His hands ran over her back, working the ointment into her stiff muscles. “So you’re staying?”
“Until I’m done here, until I see this through.”
“Then you’re nuts.”
“Maybe.” She stifled a moan as his strong fingers focused on a knot in her neck. “But it doesn’t make sense to save the fight for another day. Whatever trail my attacker left will only have grown cold.”
“You know Amy will do anything she can to humiliate you.”
It was all too easy to enjoy his touch. It’d been ages since she’d been with a man—and he wasn’t just any man. “I deserve it. I was an idiot.”
His hands stilled. “There’s nothing wrong with innocence.”
“Except the stupidity that so often goes with it. You’ve got to be laughing inside.”
His voice grew deeper. “You think I like knowing I hurt you?”
“Not in a vengeful way, like Amy. I’m just saying you’ve got to be amused that a 4.0 student could be so gullible.”
He began to rub her back again. “I’m amused that you think you’re so much wiser these days.”
“I am.”
“Because now you know that all I care about is nailing another girl?”
She moved her hair to one side so he wouldn’t get the nasty-smelling salve in it. “You don’t seem to care so much about nailing girls anymore. I think you’ve changed. But, regardless, I don’t regret the lesson you taught me. Just my own ridiculous reaction to it.”
There was another slight hesitation in his movements. “What lesson did I teach you? That men are scum? That they’re only after one thing? That sex doesn’t mean what you thought it did when you were sixteen?”
She didn’t want to get involved in a debate. She was still embarrassed over her puppy-love crush, the revelation of which made her look like a fraud, as well as a liar, to the whole town. “Fortunately, stupid and jaded are not the same thing. I merely learned what every woman should know.”
“Which is…”
She let her eyes drift closed. “You have to be careful who you trust.”
“Lucky me. I get the credit for that?”
His hands moved down both sides of her back, kneading her flesh. She thought about claiming she’d learned it elsewhere, too, but he was the one who’d forced her to take off those rose-colored glasses. “Like I said, it was a good lesson,” she muttered into her arm.
“What you deserved for getting involved with the wrong boy.”
She opened her eyes. Where was he going with this? “More or less,” she said. “Anyway, now that our little mistake’s out, they’re going to be taking a hard look at you in relation to the shooting. You know that.”
“They were already taking a hard look at me.”
“There’s no way Amy will let this go.”
“I was keeping my mouth shut for your sake, not mine.”
For some reason, she believed him. Maybe he hadn’t fallen in love with her as she had with him, but he’d been honorable enough not to brag about what he’d done with her. “You’re not worried?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I think you should get out of here before it gets any more uncomfortable.”
“I refuse to let the person who chased me away twelve years ago make me run a second time. If I’m not equipped to take a stand now, after all my training, I never will be.”
“What kind of stand?”
“I’m going to catch him.”
“How?”
“I’ll use myself as bait if I have to.”
Cain set the salve on the nightstand and stepped back. “Don’t even talk like that.”
“Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.” Feeling oddly reckless, she rolled over and sat up—and began applying the ointment to the bruises on her chest as if he was no emotional threat to her at all, no different from a girlfriend.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still in the room,” he said.
She hid a smile at his stunned expression. “So? You’ve already seen me. You said so yourself. And the past is behind us. I’m over my first-man-to-touch-me insanity.”
“I get that,” he said, taking the jar from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, growing nervous.
“If I’m no temptation to you, I might as well help. This is purely clinical. It’s like I’m a doctor and you’re my patient. Isn’t it?” His enigmatic green eyes were riveted on hers as his hands, covered with the slick ointment, slid over her br**sts.
Arousal shot through Sheridan so hard and fast she could no longer breathe, and she was afraid he could tell. Especially when his palms scraped over her ni**les.
“Sometimes fighting fire with fire means you get consumed in the flames,” he murmured.
Stubbornly lifting her chin, she refused to flinch or cover up. She wanted to prove that she could take him or leave him, that she’d be the one to walk away this time.
But it wasn’t long before she began to tremble. Taking the jar from him so he wouldn’t notice, she forced a polite smile and moved out of reach. “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
The doorbell rang but he stayed where he was. Lowering his eyes to what she’d revealed, he devoured the sight in a hot glance. And then he turned away—but turned back at the door. “Unless you plan on making love to me, don’t ever taunt me like that again.”
He wasn’t joking.
Sheridan was so breathless, she wasn’t sure she could keep her voice steady enough to speak. But she wasn’t about to succumb to his temptation a second time. She’d already learned her lesson—the hard way. “Yeah, well, I’ll call ya,” she said.
11
Ned wrinkled his nose the moment he walked into her bedroom. “Smells terrible in here. What is that?”
Cain followed him but didn’t seem to be in a particularly loquacious mood, so Sheridan spoke up. “Salve. For bruises.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Cain made it for his clinic, I think.”
Cain didn’t confirm her answer or offer an alternative. He obviously wasn’t interested in making Ned feel comfortable.
“If the smell’s too strong, you’re welcome to come back another time,” she said and prayed Ned would give her a brief reprieve. She was still jittery from the hormones that had flooded her system only seconds before he arrived.