TEMPERATURE'S RISING

by Donna Sterling

  She nodded.

  "Do you want me to turn around while you take it off?"

  "What good would that do? I'd still be sitting here in my … my…" Her voice faded into tense, uncomfortable silence.

  Their gazes shifted and danced. Hers asked for understanding. His refused to give it. The deed had to be done.

  "Close your eyes, Callie." He said it quietly but with the same sternness he had used when he'd taken bee stingers out of her foot or slivers out of her fingers.

  She understood that his words, though sternly spoken, were more of an offer than an order. They meant that she could close her eyes, divorce herself from whatever unpleasantness had to be faced, and he would handle it for her. He would make everything okay.

  Maybe because he always had, Callie closed her eyes. She couldn't, however, distance herself quite as easily as she had when they'd been kids. She braced herself—not only for the physical pain, but for the abject humiliation.

  He loosened her grip on the front of her blouse, gently prying open her fingers, and set her hands on the arms of the chair. Then he began unbuttoning.

  She kept her eyes tightly shut. She couldn't believe this was happening. Jack Forrester was unbuttoning her blouse. The top button. The second. The third. Her heart beat wildly. He was going to take the blouse off her. She'd be sitting here in her semi-sheer white bra.

  From an influx of relative coolness, she knew he'd finished and had opened the blouse. If any part of her body other than her cheeks could blush, she'd be redder than a lobster.

  "Have you heard about Earline?" he asked in an absent tone.

  "Earline?" she repeated through stiff lips. He was drawing the silk down the shoulder of her uninjured side. Which meant, of course, that her bra was exposed to his view. A warm shiver raced across her suddenly sensitized skin.

  "Earline's the best thing that's happened to me in years. She's a real beauty. I've been the envy of every guy on the Point. You'll have to drop by my house and meet her sometime."

  "Your girlfriend lives with you?" Callie didn't know why that surprised her. Jack Forrester exuded sensuality like most people did body heat. Why wouldn't he have a live-in girlfriend? And why should that prospect settle in her stomach like an undigested lump?

  "She's not my girlfriend." He guided her arm out of the blouse, his fingers strong, warm and controlling. "My relationship with Earline is a lot more official than that. A matter of public record."

  Public record? That could only mean…

  "She's your wife?" The idea stunned her. An invisible cord seemed to wrap painfully around her internal organs. She opened one eye to read his face. "You're married?"

  "Nah. You know me better than that." He tossed her blouse aside, held her arm up and bent his shaggy blond head closer to the underside of her left breast.

  The stubble on his jaw glinted golden below the jagged scar on his cheek.

  "Then what the hell are you talking about, 'matter of public record'?" She opened both eyes in bewilderment and, undeniably, relief. He wasn't married. Why should she care? She didn't! "Who's Earline?"

  He answered with a roguish smile. "She's the sweetest, prettiest—" he paused to press something cold and wet against her injured skin, which made her jump "—mackerel that's ever been caught off the Point."

  "Mackerel? Did you say, mackerel?"

  "The biggest one caught around here in years. The record is posted at the marina, officially signed and notarized by all the proper authorities."

  If he hadn't been holding her arm up and swabbing disinfectant on an area of skin that hurt so badly, Callie would have slugged him. "I figured you'd take the news about Earline hard," he murmured, his brown eyes sparkling with fun.

  It was then that the significance of Earline hit home. "Are you telling me that your Earline is bigger than my Earl?"

  "By a pound and a half."

  "I don't believe it." She'd been so proud of holding that particular record. She still felt rather proud, and ridiculously pleased that he'd named his catch Earline. A fitting tribute to her long-ago catch. "Were you the first to break my record in twelve years?"

  "Kermit Jones broke it five years ago, but only by half a pound. Take a deep breath now, Cal. You'll feel some pressure while I apply this bandage."

  The pain caused her to wince, but not enough to distract her from the point she intended to make. "You realize you'll have to hold your record for seven long years to really beat me."

  "No, darlin'." He sat up to confront her, angled his ruggedly handsome face and locked her in his shining gaze. "You'll have to catch a bigger mackerel to beat me."

