“Come on then, let’s have a look.”
She turned toward the sound of his voice. He was holding a brown bottle and some cotton balls. “Madam, your surgery awaits,” he said, bowing a little, and stepped aside so that she could enter the kitchen.
Rachel gathered her shawl about her and picked up her bag.
He ushered her to the sink, took her bag from her hand. “Must have something frightfully important in that very large container vessel you have there, seeing as you won’t let it out of your sight,” he said as he put it on the counter behind her. Then he turned on the tap water, picked up a little sample bottle of Anti-Bacterial Dial, and, taking her hand in his, put a little soap in her palm, then put it under the warm water.
“Ouch!” she said as the soap hit the deep scratches the ungrateful cat had left.
“Rather nasty, really,” he opined as his fingers began to move on her, gently sudsing the wounds, taking care to clean the deeper scratches, then turning her hand over and washing the back side in the same, delicate manner. Each time his finger moved against her skin, Rachel could feel the electricity of it firing up her arm and into her chest.
His hands were magical—strong, yet gentle. She suddenly pictured those hands on her breasts . . . and remembered herself, jerked her gaze up. He was calmly rinsing the soap from her hand; he had a wonderfully handsome profile—very Anglican, with a thin, straight nose, a strong chin, a strong brow—
“Now the other, if you please,” he said, gesturing for her left hand, and wordlessly repeated the same process, shaking his head when he saw a really deep scratch that ran up her wrist, and that sexy strand of hair fell over his eye.
But the caress of his fingers on her wrist was almost her undoing, and now she was seeing images slide past, images of that very same hand, purposeful and commanding, on other parts of her body—
“Am I hurting you?” he asked quietly, glancing at her with a hint of a smile on his lips.
“N-no,” she stammered as he rinsed her left hand.
“I’d like to see the cat, frankly,” he quipped as he took a dish towel that looked as if it had never been used and pressed it gently against her skin.
As he dried her hands, he looked at her through thick, sandy brown lashes, let his gaze wander her face, smiling softly at the gold in her hair. “You’re rather surprising, Rachel Lear,” he said quietly. “What with all the witchcraft and weaving and catering and cat-liberating. One can’t be certain what will come next.”
“The same could be said of you, you know. One minute you’re Flynn, then you’re Charlie, then you’re Ollie.”
“All quite good blokes, actually,” he said with a wink. “This might sting a bit,” he said, pulling a bottle of iodine from his trouser pocket.
“Iodine?” She laughed. “What sort of man lives in a corporate apartment, has never used the kitchen, and carries a bottle of iodine?”
“A resourceful one, thank you,” he said, and dabbed some on the first scratch. Rachel sucked a breath. “My mum always said that one must be fully prepared for all eventualities. She was the sort to make certain that our names were indelibly marked in our knickers.”
Rachel laughed as he dabbed more iodine on her cuts.
“I’d cringe every time I saw her with a Sharpie in hand,” he said as he turned her hand over and began to coat the scratches on her palm.
“I bet you have peanut butter and water on hand in the event of a blackout, right?”
“Kippers, actually,” he said. “And I’ll have you know that I’ve certainly used this kitchen on more than one occasion to dry my socks. The oven is perfectly suited for them, having just the right dimensions.”
Rachel laughed again, hardly noticing that he had finished one hand and started the other.
“Do you have a father?” she asked, wincing a little as he coated the scratch on her wrist.
“By that do you mean am I the product of some science experiment gone awry, or is he living?”
“Living.”
“Indeed he is. He’s a putterer, my dear old dad, always on the prowl to mend something around the house and never getting it quite right. And what of your parents?”