Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,5

to action. To tend to the wound. Open the dressing pack, pour in some antiseptic lotion, pick up the gauze, work away at the dried blood.

It was awkward and hurt like the blazes but she welcomed the distraction from her thoughts and her shaking hands settled with a familiar routine.

Two minutes later Luca strode through the door. Mia glanced up at him, feeling strangely naked with her blouse discarded. Which was ridiculous—she was more than adequately covered. She ignored him, returning to the task at hand.

Luca lounged against the table and smiled to himself as Mia barely acknowledged his arrival. ‘You’re making a mess of that,’ he mused.

Mia glared at him. ‘It’s a little difficult.’

‘I do believe I told you I would attend to your wound.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘But you don’t like asking for help, do you, little Mia?’

His slight accent gave his deep baritone a very sexy edge as it rolled over her. ‘It’s Mia, or Dr McKenzie. Please refrain from addressing me any other way.’

Luca chuckled as he pushed off the bench. ‘Okay, Mia.’ He sat on the chair next to her. ‘Allow me,’ he said as he picked up some gauze and dabbed at the wound.

Mia didn’t protest—she was making a hash of it anyway. His touch was gentle as he coaxed the dried blood from the cut and she shivered. His fingers were dark against her paler skin and long.

Her father had long fingers. A pianist’s hands. He was tall too, like Luca. He’d told her he was her prince and she was his princess and they’d be together for ever.

And then he’d left.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop it. Stop it.

Luca watched her. It was the first time he’d spent any length of time in her company and he was curious. He’d already noticed on their brief acquaintance she was a good-looking woman with a cute mouth and a sassy swagger.

But up close she was really quite exquisite.

Her face was long, as were her eyelashes. A frown appeared between her brows and her lips parted. She looked in pain.

‘Am I hurting you?’ he murmured.

Mia’s eyes fluttered open. How had he got that close? She could see the individual whiskers making up the smooth blue-black of his jaw and just make out the black pupil in the middle of his bottomless brown eyes. His hair, as dark as his eyes, was thick with a slight wave that brushed his forehead and the tops of his ears.

And his mouth. The full curve to that bottom lip was wicked.

His fingers stroked gently over her skin as he cleaned the wound and it reminded her it had been a while since a man had touched her.

She lowered her gaze to the column of his throat. ‘No.’

Luca was captivated by the slide show of emotions in her large blue eyes as magnificent and as transparent as a stained-glass window. The husky timbre of her voice wove between the bands of steel around his heart. ‘Are you okay?’

Mia nodded, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on his throat. The long tanned column of his neck was also shaded in blue-black smoothness. She remembered how she’d loved the sandpaper roughness of her father’s neck as he’d cuddled her close to read to her at night.

Damn it! She gripped the back of the chair hard. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ve been through an ordeal tonight. That knife came very close to—’

‘I said I’m fine,’ Mia interrupted, raising her face to scowl at him. ‘Just clean the damn wound.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCA paused in his ministrations for a moment, the blue of her eyes frosty now. He’d only known her for a few short weeks and while he’d been impressed with her empathy for patients and her good rapport with her colleagues he’d also sensed she was a woman who preferred to keep herself pretty much to herself.

But she’d always been polite about it.

Something was definitely eating at Mia McKenzie tonight.

He shifted his attention back to the wound.

‘It’s borderline,’ he mused, looking at the clean ten-centimetre laceration. ‘It’s deeper laterally, could probably do with a couple of sutures there.’

Mia nodded to the pile of medical supplies on the table. ‘Steri-strips there somewhere.’

‘Sutures would be better.’

‘Steri-strips will be fine.’

‘The scarring will be worse if we use steri-strips.’

Mia shrugged. ‘I don’t care about a scar.’

Luca looked at her for a moment then fished around for the strips. ‘Most women would,’ he murmured when he located them. He doubted he’d ever been with a single woman who didn’t