Authors: Regina Kyle
He half closed his eyes and let his head fall back. It was starting to pound again, no doubt thanks to his parents and the lighting.
Ivy released his hand and stood. “You’re tired. I should go.”
“Stay.” He reached out to her, eyes fully open now. “Please.”
She shuffled her feet and tugged on the hem of her shirt. “What will people say?”
“What people?”
“It’s a small town. People talk.”
“So don’t listen.” He ignored the pounding in his head and stared at her, his eyes starting to water but his gaze unmoving.
She hesitated for a second before reclaiming her seat and his hand. “Okay. Until you’re asleep.”
He closed his eyes and let out his breath on a long, slow, pain-infused sigh. “Good enough.”
For now.
W
HEN
C
ADE
WOKE
up the next morning, Ivy was still there, sprawled in the chair, head back, mouth open, snoring adorably.
The corners of Cade’s mouth curled into a smile. Who knew snoring could be cute?
“I see one of you is awake.” A nurse, this one in lime green, came in with a tray of brown-and-gray institutional food. She wheeled a table over the bed, set the tray on it and pressed a button on the bed rail to raise the head until he was almost in a sitting position. “Eat up. You’re being released. The doctor will be by in a few minutes with your discharge papers.”
“Great.” Six weeks of daytime talk shows and bad reality TV. Maybe he could convince Cappy to let him come in a couple of hours a day and do paperwork or something.
Ivy sat up and yawned, revealing a strip of creamy white skin between her waistband and the bottom of her shirt. “I’ll make sure he follows doctor’s orders and takes it easy.”
What was she, a mind reader?
He reached down to adjust the blanket. His leg might be immobilized, but other parts down under were working just fine.
“I have a feeling that’s going to be a challenge.” The nurse smiled at Ivy then turned back to Cade. “I’ll go get the doctor and your morning meds.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Don’t be such a grump,” Ivy said as the nurse left. “You’re getting sprung from this place. You should be happy.”
“Yeah, happy.” He picked up his fork and pushed around a pile of goop that he suspected was some sort of potato. “I’ll get to catch up on Jerry Springer. Learn to play the guitar. Reach level one hundred in
Candy Crush Saga
.”
“You could always study for the lieutenant exam.”
He froze with the fork halfway to his mouth. “How do you know about that?”
“I saw the books in the backseat of your SUV.” She rolled her neck one way and then the other. “When is the test?”
“Cappy gave those to me.” Cade shoveled in a forkful of gooey potato and grimaced. They tasted more like the dirt they were grown in than any spud he’d ever encountered. “I’m not even registered.”
“So get registered.”
“You might have left Stockton in the rearview mirror and forgotten half of high school, but I haven’t.” He peeled back the lid on a plastic cup of orange juice, needing something to rid his taste buds of the sticky residue of the potatoes. “Test taking isn’t exactly my strong suit. I wouldn’t have graduated high school if it wasn’t for you and Gabe pulling me through.”
“I haven’t forgotten Stockton. Or you.” She lowered her head, but not before he saw the mist in her eyes. “And who’s to say we won’t pull you through again? You said it yourself, Cade. We’re friends. We’ll always be friends. And friends look out for each other.”
She stood, stretched and disappeared into the bathroom.
Cade scowled at his plate. Now she was the one throwing the
F
word around. And he was the one who didn’t like it one damn bit, something he didn’t want to analyze too closely.
Talk about ironic. Alanis Morissette had nothing on him.
“Holy crap.” Ivy’s voice drifted through the open door. “Why didn’t you tell me I looked like Ursula the Sea Witch? My hair’s all over the place.”
“I’ve always thought Ursula was kind of hot.” He sipped his juice, grateful for the change of subject. “She’s got a great rack. So do you.”
“Thanks for noticing.” She popped her head out the door. She’d tried to tamp down her curls with water, but all she’d succeeded in doing was creating a hotter, wetter mess. “You must be on the mend if you’re ogling my breasts.”
“Honey, I’ve been ogling them since the calendar shoot. There just wasn’t a polite time to mention it until now.”
He winked at her, and she ducked back into the bathroom. He downed the rest of his juice, pretty much the only edible thing on the tray. He was even a little afraid to try the coffee.
