If You Dare Read Free

“I have no need of you anyway. . . .”
    And then she was alone. With the big, terrifying Scot.
    She really should be having tea right now.
    She billowed a sheet over him, then blindly endeavored to cut away his ruined trousers underneath it. Frowning in concentration, she placed the shears only to yank her hand back. She was fairly certain she’d stabbed his waist.
    Focusing on the opposite wall, she tried again, but pushed the sharp tips into his skin once more. This time he moaned and she jumped back. She’d bet her Limoges porcelain that any red-blooded male would rather die than have an exhausted, unseeing woman cutting near his groin.
    So she tugged the sheet down to his waist to shear away the remains of his shirt. His boots they’d discarded as unnecessary weight on the stairs. Which again left . . . his trousers.
    Biting her lip, she unfastened and pulled free his sodden belt, noticing that his torso was flat, the ridges of muscle pronounced, with a thin trail of black hair leading down.
    He was so heavy and yet he hadn’t an inch of spare flesh on him. A strong body—he would heal fast if she helped him. But she’d never seen a grown man wholly nude before. No one here swam unclothed. There simply wasn’t the laissez-faire attitude about nudity here as in neighboring Spain and France. And he was about to be completely unclothed, where she could see if she chose.
    She would not choose! Disregard these thoughts, she commanded herself. Putting her shoulders back, she assumed a brisk attitude. She was a nurse today, and a lady always.
    She opened the front of his trousers, ignoring the foreign, remarkable textures, the fascinating shape she brushed. With the fastening undone she was able to pull and cut around until they were off, always striving to keep the sheet between him and her eyes. And mostly succeeding.
    Wiping perspiration from her brow, she began on his wrist, splinting it with the spoons and tight linen strips untilshe could cast it with flour in the morning. When she finished, she lay his arm back above his head and spread the other arm out to the side to wrap his ribs. Again and again, she pulled the cloth around him, tightened it, then forced the material under his back. His chest was deep, and bandaging it meant reaching over him, grazing him.
    When she was done, she was oddly irritable and fidgety. Though she wanted nothing more than a bath and her bed, her gaze kept returning to his good hand. Finally she gave in to temptation and leaned beside him in the bed to lift it. The fingers and back of it were as scarred as the rest of his body and the palm was abrasive. Her brows drew together as she placed the palm flat against her own.
    She marveled at the size of his hand, at how it could swallow her own, and pressed each finger against his matching one. If he was a mercenary, and he must be, judging by all the battle scars, she wondered how many guns and knives and swords he had wielded with it. Had he ever used it to strangle the life from someone?
    Had she been completely crazed to bring a man like this into her home?
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    For the last two days Annalía had wondered if he’d ever wake up. She’d browbeaten Vitale into washing the man each day—there were just some things she refused to do—and into helping her set his wrist with a cast. Afterward she’d settled into a daily routine where she would check the Scot’s ribs and wrist and grapple to pour broth and water down his throat.
    Each day some of the swelling around his eyes and jaws receded, but she suspected that even uninjured he still would look like a ruffian.
    This morning had already heated the casa miserably. The wind was absent, and even the usually cool mountain nights had been balmy this summer. Though she’d already checkedon him, she should probably return and make certain that Vitale had locked up after he tended to the man