The butterfly bandage he’d gotten from the med-tech guys in jail hadn’t stood a chance in the ring and God only knew where it had ended up. Whatever, though, the cut was nothing special, just a split in the skin that was deep enough to give a blood show, but nothing to get hysterical about. He was going to have a scar—like that mattered?

He slapped a Band-Aid on the thing, and didn’t bother with the antibiotic stuff. He was far more likely to die from Smith & Wesson-related lead poisoning than any skin infection.

Out of the guest room. Down the stairs. By the time he got to the front hall, things had begun to ease off slightly at the hip level.

Until he came around the corner of the kitchen and saw Grier.

Oh, man.

If she was gorgeous in a little black dress, she was totally beddable in what was evidently her version of pajamas: men’s flannel boxers and an old green sweatshirt that read, CAMP DARTMOUTH. With white socks and a pair of schleppy slippers on her feet, she looked closer to college age than any kind of thirty . . . and the absence of makeup and fancy hair was actually a plus. Her skin was satin smooth and her pale eyes popped rather than got lost behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

Guess she wore contacts.

And her hair . . . it was so long, much longer than he’d thought, and vaguely wavy. He bet it smelled good and felt even better. . . .

She glanced over from the red bowl she was drying at the sink. “Find what you need upstairs?”

Not. Even. Close.

For good measure, he yanked at the bottom of the sweatshirt to make sure Mr. Happy was covered. And then he just watched her. Like he was some kind of idiot.

“Isaac?”

“Have you ever been married,” he asked quietly.

As her eyes flipped up to his, he knew how she felt: He couldn’t believe he’d thrown that out there, either.

Before he could backpedal, she pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, and said, “Ah, no. No, I haven’t. You?”

He shook his head and left it at that, because God knew he shouldn’t have opened the door in the first place.

“A girlfriend?” she asked, picking up the pan to dry it off.

“Never had one.” As her eyes shot back to his, he shrugged. “Not saying I haven’t had . . . er, been with . . .”

Holy. Hell. Was he blushing?

Okay, he so had to get away from her and out of town—and not just because Matthias was after his ass. This woman was turning him into someone he didn’t know.

“You just haven’t met the right person, I guess?” She bent down and put the bowl away, then came over with the pan to tuck it into the cabinets under the island. “That’s always the thing, isn’t it.”

“Among others.”