Kiss Your Prince Charming. Jennifer Greene

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СКАЧАТЬ could admire a Jag. Could lust after it. Could look. But a grown man with character knew better than to touch something that couldn’t belong to him.

      Greg sighed heavily and closed his eyes. Most of his life he’d been invisible, the kind of guy who faded into the woodwork and no one noticed. Other men liked attention. Not him. And right now all he wanted was to be home again—back to his work, back to his life, back to being comfortably invisible. Especially with Rachel.

      

      A week later, Rachel rapped on Greg’s back door, and when no one answered, she twisted the knob and poked her head inside. “Stoner! It’s me, Rach! Are you here?”

      “Yeah, I’m back here in the den.”

      Shaking her head with impatience, she stomped inside and closed the door. Technically Greg was still on a medical leave of absence, but there was no telling him that. When the hospital finally sprang him four days ago, he’d had a co-worker bring him work from the office ever since. He was always in the den working on the computer. Reminding him that he still had a doctor’s mandate to take it seriously easy fell on deaf ears.

      Quickly she peeled off her pea coat and tossed it on a kitchen chair, automatically glancing around the room. No crumbs cluttered the red-tile counter; no dishes were stacked in the white porcelain sink. Old-fashioned glass cabinets revealed neatly stacked plates, and the long oak table held a nauseatingly tidy pile of mail and magazines. Personally Rachel didn’t trust anyone who didn’t leave a shameful mess somewhere—it just wasn’t human—but Greg was a friend. One had to forgive a friend a few revolting habits.

      Momentarily, though, she only glanced around the kitchen to ascertain how he was doing today.

      The dimwit wouldn’t ask for help if his life depended on it, so Rachel had to rely on clues. He’d been working too hard ever since coming home from the hospital, but Stoner was too much of a hard-core perfectionist to ever leave a mess unless he were exhausted or in pain. Today, his spotless kitchen reassured her that he was feeling good.

      Pushing off her shoes, she padded in stocking feet down the wainscotted hall and through the living room. His decor always struck her sense of humor. Greg had told her that Stoners had built the family home in the 1890s, and some furnishings were obviously heirlooms from that elegant Victorian period—like the mahogany breakfront and a burgundy crushed-velvet rocker and the rich Oriental rugs. And then there were Greg’s choices. Futuristic minimalist. A spear of a lamp, a lapis lazuli slab for a coffee table, a giant wall-size TV and entertainment center, futons for seating. The furnishings were backdropped by old fashioned stuccoed walls and fancy copper-carved ceilings.

      Rachel was unsure whether Greg didn’t realize that nothing went together or, worse, that he thought it did. A wolf had to have a better sense of style that he did. The French doors at the far end of the living room opened onto his study.

      She paused in the study doorway. The closed wooden blinds sealed out the midday sun and made the room murky-dim. All she could really see was Greg’s back, hunched over a glowing computer monitor, his fingers clicking on the keyboard. He was wearing his favorite Green Bay sweatshirt—which was so decrepitly frayed that it should have seen a trash bin up-close-and-personal years ago—and he was obviously concentrating hard. One look, and a lump filled her throat.

      She’d loved him as a friend for ages now, but feelings had hugely and drastically changed since his car accident. Maybe it was watching him cope with so much pain. Maybe it was all those nights in the hospital, the way he teased her, the way he cheated at cards so she’d win, the way they so easily laughed together.

      Somehow she had just never looked at Greg as a man before. She’d seen him as a brainy, overweight nerd, because that was how he’d always made such a point of billing himself. And more privately she’d thought of him as a gentle giant, because that’s how he’d been with her—a neighbor, a friend, a fixer of fuses and a stealer of cookies and an unbeatable listener. She’d seen Greg in lots of roles. All of them wonderful.

      But until the accident, she’d just never thought of him as a sexual being. A sexual single male human being.

      Rachel wasn’t positive she wanted to see him that way. To risk screwing up the best friendship she’d ever had troubled her. But in the silence of her heart, she couldn’t deny that just being in the same room with him aroused emotions that had never been there before.

      “Hey, slugger. You’ve got a doctor’s appointment today. Did you forget?”

      Greg didn’t turn his head, didn’t lift his fingers from the keyboard. “I didn’t forget. The appointment’s at one.”

      She came up behind him, her hands instinctively molding around his shoulders and neck. As she might have expected, his muscles were all knotted up. No question he’d been sitting here a long time. She started kneading, careful not to touch the bandages wrapped around his head. “And do you know what time it is right now, Stoner?”

      “I dunno. Nine? Ten? God, that feels good, don’t stop.”

      “It’s noon.” Her fingers dug and probed, trying to relax the knots in his neck. She’d have volunteered such a back rub for any ailing friend—male or female—only Rachel knew it wasn’t the same. Not with him, not anymore.

      As if her female hormones had suddenly come awake after a two-year hibernation, she felt conscious of the warmth and scent of his skin, of her sensitized response to everything male about him. And that was wonderful, but also unnerving. She might have missed sex, but she really hadn’t wanted to touch a man in all this time. And because Mark was the only man she’d known—no matter how much he’d hurt her—she’d just never anticipated touching any man intimately but him, either. Now, suddenly, she could imagine all kinds of disastrously wild and inappropriately naked things. With Greg. And once her mind started dripping those ideas, it seemed the leak just kept getting bigger.

      “It can’t be noon,” Greg corrected her.

      “Yeah, it is—12:02, actually. I don’t know how you could possibly forget a red-letter doctor’s appointment like this one—finally you’re getting those bandages off your face after all this time—”

      “I didn’t forget. It’s just I started working after breakfast—”

      “And lost track of the time, I know.” The knots had eased, which obliterated the judicious excuse she had for touching him. She dropped her hands. “If you want some company,” she said casually, “I could drive you to the doc’s. Friday’s my home day at work, but I’m all caught up, so taking off a couple hours this afternoon is no problem.”

      “Nah. Thanks for offering, Rach, but really, that’d be crazy for you to waste your time sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. There’s no pain or anything like that involved where I’d have trouble driving alone.”

      “I know you have some trouble with visibility because of the bandages—”

      “Yeah, I do. But it’s just a fifteen minute drive there, and then these confounded bandages are off for good. I’ll be fine, really.” He still hadn’t turned around and faced her, because he was still saving and messing with disks and then exiting the computer.

      And she hesitated. If Greg didn’t want her help, then he didn’t. But she was still concerned about his going to this doctor’s visit alone. Even for a man as unvain and totally oblivious to appearances as Greg, this afternoon was a huge traumatic thing.

      The СКАЧАТЬ