dark slash across his back, about two inches below his shoulder blades. The Sex on the Beach Killer. He’d said the guy had scratched him, but the cut extended almost all the way across his back!
“Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “You call that gash a scratch? I’d hate to see your idea of a serious wound. Let me see that.” She rushed over to examine the cut, which still oozed blood. “You need to see a doctor. That thing needs stitches.”
“No doctor,” he replied sharply.
“Why not?”
“Only medic on Vanua Taru is also the sheriff.”
She didn’t know which question to ask first. Why he wanted to avoid the law, or if they really were on Vanua Taru, which had been her destination this evening in the first place. Caution won out and she asked the second question, for fear of the answer to the first. “We’re really on Vanua Taru?”
He nodded, his lips pressed together in a tight line.
“Are you in pain?”
He shrugged, a tense move of a single shoulder.
She knew that look. Her brothers and father used to get it when they’d been hurt but didn’t want to act like sissies in front of one another. Tom was having a bout of macho maleness.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least let me clean that cut out. It has sand in it.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You can barely see it, let alone reach it. Where’s your first-aid kit?”
He scowled at her for a moment, then moved through a doorway into what looked from a glimpse like a bathroom. He came back in a moment with a big backpack crammed with a shockingly well-stocked first-aid kit. A person could practically perform surgery out of it. Growing up on a farm far from any immediate help, she and her siblings had all learned basic first aid early. It was surprising how much veterinary medicine applied to human beings in a pinch, too. She rummaged through the supplies until she found what she needed.
“Let’s go into the bathroom. When I flush out that wound, it’s going to make a mess.”
He sighed, but did as she suggested. In the end, they both stepped into the big, Roman-tiled shower, clothes and all. He stood under the water until the sand and blood were gone, then she soaped up his back gently but thoroughly and finally he rinsed off again.
He turned to her, his hair slicked back from his strong, tanned features. He looked like a freaking cover model, even if he was white around the mouth at the moment. An errant urge to kiss away his pain washed over her. Focus, girlfriend. The Plan.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
Butterflies leaped in her stomach and she took a step backward, her back coming up against the cool, tiled wall. He braced his left hand beside her head and smiled down at her a slow, lazy, sexy smile that promised hours and hours of mind-blowing lovemaking.
“Have you got any scratches I can clean out for you?” he drawled.
“I…I don’t know.”
“We’d better check. Cuts infect fast in this climate.”
He plucked at the scrap of cloth clinging to her shoulder and she glanced down. Then stared down in shock. In the dim light of the oil lamp flickering on the counter outside the shower, the remnants of her silk shirt and her lace bra clung to her breasts transparently, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. She watched, mesmerized as his brown fingers trailed over the pale fabric, around the outside curve of her breast, then lightly along the sensitive underside of the mound. Her nipples puckered hard, standing up proudly, begging for his touch. She closed her eyes in mortification—and longing. Something warm and firm touched her temple.
His mouth. He was kissing her again. Her toes started to curl. Ohboyohboyohboy. The… What was it that she was supposed to remember? He straightened and she tipped her mouth up to his. In the midst of the warm spray of water, he captured her lips with his, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and laving it with his tongue.
Her hands crept up to his shoulders. Urged him closer. His arm swept around her waist, pulling her away from the wall and against his big, hard body. The shower pounded down, raining heat and steam all around them.
He sucked in a hard breath as the spray hit his back and she lurched. His injury. And here she was, crawling all over a wounded man. She sagged against him in frustration, pressing her forehead against his chest for a moment before pushing herself away from him.
“Let’s get you out of here and get that cut dressed and covered,” she sighed.
He matched her sigh with one of his own. “But I didn’t finish scrubbing your back yet.”
“Next time.”
“Promise there’ll be a next time?”
Whoa, baby. There’d be a next time if she had anything to say about it! Belatedly, she recalled herself. Madeline C. The Plan. This man was trouble with a capital T.
They stepped out of the shower and dried themselves quickly, and Maddie—Madeline—then used paper towels to blot his wound dry. She couldn’t bring herself to ruin one of the fluffy, snow-white Turkish towels from his linen closet. She had to give the guy credit. She would never have guessed he even had a linen closet, let alone one neatly stocked with high-end bath and bed linens.
She carried the oil lamp back into the kitchen and set it down on the counter beside the first-aid kit. “So do you not have electricity at all, or is this a temporary power outage?”
“I haven’t tried the lights. It’s usually pretty reliable, though.”
“Then why in the world am I trying to patch you up in the dark?”
“I prefer to live simply.”
Simply? The very word made her shudder. Give her every electrical convenience modern technology could summon up, thank you very much. She liked her zoned air-conditioning, and her blow dryer, and towel warmer and wireless-Internet-capable cell phone/camera/television.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Where’s a light switch? I need to see what I’m doing.”
He sighed and pressed a rocker switch on the wall beside him. Bright halogen lights imbedded in the beams overhead suddenly shone down, making her squint for several moments. Tom’s wound came into focus.
“This definitely needs stitches. It’s pretty deep.”
“Just slap some butterflies on it and call it good,” he growled.
She sighed. “All right, but you’re going to have to be careful. I don’t know if butterflies will hold or not.”
He threw her a look so hot it made her bare toes bend into hard little knots of anticipation. “I can be careful,” he murmured. “Very careful.”
Her hands inexplicably shaky, she tore open a half-dozen sterile wrappings and laid the butterflies out on the counter as he turned his back to her.
“Are you always this cussedly independent?” she asked as she gently drew the edges of the wound together and commenced taping them in place.
“Nope. I’m usually worse.”
“Great.” She finished with the butterflies and laid a strip of rayon over the wound, covered it with gauze pads and secured it all with long strips of adhesive tape. She studied the bandage, pondering its chances of staying in place. Not good. She rummaged in the first-aid kit and found an elastic bandage. Perfect.
She held one end of the long, beige wrap against his left side and passed the three-inch-wide strip under his right arm. Her palms skimmed across his ribs, and her own stomach couldn’t help but contract at the way the slabbed muscles of his abdomen tensed into impressive ridges under her touch. To reach all the way around him to pass the bandage