  Neither of them actually smiled. Neither of them looked away.

  And there was no reason—none at all—for the joyful languor that warmed her insides and filled her head with thoughts of kissing him. There was no reason, either, for his gaze to sweep slowly across her mouth.

  Sensuality skittered through her veins.

  It meant nothing, she told herself. She'd misinterpreted his gazes before. He'd looked at her that way a couple of times when they'd been teenagers, only to break the moment with a silly wisecrack and busy himself with other friends. Girlfriends, usually. Which had been fine with her.

  "Are we almost finished here, Doc?" She broke the moment herself this time.

  His eyes flickered back to hers with a dazed expression. After a moment, he breathed in deeply through his nostrils and blew the breath back out. "Uh, no."

  She raised an inquiring brow.

  "The part of the wound I've dressed so far," he explained, "is only a scrape. I haven't been able to see the rest."

  Foreboding gathered in her stomach. "Why not?"

  "It's beneath the side band of your bra."

  "My bra?" she breathed.

  "It'll have to come off, Callie." He said it as if he were breaking news of a necessary amputation.

  She stared at him, aghast. He expected her to take off her bra?

  "It looks like a fairly deep gash," he told her. "The tightness of the band may be acting as a bandage and inhibiting some serious bleeding. I have to take a closer look."

  "C-can't we just loosen the straps?" she stuttered, her hands crossing to cover her lace-clad breasts. "You know, loosen them just enough so you can—"

  "The bra has to come off," he stated. "Even after I've treated the wound, you can't wear anything too binding over it." Her heart tripped into a faster, heavier beat. Heat crept under her skin. Her nipples tightened into sensitive buds at the thought of baring her breasts for him. "No."

  He sat back and crossed his muscular arms. "You haven't been too embarrassed so far," he reasoned, "have you?"

  She admitted to herself that he was right. She'd been sitting here in her semisheer bra without much embarrassment at all. He'd distracted her, of course.

  But he also hadn't given her breasts a glance. Not even one covert peek, as far as she could tell. He seemed unaffected by her partial nakedness. For all the interest he'd shown, she could still be a gawky, flat-chested kid with braces.

  The thought irked her. She might not have blossomed into a raving beauty, and might not be exactly stacked, but her breasts had grown considerably since she'd left. Considerably! She'd actually made it to a B cup.

  "I know this is a cliché," he said, sitting forward, "but there's nothing you've got that I haven't seen before."

  That set her teeth lightly on edge. It was a cliché. It was also the truth. That didn't make the statement any less troubling. He was, in effect, telling her that she had nothing that could interest him.

  The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like a challenge.

  "Close your eyes again, Callie."

  "No," she softly replied, unable to stop from acting on an impulse. "I think I'd rather keep them open this time."

  He studied her face in patent surprise, as if trying to divine her meaning. "Actually, I'd prefer that you close them," he countered. "Until I get the bandage in place, th
ere might be some … unpleasantness."

  "I'm a big girl now," she drawled in a whisper. She touched a fingertip to each satiny bra strap on her shoulders, then slowly drew those fingertips down to the lace-trimmed cups. "I can take it, Doc."

  His eyes followed the path of her fingers.

  With her heart thudding, she skimmed her fingers along the top edges of her bra, around the gentle swells of her cleavage, until she reached the front clasp. "Should I take it off, or—" she inclined her head and stared at him "—should you?"

  His mouth opened an instant before the gruff words came out. "Whichever you'd prefer."

  She focused on his dark, unreadable face. He focused on the clasp, which she gripped with trembling fingers. He sat perfectly still, his face void of reaction, and watched her fingers work.

  The hook gave way. Self-conscious heat rose up her neck and flooded her face. She opened the bra. Parted it. Her breasts sprang free of the lace.

  He moved not a muscle. His gaze didn't shift to either side, but remained fixed in place, straight ahead, as if he'd slipped into a daydream. He looked utterly oblivious.

