He tilted his head, and gave her a very dry look. 'Considering I'm only thirty-five, that could be taken as an insult.'
Elizabeth felt ridiculously shocked by the insecurity revealed by the blatant lie.
'It must be your suntan that makes you look older,' she said spitefully.
'Are you going to help me up or not?'
'Maybe at thirty-five you're getting too old to chase women,' she jeered.
'A man is never too old.' He dropped his hand, using it instead to support himself as he shifted himself on to his right hip, wincing slightly as he drew up his straightened left leg—the one with the long scar.
Elizabeth gasped as she realised that she had misjudged him.
'Are—are you hurt?' she faltered, crouching back down beside him.
'No more than usual.' She could see a fine mist of perspiration forming on his dark brow as he moved the leg again. He was in real pain.
'But your leg-' She broke off, her soft palm hovering above the raised scar tissue that seamed the hard thigh, the toughened ridge of skin a smooth pink highway snaking through the dark hair that coated the rest of his leg. An old scar, fully healed, but obviously with some permanent effects. 'What happened? Did you have an operation?'
He stiffened, causing her to recoil both physically and mentally. 'Don’t go soft on me now, chérie,' he warned savagely. 'I might be tempted to take advantage of it. You don’t want to ruin a perfect record for infuriating me.'
'Did you hurt it when you fell just now? Perhaps you shouldn’t try to get up yet.'
Her sympathy was as unwelcome as her former reticence. 'Don’t perhaps me, Beth,' he growled, reminding her of his distaste for the word.
'I'm not your mother!' she reproved him sharply.
His eyes drifted from the anxious tuck of her mouth to the modest scoop-neck of her maillot, exposed by the rolled collar of her shirt, and the generous swell beneath. His smile was a painful parody of a leer. 'Pity. You have such an abundance of maternal potential. My mother was rather more under-endowed and chose to bottle-feed. If I'd been suckled by you I'm sure I'd have been the fattest, happiest, not to mention horniest baby in the neighbourhood.'
For a moment she felt like smacking his head off, but her instincts told her that his obscene remark was a deliberate insult, aimed at alienating her sympathy and stifling any further curiosity.
'Don’t take your deprived childhood out on me,' she said calmly, standing back up. 'Now do you still want my help or do you just want to lie there and sulk with your injured pride?'
He was slowly working his way around to his knees, his face a rigid mask, his eyes chilled into icy slits. 'Bitch.'
'Ask nicely, Jack, or I'll just stand here and watch you floundering around at my feet. Now that really would be entertaining.' At least a dose of his own medicine seemed to be giving him something other than the pain to focus on. 'Perhaps I could go and find Bunny for you. I'm sure she'd love to see macho man gritting his teeth and sweating and swearing and weak as a rabbit himself-'
'Damn it, Beth, I've never begged a woman for anything and I'm not starting now. All I wanted was a hand up, but I'll do it my bloody self-'
'You really should stop swearing, Jack, it's the sign of a limited mind.' She bent and slid an arm across his back, lacing her hand under his arm and taking his full weight as he pushed himself to his feet with his uninjured leg. The only sign that it caused him any pain was a swiftly indrawn breath that reissued on a soft snarl.
'Thank you.'
Elizabeth wasn’t offended by the offensive manner of his gratitude. She let him shake off her touch, noticing he was s
till in possession of her camera as she said self-righteously, 'If you hadn’t been so paranoid it wouldn’t have happened. You could just have called out to me, you know, instead of scaring me by running at me like a maniac'
'Oh, is that why you took off like a scalded cat? And there I thought it was a guilty conscience.' His sarcasm was as pronounced as his disbelief. 'As it happened it wasn’t the run that did me in, it was the hefty kick you gave me.'
Elizabeth clenched her hands in an effort not to let him see how awful that made her feel. 'I was only defending myself. I thought you were attacking me-'
'What did you think I intended to do? Ravish you?'
His incredulity was well founded, but it only made Elizabeth feel more defensive. 'I don’t know. I...I suppose I didn’t stop to think.'
'No? It seems to me that you're the one suffering from paranoia. The life of a university research assistant must be more thrilling than I imagined.'
Elizabeth's stomach tightened. 'How do you know what I do?'