She was visibly unsettled. Her hands were shaking as she gently supported his head and brought a glass of water to his lips. “Here. Drink. Just a little.”

  The water felt cool going down and almost as good as the nestling warmth of her body, so close to his.

  Too soon, her hand and her warmth were gone.

  Her eyes were suspiciously moist and glistening when she eased away. “Who did this to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he croaked, aware of a dawning realization that emotions he hadn’t ever claimed he owned were making themselves known with a flurry of activity. “And it’s not as bad as it looks,” he added quickly, trying to deny a wave of protectiveness prompted by the pain in her expression.

  “Oh, and now you know more about medicine than I do? You’re lucky they didn’t beat you to death.” Fire and fury peppered her words and brightened her eyes, along with a telling tear.

  “When are you going to grow up, Johnny? When are you going to learn? As long as Carmen is here to patch you up, you think you can play your macho games just for the fun of it, don’t you? Have you forgotten so soon that Rico was almost killed?”

  It was glaringly obvious that seeing him like this— seeing Dallas like this—hurt her. Try as he might to deny it, Logan felt jealously ripple through him like a hot Houston wind.

  The fact that she was hurting affected him far more than his wounded pride—or his inability to catalog and file away all the unexpected feelings she kept managing to draw out of him. He was moved by her pain. And he wanted to do something to minimize it. To that end, he didn’t stop to think about the wisdom of touching her, he simply did it.

  Cupping her face in his palm, he brushed his thumb over the hot, heavy tear tracking down her cheek. Her skin was so delicate. And he realized, so were her feelings.

  He was completely out of his element. He didn’t know how to handle what was happening to her. For that matter, he didn’t know how to handle what was happening to him.

  Ask anyone who knew him and they’d tell you that Logan Prince didn’t have a heart. He’d traded it in long ago for the price of a corporate kingdom. Liquid silver, not blood, ran through his veins. Silver readily convertible to cash. Callous and cold as that assessment was, he’d always accepted it as accurate.

  So he didn’t have a clue as to why her pain was affecting him. Or why a lump the size of Texas formed in his throat when he tried to swallow back a surge of sympathy he wasn’t supposed to be capable of feeling.

  Abruptly he let his hand fall away, determined to stay true to his reputation. It was more difficult than he’d anticipated.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he heard himself whisper.

  “You’re sorry.” She sniffed, attempting a brave, huffy front. “Today you’re sorry. Sorry that your body is one big raw nerve. But you’ll forget the pain soon enough, and the next time you get a notion to pick a fight, you’ll drag your sorry self back to me.”

  She turned to go. With supreme effort he reached out and snagged her wrist.

  “I am sorry,” he insisted, compelled by an inexplicable need to assure her that it was not his intent to cause her pain—and suspecting that before he left her, he probably would.

  “Save your sorrys, Johnny. But don’t expect me to patch you up again, okay? I can’t stand to see someone I care about hurting like this.” She blinked hard. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

  His grip on her wrist tightened in response to the resignation darkening her eyes.

  She stood, looking everywhere except at him. But he saw it all, everything she didn’t want him to see. The fatigue in her eyes was evident, and the feelings in her heart as well.

  Carmen Rodriquez would never make it in a boardroom. She’d never be able to pull off a bluff. Neither would she take advantage of her sexuality to strike a bargain in a bedroom. It would never occur to her to try; even if she did, her emotions would give her away. She wore them like her fragrance. Sweetly. Without guile. Honestly. Without pretense.

  And that, he realized, was what was giving him so much trouble. He was unaccustomed to such honesty. He’d had little experience handling it. If he was as jaded as he was accused of being, then why was he so affected by her pride? Why was he affected by her at all?

  Look at her. Even now, the truth preempted her resolve to be angry. While her mouth was set in a grim, hard line, her soft Spanish eyes betrayed how much she cared.

  He let go of her wrist, telling himself he couldn’t afford to become entangled with her emotions or his. He was here only to bide time.