  Her heart gave a bleak little pang. It was true, then. He had no more interest in her now than he ever had. "I may need your help taking this off the rest of the way," she said, humiliated by her own bold behavior and by her genuine need for his help. The loosening of the bra had renewed the throbbing in the wound. Her pride, however, throbbed even more. Amazing, how much bruised pride could hurt. "I'm afraid of disrupting the injury."

  Slowly, as if he'd just then realized she was still there, his gaze inched upward. And locked with hers.

  The heated intensity of his stare shocked her.

  "Callie," he rasped. "Take my shirt."

  Before she understood, he'd pulled his T-shirt up and over his head. His magnificent chest rippled with muscle beneath a gilded spangling of curls as he handed the T-shirt to her.

  "Use it as a drape," he gruffly ordered. When she hesitated, unsure of what he meant, he took the body-warmed shirt from her, draped it over her shoulder and fanned its cottony folds across her breasts, taking care not to touch her.

  "We might get blood on it." She barely recognized the husky whisper as her own. His unexpected reaction had shaken the breath out of her, and the sight of him shirtless—golden, muscled and hairy—kept her spellbound.

  "That's okay. I don't mind a little blood."

  The impulse seized her to run her hands over every sleekly muscled contour, tangle her fingers in his silky curls, trace the light, jagged slash of a scar above his left nipple. "Take your shirt back," she urged. "I don't care if I have a cover."

  His stare shot back to hers, stunning her again with its raw intensity. "I do."

  The blaze in his eyes ignited little fires in her blood. Thrilling her. Scaring her. She'd never seen him like this before. She wanted to back away. She wanted to move closer.

  He wrenched his gaze from her and returned to his task. Thick, heated silence descended between them, broken only by the murmur of the surf, the sigh of summer breezes through the boathouse and the occasional cry of a gull.

  Jack heard nothing but the blood drumming in his ears as he drew the straps of the opened bra from her silky shoulders and carefully removed the side band from her wound.

  He would concentrate only on his work.

  Gritting his teeth seemed to help a little. Nothing helped much, though. Why the hell had he thought he could watch Callie unveil her breasts and keep himself under control? He'd had a hard enough time unbuttoning her blouse and avoiding the sight of her pert, dark-tipped breasts beneath white lace.

  He didn't understand his intensely physical reaction to her. It wasn't as if he'd never seen breasts before.

  And yet, it was. As if he'd never seen breasts before.

  Cursing himself and his unwanted arousal, he worked quickly. Silently. He had to forget this was Callie's skin he was touching. Callie's scent he was breathing. Callie's breasts barely covered, close enough that he could turn his head and brush his face against them. Take the dusky, pointed nipples into his mouth.

  Sexual heat washed through him. He had to think of another topic. He'd latched onto his earlier conversation about Earline like a drowning man grabbing for a lifeboat. Distracting himself hadn't been easy.

  He'd never had a problem keeping his mind on the job before. Of the many women he'd seen in the course of his work, no one had rattled him, tempted him or made him ache with desire. No one except Callie.

  Maybe because of his history with her. When he'd been a randy teenager, he'd caught glimpses of her small breasts through certain shirts and swimsuits. Her flowerlike nipples had somewhat obsessed him, turning from blossom soft to pebble hard in the space of a missed heartbeat. All it took was a splash of cool water or a chilly breeze. Or, sometimes, a simple stare.

  He'd never deliberately stared at her. He hadn't felt right, thinking about her in a sexual way. He'd spent whole nights trying not to think about naive, wide-eyed Callie and her pebble-tipped breasts.

  He tried not to think about them now. But the drape had slipped a little, and the lush, pale side-swell of her breast loomed near his fingers. The temptation to nudge his knuckles into the silky softness sent a shaft of heat through his loins.

  He gritted his teeth harder and finished the bandaging job.

  With acute relief that the work was done, he raised his head to inform her she didn't need stitches. His eyes met hers, and his words dissolved in another onslaught of heat.

  This one came from the way she was looking at him. In place of wide-eyed naiveté was a subtle, smoky awareness. Sensual awareness. She knew that he wanted her. And she wasn't displeased with that knowledge.

