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He swore and placed a hand on her shoulder as she struggled to her feet, or at least one of them. At the last minute, overbalancing, she fell back with a grunt.
She slung him an indignant look.
‘I have no idea why women put themselves through agony for the sake of fashion.’
The hypocrisy!‘Does it never occur to you that the almost-dressed women hanging onto your arm are doing so to stop falling over?’
‘How do you know I have women hanging on my arm?’
‘A wild guess?’ she suggested sourly. Another educated guess was they would all possess endless legs and perfect faces.
‘Why buy shoes that don’t fit?’
‘They were a bargain.’
He looked genuinely bemused by the explanation but then she didn’t imagine he did much bargain-hunting.
‘Let me see.’
She retracted her leg. ‘Why?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘So I can post a photo on—Why the hell do you think? So I can see the damage.’
‘It’s nothing.’
He sighed and looked bored again, or at least bored with a clenched ticcing jaw. ‘Spare me the brave-little-soldier attitude and let me see!’
She felt his gaze for a moment before she threw up her hands. ‘All right.’ Hands clasped supportively under her thigh, she lifted her leg and wriggled her toes, a mistake, it hurt, before retracting her foot and throwing out a childish, ‘Happy now?’
The provocation of her pout took him a moment to move beyond.
His touch was clinical and light around her slender ankle as he turned her extended foot to view the damage.
What he saw made him swear. ‘It’s a mess.’
‘And I always thought my feet were one of my selling points.’
Her attempt at humour did not go down well.
‘You’ve made it worse walking around on it.’
‘I spent most of the time sitting down being grilled. I didn’t really notice until... It’s only a blister. I really don’t see what you’re making a fuss about.’
He swore again. It was Italian-sounding, and with his carved features set in a scowl he looked very brooding—Latin with a side order of Viking thrown in. In short, very gorgeous.
‘What about the other foot?’
‘That’s not too bad,’ she husked, the tenderness in her foot no longer the problem. It was the tingling imprint of his light touch that was bothering her...more than a little. ‘I don’t think the skin is broken on that one.’
‘Think or know.’
‘Know,’ she said firmly.
‘Well, that is going to need cleaning and dressing.’
‘I’ll get it done when I get home.’ She had already decided that she couldn’t stay here. She wanted more than ever to go home, by cover of darkness if that was what it took.
‘You’ll probably have gangrene by then. Wait there!’
