Awakened By His Touch. Nikki Logan
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Название: Awakened By His Touch
Автор: Nikki Logan
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: Mills & Boon Cherish
isbn: 9781472047823
isbn:
She palmed the packed earth wall of the chalet and opened her mouth to say Well, this is you, but as she did so she stepped onto a fallen gum nut loosed by the wildlife foraging in the towering eucalypts above and her ankle began to roll. Her left fingernails bit into the chalet’s rammed earth and her right clenched the fabric of Elliott’s light jacket, but neither did much to stop her leg buckling.
The strong arm that slid around her waist and pulled her upright against his body was infinitely more effective at stopping her descent.
‘Are you okay?’ he breathed against her hair.
Other than humiliated? And way too comfortable in his strong hold. ‘Occupational hazard’ she said, when she really should have been thanking him. ‘Happens all the time.’
He released her back onto two feet and waited a heartbeat longer as she tested her ankle for compliance. It held.
‘I’m sorry, Laney. Guess I don’t have Wilbur’s years of training as a guide.’
Guilt saturated the voice that had been so warm just moments before. And that seemed an ungrateful sort of thanks for his catching her before she sprawled onto the ground at his feet.
‘It wasn’t you. My bottom and hip are peppered with bruises where I hit the dirt. Regularly.’
Talking about body parts suddenly felt like the most personal conversation she’d ever had, and it planted an image firmly between them that seemed uncomfortably provocative.
She released his jacket from between her clenched fingers. ‘Thank you for those basketball-player reflexes.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he breathed, and his smile seemed richer in the silence of evening. ‘Are you okay to get yourself back?’
She whistled for Wilbur, who bounded to her side from out of the night, and then forked two fingers to touch his furry rump in lieu of a harness. ‘Yep. I’m good. I walk these paths every day.’
Not that you’d know it by the wobble in her gait.
Then she set off, turning for the house, and Wilbur kept careful pace next to her, making it easy to keep up her finger contact with his coat. But she wasn’t entirely ready to say goodnight yet, although staying was out of the question. Something in her burned to leave him with a better impression of her than her being sprawled, inelegant and grasping, in his arms.
So she turned and smiled and threw him what she hoped was a witty quip back over her shoulder.
‘Night. Sorry about the possums!’
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