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Dashing at her useless tears to hold them back, she nearly screamed aloud when she couldn’t even do the simple task of sliding buttons into buttonholes. Her fingers were hampered by the thick bandages and the length of the shirtsleeves that dangled past her wrists and refused to stay pushed up her arms.
‘Oh, damn, damn, damn.’
‘Ava? Are you okay in there?’
Ava stopped cursing and stilled. ‘Oui. Fine.’
The door opened regardless and Wolfe stood framed in the doorway, with his hands on his hips. He’d changed into a clean shirt that hung out over soft denim jeans. Magnificent didn’t even begin to describe him.
* * *
Wolfe felt as if someone had just tried to squeeze every drop of blood out of his heart as he took in the sight of her standing in the middle of the bathroom, pale and regal, clutching the sides of his shirt together, her torn gown like a puddle of blood circling her bare legs and feet. Tear-marks tracked down her dirty face and her lower lip was trembling as she tried to hold herself together.
He’d never met another woman like her. One who faced life’s challenges with grit and determination. One who wasn’t afraid to face the truth about herself and, when she set her mind to something, just gathered her courage, rolled up her sleeves and got on with it.
Something tugged in the region of his heart. She was beautiful and strong and...special. The word anchored inside his mind and wouldn’t budge. It didn’t help that she looked as sexy as hell in his shirt.
‘I can’t do up these damned buttons,’ she complained, her voice rough as she worked to hold back tears, her brow furrowed.
‘Oh, baby...’ Wolfe didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with female tears but he acted purely on instinct as he stepped into the room and closed his arms around her. Something satisfying was released inside him when she buried her head against his chest and sniffed. It felt as if she belonged there, but he immediately dismissed the rogue thought. That kind of thinking was totally against his rules.
Her arms slid around his back and he ignored the bolt of discomfort that shot up his spine as she inadvertently touched muscles that had been crushed when part of the wall of her gallery building had landed on top of him.
‘Do you know why I chose Paris?’
Her soft voice was muffled against his shirt front and she reminded him of the bunch of newborn kittens he and his brother had once found abandoned in one of the back sheds on their farm. He and Adam had secretly fed them until they had grown too big to be contained. His father had wanted to drown the lot of them, but both of them had begged him to reconsider. Then they had made signs and taken the kittens to the local mall, and stayed all day until the last one had been given away.
The stupid memory made him feel suddenly vulnerable, and he cleared his throat and smoothed his hand up and down Ava’s back to distract himself. ‘No. Why?’
‘It’s my mother’s city. She grew up here. After she died my life became like something out of a Dickens novel. My father didn’t know how to deal with a teenage daughter so he didn’t. Since Frédéric had been sent to military school, I...I...’
‘You had no one.’
‘No.’
A raw sob ripped from her throat and, remembering her stoic reaction to the news of Frédéric’s death, Wolfe guessed that she had probably never let herself grieve the loss. The futile destruction of her gallery would be just one more injury for her to try to cope with.
The need to comfort her overrode any sense of self-preservation he had left. Gathering her close, he cradled the back of her head and soaked up her tears, absorbing as much of her pain as he could. When the storm had passed she shifted even closer and every muscle in his body tensed in response.
‘You must think I’m a weak foo— Oh, my God. Why did you not tell me I looked like this?’
Wolfe glanced over his shoulder and saw her horrified reflection in the small bathroom mirror. He eased her away from him and pushed her mass of hair back from her face. ‘Really? I thought you were just going for the Panda of the Year award.’
‘Yes. With dreadlocks,’ she scoffed, dashing at the dusty tear-smudges on her cheeks with the back of one hand. The other was holding her shirt blessedly closed.
‘Here, let me.’ Still taking most of her weight, and trying not to think about how good she felt leaning into him, Wolfe reached around her and wet a facecloth with warm water. He tilted her chin up and gently wiped as much of the grit and smudges from her face as he could. His muscles knotted as he thought of how close she had come to dying, but he forced himself to relax. Right now her needs took precedence over his rage.
