that had been strapped around and around his ribs to hold the cracked bones in place. And below that bandage was … Oh, dear.
“Ingrid isn't here,' she squeaked, her gaze darting all around the room in a desperate effort to keep from staring at Matt Thome's naked chest. “She's gone to Stillwater to deal with an emergency at the inn there.”
“When will she be back?” he asked, scratching his chest.
Sarah gulped hard. “D-d-days,” she stammered, her head swimming at the implications of her folly. What had she been thinking about, agreeing to stay in the same house with this man? Had she really thought he would remain obligingly asleep for the duration so that she would have to cope with only a figment of her imagination? She had never thought the conscious man would be so … compelling, so … undressed.
“Days,” Matt repeated. “What about John?”
She gave him a blank look. “John?”
“John Wood. Ingrids husband. You know. Tall guy, smokes a pipe.”
“Yes, of course I know John,” she said in a rush, the apples of her cheeks turning a delicious ripe red. “He is gone to California to do research for one of his travel books.”
A smile tugged at Matt's mouth as he realized his little nursemaid was nervous. His radar told him there was a strong signal of attraction here—both ways. It was obvious the prim Miss Troyer didn't know how to deal with it. Her big indigo-blue eyes darted from side to side, up and down, lighting everywhere but on him. Her shyness delighted him and excited him in a way that seemed subtly different from anything he'd known before.
“Having trouble with your contact lenses?” he asked, amusement thrumming through his voice.
“What?” Sarah made the huge mistake of looking at him. He captured her gaze with the magnetic force of his dark eyes and held it.
“You seem to be having some trouble with your eyes.”
“My sight is fine,” she murmured. As a girl she had always longed for a pair of spectacles because they were the only kind of adornment an Amish girl was allowed. Now she wished for them for a different reason. She could have pulled them off and cleaned them and fiddled with the earpieces, busying her hands and giving herself an excuse to not look at Matt Thome.
He regarded her with his warm dark eyes, eyes sparkling with mischief and who knew what else. The devil himself probably had eyes just like that; eyes brimming with temptation. Locks of black hair fell across his forehead in a way described as “rakish” in books. Now that he was awake and upright, his injuries weren't nearly so distracting as they had been when he'd been asleep. It had to have something to do with the inner life force of the man, the electricity that glowed in his eyes and hummed in the air around him. Sarah felt it pour over her, exciting her as it went. She took another step back, her cowardice rising inside her like a shield.
“What are we supposed to do while Ingrid is away?” Matt asked. “As if I couldn't come up with a couple of wonderful ideas on the sub-ject.”
“I'm to look after the inn,” Sarah said. “And you.”
“Oh, I like that plan,” Matt said, laughter in his eyes and voice. “Just think of the fun we can have together.”
Sarah shook a finger at him as if it were a magic wand that could force him to do her bidding. “You are to stay in bed.”
“My favorite place to be—provided I'm not alone.”
“Well, you're sure going to be alone here,” she said tartly, finding a little bit of the sass that had always brought her a glower of disapproval from her father. With this man it only seemed to generate more of his teasing humor.
He chuckled weakly, wincing a bit and laying a hand gingerly against the white bandage that swathed his ribs. “Oh, come on, Sarah. Have pity on a poor cripple. You're not really going to make me stay in bed all alone, are you?”
“You bet.” She nodded resolutely.
“Them I'm afraid I'm going to have to make a speedy recovery. I can't stand the idea of having a beautiful nurse and not being able to chase her around the bed.”
Beautiful. Sarah did her best to ignore his compliment. To accept a compliment was to accept credit for God's doing. It was
Matt closed his eyes briefly against his assorted pains. “I'm afraid you're right about that. Tell me, do I look as bad as I feel?”
She gave a little sniff, stepping closer to the bed as her initial skittishness subsided. “I don't suppose you feel as bad as you look, else you'd be dead.”
Matt gave her a look. “Gee, don't spare my feelings here, Sarah. Lay it on the line.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, having the grace to blush. “I'm much too forthright. It's always getting me into trouble.”
“Really?” Matt chuckled. “I can't imagine you in trouble.”
“Ach, me, I'm in trouble all the time,” she admitted, rolling her eyes. A secretive little Mona Lisa smile teased her lips as she stepped closer to the bed.
A sweet, warm feeling flooded through Matt. It wasn't exactly lust. It was … liking. Sarah Troyer was beguiling him with her innocence, and he would have bet she didn't have the vaguest idea she was doing it. “What kinds of things get you in trouble?”
Her smile faded and she glanced away.
She realized with a start that Matt was watching her, waiting for an answer. “Neglecting my work gets me into trouble,” she said quietly, eyes downcast to keep him from seeing any other answers that might be revealed by those too-honest mirrors of her true feelings. “I had best go down and see to making you some supper.”
“In a minute,” Matt murmured, catching her by the wrist as she turned to go. Her skin was soft and cool beneath his fingertips, like the finest silk. He'd always had an especially acute sense of touch, and now he picked up the delicate beating of Sarah's pulse as if it were pounding like a jackhammer. He wondered if she would even know what a jackhammer was, and he marveled again at how untouched she seemed to him. He felt like the most jaded cynic in comparison.
She would know nothing about the kind of violence that had disrupted his life. Street gangs and drug wars and inner-city desperation were the trappings of another world, a world far removed from farm life and people who disdained automobiles as being too worldly.
For a moment all the weariness and hopelessness caught up with him, and he wondered what it would be like to just chuck it all, plant a garden and buy a horse. He wondered what Sarah Troyer would think if he told her that. He knew what his friends in Minneapolis would think. They would think he'd gone nuts. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan Dr. Matt Thome a gentleman farmer? Absurd didn't begin to cover it. His concussion had to be worse than he'd realized, he thought, dismissing the notion.
He wanted to ask Sarah about the shadows that had crossed her face an instant before she had answered his question. He found he wanted to know all about her. He wrote it off as a combination of boredom and natural curiosity, and conveniently ignored the fact that he was not usually so curious about the deep, dark secrets of the women in his life.
It wasn't that he was so self-absorbed, he didn't care. It was more a matter of practicality. His career took precedence over all else in his life, and it left little time or energy for deep relationships. He wore his title of hospital Romeo with ease and good humor, and thought of all-consuming romantic love in only the most abstract of ways. So when Sarah Troyer turned back toward him, her eyes as blue as twin lakes under the sun and as round as quarters, he put the jolt in his chest down to a reawakening libido and counted himself lucky to be among the living.
“I think I might need a little help getting up,” he said, his voice a notch huskier than usual.
“I think you might need to get your hearing checked,' Sarah said breathlessly. She extricated her arm from his
