“Damn that dragon,” Skyler muttered to herself.

 

His suggestion hadn’t been all that unappealing and that bothered her. When he had invited her to straddle his lap, the idea had struck her as being rather than crude. He did look appealing despite being paralyzed and sick. She bet that many of the ladies out there would love to be in her predicament.

 

She let out a deep sigh. Male patients commonly made obscene remarks and propositions as a mean of venting out their frustrations. Ordinarily she dismissed the lewd comments with a chastising put-down or a flippant joke seconds after they were uttered. Yet, almost ten hours later, Jiyong’s words were still echoing through her mind. Disturbing.

 

Not only disturbing, but farfetched. How could a man who couldn’t even move, move her? Other men were never able to make her feel such emotions before. And here, Jiyong, the infamous Kwon Jiyong, CEO of Hotel Kwon Conglomerate, younger brother to her sae-eonni, the very one man whom she despise with every fiber in her, managed to get under her skin and moved her.

 

Why did it seem that all her senses were more finely tuned this morning? Perhaps it was the tropical setting. Nothing could hold a candle to Jiyong’s mountain retreat. The landscape was gorgeous, the colors vivid, the climate balmy, the air perfumed with heady fragrance of Polynesian blossoms. The house was an architectural triumph that maximized the vistas beyond its stucco walls and enormous windows. The décor was harmonious but eclectic, reflecting Jiyong’s variety of interests and tastes.

 

Luxurious as they were though, Skyler didn’t think her surroundings were solely responsible for her sensual awareness. On the other hand, it was flawed to think that Kwon Jiyong might be. 

 

Again, she didn’t like him. Not at all. When Oppa first introduced her to him, it took her only a few second to sum him up – a smooth operator. She could see that he was accustomed to ordering, “Jump!” and a whole corps of subordinates would jump. Not only his bankroll, but his natural charm and Kpop idol good looks had lured scores of cosmopolitan women to his side. His newsworthy romantic liaisons were enough to make Skyler snicker with contempt. Men like Kwon Jiyong had certainly never held any appeal for her.

 

Granted, Jiyong did have a few virtues to his credit. He generously supported numerous charities. He loved Shane’s children and treated them with care and concern whenever he visited them. He accepted Nathan and Natasha with open arms. He was a perfect uncle to them that at times, she felt inadequate whenever he was around.

 

Aside from that, however, Skyler had always been suspicious of him. As she had told her brother, she mistrusted anyone as polished as he. There must be some personality flaw that was as ruinous as a deep fault in a seemingly perfect diamond. He could be that perfect.

 

So why did her stomach go all aquiver whenever she thought about his kiss? When she had whipped that sheet back, she had wanted to impress him with how blasé she was towards the male body. But well, her plan had backfired. It turned out that she was the one who had been impressed. And in the wrong way.

 

Through the night, she had gone into his room at two-hour intervals to turn him. The first time her efforts had been met with vile cursing and name-calling. She had ignored it and forced him onto his side.

 

“Comfy?”

 

“Go to hell.”

 

Good night.”

 

The next time her alarm when off and she stumbled into his room, he was in his sleep. She rolled him to his back and there were tears on his cheeks. It was apparent to her that the dragon was affected by the accident and was having nightmares about it.

 

She had turned him to his other side, adjusted the sheet and withdrew without him ever awakening from his nightmare. She didn’t leave until his tortured monologue had ceased and his breathing had become regular. He slept, or pretended to sleep; through the other times she had turned him. Each time she touched his warm skin she experienced a sensation, not unlike light-headedness, in her lower abdomen.

 

Crazy. For her to get jelly-kneed over any man. Kwon Jiyong? She truly must be crazy.

 

Pulling on white shorts and a white T-shirt with a huge red hibiscus flower silk-screened on the front, she left her bedroom.

 

“God bless you Kang Daesung,” she told him when she entered the kitchen and her nose picked up the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Grinning from ear to ear, he poured a cup and passed it to her.

 

“Ham, eggs, pancakes?” he asked.

 

“No thanks. But the fruit looks good.”

 

Daesung had been arranging slices of mango, papaya and pineapple on a platter when she came in.

 

“And a slice of wheat toast please. Any word from upstairs?”

