“Did you get a merit badge for first aid from the Boy Scouts?” she asked.
His lips, less swollen than before, curved up just a little, shifting the bandage on his cheek. “They don’t have Boy Scouts where I grew up.”
“They don’t have Boy Scouts in the Netherlands?” she asked, rustling around in the plastic bag of medicinal supplies to find what she needed. It kept her mind off the fact that Cash was naked except for a towel, only a few feet away, and smelled like good soap and that delicious cologne of his.
“Switzerland,” he said.
Rox cocked one eyebrow down at him. “I thought you said that you were from the Netherlands. Because you’re Dutch. Like tulips.”
“I was sent to a Swiss boarding school when I was seven.”
“I guess Europeans do that,” she said. “I can’t even imagine sending my children away to school.”
He frowned. “You don’t have children, do you, Rox?”
“Just the three furry ones.” Speedbump rolled onto his gray-striped back, his stiff hind leg poking out behind him, and he watched her over his fuzzy tummy.
“Are you and your husband planning to have children?” he asked.
Rox unpacked the supplies. She had never prepared an answer for that. Deep breath. “Maybe someday. Grant is traveling a lot right now. You tend to like it that I’m a workaholic, too.”
“That must be hard on your marriage, Grant traveling so much.”
She shrugged, stalling. “It’s not so bad.”
“Do you like it when he’s gone?”
“That’s a terrible question, Cash.”
He chuckled. “I can’t help myself. You know that.”
“As long as you’re just kidding around.”
“Of course, because you’re married.”
“Sure, I am.”
“English might not be my first language, but even I know that you should have said that as ‘I sure am.’”
“I’ll say it how I like to. We Southerners speak proper English, unlike those British people you learned it from.” She paused. “You must have learned to speak English at boarding school.”
“Master Hamilton, our English instructor, was from London,” he said.
“Your sister doesn’t have a British accent.”
“She stayed home and went to public school, though it must be noted that the public schools in the Netherlands are excellent.”
She turned around with her hands full of gauze and tape. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you to bed.”
His lopsided smile rose a little. “I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.”
“I do not!” Heat boiled up her face. “What a thing to say!”
“You say that to me all the time.” He laughed, but it was a weak sound. He bent, curling down and clutching the stripes of his abdominal muscles. “Oh, ow. Let’s not make jokes for a couple of days, okay?”
“Fine with me, Cash. You just—” she was not giving him another chance to say something like that again by telling him to get into bed, “—walk right out there and sit, or something.”
He chuckled and grabbed his side again, but he did as instructed.
And a good thing, too. Rox might be a Southern belle, but Southern belles turn into Southern mommas, and God help you if you cross a Southern momma.
Not Rox’s momma, though. She had been different. A lot different.
She followed Cash out into his bedroom. “Now you just lie down out there, you hear me?”
Cash behaved himself and climbed onto his mussed bed, sliding his legs under the sheets.
The bedroom was Spanish modern, too. Again, the framed art on the walls was of pottery or plants.
Rox walked around the other side of the bed and crawled over, holding the supplies to her chest. “Just stay still.”
He gingerly slid his hands behind his head, stretching his side. The staples strained in his skin.
She said, “You don’t have to do that. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“Did you take those pills the doctor gave you?”
“I don’t like drugs.”
“Yeah, I can understand that.”
Now that she was holding the medical supplies and Cash’s bare skin was spread in front of her, uncertainty made her hands shake. Hurting him was the last thing on her mind.
The first thing in her mind was something else entirely.
His skin was pale gold and inked darkly with black flames and streaks. A whorl of flames started on his left pectoral muscle and spun out, spraying dark flames up and over his shoulder, spiraling down his arm to his wrist, and around his waist to dip under the white towel he had cinched around his hips. A short sheen of amber fuzz covered his chest and tapered toward his navel.