Gwen gathered up the items she needed and walked back. Nothing in this place seemed to involve short distances. She sensed his eyes on her again and felt self-conscious. ‘Sit down.’
Rather to her surprise, he did as he was told, straddling one of the tall stools that surrounded the peninsula work surface.
‘This will probably hurt...’ She took a deep breath and moved in closer, not realising until his thighs tightened on either side of her hips that she was standing between his legs. For once he didn’t have the advantage of height, they were literally nose to nose, and the closeness was making her insides shudder. ‘You more than me,’ she added, avoiding looking him in the eyes, not liking the idea of what he might see there. She had her pride left if nothing else. ‘Now, let me see...’ It had never been more of a struggle to channel her inner unflappable schoolteacher than in this moment.
He lowered his hand and the towel, setting it to one side on the counter top, revealing the full extent of the damage, which she was hoping might not be as bad as it looked.
His jaw was red, his lip was split and starting to swell, his nose bloody and there was already the suggestion of a purplish bruise under one eye.
On one level she registered that it could be a lot worse, on another she was trying to function despite the strength of her emotional reaction to his pain, which was making it hard to get words past the contraction in her throat.
But presumably losing all sense of proportion was part and parcel of loving someone.
She glanced away, too afraid he might see the tears she could feel standing out in her eyes. ‘Where else are you hurt?’ she asked, her husky tone falling way short of the clinical one she was aiming for, but at least she wasn’t openly crying.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Of course you are and it shows,’ she came back sarcastically.
‘Are you crying?’ he asked in a strange voice—or then again it might have just been his lip.
‘I am not crying.’ She sniffed angrily. ‘I amangry. You want to know why I’m angry?’ Apparently he didn’t; he was just watching her with a veiled expression in his dark eyes. Taken unawares, he didn’t resist when without warning she took both his hands in hers and closely examined them. There wasn’t a mark on them; no signs at all that he had defended himself.
She could think of only one person that Rio would not defend himself from.
Her eyes lifted, the blue light in them grim and hard, and Rio could see exactly what she was thinking—that his brother was a bastard. He knew he should really put her straight and explain that he was the one with the bastard credentials, but he found himself dreading seeing the sort of angry condemnation and contempt shining in her spectacular eyes right now directed at him. Even though he fully deserved it.
He acknowledged his uncharacteristic desire to please her with a faint frown, but his head hurt too much to delve any deeper into the reasons that it was so important to him for her to think he was one of the good guys.
Maybe the headache was a good thing, Rio mused grimly. He had enough complications in his life without looking for more...or maybe even inventing some. The priority he needed to focus on right now was being a good father, or at least not a bad one, and maybe persuading his twin to speak to him again. After all, Roman had only hit him the once, on his jaw, and, although he had a hell of a punch, the rest of the damage to Rio’s face had happened when he’d hit the corner of the coffee table on his way down. It gave him a thin sliver of hope that he still might be able to salvage some sort of future relationship with his brother.
A sound of frustration escaped Gwen’s clenched lips. ‘So who did this? And do not say you walked into a door because, so help me, I will hit you myself! Oh, sorry,’ she exclaimed with a wince of sympathy as she touched the alcohol swab to his cheekbone and he flinched.
Their eyes connected and her fingers found their way to the uninjured side of his face, curving tenderly around his cheek. ‘Did your brother do this to you?’
‘I deserved it!’ The words almost seemed pushed out against his will and hung there in the air between them as a stunned and confused Gwen finished cleaning up his face.
Once she’d finished, she shoved the gauze and antiseptic back on the work surface. The twisting motion unsteadied her centre of gravity and his thighs immediately tightened around her and his big hands went to her waist.
Suddenly breathing was difficult, and thinking was even harder through the fog of sexual desire that seemed to fill the bubble of air around them, and all her liberated hormones were running riot.
She lacked the strength and willpower to avoid his steady hot stare, the raw glow in his eyes making her insides dissolve into a pool of liquid.
‘Thank you.’ Her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else.
‘No, thank you,’ he came back smoothly.
The effort to stay still in his grasp brought beads of sweat to her upper lip, but she managed to break the grip of his stare to glance down momentarily at his hands that rested on her hips.
‘What did you mean youdeservedit?’
In her eyes violence was not an answer to anything. ‘Also keep in mind that the martyr look on you is very unattractive.’
His hands dropped away, and he suddenly looked so bleak that she was seized by a powerful urge to take his face between her hands and kiss him, except theirs was not a relationship based on loving kisses, was it?
‘Did your brother do this?’ she asked again in a low, dangerous growl.
‘Yes, but like I said I deserved it.’ The muscular support of his confining thighs loosened and she stepped back, feeling quite ludicrously bereft.