His answering smile was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. The most sinful.
“Itisyou,” he murmured, lifting a hand to his head. “I thought I’d dreamed it.”
Yeah,Gen almost answered out loud.Me, too.
“What happened?” she asked, instinctively brushing a lock of damp hair back from the sharp white of the gauze that circled his head.
He opened his mouth to answer. He looked at her, looked away. Looked back.
“I…”
Gen found herself leaning closer. “What?”
His face puckered, and he closed his eyes. Gen was afraid she’d lost him again. She found herself actually reaching out to him, when he gave a shuddering sigh and opened his eyes again. “I don’t know.”
Gen wasn’t sure whether she felt better for that answer, or worse. But didn’t people with head wounds often forget how they happened? Didn’t it always come back to them eventually?
“You don’t remember?”
He didn’t look any happier about it than she was. “No. Don’t you know?”
She did her own pausing. “Uh, no. No, I don’t. I just found you on the beach. Can I ask a silly question?”
His only answer was a small shrug.
Gen screwed up her courage and asked, “How do you know me?”
And suffered her fourth or fifth surprise of the evening.
Suddenly he looked like a child who had wandered into a strange place. “I don’t know.”
Gen definitely was not in the mood for this. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
He didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he evidently decided it was time to try his hand at sitting. Gen tried to restrain him and was brushed off. Then she wondered whether she was going to need a basin or something. What little color he had in his face drained right out, and he swayed alarmingly, even still sitting on the floor.
“Lie back down,” she commanded, ready to push.
He shook his head, eyes closed, hands bracing himself on either side. “No. I have to get up.”
“But you’ve been hurt. And I can’t get you to a doctor.”
“Probably a good thing.” He took another few deep, steadying breaths, as if he was preparing to launch himself straight to his feet.
“You can’t get up yet,” Gen insisted.
He gave a little shake of his head. “I hate being on my back.”
And that was when Gen noticed the scar, the one she’d missed before. Long and lethal looking, wrapping the side of his torso and disappearing beneath the wool of the blanket. Old. She wanted so badly to ask. She didn’t.
“Well, hold on to the blanket, then,” she advised. “I can’t keep you and your modesty up at the same time.”
That got his eyes open again. And then focused in the direction of the meager covering. His expression folded into one of confusion.
“What—?”
Gen couldn’t help but grin. “It was going to be my next question. How you ended up in the middle of my beach in a storm, naked as the day you were born.”
His eyes, when he turned them to her, were frankly astonished. “I have no idea.” Then he gave in to that lopsided smile that was so endearing. “Do you think it was worth it?”
