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back the snarled curls. “Rae?”
    She ducked away, the action obviously instinctive. “I’m … I’m fine.”
    Her sudden move made his body tighten, but this time in shame. Jarrett dropped his hand immediately and, bracing it on the floor, levered himself completely off of her. He rolled into a sitting position, his back against the wall. Using the light spilling out of the bathroom, he bent to check his bandaged thigh. It was only then that he remembered he was naked. His reaction to those few moments of lying on top of Rae was still apparent.
    Was that why she’d gasped? Had she felt … him?A hot flush crept up his neck, the sensation so foreign to him, he had no idea what to do about it. Reacting instinctively, he bent his good leg, drawing his knee up to provide a barrier between Rae and the … obvious. Even as he did it, he felt ridiculous. She’d made it clear that the only emotion he inspired in her was loathing.
    Rae scrambled onto her knees. “Here, let me check that. You’ll be lucky if you haven’t torn it all open again.”
    He grabbed her arm just before she could touch him. “Don’t,” he ordered. Then with a sigh of self-disgust, he added more calmly, “I can handle it.”
    She froze, looking nonplussed for a second, then the wariness and control crept in. If he hadn’t been watching so closely, he’d have missed the hurt and vulnerability that had flickered in her eyes.
    It was that tiny flicker he should be exploiting, that and the fact that she still felt compelled to help him even after their earlier confrontation. Both cracks in her guard were tools. Ways to get her to bend to his will, to agree to help him, to do what was right.
    So why had his first thought been to lower his leg and prove to her that he wasn’t averse to her touch? Following swiftly on the heels of that dangerous idea had been the equally strong need to push her away. Out of his reach. Out of his mind.
    More confused than he could ever remember being, Jarrett dropped her arm as if it were a live wire. He immediately shifted his attention back to his leg, acknowledging the action for the escape that it was and not giving a damn.
    Rae pushed herself upright, then leaned against the wall for a moment while she worked out the kinks in her limbs.
    “Yeah, you can handle it, all right, McCullough,” she said tightly as she stepped over his outstretched legs. “All of it.” Then she walked down the hallway and disappeared into the dusky shadows of the new dawn.

FIVE
    Rae told herself she didn’t care if he bled to death in her hallway. She stalked over to the cabinet next to the stove and yanked out the coffee canister, then dumped twice as much coffee as she normally did into her automatic coffeemaker. God knew, she needed it. “I hope he pulls every hair out of his perfectly shaped chest ripping the rest of that tape off.” She poured the water into the machine, visualizing tearing the tape off for him. Really, really slowly.
    The smile this notion brought to her face quickly faded, and she fought the edges of fright ruffling her anger. Righteous anger, she told herself as she struggled to hold on to it. She knew the second she stopped focusing on the anger, the rest of it would cave in. She simply wasn’t up to dealing with such upheaval at—she glanced at the coffeemaker clock and sighed—five o’clock in the morning.
    Why had she fallen asleep in the hallway? And whyoh why when she’d woken up, hadn’t she just crept down the hall and away from McCullough? She snorted under her breath. “Because you looked up and saw him standing in front of you,” she muttered. She remembered thinking that even banged up and bandaged, he’d seemed like some towering pagan god cast in evocative shadows.
    She hadn’t been able to breathe for those few silent moments, much less creep away. Not that she’d even thought to, she realized now, humiliated. To complete her crashing descent into mortification, the instant