Free Water From the Moon by Terese Ramin

fact that you’re at my mercy," Fred suggested meaningfully.
    "Perhaps," Acasia returned sweetly, "you should consider who smuggles unmelted candy bars to you at no small risk to herself."
    "You’d stop?"
    "In a flash."
    "That’s blackmail."
    Acasia nodded. "You got it, bro."
    "Well that’s a fine how do you do," Fred proclaimed eloquently. "If the director of your local medical clinic cum guerrilla refugee camp can’t indulge his chocolate fetish without someone holding it against him…" He shook his head sadly. "What’s the world coming to?"
    "No sweet revenge," Cameron muttered, then caught Acasia’s shoulder to steady himself when a wave of dizziness struck him.
    Acasia eyed him sharply. A thin trickle of watery blood had seeped through his hair and down his neck to decorate his collarbone. His eyes were bright, his skin pale beneath the high flush on his cheeks. Tension, relieved briefly by the game she’d played with Fred, came crashing back. Apprehension prickled through the hair at the nape of her neck, twisted barely relaxed muscles into knots.
    Fred moved quickly, brother gone, doctor back in place. He pulled a pair of surgical gloves out of a cargo pocket on his pants and donned them. "Where’s the blood from?"
    "His head. The wound’s infected and probably needs stitches."
    "Great." His expert fingers parted Cameron’s matted hair.
    "I caught a brick yesterday before Acasia arrived." Cameron bit down hard on the last word when Fred’s fingers collided with sore flesh.
    "That’s what I’d have guessed. Look, I want to get some antibiotics into you and get this thing cleaned and dressed pronto." He leveled a sharp glance at his sister. "I should’ve seen to this last night."
    Acasia flinched at the accusation in his tone and swung away into the hall, nearly knocking a cut–glass vase off the smoking stand in her path. A gentle English landscape rocked on the wall. Everything was out of place: Cameron, the vase, the painting, her life. None of them should have been in Fred’s jungle.
    "Acasia!" Fred called, surprised by her reaction. "Damn it, come back here!"
    He started after her, but Cameron’s hand closed on his arm and jerked him around. "Lay off her, Jones!" he told him. He’d seen Acasia’s flash of guilt and experienced a flare of protective anger when the past had bolted forward to consume him. Back came the leftover antagonism, the desire to defend her. When had the line vanished between what he wanted and what he needed? In what instant had tenuous motives been replaced by the simple desire that burned in him now and had nothing whatever to do with lust? He cared.
    "What?" Fred eyed him as though he had gone mad. He accepted without qualification how easily nerves frayed in the heat, how little it took to incite riot, but this was his sister, the only person he’d ever known who was able to keep her head no matter what the situation. No hapless idiot, however injured or wealthy, was going to keep him from discovering the reason for Acasia’s ridiculous behavior—and putting a stop to it. "What did you say to me?"
    The menace was implicit, but Cameron stood his ground. Somebody had to look after her, damn it. "I said lay off her."
    The quiet snarl brought Fred to attention. "Don’t try to tell me how to handle my family, Smith." Fred easily shook off the grip on his arm. "Down here, you’re her responsibility, not vice versa, and for as long as you’re in my clinic, you’re mine, as well. She shouldn’t be here with you at all, but as long as she is, she’d damn well better look after you!" He took a breath and swept misplaced anger aside with a wave. "It’s all semantics, anyway. You’re here, and so’s she, and what’s done is something I can’t worry about. Right now you don’t look too good, and if you have to run today, I don’t want you slowing her down." He stepped aside and motioned Cameron ahead of him. "Sutures and drugs down the hall, third door on your