 

“Well, he wanted to pee. So I told him to use the bedpan. Then he exploded saying that he don’t pee in pan anymore,” Daesung rolled his eyes. Sometimes his boss can be a pain in the , especially when things did not go his way.

 

Skyler laughed while she ate her light breakfast.

 

“Good. Maybe that’ll inspire him to get into a wheelchair so he can use the bathroom.”

 

She dusted toast crumbs off her hands.

 

“Thanks for the breakfast. Now it’s my time to attack. Is his tray ready?”

 

Skyler declined Daesung’s assistance and carried the tray up herself. Knocking once, she immediately pushed open the door.

 

“Good morn” the second syllable died on her lips. She barely managed to set the tray on a credenza before rushing across the room towards Jiyong’s bed.

 

“Good God, what is it?”

 

Jiyong’s face was twisted with agony. His lips were thin and white and stretched open to reveal clenched teeth.

 

“Left thigh. Cramp,” he gasped.

 

Skyler flung back the sheet and gave his left thigh a cursory examination. The instant she touched the contracted muscle, she knew what it was.

 

“Spasticity.”

 

Her capable hands massaged the leg muscle. Jiyong cried out in pain twice.

 

“Do you want painkillers?”

 

“No. I hate not being in control of my own mind.”

 

“Don’t be proud. If you need a painkill”

 

“No pills!” he shouted.

 

“Fine!” Skyler shouted right back.

 

Thankfully her touch was kinder than her tone of voice. She continued to massage his thigh. Finally the muscle begin to relax and with it, his grimace of pain.

 

“Thanks,” he said, opening his eyes slowly.

 

“Damn. That was… Ya! What are you grinning at? I’m in pain and here you are grinning. Talk about lack of sympathy for the ill.”

 

“Are you dense? You are dense. That’s a good sign, you idiot. The muscles aren’t flaccid anymore.”

 

He stared up at her for a moment. When the reason for her smile registered with him, he reciprocated with a wide one of his own.

 

“What does the spasticity mean?”

 

“It probably means that the swelling has gone down and relieved the pressure around the vertebrate affecting those muscles. Can you feel this?” she pinched his bare thigh.

 

He gave her a baleful look.

 

“It’s a good thing for you that all I feel is pressure, no pain.”

 

“But you can feel the pressure?”

 

Jiyong nodded.

 

“How about here?” she squeezed the muscle above his knee.

 

“No.”

 

“Here?” she ran her finger up the sole of his foot.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Don’t look discouraged. The sensation will start in your thighs and work down. How about your right thigh?”

 

She scratched it lightly with her fingernail. He said nothing. When she raised inquisitive eyes toward him, he was staring at the spot where her hand was resting high on his thigh.

 

“Pressure,” he said gruffly, reaching for the sheet and pulling it up. He was slightly affected by Skyler’s unintentional intimate touch. Though he merely felt just a slight pressure, the effect of it went to places he didn’t have control over. Skyler immediately turned away once she realized how intimate her touches were. She didn’t want him to notice that she was affected by it.

 

“Great. That’s terrific news. Although it means that you’ll be quite uncomfortable when those muscles contract,” Skyler put on an extra bright smile.

 

“We’ll be spending more time together, working harder and more often,” she went on with brisk efficiency, on thing that she was confident about.

 

“I’ll have to notify Dr. Coi TOP or whatever his name is. He’ll want to examine you. I’ll call him while you’re eating.” She bridged his lap with the bed tray and left the room before he could say anything. Jiyong merely looked at her retreating figure with a mixed feeling of disappointment and relief.

 

When Skyler got to her bedroom, which Daesung had already straightened in her brief absence, she reached for her mobile phone on the nightstand and dialed a number. But it wasn’t Dr. Choi who answered.

 

“Oppa, it’s me.”

 

“Hey! How are you? Trip’s going okay?”

 

“Oppa, don’t you dare pull this sweet brotherly act with me. I don’t feel like being civil with you. I’m actually furious with you,” Skyler growled at her brother.

 

“Furious? With me? Wae?”

 

“You were no doubt in on the conspiracy with sae-eonni. Just because she’s your wife, you forsake your sister.”

 

“What conspiracy is that, Sky?”

 

“You know damn well what conspiracy. The one you and sae-eonni cooked up to have me stranded on an island with Korea’s equivalent to Conrad Hilton.”

