Tender Loving Care. Susan Mallery

to remember that now. It was enough that Melissa had returned their relationship to its comfortable footing.

      “Okay to the bath,” he said.

      “I’ll go run the water.”

      He felt the mattress shift. Her fragrance lingered in the room, then faded. Logan swung his legs over the side of the bed, then rose and started toward the bathroom. He was almost at the door when something…or someone ran into him. Putting out his hands to keep them both from falling, he grabbed Melissa’s soft arms.

      “Yikes! Where did you come from?” she asked.

      “Scared you?” He ran his thumb in circles on her skin, then stepped back when he realized what he was doing. No touching…at least no sexual touching. He’d be damned if she was going to acquiesce simply because he was her patient. When he took Melissa to his bed, she’d be burning up as much as he was….

      Where had that come from? No relationships, that was his rule. She’d barely been in his house twenty-four hours, and already he was having thoughts he had no business thinking. He leaned against the wall and brushed back his hair.

      “The water’s ready,” she said. Taking his hand, she led him into the bathroom. “The towel’s right here, and there’s the tub. Do you need any help?”

      He could still feel the lingering hardness from their recent encounter. “I’ll be fine.” He started untying his robe.

      “Call me when you’re done and I’ll shave you.”

      “I don’t think so.”

      She sighed in exasperation. “Do you have an electric razor?”

      “Do I look like the kind of guy to use an electric razor?”

      “Logan, you can’t shave yourself. End of argument. Get in the tube before I throw you in myself.”

      “Cheap talk.”

      “Lo-gan.”

      He held up his hands. “I’m getting, I’m getting. Shut the door.”

      He was still laughing when he heard her pull it closed with a bang.

      

      “Hold still.” Melissa glared at her patient, but it didn’t seem to do any good.

      “This isn’t my idea of a good time.” Logan moved again on the chair.

      “I have a very sharp razor in my hand. Now we can complete this operation with or without blood. The choice is yours.”

      He mumbled something unintelligible and was still. Melissa tilted his jaw toward the left and began to work. The burns from the sandblast were healing nicely, but he flinched as the sharp steel slipped over the welts.

      “I know,” she said. “I’m being careful.”

      He was still damp from his bath. Droplets of water clung to his chest hair, individual prisms catching and reflecting the light. A white towel was wrapped casually at his waist. The contrast between the soft terry cloth and his tanned skin made her nervous. Part of her wanted to rip away the barrier and plead with him to take her; the other part wanted to get into her car and drive until she’d forgotten that Logan Phillips ever existed.

      “Have you ever been married?” he asked.

      “Didn’t I already answer that?”

      “No. You said you weren’t married now.”

      “Fair enough. I’ve never been married.”

      “How old are you?”

      “Twenty-eight. Why are you so interested in me and my personal life? I promise, it’s not the least bit exciting.”

      “I feel strange having you know so much about me, physically I mean, and I don’t even know what you look like.”

      She finished shaving him and wiped his face with a damp washcloth. “You’ll see me in about five days. I think you can contain yourself until then. Here.” She thrust some clothes at him. “Get dressed. Then we’re having lunch in the kitchen. Afterwards, if you’re very good, I’ll let you call the office again.”

      He stood up and looked down at her. Even with the bandages, he was intimidating. What color were his eyes? she wondered. Green like Wendi’s? Or maybe blue or brown? She had to wait the same five days to find out.

      “Who died and left you in charge?” he asked.

      “Mr. Anderson. He’s signing my check.”

      

      Logan turned toward the house when he heard another burst of laughter. A breeze had sprung up in the late afternoon and was chasing away the heat of the June day. The French doors leading to the living room and kitchen were open. He couldn’t hear the entire conversation between Melissa and his daughter, but snatches drifted out to him. The sentence fragments had to do with clothes and boys and who liked whom.

      There was a cry of “Oh, no,” followed by silence, then more laughter. He thought about getting up to investigate, but by the time he’d made his tortuous way into the house, whatever crisis existed would have already passed.

      “You’d better be hungry, Dad, because there’s a ton of food.”

      Wendi’s voice was accompanied by the slap of her sandals on the cement patio. He was seated at the picnic table by the pool. “What were you two having such a good time about?” He smelled Melissa’s perfume before he heard her soft chuckle.

      “I was having a little trouble with the indoor grill,” she said.

      “Yeah, you should have seen how high the flames—”

      “Wendi!” Melissa said.

      “But it was great. Anyway, none of the chicken burned. And I made the salad.”

      His Wendi had helped in the kitchen? The same daughter who measured every action on a scale of how cool it would make her look? Logan shook his head in disbelief. “I’m impressed.”

      “You should be. It’s so much work. Tearing up all that lettuce, then cutting up everything. Next time, let’s go to a salad bar.”

      He instinctively turned toward Melissa before he remembered that they couldn’t share an amused glance over the girl’s head. In fact, for all he knew, she wasn’t looking at him at all. Frustration knotted up inside him and dampened his enthusiasm for the meal.

      “Breast or thigh?” Melissa asked.

      “Excuse me?”

      Wendi giggled. “She means the chicken, Dad. Jeez.”

      “I knew that. Thigh, please.”

      When Melissa had finished serving the meal, she began the now-familiar task of pointing out where his food was located. “Good luck with the salad,” she murmured. He could feel her soft breath in his ear. “I wasn’t sure you’d want any, but certain people were quite insistent.”

      “Just tell me if I have dressing on my chin or lettuce in my teeth.”

      It took most of his concentration to get the food from the plate into his mouth, without any serious mishaps in between, so he simply listened to the talk flowing around him. Wendi was her normal exuberant self. In Melissa’s presence, she seemed to have shed some of the hard cynical edge she’d been developing as she grew up. If only he could keep her his little girl forever.

      “We’re going to have pork chops tomorrow, Dad. Then Mexican the next night.”

      He carefully wiped his mouth with the napkin and turned his head toward Melissa. “I don’t expect you to cook every night. We can have something brought in.”

      “I don’t mind, Logan. Besides, I don’t think you’re ready to use chopsticks or wrestle with spaghetti.”

      “You