Plain-Jane Princess

“Judas Priest, lady!” Steven carefully untangled limbs from bicycle, letting it fall with a loud clatter off to the side before squatting beside her. “What the Sam Hill are you doing way out here at this time of the morning?”

She thought, briefly, of sitting up, decided against it. “Are you always this solicitous when people land in a heap in your bushes?” She tried moving the other arm, peered up at him. “Or aren’t these your bushes?”

“These aren’t anybody’s bushes. They’re squatters. Lie still, for godssake.”

Sophie suddenly realized Steven’s brusqueness stemmed from concern, not rudeness. He’d transferred the youngest child, an adorable little thing with long dark hair and bangs that practically fell into her equally dark eyes, to a taller, more slender girl on the cusp of adolescence, then set about gently feeling for broken bones. Or so she assumed.

All four children, she realized, looked remarkably like each other. And absolutely nothing like Steven.

“These your children?” she asked.

His glance was nearly as brief as his answer. “For all intents and purposes.”

She angled her neck to watch his deft progress down one leg, determined not to react. Right. The sexiest man she’d ever met with the strongest, gentlest, most efficient hands she’d ever felt was taking his time skimming those hands over her flesh and she wasn’t going to react? A bit worse for wear, she might have been, but she wasn’t dead, and the parts that weren’t shrieking in agony were very aware that this man in a white, tight T-shirt was something definitely worth waking up the hormones for. Just to look, unfortunately, but it had been a looooong time since her eyes had been anywhere near such a feast.

Perhaps focusing on his face would distract her from his hands.

Oh, all right—so it had been a long shot.

His expression was earnest and focused, she was reasonably sure, solely on her skeletal structure. So she followed suit. Cheeks. Jaw. High, broad forehead. His brows and lashes were as pale as his hair, which for some reason she’d always found off-putting before this.

“I suppose—” She swallowed, tried to reestablish saliva flow. “I suppose you know what you’re doing?”

“Well enough.” Apparently satisfied, he started in on the other leg.

“The lady gots lots of boo-boos,” the littlest one pronounced in a voice that, in twenty years or so, was going to rival Greta Garbo’s.

“She sure does, honey,” Steven said, never taking his eyes off Sophie’s leg.

“C’n I give her some of my bandy-aids?”

“Sure thing…what?” This last was directed at Sophie, who’d feebly raised one hand.

“I realize I might regret dispensing this tidbit of information, but I didn’t land on my, um, legs.”

His hands stilled as he slowly twisted to face her, allowing her to see that, judging from his terrible attempt at keeping his expression blank, he understood. “I see.” And then the smile blossomed, wicked and sweet and just this side of cocky. And if she hadn’t already had the wind knocked out of her, the smile would have done it for sure. “And I don’t suppose I need to check that out for broken bones, huh?”

Oh, dear, but that grin was deadly.

And just like that, her imagination conjured up a very brunette woman with remarkably dominant genes who’d undoubtedly helped create all these children.

“A very astute observation,” Sophie said, deciding the time had come to haul herself upright and be on her way.

“Wow, lady—” This from an older child she hadn’t noticed before, a youngish teenager with close-cropped, nearly black hair. Which meant there were five children. And also meant that Steven had gotten a very early start in the reproductive phase of his life, since the kid looked at least fourteen or so, and Steven, she surmised, couldn’t be more than in his mid-thirties. The kid was inspecting her bicycle, which she could tell, even from this angle, wasn’t going to be transporting anyone, anywhere, anytime too soon. “You like totally demolished this.”

She silently swore, then began the arduous task of gathering together assorted body parts and convincing them to work together just long enough to get upright. She’d tackle actual movement at a later date.

“What are you doing?”

Clutching the splintery post-and-rail fence for support, Sophie shot Steven a glance, then decided, no, she needed every scrap of effort she possessed to accomplish this one task. “Standing up, if everything will cooperate long enough to accomplish my objective.”

The initial excitement over, the children had begun to drift back toward the house. Steven crossed his arms over his chest, clearly waiting.

“Hold on, hold on,” she said, feebly swatting in his direction. “I’m working on it.” She tried not to let him see her grit her teeth as she forced Leg One in front of Leg Two. Oh, for heaven’s sake—she wasn’t seriously injured. So why did it hurt so bloody much?

“Got any idea when you might be planning on taking a second step, here?”

She fought down the urge to laugh, if for no other reason that she was sure that would hurt, too. “Oh, you are just a paragon of patience, aren’t you?”

“Got me a bumper sticker that says just that,” he said without missing a beat, then announced, “Let me carry you to the house—”

“Like bloody hell!”

“Lady, if this is part of your I-gotta-be-me routine, I don’t have time, okay? I’ve got four kids to get to school, my housekeeper just drove away in her huff—”

She swatted a hank of hair out of her face. “That was your housekeeper who nearly did me in?”

“Up until ten minutes ago, yeah. Number four in a series. Which means now I’m going to have to sweet-talk my mother into baby-sitting for the little one so I can go to work. So, right now, I’m not in the best mood, okay?”

“Baby-sitting?” Sophie blinked, confused, then said, “Oooh…your wife works, too, then?”

A frown pleated his brow for a moment, as if he was wondering how she’d made such a bizarre leap in the conversation. “Wife?” Then his expression cleared. “Oh. Because of the kids. I get it.” Then he shook his head. “Nope. No wife. Now let’s go.”

He took a step toward her; her hand shot up even as her brain tried to force this latest information into a slot marked Of No Consequence. “Mr. Koleski, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your situation, really. It’s just that—” She bit her lip. “It’s going to hurt.”

His expression softened, as did his voice. “It’s going to hurt just as much to walk. At least this way will be quicker. And I’ll try to be as careful as I can, okay?” He came around to her side, held out his arms.

“Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll catch up later?”

“Why don’t you just grit your teeth and let me help you?” he said, squatting slightly, then scooping her up into his arms. She sucked in a sharp breath as tears stung her eyes.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” he said against her temple. “You okay?”

No, she was definitely not okay. But not because she hurt, which she did, but because the last thing she needed was to have some man who looked like this and smelled like this and smiled like this carrying her around like this.

“Just…don’t dawdle,” she said under her breath, and he chuckled.

He carried her in silence for a couple of seconds, his athletic shoes crunching against the dirt driveway as they approached the tree-shaded, two-story house that seemed to be growing with much the same abandon as the out-of-control lilac lunging halfway across the front steps. Not to mention the herd of profusely blooming rose bushes in a drunken tangle off to one side of the house. But the lawn had been recently mowed, and even though the house could use a new coat of white paint, the deep green shutters were all perfectly aligned, the screens in the windows obviously new. A frenzied squawking erupted from the back of the house, only to just as immediately subside. A second later, the dog came trotting out from behind the house, tongue lolling, looking inordinately pleased with himself. A giggle of pure delight bubbled up from Sophie’s chest.

“You have chickens?”

“Not to mention several rabbits, God-knows-how-many cats and a pygmy goat. So tell me something.”

She carefully twisted her neck to look up at him, only to realize how close their faces were. He’d just shaved, obviously, his skin the smoothest it would be all day, still tingling a bit, no doubt, from his aftershave…

“W-what?” she managed, clicking back to the right channel.

“Where’d you get that accent?”