‘I’ll take you upstairs so that I can have a look at your ankle,’ he told her as he carried her through the kitchen, nudging the door open with his shoulder. His movements brought his fingers into a more intimate contact with her breast, and the sudden ache of need that shocked through her made her catch her breath.
‘What’s wrong? Did I jolt you? It won’t be long now. I want to make sure that the skin isn’t broken; those cinders can be lethal if they get embedded.’
‘Then why use them?’ Sara asked him tartly, glad of something to cling on to to distract her from the effect of their intimacy.
‘Mainly because they happen to be cheap. Luckily we don’t get many people wandering along them in high heels,’ he added sardonically. ‘Since I can’t imagine that you were looking for me, what exactly was it you were looking for?’
As he shouldered open one of the bedroom doors, Sara bit her lip in vexation. She could hardly tell him the truth.
‘I was just curious to see what lay on the other side of our fence,’ she lied.
The room looked like a guest room, the bedspread pristine smooth and the furniture highly polished.
‘I brought you in here because this room has its own bathroom,’ Jonas told her, dropping her carelessly on to the bed. ‘If you hang on a minute, I’ll go into my own bathroom and bring back some iodine and a bandage.’ He paused and eyed her sardonically. ‘Curious, were you? Strange,’ he scoffed mockingly. ‘Curiosity—about anything—would be the very last thing I’d expect from you.’
Sara knew that he was deliberately taunting her, and the taunt stung, but she kept her eyes averted, trying not to wince as he dropped down on his haunches beside her, carefully taking her foot between his hands.
‘Mmm…the skin doesn’t seem to be grazed, but we’ll get it cleaned up and then take another look. Don’t go away,’ he drawled mockingly, getting up and heading for the door.
He was only gone for ten minutes at the most, but it was long enough for Sara to have edged her way restlessly off the bed, and to have started moving in an awkward crab-like motion towards the door.
It opened inward just as she reached it, the curse that left Jonas’s lips making her flinch.
‘What is it about you?’ he demanded irefully. ‘Just where in hell’s name did you think you were going?’
‘To find a telephone. Sam and Vanessa will be wondering where I am.’
‘Stop worrying; they know. I rang the cot
tage while I was in my room and told Sam what had happened. I’ll run you back there later when we get that ankle strapped up. I’m afraid this is going to hurt,’ he warned her, depositing the tray he was carrying on the bedside chest. It contained a bowl of water, some iodine and cotton wool, a bandage and a nearly full bottle of brandy. ‘It will help take the edge off the shock and the physical pain,’ said Jonas, seeing her look at the brandy. ‘Here, drink this.’
The glass he poured her seemed far too generous. Sara rarely touched spirits, not liking the taste, and she grimaced as the fierce heat of the brandy bit into her throat.
‘Don’t sip it, drink it,’ Jonas directed, watching her grimly. Already she could feel her head beginning to spin, a reminder that as yet today she had had nothing to eat, and yet, sensing that if she proved obdurate he would force the stuff down her throat, Sara reluctantly drained the glass.
‘Good girl.’ Jonas crouched down beside her again, one hand holding her ankle while the other explored it gently. As he touched the tender area where it was swollen, Sara winced. ‘These jeans are going to have to come off. If you can stand the loss I suggest I cut them free—that will be the least painful method of removing them.’
The jeans in question were the cropped type that finished above the ankle, snugly hugging the shape of her leg, and the thought of tugging them off over her tender skin made Sara grimace.
She watched in silence as Jonas wielded the scissors in a businesslike fashion, cutting up the outside seam to her waistband. Underneath her jeans she was wearing a pair of minuscule cotton briefs, and her shocked, protesting attempt to cover herself with the denim as Jonas casually pushed the fabric aside and proceeded to tug her ruined jeans off her uninjured leg made him pause and stare at her uncomprehendingly.
‘What the devil’s the matter?’ he demanded grimly, his mouth suddenly relaxing into an unforgivably amused curve as he told her softly, ‘I have seen a woman’s body before, you know.’
‘But not mine,’ Sara snapped back shortly. It unsettled her seeing him in this distant, almost cool mood. When he picked her up outside she had steeled herself against further passionate declarations of his feelings for her, but instead he was treating her as though she were almost a complete stranger.
For some reason her ire seemed to increase his amusement; his smile deepened, and Sara fought against acknowledging how attractive he looked with that teasing glint in his eyes, his stance, as he leaned over the bed towards her, subtly emphasising the smooth hardness of his body.
What on earth was the matter with her? Sara chided herself. There was no reason at all for her to be aware of him like this; he was not aware of her in the same way; he was not disturbed by her proximity, or by the sensation of her breath against his skin as he leaned across her to tug away the disputed jeans. Whereas she… She swallowed numbly, trying to deny the effect he was having on her, but the sensation curling hotly through her stomach refused to go away. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to breathe in the smell of his skin, to…
In fact she was so deeply caught up in her battle against the effect he was having on her senses that when he drawled softly, ‘Radically different, is it, or is it simply that no mere human male can be permitted to look upon the body once possessed by Saint Richard?’ initially the import of his sarcastic comment was almost lost on her. And then abruptly she realised what he had said, and her skin burned with an anger that was heightened by her own knowledge of just how ambivalent her feelings towards him actually were.
It was obviously true that it was possible to feel desire without love—without even liking, she thought bitterly, wondering wryly what he would say if he knew that her reluctance to part with her jeans sprang from her own awareness of her vulnerability towards him. No doubt he would be extremely amused, especially after the way she had rejected him.
But as she had told him then, it was merely a sexual attraction she felt for him; the fascination of the moth for the flame, she thought angrily, that part of the human nature that is relentlessly drawn towards that which it knows will do it the least good.
The touch of Jonas’s fingers against her skin as he deftly cleaned and then bandaged her swollen ankle was cool and clinical. He hadn’t even so much as glanced at her body, never mind evinced any of the uncontrolled passion she had sensed in him the night he told her he was falling in love with her.
A combination of shock and alcohol, plus lack of food, was making her feel distinctly drowsy. Her head suddenly seemed to be too heavy for her neck, and found its way automatically on to the softness of a down pillow. She was aware of her ankle being released and of missing the human warmth of another’s touch against her skin. She tried to protest, but the words became a thick, unintelligible blur on her tongue. She was conscious of movement within the room, of the light gently being shut out, and then there was nothing but a deep, dark pit of welcoming sleep.