"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.
The incision where they had removed his spleen was over his ribs, and the cut had managed to miss all the ink.
Rox realized that her finger was tracing a dark streak of ink that ran over the thick muscle of his chest. The inked skin felt velvety, a little rougher than his satiny skin. "Oh! I'm sorry."
He was watching her, his green eyes steady. "You can't feel tattoos. They're under the skin."
"I guess not." She grabbed the tube of antibiotic gel.
Okay, ointment first. She could do this.
And she could do it without making a dang fool out of herself.
She squeezed a stripe of ointment onto the stitches, careful to not touch them but just gently laying the gooey stuff on top. Cutting the square of gauze was next, and she managed to do it without cutting off one of her own fingers.
The gauze fluttered and stuck to the gel, which held it on the wound.
"Just another second," she said.
"Take your time." His voice was lower, throaty.
She glanced at him, but his arms were still behind his head. Cash was so beat up that she couldn't read anything on his swollen face. He would have been deadly in a courtroom right then. Opposing counsel wouldn't be able to tell what he was thinking at all.
Rox ripped off a modest length of tape and held it above the bandage, almost ready to press it onto his skin.
The paper tape dangled over his skin, clinging to her fingers, as she hesitated. His soft breath made it sway.
She was going to have to press it onto his body.
His rippling, muscular body with the sexy tattoo that trailed under the towel.
His skin and inked flesh stroked with cologne that smelled like rich sandalwood and vanilla beans.
Press the tape on his taut flesh, she thought. The tape right there in her hand. Press it down now.
Damn, all those heavy muscles and tight flesh were nice to look at.
The tape fluttered from his soft exhale, and he asked, "Are you sure that you have a merit badge from the Girl Scouts in first aid?"
She shot him a dirty look, but she pinched the tape between her fingers and lowered it onto his skin.
Under her hand, as she smoothed the tape, his skin was warm, not feverish but solidly warm, and she pressed the tape over his side and the smooth ridges of his abdominal muscles.
The scent of soap and shampoo and cologne rose from his body, lingering in the air.
Another length of tape, and she ran her fingers under the round, tattooed mass of his pectoral.
Manboobs. He had manboobs. Moobs. And she was touching them.
He inhaled a quick breath, and his chest rose under her fingers. She pressed his chest more firmly than she had meant to.
Rox cleared her throat. "That's a nice tattoo."
"Thanks." His voice was as hoarse as hers. They must be coming down with a virus or something.
"Is it fire?" she asked.
"It's a phoenix," Cash said, "the bird that catches fire, is destroyed, and rises again from its own ashes."
Her hand was resting on his chest, and his heart pulsed under her palm. "Is that a symbol of the Netherlands or something?"
"No."
His gaze looked like he was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't fathom what he meant.
Her gaze dipped to his lips. Oh, Lord. She might hurt him if she touched him at all, if she even touched her lips to his bruised lips. Her heart pounded in her chest, but she had to finish taping the gauze onto him.
She applied more tape, one piece to each of the four sides of the gauze pad, sliding her fingers over the tape to adhere it to his warm skin.
His chest rose and fell under her fingers with his breathing.
She pressed the tape with her fingertips, far too aware of her skin, her body, and her lips.
"So, that's it," she said. "You're all done."
His tongue licked his swollen lips. "Do it again, tonight?"
His voice was still hoarse from the intubation, she guessed.
But hers shouldn't have been. "Yeah. I'll do it again tonight."
She considered cutting the gauze into an octagon next time so that she would have to press eight strips of tape onto his skin, just to touch him a little more.
Because it was just innocent. She wasn't flirting with him. She wasn't getting herself into a relationship with him.
Not with Cash Amsberg. She knew better than that.
The first time Cash had gotten up to walk-because you do need to walk several times a day after having surgery, no matter how much you hate it-he had joked, barely, in whispers, that he needed to give her a tour of the house. When Rox had stayed with him that first night after she had been thrown out of her apartment, he had just flipped his hand at a few rooms-the kitchen, television room, and their two bedrooms-rather than show off the entire, enormous house.