“Then I’ll check it out, give you a couple of aspirin and see if we can make it go again. Come on, Cal.” She took the cloth from him and led him to a chair. “Be a good boy.”

He sat down, flicking her a glance of amused exasperation. “You sound like my mother.”

She patted his cheek in reply before taking fresh bandages and antiseptic from a cupboard. “Just sit still.” She uncovered the wound, frowning over it in a way that made him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Sit still,” she murmured. It was a nasty cut, jagged and deep. Bruises the color of storm clouds bloomed around it. “It looks better. At least there doesn’t seem to be any infection. You’ll have a scar.”

Appalled, he lifted his fingers to the wound. “A scar?”

So he was vain, she thought, more than a little amused. “Don’t worry, it’ll look dashing. I’d be happier if you’d had a few stitches, but I think that’s more than my Sears and Roebuck degree can handle.”

“Your what?”

“Just a joke. This’ll sting some.”

He swore, loudly and richly, when she cleaned the wound. Before she was half finished, he grabbed her wrist. “Sting? Some?”

“Toughen up, Hornblower. Think about something else.”

He set his teeth and concentrated on her face. The burning pushed his breath out in a hiss. Her eyes reflected both determination and understanding as she went competently about cleaning, treating and bandaging the wound.

She really was beautiful, he realized as he studied her in the watery early sunlight. It wasn’t cosmetics, and it was highly unlikely that there had been any restructuring. This was the face she’d been born with. Strong, sharp, and with a natural elegance that made him long to stroke her cheek again. Her skin had been soft, he remembered, baby-smooth. And color had rushed in and out of it as her emotions had shifted.

Perhaps, just perhaps, she was an ordinary woman of her time. But to him she was unique and almost unbearably desirable.

That was why she made him ache, Cal told himself as he felt the muscles in his stomach knot and stretch. That was why she made him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything before, more than it was possible for him to want now. She was real, he reminded himself. But it was he who was the illusion. A man who had never been born, yet one who felt as though he had never been more alive.

“Do you do this often?” he asked her.

She hated knowing she was causing him pain, and she answered absently, “Do what often?”

“Rescue men.”

He watched her lips curve and could almost taste them. “You’re my first.”

“Good.”

“There, that should do.”

“Aren’t you going to kiss it and make it better?” His mother had always done so, as he imagined mothers had done for all time. When she laughed, he felt his heart lurch in his chest.