Roarke's Kingdom - Page 35
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He’d pulled off his wet shirt and shoes, and now he was dressed only in soaked, skintight faded jeans. His arms and torso were deeply tanned and tightly muscled. Dark, silken hair lay in whorls across his chest, then arrowed down to his low waistband.
The electric awareness danced along her skin again, and she stumbled as she swept her gaze straight ahead.
He grabbed her elbow.
“Easy,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said briskly.
His hand tightened on her elbow. “Are you?”
“Surely you’ve had a full report from Mendoza and Constancia, and probably from every other flunky in your—”
She cried out as he swung her toward him. His expression was hard and unyielding, but all she could think of was what she’d seen blazing in his eyes moments ago.
“Answer the question. Mendoza says you still get headaches.”
“Occasionally.”
“Are you still seeing double?”
She wrenched away from him. “No. You can stop worrying. My recovery is uneventful.”
A hint of a smile touched Roarke’s lips. “That sounds like a quote from Mendoza.”
“It is. He checks me twice a day.” She began walking and Roarke fell in beside her again. “He lives on the island, too, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. He has a home on the other side.” He bent down and scooped up a tiny whelk shell. “He’s quite competent, in case you were concerned.”
“It never occurred to me he’d be anything less,” she said frankly. “I’m just surprised you’d share your little bit of paradise with him.”
Roarke drew back his arm and tossed the shell into the sea. “The arrangement suits us both. Mendoza is from New York. We met a few years ago. His wife had been taken ill and he’d brought her to the islands to recover. He was trying his damnedest to figure a way to resettle in a warm climate without retiring completely.”
“So you offered him the chance to be Roarke Campbell’s personal physician.”
“I offered him the chance to set up a small clinic on Isla de la Pantera. I’d just bought it, but I knew I’d end up with a fair-size community.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve seen how many people there are on the staff.”
“How many you need to keep that enormous house running smoothly for its lord and master, you mean? Yes.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but most of those people were here when I took over and I had no intention of displacing them.”
“Such generosity.”
“Such logic,” he said, refusing to rise to the bait. “They do what they’ve always done. They farm. They raise goats and chickens. They fish.” He scooped up another small shell and tossed it into the water. “All I added was a schoolhouse. And a medical clinic.”
It wasn’t all, it was a lot. Even Jennifer had to admit that, but not to him.
“All that, just so you can escape the mean streets of San Juan.”
“All that,” he said evenly, “so I can get away from the pressure cooker world where I earn my bread and live a quiet life part of the time. I suppose that sounds deadly dull to you.”
She looked at him. “Why do you say that?”
“Constancia says you’ve been fidgety. She says you’re obviously bored. She says—”
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