She leans closer, studying the picture carefully. “I… damn. I’m the same, I know I’veseenhim, but I can’t place where. I don’t think we were introduced or I’d remember. At a party, perhaps, as someone else’s guest?”
“Harris is running the picture through his facial recognition filter. He should have a hit soon.”
“It could just be a man walking past the restaurant,” she reminds me.
“Aye. Or he might have some answers for us.” I don’t tell her that my men returned to Rainwater to thoroughly question the staff. I also arranged a meeting for Michael with one of our best construction groups, I’d promised to pay for the damage.
Her brows draw together as she looks me over. “How are you? I think you got thrown back harder from the blast than I was.”
“I’m fine.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You haven’t even checked yourself, have you?”
My grin stretches to feral proportions. “Oh, you want me to strip so you can play nurse? With great pleasure.”
“No! I didn’t sayhere.”She sinks under the bubbles again.
I hold her gaze, her sea-glass green eyes wide as I pull off my jacket and dress shirt. Her eyes drop to my chest and I can see her thighs tighten. Pausing with my hands on my belt buckle, I ask, “See any injuries, my sweet little nurse?”
The glare is still there, but she reluctantly says, “Turn around.”
Spinning around, I ask over my shoulder, “Are you staring at my arse? I certainly hope so. I’m fine with being objectified.”
“Very funny. But you have a huge bruise forming on your left shoulder blade. You must have landed on it,” she says with a tinge of concern. Am I imagining it? If she hated me as much as she did when I made her marry me, surely she’d be cheering right now.
Ignoring her alarmed yelp, I turned to face her, unzipping my pants and letting them drop to my ankles. “Anything else, my sweet little nurse?”
My cock dinna’ get the message that this was a medical inspection, and he’s straining against the thin cotton of my boxer briefs. Her eyes widen and her mortified groan makes me laugh.
“Sorry, nurse. Again, there are some things I can control. He’s not one of them.”
My cell phone rattles angrily on the counter and I check my texts. “Alas, duty calls. You can objectify me later if ya’ like.”
“I wasn’t looking!” Isla protests as I pull up my pants and throw my shirt back on.
“Yes, ya’ were.” Leaning against the counter I watch her for a moment. “I noticed something interesting at the restaurant.”
Shifting to pile more bubbles in front of her breasts, an action I note with some regret, she clears her throat. “Oh? What?”
“When we were all gettin’ out of that room,” I say softly, “there was a moment when your father’s men were just as close to you as mine. You could have gone with him. But you came with me, no hesitation. A promising sign, my pretty nurse.”
As I leave, she calls out, “Don’t read too much into that!”
Chuckling, I button my shirt as I head downstairs. I can feel the thaw beginning in my wife, even if she refuses to.
Chapter Twenty-One
In which there is so much dirty talk.
Isla…
Dougal gives me the phone so I can talk to my father that night, another mark in his favor but in no way making up for stripping in front of me while I was trapped in the bathtub. Unfortunately, the Blackwood spies aren’t having any luck finding out who did this today, either.
That would have been part of my job. I graduated at the top of the Spy Division when I attended the Ares Academy, though I could never beat the great Dougal MacTavish’s shooting record, something that irritates me to this day.
Dougal.
That he had been the one to catch me at the mansion had been especially infuriating. There was always a running competition in the back of my mind with him when I was at the Academy - even though he’d graduated six years before me - and I can see it never went away. Which is ridiculous. We didn’t know each other. We’d never spoken… aside from that bloody night at the docks, at any rate.
