Jillian woke with a killer headache, and half off the couch. Her father stood over her, with his arms crossed. “Ok. To your room. You’ve slept all afternoon. Taking up couch space. To your room and let Rafe take a look at your head. You’ve worried me, young lady.”

Jillian stood and rubbed her eyes. She took a look around.

Well, everyone who’d been there when she’d fallen asleep was gone.

Mostly.

One man was still there.

Her father pointed. Jillian obeyed, just because she didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment, thank you very much.

Never mind that she didn’t know what to do about Rafe being there.

When she realized he’d followed her down the hall instead of her father, Jillian yelped.

Her room wasn’t exactly the place for a man Rafe’s size.

She wasn’t used to a man in her room. Not at her father’s house.

Come to think of it, the few relationships she’d had had occurred elsewhere. Never in the room she was in now. That he was there for a strictly platonic reason still didn’t reduce the freaked out aspect of it.

She thought he was there platonically. She certainly hadn’t asked him to follow her down the hall.

Her head was too fuzzy to think straight, that was for certain.

Rafe dwarfed her small bedroom completely. How could he not? His shoulders were thirty feet wide, after all.

When he lifted her right off her feet and placed her on the white wooden desk that had been hers as a teenager, Jillian let out a stupid squeak. “What are you doing in here?”

“Not what I want to, that’s for sure. You, me, a bed...you can do the math. How’s the head?”

“Spinning. And not because you’re so close, so don’t even think it.” Although he did smell really good. And his arms felt really good where she still clutched him closely. Jillian pulled her hands back quickly.

“Ha-ha. Let me see.”

“You know, you didn’t have to follow me. Lacy could have even done this before she left. Not like the two of you haven’t been hovering all day,” she grumbled up at him just because he deserved it. The few times she’d woken today, either he or Lacy had been looming over her. Checking her pupils and everything annoying like that.

Because they cared. She hadn’t forgotten that.

Rafe grabbed his penlight from his pocket—why did he carry a penlight? That was so weird. Rafe was so weird. She bet he’d been a boy scout or something. All have-everything, prepared-for-everything. All fix any problem.

Well...she had to admit, other than him being a problem for her, he had fixed just about everything except Lanning. And he’d been there to clean up that jerk’s mess every time she’d needed him to. She tolerated him checking her pupils and her pulse—which he didn’t need to do, his fingers scorched her skin where he touched—for just long enough. “Ok. I’m done playing doctor/nurse. Time you got out of my parlor.”

“I’m hardly a spider. Where do you get these little quips of yours? I think you secretly write them down and keep them to shoot at me later. Pupils dilating as they should. I think you’re going to be just fine, Nurse Jillian, and I’m more than willing to play doctor/nurse with you. Want me to show you my stethoscope? I think it’s in my pocket, if you want to take a look.”

All joking aside, this sudden attraction between them freaked Jillian out. She wouldn’t lie to herself about that. “I don’t want to be attracted to you. I don’t want the jokes or the looks or the you in my space, Rafe. You’re...you’re too much. On top of what’s already going on inside my head. I’m not ready for anything more than getting my life back to normal. You, Dr. Holden-Deane, are anything but normal.”

“I’m not sure what to say.”

She felt him pull away, felt a wall of reserve suddenly between them. Anxiety rose in her chest. “Don’t be that way.”

“What way, Jillian? This is about what happened at my place the other night.”

She nodded, leaning her head down until she wasn’t looking straight into his demon-dark eyes. “Not that I...you...I can’t. I can’t be attracted to anyone right now. It’ll change everything, don’t you understand that? You’re you. It can’t just be casual, even if I wanted it to. Not with Travis and Ari...and...Paige and the rest. And Elliot and Chance and the family that’s all around us. I just can’t.”