  "All finished, Doc?" The huskiness of her voice reminded him of the way she'd spoken, the way she'd watched him, as she'd unclasped her bra. He'd been too caught up in the moment to notice then.

  Was she teasing him? Or, inviting him?

  "The bandages are in place," he slowly replied, unable to look away from her sultry green gaze or to forget that they sat half-naked, both of them, and within easy reaching distance. "You won't need stitches."

  She didn't answer. She merely sat with his T-shirt draped across her peaking breasts, her shoulders and arms sleek and bare, her lips peachy smooth, her eyes sensually dazed.

  Her stare slowly descended to his mouth.

  Desire to kiss her ripped through him. To kiss her. Feel her. Taste her. Every muscle in his body clenched with need.

  Did she know what she was doing to him? Did she know he couldn't, as a doctor treating her wound, act on his desire?

  A clear invitation, however, might allow him to shift out of doctor mode, now that the treatment had ended.

  "Don't play with fire, Callie," he warned in a low, hoarse whisper, aware he was treading a fine ethical line, "unless you want to get hot."

  Her gaze focused on his.

  "If that's what you want, though." He angled his face near hers. "Let's strike the match."

  A strangled sound rose from her throat, and she pulled back from him. "What are you talking about?" The shirt fell from her shoulder, and she caught it against her chest with both hands, looking thoroughly flustered.

  Disappointment clutched him. Could he have been wrong? Could his own crazy desire have made him imagine her provocative air? "I think you know."

  As if sensing his uncertainty, she gathered her poise and glared at him. "What exactly are you trying to say, Doctor?"

  That was when he knew, beyond a doubt, she'd been teasing him. Ms. Callie Marshall might not be ready to kiss him, but she wasn't above playing games. From the time she'd been a kid, she'd reacted with the same red-faced indignation whenever she'd had to bluff her I way out of a tight spot.

  He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or to shake her. Mostly he wanted to kiss her. "Get dressed, before I ask for my T-shirt back."

  He had the satisfaction of seeing worry flash in those gray-green eye
s, just before he turned his back on her. Too bad he didn't have a shower handy—a nice, ice-cold shower. He sorely needed one.

  As he washed his hands at the sink, she called, "Is it okay if I wear your shirt for now?" Her voice had lost its indignation. She'd adopted a notably humble tone. "My blouse is a mess, and, uh, without my bra, it would be too sheer to wear."

  The image conjured up by those words only aggravated his condition. "By all means, wear the T-shirt. Please."

  Callie bit her lip, feeling guilty. He'd treated her injury in a kind, professional manner, and what had she done? She'd pushed him into noticing her as a woman. Flaunted herself.

  And boy, had it worked.

  Heat flushed through her at the memory, and not all because of embarrassment. He'd reacted so intensely. What would he have done if she hadn't pulled away? Her pulse rioted at the possibilities.

  Turning her back to him, she slipped his T-shirt over her head and pulled it down over her naked breasts, conscious of the pain in her side. The injury felt much better than it had, though, now that it was clean, dry and securely bandaged.

  She really did owe him her thanks.

  "Jack." Nervously she turned to face him. "I want to thank you for your help."

  "You're welcome." He didn't spare her a glance but sauntered toward the refrigerator, looking gloriously male in his tight, faded jeans, his golden-furred chest with its mysterious scar, and sinewy biceps browned to a shimmery tan. "Want a beer?"

  "A beer? Oh … no. No thanks. It's getting pretty late." She glanced at the twilight colors blazing outside the high, dusty windows. "We need to figure out a way to reach the authorities before that alligator hurts someone."

  He grabbed a bottle of beer and popped the cap off with his thumb. "I could wire up my old ship-to-shore radio." He nodded toward a dusty case on the shelf. "I haven't used it in years, though. Parts may be missing."

  "It's worth a try." She gnawed at her bottom lip. "But what if it doesn't work?"

  A slow, crooked smile spread across his mouth and somehow made her heart beat faster. "Then I guess we'll have to wait until someone rescues us."

  "But that could take hours." She wasn't supposed to be with him at all. People could get the wrong idea. They might think she was fraternizing with him. Her sister's case could be compromised.