He looked baffled. “Subjective, my ass. What’s not to understand? Beautiful is beautiful.”

She rushed on. “What does it mean, to tell someone she’s beautiful? Men have told me that I was beautiful before. They changed their minds when they met someone they thought was more beautiful. By comparison, I suddenly became less beautiful. That sucks, by the way, when you look into your boyfriend’s face and realize that your stock just went down the toilet.”

“Nancy,” he said gently.

“Who knows what a person sees when he looks at another person? It changes with his mood, the weather, what he ate that day! How beautiful would I look to you after I’d annoyed you for a while by popping my knuckles, or slurping my soda, or whatever grates on you? Telling me I’m beautiful is meaningless. So don’t do it. You’d have more luck coaxing me into bed if you stayed away from the whole subject.”

“You think that’s what this is about? Just getting you into bed?”

She swallowed over a lump in her throat. Doing it again, with him. Babbling nonsense, like an idiot.

“Be quiet for a second.” His voice was as soft as drifting smoke. He reached out and plucked a spray of miniature orchids out of a vase on the end table by the couch. She’d bought them the week before, in honor of Lucia, who had always loved them. Deep pink, spotted with purple, luminous and mysterious. “Are these beautiful?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

“How do you know they are?”

She chewed her lip, sensing a trap. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say. I’m not the poetic type. They just are.”

He tucked the sprig back into the vase and stroked a petal with his fingertip. “That’s my point. You don’t have to be poetic. Just look at them. Shut up, and really look at them. And you know. You feel it. Right here.” He put his hand on his chest. “They just are.”

She gazed at him, hypnotized as his finger stroked the lambent curve of the blossom.

She tried it. Exactly what he suggested. She shut up, the talk, the worries, the fear, the clamorous noise in her head. She just looked at him as he touched that flower. He gazed back at her, those clear, light eyes endlessly patient, and gentle. Waiting for her to get it. He reached out, touched her cheek, as softly as he’d touched the flower.

And suddenly…ah. She got it. She knew. Right in her chest, just like he said. Oh, yes. He was beautiful. He shone. Like a jewel.

The realization pierced, burned, like a knife in her chest, turning.

This was against all her rules, all her better judgment. The power dynamic was whacked, wrong. He was the one who had saved her. He was the one offering protection and comfort. She was the one who was desperately in need of it. He had everything, she had nothing. She couldn’t even guarantee him a good time in bed to compensate him for his trouble, with all her sexual hang-ups. A crass assessment of the situation, but there it was. She called it how she saw it.

She preferred to have something concrete to offer a man that would keep him connected with her after the initial flash of desire flickered and went out, as it inevitably did. Not that the trick had ever worked that well before, considering her romantic track record.

Liam didn’t need her. She had nothing to offer him but herself, and when he lost interest in that, she would be toast.

Liam sensed the direction her mind was running. She could tell by his thoughtful frown. “What’s wrong now, Nancy?”

He sounded exhausted. Fed up. She didn’t blame him a bit. She was a piece of work. Nothing but problems. Her mind raced to come up with a plausible lie. Letting him see how small she felt would just embarrass them both.

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she whispered.

He let out a sigh, and leaned back, laying his head against the back of the couch. Covering his eyes with his hands.

That was when she noticed the condition of his hand. His knuckles were torn and raw, encrusted with blood. God, she hadn’t even given a thought to his injuries, his trauma, his shock. She’d just zoned out, floated in her bubble, leaned on him. As if he were an oak.

But he wasn’t an oak. He was a man. He’d fought like a demon for her, and risked his life, and gotten hurt, and she was so freaked out and self-absorbed, she hadn’t even noticed. She was mortified.

“Liam. Your hand,” she fussed, getting up. “Let me get some disinfectant, and some—”

“It’s okay,” he muttered. “Forget about it.”

“Like hell! You’re bleeding!” She bustled around, muttering and scolding to hide her own discomfiture, gathering gauze and cotton balls and antibiotic ointment. He let her fuss, a martyred look on his face. After she finished taping his hand, she looked at his battered face and grabbed a handful of his polo. “What about the rest of you?”

“Just some bruises,” he hedged.

“Where?” she persisted, tugging at his shirt. “Show me.”

He wrenched the fabric out of her hand. “If I take off my clothes now, it’s not going to be to show you my bruises,” he said.

She blinked, swallowed, tried to breathe. Reorganized her mind. There it was. Finally verbalized. No more glossing over it, running away.

“After all this?” Her voice was timid. “You still want to…now?”

“Fuck yes.” His tone was savage. “I’ve wanted it since I laid eyes on you. It’s gotten worse ever since. And combat adrenaline gives a guy a hard-on like a railroad spike, even if there weren’t a beautiful woman in my face, driving me fucking nuts. Which puts me in a bad place, Nancy. I know the timing sucks for you. The timing’s been piss-poor since we met, but it never gets any better. It just keeps getting worse.”

“Hey. It’s okay.” She patted his back with a shy, nervous hand. He was usually so calm, so controlled. It unnerved her to see him agitated.

He didn’t seem to hear her. “And the worse it gets, the worse I want it,” he went on, his voice harsh. “Which makes me feel like a jerk, and a user, and an asshole. Promising to protect you—”

“You did protect me,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, and I told you it wasn’t an exchange. You don’t owe me sex. You don’t owe me anything. And that really fucks me up. Because I can’t even remove myself from the situation. I’m scared to death to leave you alone. And that puts me between a rock and a hard place.”

She put her finger over his mouth. “Wow,” she murmured. “I had no idea you could get worked into such a state, Mr. Supermellow Liam Let’s-Contemplate-the-Beauty-of-the-Flower Knightly.”

His explosive snort of derision cut her off. She shushed him again, enjoying the feel of his lips beneath her finger. “You’re not a jerk or a user,” she said gently. “You were magnificent. Thank you. Again.”

He looked away. There was a brief, embarrassed pause. “That’s very generous of you,” he said, trying to flex the wounded hand. “But I’m not fishing for compliments.”

“I never thought you were.”

She placed her own hand below his and rested them both gently on his thigh. Her fingers dug into the thick muscle of his quadriceps, through the dirty, bloodstained denim of his jeans. Beneath the fabric, he was so hot. So strong and solid.

She moved her hand up, slowly but surely, stroking higher toward his groin. His breath caught, and then stopped entirely as her fingers brushed the turgid bulge of his penis beneath the fabric.

Here went nothing. “I think I know what you mean, about the hard place,” she whispered, swirling her fingertips over it. Wow. A lot of him. That thick, broad, hard stalk just went on and on. “Or was this what you meant when you were referring to the rock?”

His face was a mask of tension, neck muscles clenched, tendons standing out. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, his voice strangled.

Aw. So sweet. Her fingers closed around him, squeezing. He groaned, and a shudder jarred his body. “I can’t seem to stop,” she said.