The Winner Takes It All: Winning Back His Wife / In Her Rival's Arms / Royally Seduced. Melissa McClone

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       CHAPTER SIX

      SOMEONE COUGHED. CULLEN bolted upright from a dead sleep. He blinked, not quite sure what was going on. Rays of sunlight peeked into the room around the edges of the window blinds. The digital clock on his nightstand read 6:45 a.m. Another cough.

      Sarah.

      Pulse pounding, he jumped out of bed, ran to her room and flung open the door. She lay in bed. Her hair was a tangled mess. Her face, what he could see through her hair, was pale. “Sarah?”

      “I coughed.” Her voice sounded hoarse. “It hurt.”

      “I’m sure it did.” He sat next to her. “Let me check your incision.”

      Her eyes widened with a hint of panic. “It was the cough.”

      He brushed the hair away from her face. His fingers touched her cheek. She didn’t feel warm. “I want to make sure.”

      She pulled the blanket to her neck. “You don’t have to go to all this trouble.”

      “It’s no trouble.” He understood Sarah’s leeriness. In spite of being a little out of it last night, she must have realized he’d been turned on. Even after a cold shower, he’d wanted to sleep in here, to hold her, to breathe in her scent. Loneliness did strange things to a man. “If you were in a SNF, someone would check you.”

      “Yes, but not…”

      “Me.”

      She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

      “Don’t apologize.”

      Her fingers rubbed the edge of the blanket. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s the situation. I’m not sure how to feel around you. Parts of last night were nice, then awkward, then nice again. So nice I hated sleeping alone.”

      A combination of relief and satisfaction radiated through him. He’d thought the same thing. He touched her shoulder.

      Her muscles tensed beneath his hand.

      “I get it,” he admitted. “Having you here is…”

      “Weird.”

      “Different,” he said at the same time. “A little weird, too.”

      She blew out a puff of air. “Good. I mean, not that things are weird, but that I’m not alone or imagining things.”

      “You’re not alone.” He’d been imagining things about her all night. Unfortunately. Because those fantasies would never become reality. “We’re adults. We can handle this.”

      “It’s not like we have another choice.”

      If only…“It is what it is until you’re ready to go back to Bellingham.”

      “If things get too weird we can talk it out.”

      She had wanted to talk about everything. He hated doing that. He’d been talked out after his parents had the family attend counseling and grief sessions following Blaine’s death. The intense sessions helped, but they also frustrated Cullen because no amount of counseling or rehab had been able to help his brother kick his drug addiction.

      Sarah looked expectantly at him.

      “Sure, we can talk.” He relented. “May I check your incision?”

      She lowered the blanket. “It’s not like you haven’t seen this before.”

      He slowly raised the hem of her nightshirt over her thighs. The bruises were fading. He lifted the material higher, past her orange polka-dotted bikini panties that showed off the curve of her hip. He willed his hand not to tremble. He continued to the large incision on her abdomen from her emergency splenectomy.

      Cullen might have seen her body before, but he liked seeing all that creamy skin again. His gaze strayed back to her panties. He swallowed.

      Focus.

      The skin around the sutures wasn’t any more red then it had been at the hospital. No drainage, either. He placed his fingertips on her stomach. The skin wasn’t hot, but boy did she feel nice. Soft, smooth, silky.

      He dragged his hand away. “No drainage or rash. Are you hungry?”

      She nodded.

      “That’s a good sign.” He pulled down the hem of her nightshirt before he became more unprofessional. “Has the pain СКАЧАТЬ