The Boss, the Baby and Me. Raye Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ in for me,” Kurt drawled, his voice half teasing, but with just enough of an edge to set her nerves twitching. “I just didn’t realize how far she was prepared to go.”

      She moaned softly, but David couldn’t resist expanding on the joke.

      “You know, sis, if you really want to take a guy out, you’re supposed to be the one in the car. He should be the one in the street, running for his life.”

      She ignored him. She’d spent too many years fending off the pestering of big brothers—she knew better than to rise to the bait. Besides, she did feel terrible for what had happened, and she wanted to make sure Kurt knew it.

      “I just don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” she began, and not for the first time.

      Kurt looked up at her and groaned. “Jodie, if you try to tell me how sorry you are one more time, I’m going to have your brother use that surgical tape on your mouth.”

      “We’d have to tape up her hands, too, or she’d be using them to give you apologies in sign language,” Matt said with a smirk.

      “Do that, and she’ll have to resort to tapping out her pleas for forgiveness in Morse code with the toes of her shoes,” David threw in teasingly. “Let me tell you something. This sister of ours doesn’t give up easily.”

      Jodie flushed as they all laughed. It was obvious her brothers both liked Kurt. She didn’t know how they could be so blind.

      But another thing that stumped her was how well Kurt had taken the whole thing. She would have expected a little snarling, a few insults about watching where she was going, and a whole lot of swearing. But there had been very little of that. Maybe if he’d been grouchier about it all, she would feel better. At least then she could get mad instead of feeling so wretched.

      Kurt had wanted paramedics. She only wished she could have obliged. But there were no paramedics in Chivaree. There was Old Man Cooper, who answered the phone at the fire department and then called around to the volunteers if there was a fire. He supposedly had a little first-aid training. But he certainly wasn’t competent to deal with a broken leg. So she’d called Matt. After all, he was the best physician in town as far as she was concerned. He’d come right away, bringing David with him, and between them they had carried Kurt to the clinic so that Matt could X-ray the leg.

      No major bone was broken, but the patella was cracked, a situation that could be very painful and required a cast that held the knee immobile.

      “We’ll have to keep you in the cast for a couple of weeks,” Matt had told him. “Then we’ll take it off and do some X-rays to see if you can transfer to a knee brace. That will give you a lot more freedom of movement.”

      It had all gone pretty smoothly. They’d brought Kurt back to his house and installed him in his bedroom, where he was right now. Matt had given Kurt some sort of painkiller when he’d worked on him. Maybe that was why Kurt seemed to be taking it so calmly. Maybe he was just groggy from the medicine.

      She wanted to go home. She ached to leave this behind. But she couldn’t really leave. After all, the accident had been her fault.

      “Jodie is a licensed physical therapist,” Matt was saying. “That will be handy. She can help in your rehabilitation.”

      “I’d forgotten that,” Kurt said. He grinned at her, knowing it would bug her. “That will be useful.”

      Jodie felt numb. Everything that happened seemed to tie her more firmly to this man in one way or another. As she’d said before, she was doomed.

      Matt rose to get something from his bag and, to Jodie’s surprise, he stopped in front of a framed picture of a cute baby girl, that was set on the top of an antique dresser.

      “This your daughter?” he asked gruffly.

      Kurt looked up and nodded proudly. “Yes, that’s Katy. She’s at my mother’s for the night.”

      Matt was still staring at the picture in a way Jodie found a little odd. She couldn’t imagine when her big brother had become a child person. Considering that none of the six siblings in her family, including herself, were married or had children, she’d assumed they all felt pretty much the way she did. She didn’t dislike children, but she felt a lot more comfortable keeping them at a distance, avoiding too much up-close-and-personal interaction. Maybe she’d been wrong about Matt.

      “It’s a good thing the baby wasn’t with you when you had the accident,” Matt said with feeling.

      “Yes,” Kurt agreed. “That’s one blessing, at least.”

      Jodie agreed, though she didn’t say it aloud. Just imagine if she’d been responsible for hurting Kurt’s baby. She shuddered, not wanting to think about it.

      Still, Matt lingered, staring at the portrait. “She’s a beautiful baby,” he said. “About how old?”

      “Sixteen months.”

      “A little over one year.”

      “Yes.”

      Jodie frowned, wondering what was eating her brother. This just didn’t fit with the image she had of him. Then she turned to look at Kurt lying back against the pillows, and immediately wished she hadn’t. All thoughts of Matt flew out the window, and unwelcome reactions to Kurt took their place.

      Since he’d put on cutoff jeans, to leave his damaged leg bare for the cast, she’d wisely been avoiding looking at his beautifully sculpted good leg, which was covered with a sleek pelt of reddish-brown hair. But while she wasn’t paying attention, somehow his shirt had been removed, as well, and now he was displaying a set of sexy muscles and a washboard stomach, all wrapped up in the most deliciously smooth and bronzed skin she’d ever seen.

      The man was a damn Greek god! Gazing at him made her feel dangerously warm and fuzzy inside.

      Realizing with a start that she’d been staring at his powerfully built chest too long, she glanced up into his bright green eyes and saw that he’d been watching her all along. Turning ten shades of red, she spun on her heel and pretended a sudden fascination with the collection of old first editions in his bookcase.

      Matt and Kurt went on talking, but she didn’t hear a word they were saying. Her head was buzzing with a strange vibration, and all she could think of was that his gaze had been so full of awareness of her, it was downright scary. Awareness not only of what she was feeling, but of just what she might be thinking, as well.

      Had he understood just how drawn to him she was physically? Had he known she’d ached for him to kiss her in the elevator? It was all so humiliating!

      She tried some even breathing, determined to get this silly blushing under control, and to avoid meeting Kurt’s eyes again. And then she took a chance and escaped into the rest of the house, taking a deep breath as she did so. The cool air in the living room was a welcome relief.

      She looked around the room. It was nicely furnished in a simple style, but there were toys everywhere. She winced, looking away. Funny. It had been almost ten years, but looking at baby things still brought on a wave of nausea every time. She knew it was silly and self-destructive to let that reaction rule her life, but she hadn’t found a way to fight it yet. Losing a baby was hard, even if that baby hadn’t been born yet at the time.

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