Mystic Cowboy(25)

Well. At this particular point in time, perhaps hot was the best she could do. “I don’t have a suit.”

He had the nerve to chuckle. “So? Neither do I.”

Now would be a good time to start breathing again. Right now. “Uh...”

“You came from the east, which means it’s about a mile and a half back to your Jeep. I don’t want you to get heatstroke or anything.” Rational—at the same time he was completely, totally irrational.

Get naked? In a river? With him? Oh, let me count the ways this is a bad idea. “Uh...”

Great. Just great.

And then he moved. One careful step at a time, he closed the distance between them until there was less than a foot. One measly little foot between hot, sweaty and panicked and cool, wet and calm.

She swore she could hear “The Time of My Life” echoing from somewhere. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

“You’re hot. You’re blistering. You need to cool off.”

“I’m fine.” And that sweat trailing down her face? That had nothing to do with anything, thank you very much. At least she was still sweating, right?

Twisting his mouth into that canine grin, he shook his head at her lousy lie. And then, moving slow enough that it hurt her deep inside, he reached up and felt her forehead with the back of his hand. His hand was cool, damp. Her temperature dropped a whole degree—at least on her head. “Why do you do that?” he asked.

She tried to pull away from his touch, gentle and yet exquisitely dangerous, but he suddenly had her face in his bare palm. That alone was enough to hold her. “Do what?” Excellent. Her voice was starting to quiver. All she wanted to do was run into the river, water god be damned. She was going to crack.

“Ignore what you really want.” His thumb moved over her cheek, leaving a cool trail in its wake. “What you really need.”

“I don’t need anything.” She was sure that wasn’t true—she’d come here needing something—but at this exact moment in time, she was having a lot of trouble remembering what that was. She didn’t need anything. Other people needed her. That was how it worked.

“Everyone needs something, at least some of the time.” He should sound like he was scolding her for not knowing that simple fact, but nothing about him said scolding. “And right now, you need to cool off.”

He stepped in, close enough she could see herself reflected in those black eyes. Close enough she could smell the river water. Close enough she could taste him, if she wanted.

He slid his hand down from her face, across her collarbone, over her shoulder and down each and every one of her vertebrae with enough pressure to weaken her knees. Then he grabbed her top shirt and began to pull.

“What are you doing?” she spluttered, finally finding her hands. She grabbed at his forearms—rock solid—and halted his movement.

He let her stop him. “You don’t want to ride home in wet clothes, do you?”

There it was again, that rational irrationality. “I don’t want you to look.” And she was right back to childish.

He shook his head, his smile not moving a bit. He knew exactly how childish she was being. “You’re a doctor. You see people naked all the time.”

She swallowed. His hands were still on her waist, but he was tracing her ribs through her tank top now. Her shirt was half up. For the love of God, it couldn’t go up any farther. “That’s different. I’m a doctor.”

His eyes narrowed and his hands stilled. “Are you saying no one has ever seen you naked before?”

Excellent. Just freaking wonderful. She was so horrid at this...this...this whatever they were doing that she was coming off as a virgin. A bad virgin. “I didn’t say that.”

Did he look relieved, or was she imagining things? Either way, his hands started to move again, edging up ever so slightly and taking her shirt with them. “Let me guess. The first boyfriend, your parents hated. The other, they loved.”

How did he do that? How did he just know about Bryce, her one attempt at teenaged rebellion? How did he just guess that Dad had referred to Darrin as son from the second date onward? How did he know anything?

There was that grin again, the one she wanted to push into his head when he shot it at her in the clinic. But they weren’t in the clinic. They weren’t even in a building. They were standing on a sand bar, next to a river, under a hill.

She was pretty sure. If she was suffering from heat stroke, she might be imagining this whole thing.

He leaned in and pressed his cheek against hers. She was not imagining that, that much she was certain. “So which one did you leave to come here?”