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tear up? I’ll scrub it once I quit bleeding to death, I promise. Now, get out!”
    The door slammed with firm disgust. She sniffed in disdain at his impossible standards and stared at hands that looked worse under the running water. They scorched with protest at the pummel of spray, but they had to be cleaned. Her feet were begging her to get off them, but her leg worried her most. Not the sting on her skin, which was acute enough to make her clench her back molars. No, there was a deeper pain that concerned her. All the walking today hadn’t helped. She was afraid to look but had to. No one else would.
    Rolling her eyes at her decline into maudlin self-pity, she switched off the shower and dragged a bathsheet around herself. It wasn’t as if her mother would be any use in this situation so why bother getting weepy? Olief would have been solicitous, though.
    Shaking off wistfulness, still deeply chilled, she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to pat herself dry. The door swung open again.
    “Really?” she demanded, instinctively curling her feet in and closing a hand over the knot of her towel. She was in a high enough state of turmoil without Nic accostingher with his potent male energy every ten seconds. He’d already got her all bewildered on the beach, and then seen her naked in the shower. Sitting on a toilet in a bathsheet, shaking off a near-death experience, put her at the worst disadvantage ever.
    He hesitated at the door, but it wasn’t with doubt. She had the impression he was gathering himself. Bracing for a challenge.
    Odd. She searched his expression for more clues, but he revealed nothing beyond a clinical interest in her hands as he set bandages and disinfectant on the counter. “You scraped yourself on the rocks, I assume?”
    “Good work, Holmes. I should have consulted government-issued safe work plans prior to retreating from the tide, I assume?”
    A pithy look, then, “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t drown you at birth. Do you want help or not?”
    She grudgingly held out a hand. “I don’t even know why you want to help me.”
    “I don’t,” he replied flatly, going down on one knee and reaching for supplies. “But I am an adult, and adults take responsibility rather than doing whatever selfish thing they want.”
    “Is that a dig? Because I’m almost twenty-two. A fully-fledged adult.” Even to herself she sounded like a petulant child and, really, reminding him it was nearly her birthday was the last thing she ought to do.
    “All grown up,” he said, with an ironic twist to the corner of his mouth. Renewed tension seemed to gather in his expression as he smoothed a bandage against her wrist.
    “Yes,” she claimed pertly. Her pulse involuntarily tripped under his dispassionate caress, making her subtly catch a breath.
    His gaze came up sharply, the blue like the center of a flame.
    She was transported back to the feel of his arms as they’d stood wet and trembling on the beach, his arousal hardening against her. Heat flooded into her, chasing away the last of her chill, cooking her alive. She should have felt appalled and disgusted, but to her eternal shame she was energized by the crackle of sexual awareness in the air.
    “All grown up,” he repeated, with flint in his tone, and lifted her hand to press his lips against the bandage, a cruelly mocking glint in his eye.
    She flinched and pulled her hand away, even though she’d barely felt the pressure of his mouth. That so hadn’t been kiss-and-make-it-better!
    Derisive amusement darkened his eyes. “No? That’s not like you, Ro.”
    Her heart took a long plunge of disgrace. At the same time she felt herself begin to glow with heated longing and other weakening sensations, even as uncertainty and intrigue muddled her mind. Desperately she reminded herself of how unaffected and ruthless he could be.
    “What are you doing, Nic?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to clear the huskiness from her throat.