  Yet when she turned in silence and left the room, he suspected that this great deception of his could have set something bigger in motion. And for a long time after she left the bedroom, he lay there pitting an escalating desire to take everything she was offering Dallas, against the most damnable urge to protect her from himself.

  A sixth sense warned Carmen something was wrong. She spun away from the stove to see Johnny teetering in the doorway. Racing across the room, she reached him as he stumbled. She caught him as he was about to go down.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” She eased his arm over her shoulder and took his weight. “Crazy Anglo. You want to keel over from lack of strength and crack another rib?”

  As a nurse, she knew that while his injuries were serious, they weren’t life threatening—if he gave himself time to heal.

  As a woman, however, she empathized with his pain and the beating to his pride as he had to hang on and let her walk him the rest of the way to the kitchen table.

  “I’m fine,” he murmured weakly.

  “You’re fine. And I’m Mary, Queen of Scots,” she said. His face was as white as her uniform. She suspected it took every ounce of his will to keep from passing out as she helped him into a kitchen chair.

  Her arm was still around him when he looked up and into her eyes. A mere inch or two away, his blue gaze searched her face with a startling intensity.

  She’d always thought of blue as cool. Until Johnny. The blue of his eyes was like the dazzling center of a dancing flame, fluid heat, liquid fire. The touch of his bare skin burning through her clothes and searing almost painfully against her breast was the only heat that even came close.

  In that moment, with their gazes and bodies locked, she felt a sharp awareness of herself as a woman.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” she said breathlessly, telling herself the intense physical contact was the reason she thought she saw that something in his eyes she sometimes fantasized about seeing. “You should have called me. What were you thinking, getting up by yourself?”

  “That I missed you.” His voice was gruff with pain and fatigue, his eyes smoky with all the longing any woman could ever hope for.

  She lowered her lashes and looked away. Slowly, carefully, she eased away from his side. When she was certain he was steady, she walked back to the counter. Less than steady herself, she was acutely aware that he was watching her.

  In confused silence, she tossed her braid over her shoulder and went back to preparing his supper.

  She’d known Johnny for a little less than three months now. In that time he’d never looked at her the way he was looking at her now: The way a man looks at a woman when he wants her. The way a man could look in order to make a woman feel hot on the inside, shivery cold on the outside, wistful and wanton everywhere in between.

  Shaken by that look, she told herself she was imagining it. A man didn’t change overnight. A man like Johnny would never change.

  Sorry fool that she was, she’d fallen half in love with Johnny Dallas on first sight. Bad, sad seed that he was, she hadn’t been able to help herself. In spite of his lack of ambition and his roving eye, he had a kind and generous heart, a teasing, flirty light in his eyes, and enough dazzle to charm the sun from the blue Texas sky.

  She was a sucker for a killer smile and a man in need of a good woman to straighten him out. Sometimes she even thought she wanted to be that woman for Johnny. She thought of those times as her “sanity lapses.” Unfortunately she had them a little too often around Johnny. On the flip side, a swift dose of common sense never failed to turn her around. She was determined to avoid what her friend Barb cataloged as every woman’s once-in-a-lifetime shot at falling for exactly the wrong man. She wasn’t about to let herself in for that kind of heartache.

  Besides, Johnny liked his life the way it was: Short on commitment and long on wild women. She was light-years away from either, and wasn’t willing to compromise. Not even for him.

  While her heart had tumbled like a toddler venturing that first shaky step, she’d known straightaway that she was lucky he’d never been able to see her as anything but Rico’s kid sister.

  That knowledge didn’t stop her from wishing for a little romance, though. As always, she kept it to herself.

  “Smells good,” he said gruffly, breaking into her thoughts.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, wondering at the raspy quality of his voice, worrying if one of the blows he’d taken had damaged his vocal cords. He didn’t sound like himself. Didn’t act like himself either. And she was beginning to think she was not mistaken about the way he was looking at her. It was intimate, that look. Full of longing and wonder and studied speculation.

