butt, his hand gripping a cheek. “Ben.” She lifted her face, and found her mouth an inch from his. But it wasn’t their proximity that backed her breath up in her throat. It was the look in his eyes. Dark, intensely speculative and so hot she couldn’t have drawn air into her lungs to save her life. “You…can let me go now,” she said in a funny feathery voice she hardly recognized.

“Yeah.” But she would have sworn his arms actually tightened, including the hand on her butt, before he slowly released her, sitting her back on the commode. “You okay?”

No. No, she wasn’t. “Fine,” she said through clenched teeth because her body had reacted without permission. Her nipples were two hard tight points and her legs had gone mushy, not to mention what was happening between them. A shiver trailed over her skin as his breath tickled down the side of her neck, and she let out a sound that shocked her with its neediness.

Further shocking her, Ben nibbled in the exact spot he’d breathed on, nuzzling the side of her throat and the curve of her shoulder until her bones liquefied. “Should I close my eyes again, Rachel?”

Her heart jerked, then again as he dragged his mouth over her flesh. “Yes!”

He didn’t. In fact he kept them wide-open and all over her. He slid one hand up her hip to her waist, then a little higher, gliding his thumb up and down over her skin, on the heavy underside of a breast. “I’ve seen it all before.”

“A long time ago.” She felt like a marshmallow, a melting marshmallow over a slow, perfect flame. “Close ’em.”

“You’re even more amazing now than you were then, and I remember you as pretty damn amazing.”

She crossed her casted arm over her breasts and tried to not think about the parts he could still see quite clearly. “Is…that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Well…” He let out a low, nipple-hardening laugh. “Looking at you is making me feel better.”

“Close your eyes,” she said through her teeth. “Or find out how hard a cast is over your head.”

He tilted his head and studied her while his hands took another slow pass at the flesh plumped out beneath the cast. “So you’re going to ignore the fact that every time we’re within two feet of each other we nearly spontaneously combust?”

With great effort, she lifted her bag-covered left arm warningly.