LITMIR.BIZ

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      White lines where her bikini straps had been were in sharp contrast to her skin.

      Because her skin tones were so golden it had never occurred to him she might burn. It had not seemed scorchingly hot out today. On the other hand he should have known breezes coming off the water could make it seem cooler than it was. It had never occurred to him that someone who lived in this island paradise might not avail themselves of the outdoors.

      He remembered, too late, what she had said about her mother. “Has your skin ever seen the sun before?” he asked her.

      She shook her head, contrite. “Not for a long time. I was allowed to come here until I was about thirteen, but then my mother thought I was getting to be too much of a tomboy. She thought skin darkened by the sun was—”

      “Let me guess,” he said dryly. “Common.”

      He was rewarded with a weak smile from her. Selfish bastard that he was he thought, At least I’m not going to have to see her in a bikini again for the three days we have left here on the island.

      But there was another test he had to pass right now. He was going to have to administer first aid to her burns. She’d exposed her back to the sun while they snorkeled. The water beading on it had drawn the sun like a magnet. Though her shoulders were very red looking, most of that burn was going to be on her back where she couldn’t reach it herself.

      Having grown up in Australia, he was cautious of the sun, but his skin was also more acclimatized to sun than that of most of the people he worked with. He did not have fair coloring, his skin seemed to like the sun.

      But many times after long training days in the sun, especially desert training, soldiers were hurting. Ronan had learned lots of ways to ease the sting with readily available ingredients: either vinegar or baking soda added to bath water could bring relief. Unfortunately, just as when he was in the field, they didn’t have a bath here.

      What they did have was aspirin, he had seen that in a cabinet in the outdoor kitchen, and powdered milk, an ingredient he’d used before to field dress a sunburn.

      He knew, though, there was going to be a big difference between placing soothing dressings cooled with freshly made milk onto her back, and slapping it onto a fellow soldier’s.

      All day he’d struggled to at least keep the physical barriers between them up, since the emotional ones seemed to be falling faster than he could reerect them. When she’d lost the top, and he’d wrapped his arms around her to pull her back to the water’s surface, he’d known he had to avoid going to that place again at all costs, skin against skin.

      But here he was at that place again. It almost felt as if the universe was conspiring against him.

      But she was his charge. He had no choice. He felt guilty that she’d gotten burned on his watch in the first place. It was proof, really, he could not be trusted with softer things, more tender things, things that required a gentle touch.

      It was proof, too, that he was preoccupied, missing the details that he had always been so good at catching.

      “Come on out to the kitchen,” he said gruffly. “I’ll put something on that that will make it feel better.”

      “I can’t get dressed,” she told him, and blushed. “My skin feels like its shrinking. I don’t think I can move my arms. I don’t want to put anything on that touches my skin.”

      Oh well, just run out there naked then.

      He yanked the sheet out from the bottom of the bed and tucked it around her right up to her chin. “Come on.”

      She wobbled out behind him to the kitchen, the sheet draped clumsily over her, him uncomfortably and acutely aware that underneath it she was probably as naked as the day she was born. The outfit was somehow as dangerous—maybe more so—than the bikini had been.

      And the night was dangerous—the stars like jewels in the night sky, the flowers releasing their perfume with a gentle and seductive vengeance.

      “Sit,” he said, swinging a chair out for her. He took a deep breath, prayed for strength and then did what had to be done. He lifted the sheet away from her back, forced himself to be clinical.

      Her back looked so tender with burn that he forgot how awkward this situation was. The marks where her bikini strings had been tied up dissected it, at her neck and midback, white lines in stark contrast to the rest of her. Her skin was glowing bright red on top of her copper tones.

      “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he said, his sympathy genuine, his guilt acute even though he knew how hard it was to spot a burn as it was happening in the full sunlight, “but in the next few days your skin is going to be peeling. It may even blister.”

      “Really?” she asked.

      She couldn’t possibly sound, well, pleased, rather than distressed.

      He had to make it a bit clearer. “Um, you could probably be lizard lady at the sideshow for a week or two.”

      “Really?” she said, again.

      No doubt about it. Definitely pleased.

      “Is there some reason that would make you happy?” he asked.

      “Between my new hair and lizard lady, Prince Mahail will probably call off the wedding. Indefinitely.”

      Now there was no mistaking the pleasure in her voice.

      Don’t ask, Ronan. “Is he really that superficial?”

      “He chose me for my hair!”

      Well, he’d asked. Now he had to deal with the rush of indignation he felt. A man chose a wife for her hair?

      It was primitive and tyrannical. It was not what she deserved. Wasn’t he in the business of protecting democracy? Of protecting people’s freedoms and right to choose? If she was being forced into this, then what? Cause an international incident by imposing his values on B’Ranasha, by rescuing the princess from her fate?

      “Are you being forced to marry him?” he asked.

      “Not exactly.”

      “What does that mean?”

      “Nobody forced me to say yes, but there was enormous pressure, the weight of everybody’s expectations.”

      He turned from her quickly to stave off the impulse to shake her. Here he’d been thinking he had to rescue her when the aggravating truth was she had not, as far as he could see, made a single move to rescue herself. She seemed to just be blindly trusting something was going to happen to get her out of her marriage. And much as he hated to admit it, so far that had worked not too badly for her.

      But her luck was going to run out, and for a take-charge kind of guy, relying on luck to determine fate was about the worst possible policy.

      Rather than share that with her, or allow her to see the fury he felt with her, Ronan busied himself mixing a solution of powdered milk and water in a big bowl. He tore several clean tea towels into rags and submerged them in the mixture.

      Then, his unwanted surge of emotion under control, a gladiator who had no choice but the ring, he turned back to her, lifted the sheet off her back.

      “Hold that up for me.”

      He laid the first of the milk-soaked rags flat on her naked back, smoothed it on with his hands. She seemed unbelievably delicate. Her skin was hot beneath the dressing. And, for now anyway, before the inevitable peeling, it felt incredibly smooth, flawless beneath his fingertips. He didn’t know of any other way to bring her comfort, but touching her like this was intimate enough to make him feel faintly crazy, a purely primitive longing welling up within him.

      He thought she might flinch, but instead she gave a little moan of pleasure and relief as the first cool, milk-soaked dressing adhered to her back, a sound that could have easily been made in another context.

      “Oh,”

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