Free Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown Page A

head. "No. He regained consciousness. I spoke with him."
    "I don't understand."
    "You're not supposed to," she said shortly. "Stop meddling in my business."
    "All right. The next time you get a dog bite, I'll let your arm rot off."
    Schyler pressed the heel of her hand against her temple, where a headache was off to a good start. "I'm sorry. I should have thanked you."
    "How is it?" He nodded toward her bandaged arm.
    "Okay I guess. It hasn't hurt at all."
    "Come here." She only stared at him. He arched one brow and repeated softly, "Come here."
    She hesitated a moment longer before stepping around the desk and approaching the open door, where he still had a shoulder propped against the frame. She stuck out her injured arm with about as much enthusiasm as she would thrust it into a furnace.
    Her aversion to having him touch her made him smile sardonically as he unwound the gauze bandage he had fashioned the night before. Schyler was amazed to see that the
    skin had almost completely closed over the wounds and that there was no sign of infection. He touched the scratches lightly with his fingertips. They were painless.
    "Leave the bandage on tonight." He rewrapped her arm. "Tomorrow morning, take it off and wash your arm carefully. It should be okay after that." She looked up at him inquiringly. "It's the spleen of warthog that does the trick."
    She jerked her arm away. "You're left-handed."
    His grin widened. "You believe the legend, do you? That all traiteurs are left-handed." Without a smidgen of apology or hesitation, he moved aside the square nautical collar of her dress and brushed his fingers across the top of her breast, where he had located the welt the night before. "How are the mosquito bites?"
    Schyler swatted his hand away. "Fine. Was Monique left-handed?"
    "Out. She was also a woman. That's where I break with tradition." His voice dropped seductively. "Because I am a man. And if you have any doubts as to that, Miss Schyler, I'd be more than glad to prove it to you."
    She looked up at him and said wryly, "That won't be necessary."
    "I didn't think so."
    His conceit was insufferable, Schyler thought as she watched his lips form a lazy, arrogant smile. What was she expected to do, unravel because big, bad Cash Boudreaux, the man most feared by fathers of nubile daughters, had turned his charm on for her? She was a little old to grow giddy and faint in the face of such blatant masculine strutting.
    Still, no one needed to sell her on Cash's masculinity. It was evident in the rugged bone structure of his face, the width of his shoulders, the salty scent that he emanated in the afternoon heat. A bead of sweat rolled from beneath the hair curving over his forehead. It slid down his temple and disappeared into his thick eyebrow.
    His walk, all his movements, were masculine. Schyler watched his hands as they went for the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket and shook one out. He offered it to her, but she wordlessly declined. His lips closed around the filtered tip. He replaced the pack in his pocket and pulled out a matchbox. He struck the match on the dooijamb, then cupped his hands around the flame while he lit the cigarette.
    She remembered his hands on her midriff, pressing into the tender center of her stomach, the hard, dominant fingers lying against her ribs. He had imprisoned her against the wall of the gazebo without exercising any force. The only bruises her body bore this morning were a result of her struggles with the pit bull. It made her uneasy to know that Cash Boudreaux could be so overpowering without hurting her.
    As he drew on his cigarette, staring at her through the smoke that rose from it, she lowered her eyes. There was a knotted bandanna around his strong, tanned throat. His chest tapered into a narrow waist and lean hips. The soft, washed denim of his Levi's cupped his sex as intimately as a lover's hand.
    Schyler knew that his eyes were boring a hole into the crown of her head, just as