Page 51 of Secrets of the Heart

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, his voice slurred.

“And you are drunk,” she responded tartly, ignoring the little quiver in her abdomen.

He chuckled, his eyes crinkling up in a way that struck her as charming. It was absurd, she thought, that he was flirting with her when he was sitting there with a hole in his arm.

“You need to pour some of this whiskey on the wound,” he told her.

“What? Are you mad? I will not! That will burn horribly.”

“I know. And while I am grateful for your concern, it is what you must do. It will help.”

Rachel looked at him for a long moment, then sighed and nodded her head. “Clearly this sort of thing is quite commonplace for you.”

Holding a cloth beneath his arm, she lifted it with one hand and poured whiskey directly on the wound. He made a muffled sound and stiffened all over, and Rachel glanced at him anxiously. His face had paled considerably.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. Humor glinted in his gaze. “Why are we whispering?” he whispered back.

“I don’t know,” she said aloud, releasing his arm with an exasperated noise. “I was afraid I had hurt you. But I can see that nothing would do that.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I would indeed.”

Rachel pressed a small pad to each side of his wound and began to wrap a long strip of linen around them. “Do you think someone shot you because of your investigating this—Mrs. Birkshaw’s death, I mean?”

“I have no idea. There have been other things I have been working on. And there are people who don’t like me from the past.”

“You know, someone told Michael that he should be careful, that someone didn’t like what he was doing. Of course, it was really you he was talking about. I should have told you: I didn’t think about it.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry. A man can hardly guard against a man lying in wait and firing at you when you come out the front door.” He paused, then added, with a touch of humor, “However, I do believe that, in the future, I will exit by the rear door.”

“Did you see them?”

He shook his head. “No. There was no one directly across the street from me. They were hidden from sight. I—I think the shot came from above, perhaps from the building facing this or even on its roof.” He glanced down at his wounded arm, where she was now tying a neat knot in the ends of the bandage. “What was the path of the bullet? It came out below where it entered, didn’t it?”

“Yes. Oh, I see. That means they must have fired down on you.”

Picking up the scissors, she snipped off the ends of the bandage and tucked them neatly in. “There. You are done.”

She started to step back, but he wrapped his other hand around her wrist and held her in place. “Thank you.”

Rachel looked into his face. The laughter was gone now, his gray eyes serious. “You’re welcome.”

He released her wrist, raising his hand to her face and gliding his knuckles lightly over her cheek. “You were very gentle.”

“I—I tried to be.” Rachel’s flesh tingled where he touched it, and she could feel heat suffusing her cheeks.

His eyes dropped to her lips, then traveled downward to the swell of her creamy breasts above the blazing red dress. He traced her upper lip with his forefinger, then trailed his fingers down along her throat, following the path his eyes had taken, until they came to rest on the quivering white top of her breast.

Rachel shivered. Every inch of her was blazingly alive. She could not tear her eyes away from his. And much as she tried, she could not regulate her breath, which came faster and harder. His hand curved over the satiny skin and slid slowly across her chest to the other breast. A shudder ran through Rachel.

“This—you—” she began, unable to bring out a coherent thought. “I—I am married.”

“Your husband does not deserve you,” he told her hoarsely, watching his hand as it caressed the tops of her breasts and spread out over her chest.

“He—yes, of course he—he is a very worthy man.” Rachel was finding it hard to think, her brain was so bombarded with the pleasant sensations he was creating.