He shook his head. ‘You heard one voice and two languages.’ He demonstrated his earlier cussing fit, though he toned it down to make it more palatable for mixed company.
For a moment the knuckles on her right hand whitened where it gripped the lacrosse stick, and then relaxed. She told the police officers in perfect Greek how sorry she was to have raised a false alarm, promised to bake them homemade lemon drizzle cakes and begged them very nicely to let him go as he was an old friend of her brother’s. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him grind his teeth.
He groaned his relief when he was uncuffed, rubbing his wrists rather than his shoulder, though he was damned if he knew why. Except he didn’t want any of them to know how much he hurt. He was sick to death of his injuries.
A part of him would be damned too before it let Audra see him as anything but hearty and hale. Her pity would...
He pressed his lips together. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he didn’t want to become an object of it.
Standing side by side in the circular drive, they waved the police off. He followed her inside, wincing when she slammed the door shut behind them. The fire in her eyes hadn’t subsided. ‘You want to yell at me some more?’
He’d love to. It was what he and Audra did—they sniped at each other. They had ever since she’d been a gangly pre-teen. But he hurt too much to snipe properly. It was taking all his strength to control the nausea curdling his stomach. He glanced at her from beneath his shaggy fringe. Besides, it was no fun sniping at someone with the kind of shadows under their eyes that Audra had.
He eased back to survey her properly. She was too pale and too thin. He wasn’t used to seeing her vulnerable and frightened.
Frighteningly efficient? Yes.
Unsmiling? Yes.
Openly disapproving of his lifestyle choices? Double yes.
But pale, vulnerable and afraid? No.
‘That bastard really did a number on you, didn’t he, Squirt?’
Her head reared back and he could’ve bitten his tongue out. ‘Not quite as big a number as that mountain did on you, from all reports.’
She glanced pointedly at his shoulder and with a start he realised he’d been massaging it. He waved her words away. ‘A temporary setback.’
She pushed out her chin. ‘Ditto.’
The fire had receded from her eyes and this time it was he who had to suffer beneath their merciless ice-blue scrutiny. And that was when he realised that all she wore was a pair of thin cotton pyjama bottoms and a singlet top that moulded itself to her form. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
The problem with Audra was that she was exactly the kind of woman he went after. If he had a type it was the buttoned-up, repressed librarian type, and normally Audra embodied that to a tee. But at the moment she was about as far from that as you could get. She was all blonde sleep-tousled temptation and his skin prickled with an awareness that was both familiar and unfamiliar.
He had to remind himself that a guy didn’t mess with his best friend’s sister.
‘Did the police hurt you?’
‘Absolutely not.’ He was admitting nothing.
She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Finn, it’s obvious you’re in pain.’
He shrugged and then wished he hadn’t when pain blazed through his shoulder. ‘The cast only came off yesterday.’
Her gaze moved to his left arm. ‘And instead of resting it, no doubt as your doctors suggested, you jumped on the first plane for Athens, caught the last ferry to Kyanós, grabbed a late dinner in the village and trekked the eight kilometres to the villa.’
‘Bingo.’ He’d relished the fresh air and the freedom. For the first two kilometres.
‘While carrying a rucksack.’
Eight weeks ago he’d have been able to carry twice the weight for ten kilometres without breaking a sweat.
She picked up his glass of half-finished Scotch and strode into the kitchen. As she reached up into a kitchen cupboard her singlet hiked up to expose a band of perfect pale skin that had his gut clenching. She pulled out a packet of aspirin and sent it flying in a perfect arc towards him—he barely needed to move to catch it. And then she lifted his glass to her lips and drained it and stars burst behind his eyelids. It was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
She filled it with tap water and set it in front of him. ‘Take two.’
He did as she ordered because it was easier than arguing with her. And because he hurt all over and it seemed too much trouble to find the heavy-duty painkillers his doctor had prescribed for him and which were currently rolling around in the bottom of his backpack somewhere.
‘Which room do you usually use?’
‘The one at the top of the stairs.’