Page 28 of Wilde Nights in Paradise

He winced. “Painful.”

As he straightened, Libby cleared her throat. “Um, Jude, you do know you’re still in your underwear, right?”

“I’m aware.”

“And that you ran out in public like that?”

“Eh.” He waved a hand, but decided that maybe it was time to pull on some shorts. “Key West is like Vegas. What happens here, stays here. I’ll get dressed, maybe pop us some corn.” He handed her the remote, and the quilt fell away as she reached for it. Angry red lines marred the soft flesh of her arm.

“What the hell?” Forgetting about everything else, he caught her wrist and turned her arm over when she tried to hide the marks. “That fucking cat.”

“Don’t be mad at him.” She tugged, trying to loosen his grip. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Bullshit. He scratched the hell out of you.” Jude ran his fingers gently over the scratches, then dropped her wrist and changed course for the small bathroom off the living room. He tore open cupboards, looking for the first-aid kit that Seth kept there. It had seen a lot of use during their partying days, always kept well stocked with everything from antiseptic cream to sutures to IV bags and tubing. He found it and started back across the living room. “I need to clean you up.”

“Why?”

“Because that cat shits in a box and then digs through it. I can’t even begin to guess the kinds of bacteria he carries around on his paws.”

“Not that. I agree that I need to clean these scratches, but…why do you care?”

Her words hit him with the force of a surface-to-air missile, and he stopped short halfway across the living room. Why did he care? The question implied awe and disbelief, as if he were doing something so far out of the realm of her understanding she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. And, damn, that hurt, because he’d never stopped caring. For him, it was a fact of life—inevitable, like the spin of the Earth on its axis. No matter what he did, thought, or pretended, Elizabeth Pruitt was always going to mean something to him.

Not like he could tell her that. No, he’d had his reasons for ending things with her the way he had—reasons that still applied. So instead of saying any of the thoughts on his mind, he answered, “It’s my job. Your father hired Wilde Security to keep you safe from everything, including cats.”

She frowned. “Sam was just scared.”

“Scared or not, all cats are insane,” he said and settled onto the couch next to her. He set the first-aid kit on the coffee table, flipped it open, and searched for the antiseptic pads.

“Wait, let me get this straight.” She held up her hands to stop him from dabbing any of the scratches. “You like freaky giant lizards, but not cats?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Cats always look like they’re plotting your demise.”

“And the lizard wasn’t?”

“Nah. He just wanted to steal a flower or two.” He caught her wrist and slapped one of the pads over the scratches.

She hissed through her teeth. “Youare the only insane one in this room.”

“So you’ve said. Repeatedly. Now hold still. It doesn’t hurt.”

She grumbled, but let him finish tending to her arm. After a long moment, she muttered, “You’re kind of good at this.”

“I had some battlefield medical training.”

“All so you could tend to cat scratches.”

“Yeah, well.” With a shrug, he packed up the kit and started gathering the used bandage wrappers. “I’d much rather be here, dealing with cat scratches, than over there, dealing with a buddy’s bullet wound.”

“God. That was so insensitive of me. I apologize. I’m still shaken, I guess.” She hesitated, swallowed hard. “Did you ever see one? A bullet wound?”

“And worse.”

She bit her lower lip. “Were you…?”

“No, I never took a bullet.”

“But you were shot at?”

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