She held up a hand to cut him off and finished his sentence in a sarcastic voice. “Unless I want you to.” She said it like she’d heard it a hundred times before. “Whatever. I don’t want you to. Not now. Not ever.” Her words were tired, hard, but she moved toward him. “I’ll take the ice, though.”

He handed it to her and she was starting to thank him when she pressed it against her cheek a little too hard and gasped in pain.

“Here,” he said, “let me.”

Moving close enough to touch again, he slid the fingers of his left hand beneath hers while cupping the back of her head with his right.

Chase was surprised to realize the ice had finally broken between them. All because of the hard-on he couldn’t control and her sarcastic comments about it.

Who would have thought that would do it?

He expected her to pull away from him, to tell him she could take care of herself, to insist that he keep his hands off her. Instead, he was in for another surprise when she said, “You’re good at this,” in a soft voice that did nothing to stop the southerly flow of blood to his groin.

“Five brothers, remember?” he said with a small smile. “Although my sisters were the ones who usually left the worst bruises when we were messing around.” He grinned. “Little brats.”

She looked up at him, then, and he didn’t have any hope of controlling his reaction to the shot of desire that rocked him. Her eyes were extraordinary, a vibrant green along the rims of the pupil, but filled in everywhere else with blue.

“You like your brothers and sisters a lot, don’t you?”

His eyes moved to her mouth as she spoke, giving him a chance to further appreciate the full curves of her lower lip, the sweet cupid’s bow of the upper.

No question about it, he was on his way to totally and completely losing his mind over this woman. One that obviously came with baggage.

He’d never been a man much interested in baggage. Looked like the universe was playing a fast one on him tonight. Because he was definitely interested.

“Do I have something on my mouth?”

Her irritation was, thankfully, fused with a faint amusement at how clearly mesmerized he was. At this point, he’d rather have her laughing at him than running from him.

He refused to think of later, to let his brain head toward the direction it was dying to go...the one where she was naked and he was tasting every inch of her beautiful skin. First he had to get her to agree to actually stay the night.

And not run at first light.

Aware that his erection was filling out even more behind the zipper of his jeans, he shifted his hips away from hers before saying, “No, your mouth is perfect.” A flush spread across the side of her face he wasn’t covering with the towel. “And yes, my siblings are great.”

Her expression filled with longing before she turned her head away and lowered her lashes so he couldn’t see into her stunning—and expressive—eyes anymore.

“My cheek feels better now, thanks. I’m pretty tired. Could you show me where the bedroom is?”

He wanted to keep her there with him and ask her questions until she told him who had hurt her. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to guess that she was running from someone. Every cell in Chase’s body wanted to protect her, but even though that initial icy barrier had been broken, he knew she wasn’t anywhere near ready to trust him yet.

“The bedrooms are just down the hall,” he told her, but even though it was long past time to let her go, he couldn’t do it. Her warmth, her soft curves were too good, too right, for him to back away.

Chloe, unfortunately, had no problem moving out of his arms.

Since odds were a guy had done the number on her face, he wondered, was she married? Was this the work of an abusive husband?

Chase wasn’t in the habit of scanning ring fingers for diamonds, but it was important this time. There was no subtlety in his glance at her left hand. He didn’t even try to be subtle. Hell, she’d already seen his hard-on for her. Felt it, too. He’d promised to keep his hands off for the night. But he’d said nothing about the future. And he needed to know if she was being beaten up by the guy she was married to.

She was holding her hand clenched into a fist, but he couldn’t see a ring.

Good. That meant that once he found out what had happened to her, once she started to trust him, there wasn’t one single reason he couldn’t also begin a slow and steady seduction.

When he finally looked up at her face, she was staring back at him with that same irritation he’d seen in her eyes earlier, only with none of the accompanying amusement this time.

Busted.

“The bedroom?” She lifted an eyebrow. Way up. “You were going to show me where it was.”

He put his hands on her bag. “This way.”

She reached for it, too, and they played a ridiculous game of tug-of-war over the barf-green canvas bag for a few seconds. Chase knew he should just let her continue carrying it, but she couldn’t have been more than five foot five to his six-three and he figured he outweighed her by about eighty-or-so pounds. He could carry the damn bag for her.

Still clutching it in both her fists, she said, “You’ve really got a thing about carrying my bag, don’t you?”

He was holding firm to his side as he replied, “I was going to say the same to you.”

She dropped the bag so fast he stumbled back with it.

She shook her head and muttered, “I’ve never understood why men feel like they have to be so macho.”

“Wanting to help you with this bag isn’t macho.”

“You sure about that?”

“Maybe it’s just that my mother taught me right,” he countered, throwing her earlier words back at her.

He didn’t wait for her to argue some more…not when he was getting way too close to planting a kiss on that lovely smart mouth, whether she wanted him to or not.

He led the way down the hall to the master suite where he’d been planning to sleep. The other bedrooms were fully decked out with high-end mattresses, but he wanted Chloe to have the very best.

Chase opened the door and was about to reach for the light switch when he realized it was already on. It took his water-addled brain longer than it should have to realize that the bed wasn’t empty.

And a naked woman was waiting for him on it.

He’d forgotten all about Ellen, but she obviously hadn’t forgotten about him. If things had gone differently tonight—way differently—he would have been psyched to find her already stripped down and ready for him.