 

“Hardly stranded. And hardly an island, dongsaeng-ah. I heard Maui is beautiful. I’ve always wanted to go there. I should bring Dami and the kids there next summer.”

 

“Oppa!”

 

“I’ve had second thoughts. I don’t want this lousy job. He’s horrible. Awful. Worst than I expected. He’s been verbally and physically abusive.”

 

“Physically? How can a paralyzed man be physically abusive?” Shane asked, sounded incredulous at his sister’s words.

 

He kissed me until my ears rang and I ended up staying awake thinking about his lips on mine. But she obviously couldn’t say that. Instead she stammered around for a moment before finally coming up with an answer.

 

“He threw a drinking glass at me.”

 

“And hit you with it?! Jagi-ya, come here. It’s Sky. Apparently Jiyong threw a glass at her.”

 

Skyler heard shuffling sounds as the receiver was transferred to her sae-eonni’s hand. She also heard Natasha’s voice in the background requesting to speak to her but she was hushed by both parents. Finally Dami’s worried voice reached her.

 

“Jiyong-ie threw a glass at you? That doesn’t sound like something he would do.”

 

Skyler cursed under her breath, trying to control her annoyance. She understood how much her sae-eonni loved her younger brother. But it seemed that he almost never showed his bad side to her. Skyler had always been on the receiving end of his bad tempers and attitudes.

 

“Sae-eonni, I don’t mean to be rude but I told you already. When something like this happens to a man, his whole personality undergoes a change. At least temporarily. And usually for the worst.”

 

“I know how much you love Jiyong but I never like him to begin with. And I’m sure don’t like him now.”

 

“Did you know anything to provoke him?”

 

“Sae-eonni!”

 

“Mianhae Sky. It’s just that, you are you while Jiyong is well, Jiyong.”

 

“Sae-eonni, I’ve been strictly professional. I haven’t done anything to provoke him since I got here.”

 

She thought about the salad bar earrings and the theatrical way she’d unfurled the bedsheet but decided that, all things considered, what she told Dami was basically the truth.

 

“Jiyong is impossible. This situation is impossible. I agreed to work with him in a hospital, with other staff around to help buffer his angst. Staying here alone with him is something else entirely. You coerced me into it. And I want to come home. Today. Right now.”

 

“What’s she saying?” Skyler heard Shane ask.

 

“That she wants to come home.”

 

“I was afraid of this, Jagi-ya. They’re like fire and water. They just don’t mix.”

 

“But she’s the best therapist we know. And Jiyong is my only brother. Here, you talk to her. My close relationship with Jiyong might make her feel like I’m being selfish towards Jiyong.”

 

Skyler sighed. She didn’t mean for Dami to feel that way. Now she felt more ty about the situation and herself but she wouldn’t back down. She too had a right on the situation for she was the one having to suffer through Jiyong’s temper tantrums.

 

“Skyler,” Shane began.

 

“Oppa, coming to Maui wasn’t part of the deal. I was supposed to treat this idiotic dragon in the hospital.”

 

“Come on Sky. It can’t be all bad.”

 

“I didn’t say it was all bad. This house could be a replacement for the Blue House. There’s a sweet Daesung, Jiyong’s housekeeper, who is a cross between an angel and a slave from the way he is being treated by Jiyong.”

 

“At least he is the only one that thinks I’m wonderful and waits on me hand and foot. He is the only civilized one in this whole place,” she sighed.

 

“But it’s Jiyong, Kwon Jiyong aka Dragon. Treating a patient in his condition requires stamina and energy and boundless tolerance. And I’m not sure of I have enough tolerance before I smother him in his sleep.”

 

“Bottomline, I just can’t tolerate him.”

 

“Sky, put all your personal considerations aside please. Jiyong needs you.”

 

“It’s not just my personal considerations. He’s as dead set against me being here as I am. Believe me. He nearly had a when I showed up yesterday.”

 

“We simply can’t stomach one another and never could. It had always been this way since the vey first time we laid eyes on each other. I hate his arrogance and he hates my guts.”

 

“Give it a day or two more at least.”

 

“But”

 

“Has he shown any improvement?”

 

Compelled to tell the truth, she gave Shane a rundown of Jiyongs condition, including the muscle cramp and the improvement it meant.

