Fortune's Legacy by Maureen Child

rise.
    â€œYou’re freezing, Kyra,” Garrett stated flatly. “We’ve got to get you warm again.”
    She paid no attention to him. She was much too busy trying to soak in as much heat as she could. She welcomed the uncomfortable stinging on her skin because she knew it meant she was thawing out.
    Garrett, meanwhile, stripped off his own coat, then went to work on her. “What’re you doing?” she yelped, and tried to fend off his hands.
    â€œI’m getting you out of those wet clothes.”
    â€œLike hell!” She scooted backward, slapping at his hands, pushing at him, and still, in her numbed condition, losing the battle.
    In a few minutes, he not only had her out of her coat, but stripped down to her underwear. She should have been mortified; instead she was furious.
    â€œGet away from me, you jerk,” she snapped, and tried to grab back her shirt to hold in front of her.
    â€œI’m not looking to get lucky here, Kyra.” His voice was clipped and just as furious as hers. “I’m trying to keep you from getting frostbite.”
    Great. A man finally sees her in her brand-new matching, red lace bra and panties, and it’s only because he’s trying to play doctor. Yes, she was icy-cold right down to her bones. But she’d have preferred keeping her wet clothes on than to be undressed and ignored by Garrett Wolff.
    â€œBy stripping me in a freezing cabin? Good thinking, Einstein.”
    â€œGod, you’re a pain in the ass,” he muttered, and pushed himself to his feet. Grabbing a blanket off the back of the closest chair, he wrapped it around her, and through the fabric briskly rubbed her arms and back, trying to speed up her circulation.
    â€œ I’m a pain in the ass?” she countered, refusing to admit, even to herself, how good it felt to have him rubbing the iciness out of her skin. “ I’m not the one pushing you around.”
    â€œI’m not the one acting like a spoiled infant when someone’s trying to help her.”
    â€œInfant?” She slapped his hands away, shoved at his chest, then drew her knees up and wrapped the blanket around her as tightly as she could. Pointless as it was now to try for dignity, she gave it a shot, anyway. “I wonder how you’d like it.”
    His features tightened and his mouth flattened into a grim slash of determination. “I’m sure I wouldn’t. But just maybe I’d try to remember that whoever was ordering me around was trying to help.”
    Okay, maybe she was overreacting a little. But come on. What woman wouldn’t have fought him on that? He’d stripped her down like she was a cranky two-year-old! The fact that she wasn’t nearly as cold as she had been didn’t really matter. Sure, he’d helped. But it was the way he’d helped she was taking issue with.
    â€œYou’re thinking.”
    â€œIs that against the rules?” she snapped.
    â€œNot if it keeps you quiet,” he told her.
    â€œNice. Very nice.” Then her eyes widened. “What the hell are you doing now?”
    â€œI’m getting me warm again.” He stood up, undid his shirt buttons and tossed the soaking fabric to one side. Then, while Kyra watched, he stepped out of his shoes, took off his socks and pulled his slacks down and off.
    She couldn’t stop looking at him.
    It had been like opening a badly wrapped present to find something fabulous inside.
    His chest was broad and tanned, with a sprinkling of curly blond hair drifting down across his flat, muscledabdomen to disappear beneath the waistband of his dark blue boxers.
    He was built like a cover model, and Kyra hoped to God she wasn’t drooling.
    Grabbing another blanket from the end of the sofa, Garrett wrapped it around his shoulders, then sat down in front of the fire beside her. Glancing at her, he asked, “What?”
    â€œNothing,” she said, shaking her head as