  He’s hurting, she reminded herself. How do you expect him to act? She turned back to the saucepan on the front burner. “I made you some soup. Hopefully you can get it down without too much difficulty.”

  Silence settled again, uncomfortable, crowded with that electric, expectant edge she couldn’t seem to ignore. Maybe the shock of finding him so badly beaten had prompted this undercurrent of sexual tension. Maybe it was seeing him in her bed.

  Seeing him in her bed. Heat flared in her cheeks. Beaten and bloody, he was still some kind of dangerous-looking Anglo. All six-plus bare feet of him. Even now, dressed in a pair of faded denims, she couldn’t rid herself of the picture of his long, muscled self sprawled out across her sheets.

  Not that she hadn’t seen her share of naked men. She was a nurse. It came with the territory. But she hadn’t seen her share of naked men in her bed. And while she’d admit to spending a few lonely nights wondering how Johnny would look lying there, the reality far outshone the fantasy.

  Would you listen to yourself, Rodriquez? The man is in a bad way and you’re thinking about physical activities that would have stressed Don Juan in his heyday. What is the problem here?

  The problem, she finally decided, was that he seemed different. Something about him—not just the way he looked at her, not just the fact that he was hurt—was so very different. The difference finally came to her.

  She spun around and took a long look at his face. “When did you shave off your mustache?”

  Several tightly strung moments passed before he answered.

  “I don’t know. Couple of days ago, maybe.”

  She allowed herself a long, hungry look at his mouth. His poor, battered mouth. A mouth she’d never seen as clearly as she’d have liked, hidden as it was beneath his mustache.

  She could see it now. Even swollen and bruised, it was quite glorious. She stared at his lips and knew why he had no shortage of lovers who would be willing to do all those sweet sultry things a woman could do to take her man’s mind off his pain.

  Her reaction was involuntary. She licked her own lips, then drew her lower one between her teeth before raising her gaze to his—and discovered he’d caught her staring.

  She quickly lowered her lashes, but not before she’d caught sight of a dangerous and tummy-tightening darkness that shadowed his eyes.

  “I . . . think I . . . like it,” she stammered. “. . . the mustache. That you shaved it off, I mean. The haircut too. Of course, it’s a little hard to tell, given the condition of your face.”

  He slowly raised a hand and explored the face in question. “Feels better already.”

  “Sure it does.” Her gentle smile told him how much credence she gave his remark. Nothing on his body could possibly feel better. It would be a few days, in fact, before he’d be able to make that claim in earnest.

  He was such a fraud. Such a tough, macho fraud. And he was such a contradiction. So was she. All this time she’d wondered if he would ever look at her like this, and now too much heat, too much attention, had her wringing the nap out of a hand towel.

  A hot sweet affair did not fit into her plans. And while an affair with Johnny would definitely be hot and sweet, it would also be short. She wanted nothing long-term, or she wanted nothing at all.

  She quickly went to the counter, still at a loss to understand what was happening between them, but determined not to entertain any more thoughts about it.

  “What about your job, Johnny?” she asked, needing a diversion. “You can’t go to work. Not in your condition. But if you don’t show up, won’t they fire you?”

  He was silent for a long moment. “It was a lousy job. I’ll find another one.”

  Typical Johnny Dallas reaction. She didn’t have to look at him to know he had that “I don’t give a damn” look on his face. She shook her head sadly. “Easy come, easy go, right?”

  He had to have heard what she couldn’t hide. Disgust and regret. His lack of drive and inability to commit were his own business. He was a walk-away Joe and she knew he was doing her a favor by not giving her the time of day.

  “Why do you put up with me, Carmen?” he asked softly, as if reading her mind.

  Despite her determination not to react, something in the way he said her name made her go all soft again inside. “I don’t,” she said in a quiet voice. “I put up with Rico—he puts up with you.”