 

“Well, hell, I think that’s great news!” he exclaimed. Skyler listened as he repeated it to Dami.

 

“So you’ve already made progress. Just hang in there. Jiyong will come around. He’ll get used to you.”

 

But will I get used to him? To touching him? To not wanting him to kiss me again? That was the crux of her dilemma and the reason behind this phone call. Jiyong might not have been affected by the close proximity of her presence to his self, but she was. She was starting to feel emotions that she was terrified to feel more than any temper tantrum he could throw at her.

 

“You can stick it out a few more days, can’t you?” Dami wheedled. Apparently her brother had passed the phone back to her.

 

Skyler sighed her surrender.

 

“I guess I can. But start to find a replacement. Check with the hospital. I’m sure my supervisor can give you a long list of competent therapists. I suggest a man.”

 

“I think a man would work better with him.”

 

What woman, no matter how businesslike, could maintain a professional attitude toward that godly body?

 

“I’ll see what we can do.”

 

“Please sae-eonni. Find someone to take my place.”

 

“It won’t be easy.”

 

“Try please.”

 

“I will.”

 

“Promise?”

 

“I will.”

 

“Sae-eonni, I meant it. What good will it does for me to get Jiyong to walk again, only to have him spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering me?”

 

“Great. I’m glad you think that’s funny!” Skyler puffed.

 

Annoyed by Dami’s spurt of laughter, she slammed the receiver down. She knew that Dami could be as stubborn as Jiyong when she put her mind to it. Crap. She didn’t even managed to ask Dami how she was feeling but if she could laugh that hard, she must be feeling wonderful then.

 

“Glad at least someone find the situation funny,” Skyler muttered to herself.

 

Her professional integrity would be jeopardized if she left Jiyong in his present condition. Hopefully within a few days, she could leave and someone else would take over his physical therapy. She knew she could last very long working with him without losing something more than her heart. In the meantime, she would go through the motions as expertly as she knew how, but with as much detachment as she could maintain.

 

In that pragmatic frame of mind, she reentered Jiyong’s bedroom.

 

“Good. You ate all your breakfast.”

 

She removed the bed tray.

 

“So what’d the doctor say?”

 

“The doctor?”

 

“Didn’t you call the doctor?”

 

“Oh, uh, he wasn’t in yet.”

 

“He gets there early every morning.”

 

“Then I guess he was making rounds.”

 

“He must have said something you don’t want to tell me, didn’t he?” Jiyong asked suspiciously.

 

“He told you not to get excited about the muscle cramp, that it didn’t signify anything, right?”

 

“God, you’re paranoid!” Skyler replied with her hands on her hips as she faced him.

 

“Then why don’t you tell me what he said?”

 

“If you must know, I didn’t talk to the doctor at all. I called Oppa and sae-eonni.”

 

“What for?”

 

“To quit.”

 

Jiyong looked at her in surprised.

 

“Well, isn’t that what you want?”

 

“Yeah, sure, but”

 

“But what?”

 

“You don’t strike me as a quitter.”

 

“I’m not. Usually. But our dislike for each other is so strong that I’m afraid it will hamper your progress.”

 

“Aren’t you professional enough to put personal considerations aside?”

 

That was the second time in the span of half an hour that she’d heard those words. This time they were come from Dragon in the form of a dare. His head was arrogantly tilted to one side, a strong nonverbal challenged in itself.

 

Turbulent onyx eye narrowed on him.

 

“Damn right I am. Are you man enough to take the therapy without slinging personal insults at me?”

“Of course.”

 

“No slurs. No complaining. No temper tantrums.”

 

“I can take the pain.”

 

“How badly do you want to walk again?”

 

“Walking isn’t the issue. I want to run and sail and ski and kick your back to Seoul.”

 

“Then we’ve got weeks, possibly months, of hard work cut out for us. You’ll work and perspire harder than you ever have. Before we’re finished, you’ll push yourself to limits of endurance you didn’t know you had.”

 

“I’m ready. Bring it on.”

 

Skyler carefully hid her smile. His attitude had taken a complete turnaround. At least she’d achieved that much. He was no longer sulking like a broken wing dragon, snarling at everyone who invaded his miserable space.

 

“What’s first?” he asked, his eyes eager.

 

“A bath.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You hear me. A bath. You stink like a dragon, Dragon.”