One Christmas Knight by Creighton Kathleen

Author:Creighton, Kathleen [Creighton, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-10-18T23:42:54+00:00

Chapter 9

“How you doin’ back there?” “I’m droppin’ back a little, but I’ll make it.”

I-40—New Mexico

“Why do you always say that?” she asked in a strained and testy voice. “You and Charly—always the same thing: Breathe. I am breathing, dammit. Otherwise I’d be dead. Oh—ow. That hurts.”

“It hurts,” Jimmy Joe scolded, “because you’re not breathin’ right. And you’re all tensed up. Look at you.” Although he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering the knot his own insides were in. “You gotta relax, now.”

He peeled one of her hands off the mattress and sat down beside her. Holding it with both of his, he began to delicately manipulate the small bones in her palm, gently bending each finger, lightly stroking along the tendons in the back of her hand as if he were fine-tuning a musical instrument or an intricate piece of machinery.

And all the while his jaw was clenched tight and his mind was screaming, Charlie? Who’s Charlie?

“Charlie—that your husband?” he casually asked as he watched his fingers work their way from the base of her palm to the incredibly fragile bones of her wrist. He told himself it was to get her mind chewing on something else besides the pain she was in.

But it was hard to overlook the way he felt when she replied, with a funny little snort of laughter, “She’s my coach.” He felt light-headed and sort of goofy, like he wanted to smile but knew he shouldn’t.

“Well, she’s right. You should listen to your coach.” He crooned the words with a perfectly straight face. But inside, his heart was singing like a set of jakes on a downhill grade. She. Not a husband. Not even a boyfriend. She. “Here, why don’t you lie over there, now. Let me rub your back...get that breathin’ goin’ right.”

She shook her head rapidly, emphatically. Her eyes were closed and he could see that she was in that other place now, the place he couldn’t go, concentrating hard on the breath she was taking. The hand he was holding had gone limp and boneless and the other appeared to have relaxed its grip on the edge of the mattress, so he kept his mouth shut and rode it out with her. Which was all he could do.

“It’s going,” she whispered on a long exhalation, slowly rocking herself back and forth. And finally, “There.” And she smiled and opened her eyes. “Gone.” She looked triumphant.

He noticed then the nightgown she was wearing, the outlines of her body clearly visible beneath the cartoon character on the thin T-shirt material—the fullness of her breasts, the pert little button of her turned-out navel. Her bare arms and her feet swathed in his thick white socks looked oddly defenseless, almost childlike.

“You warm enough?” he asked her, lightly brushing her arm with the backs of his fingers, frowning when her skin suddenly roughened with goose bumps. “Let me get you somethin’ to put on....” His voice thickened in his throat.

He loosened his hand from hers in a hurry, heart thumping, and got up to rummage through his closet.

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