  “Why is that, do you suppose?”

  Gruff with fatigue and pain, his voice made her shiver with an unexpected longing to feel his whispery words feather across her skin. She shrugged to hide her reaction. “As if you didn’t know.”

  “Humor me. I’m wounded.”

  She cast him a puzzled look. He forced a quick, lopsided grin—one that caused him pain. One that caused her heartbeats to stumble over each other in crazy, clumsy thuds.

  She gazed at the counter, praying she didn’t lop off a finger chopping vegetables for a salad, as she chastised herself under her breath in rapid-fire Spanish.

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “Talk to me, Carmen. It helps take the edge off.”

  She drew a deep breath, knowing she couldn’t deny him. “Rico puts up with you because you saved his foolish hide and you know it,” she said stiffly.

  “And I’ve taken advantage of your hospitality ever since, haven’t I? Why do you let me do that?”

  Why? The stray-dog syndrome, she supposed. Couldn’t turn one away. Now was the time to change that dirty shirt, if there ever was one. If she had a gram of common sense, she’d agree with him and tell him it was time to hit the road. Tell him she was tired of him showing up on her doorstep and camping out whenever he damn well pleased—or when he’d had a tiff with one of his women and she’d told him to take the closest door marked EXIT.

  But she wasn’t smart enough to tell him that. And what good would it do anyway? She suspected she would never be completely free of him, no matter where he was. Better off, no doubt, but never free.

  Above it all, though, she felt she owed him. “In your own way, I think you’ve helped straighten Rico out.”

  That was the truth. Johnny might lack ambition, but his heart was usually in the right place. He’d talked to Rico. And Rico had listened. She couldn’t help but have a soft spot for Johnny because of that.

  “In the three months since you dragged him home beaten half to death, he’s gotten himself together.” She stared without seeing for a moment, lost in remembered fear for her brother. “He looked even worse than you do now. I was afraid for a while I’d lose him.” She shivered, then pulled herself together. “But it’s over now. He’s doing fine.”

  “He doesn’t talk about it much,” she heard him say hesitantly before adding, “Who was it, do you think? Who beat him so badly?”

  She went back to the stove to stir the soup. She wondered if the blows to his head could have caused some short-term memory loss. She didn’t think so. Still, she decided to watch him closely over the next few days for signs of trouble. In the meantime she decided to do as he asked and humor him.

  “Rico doesn’t talk to me about it either. But I know who was responsible. Loan sharks had him tied in so tight he couldn’t meet their payments. The beating was a warning.” Another involuntary shiver rippled through her as she crossed the small kitchen. “Thank God they didn’t kill him. And thank God they’ve left him alone since.”

  Her heart lurched to her throat as a horrible thought suddenly struck her. Her knife clattered to the counter, punctuating her fear. “Oh, Johnny, the men who beat you, were they . . . ? After what they did to Rico, tell me you weren’t stupid enough to get into them for money too!”

  “No, Carmen,” he quickly assured her. “I was mugged. It’s that simple. And that stupid. I wasn’t watching my back.”

  Relief was swift and unsteadying. Her shoulders sagged, and she sank against the counter. When she met his gaze again, however, it was narrowed with edgy concern.

  “Carmen . . .” he began, his scowl dark and ominous, “if Rico couldn’t meet the payments, why have they left him alone since then?”

  She dropped her chin against her chest. Men were insensitive, unappreciative dolts, all of them. And this man was blind as well. And stupid, she added in disgust. She worked double shifts. She’d sold all of her good furniture and replaced it with the bare essentials. She lived the Spartan existence of a nun. And he had to ask why the sharks weren’t bothering Rico?

  The bleak look in her eyes must have given him his answer. He glanced quickly around the modest apartment. She had to make better than a living wage on an RN’s salary, but everything in the apartment suggested she was living from hand to mouth.

  “You paid them off, didn’t you?”