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understand why anyone would arbitrarily put oneself at risk.”
    The lines above Paul’s mesmerizing blue eyes crinkled in a frown. No, not a frown, exactly. Confusion. Ignorance, perhaps. “The way I see it,” he began slowly, “we have a finite amount of time to spend on this earth. How we play it is entirely up to us. That croc had already stolen two children and any number of sheep and cattle up and down the river. Now, we don’t own anything around these parts. She had as much right, or more, as we do to live and just be a crocodile, doing what crocodiles do. In my estimation, she deserved a chance to defend her territory, same as me. Same as you. Same as all of us.”
    “But you could have simply shot her from a distance and saved yourself a lot of pain.”
    “Aye, I could have. But where would lie the fun in that?” He winked.
    He winked at her! All of the charm and brash ego he’d fully admitted to landed with a giant fist in her heart.
    “I suppose it’s a good thing the two of you have met, in any case,” Dr. Mallory broke in. “You can get dressed now, son.”
    Paul shrugged his shirt back into place.
    Helen broke free, finally, of the enchanting haze Paul’s voice had trapped her in. Doc’s comment broke through the fog. “Why is it good?”
    A sudden flutter of something Helen couldn’t recognize floated through her stomach. It wasn’t dread, exactly. But whatever it was, it was profound—as if something was going to happen that would change … everything.
    Dr. Mallory shuffled past the examination table and exited the room. His hulking frame disappeared into the hallway in the direction of his private office.
    Helen glanced at Paul, who studied her as though she were some kind of oddity. “Is something wrong? Anything I can do?”
    “Why would you ask me that?” She squared her shoulders and stomped out of the room. “Why would Doc say that?” she mumbled to herself.
    Heavy footsteps followed her. She didn’t need to hear the steps to know Paul was directly behind her. He released a masculine scent, an aura, or something that announced him wherever he went. It hugged her like a warm lover’s caress.
    Marching forward, she tried to shake it off. This was the very last thing she needed. She had to be strong. She couldn’t allow herself to lose track of her goals. Whatever the insistent probative feeling was, she would be best served to ignore it. She’d made that mistake once in her life. The mistake of following her instincts. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have any worth listening to. She hadn’t been the only one to suffer for it. A sharp twinge brushed her heart.
    She glared at Paul over her shoulder. He tossed her another damnable wink and a grin that sent a warm flush cascading over her heated flesh, almost—but not quite—eradicating her guilt.
    There was no mistaking it. The feeling was there. That incessant, unwanted attraction.
    Damn
.
    When she reached Dr. Mallory’s private office, she knocked twice. Paul approached, then leaned over her with his uninjured arm resting on the thick, dark wood that framed the door. “Nobody home,” he quipped. “Doc is getting pretty old, you know. He might not have heard you.”
    “He has the ears of an eagle, Mr. Campbell. Even I know that.” Still, she rapped harder on the door, three times.
    No answer.
    Paul leaned his back against the wall by the door and carefully folded his arms. He raked that irascible, knowing glance over her again.
    “What?” she huffed. Then she closed her eyes and drew a steadying breath. She hated it when she lost her patience, but something about Paul wore her patience very, very thin.
    “Not a thing.”
    Soft humming came from the rear of the building. Helen lunged at the sound, and threw open the back door. Dr. Mallory tended to a row of herbs planted in boxes along a tall wooden fence. In one hand, he held a tin watering can decorated with engraved daisies, and in the other, a rusted