“How’s our patient doing this morning?” The doctor picked that moment to not-so-conveniently interrupt, bursting through the door with the nurse trailing behind him. He plucked Cade’s chart from a hook next to the bed and flipped through it. “Ready to go home?”
“You bet.” Cade tried to hoist himself up and was rewarded with a blinding bolt of pain that shot from his knee to his ankle.
“Good.” The doctor handed the chart to the nurse, pulled a pad from the pocket of his lab coat and started scribbling. “I’m writing you two prescriptions, a painkiller and an antibiotic. No baths or showers for the next two days. Then you can clean yourself up, but cover your cast with a plastic bag and seal it to keep out any moisture. Elevate the leg whenever you can, and don’t be afraid to ice it if it starts to swell. Diane will get you some crutches, but I’d prefer that you stay off your feet as much as possible. And if your bedroom’s on the second floor, you’ll want to set up something downstairs until the cast comes off.”
Cade swore under his breath. “That’s gonna be a problem. My apartment’s on the second floor of a two-family house.”
The doctor put the prescriptions on the bed table and stuck his pad back in his pocket. “Is there somewhere else you can stay while you’re recuperating?”
Cade shook his head. “I don’t think...”
“He can stay with me.” Ivy came out of the bathroom, her hair a little tamer. “There’s a guest room on the first floor. It’s perfect.”
Perfect? More like letting the fox in the henhouse. Not that the fox was complaining.
“Ivy, you don’t have to—”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I know I don’t. I want to. Besides, what choice do you have?”
She had a good point. He didn’t really have any other options with his parents AWOL, Gabe in the city and his buddy Trey’s place in worse shape than his own.
“Then it’s settled. As soon as Diane goes through the rest of your discharge instructions and makes you a follow-up appointment, she’ll release you to your girlfriend’s care.” The doctor extended his hand, and Cade shook it. “Good luck, Mr. Hardesty. We’ll see you in a few weeks.”
He left the room, followed by the nurse, who stopped and turned at the door. “I’ll be right back with a pair of crutches, your valuables and some information from the nutritionist.”
The door swung shut behind her, leaving Cade alone with Ivy.
“I’ll be in this thing for six weeks.” He sat up, swung his good leg over the side of the bed and thumped his cast with his fist. Bad idea. Pain radiated down his leg. He did his best to ignore it and plowed on. “Will you even be here that long?”
“My dad’s nowhere near ready to go back to work full-time.” Ivy sat next to him on the bed, giving the cast a wide berth. “And I promised the shelter I’d be here for their benefit on Labor Day weekend when they unveil the calendar.”
“We’d be living together.” He eyed her, remembering her words from the night before. “What will people say?”
“I thought you weren’t worried about small-town gossip.”
“I thought you were.”
She gave a halfhearted shrug. “We’re friends, remember? Friends help each other. No one has to know any more than that.”
There she went with the
F
word again. But even that wasn’t enough to stop Cade’s heart from doing a celebratory jig. Six weeks under the same roof as Ivy. Suddenly his forced incapacitation didn’t seem so much like a prison sentence. It’d be like old times, when he, Ivy and Gabe had spent hours hanging out in the Nelsons’ basement, watching TV and playing video games.
Except minus Gabe. And swap out the video games for screwing like rabbits.
“I can be pretty demanding,” Cade warned.
“I can handle demanding.”
“How about sponge baths?” He leaned in to her, barely resisting the impulse to bury his face in her hair, sexily mussed from a night of sleeping in a hospital chair. “Can you handle those?”
“Sponge baths?”
“You heard the doctor. No baths or showers.”
“For two days.” She playfully pushed his shoulder. “Not six weeks.”
He pushed back. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Um, do you have any clothes?” She craned her neck to catch a glimpse of his exposed back. “As attractive as that hospital gown is, I don’t think you want to walk down the hall with your backside hanging out.”
“Check the closet when you’re done checking out my ass. I think they put the stuff I was wearing under my turnouts in there.”
She went to the closet and opened the door. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Could you run by my place and grab me a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt?”
“What about underwear?”
“Optional.” He fell back onto the pillow, crossing his arms behind his head.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You just want to get your hands on my skivvies.” He grinned. “Again.”
“Aw, shucks.” She grinned back. “You got me.”
“You’ll have to swing by the station first. I left my keys there.”
“No problem.” She scooped up her purse from the floor and fished out her cell phone. “I’ll call someone to come get me. I’m sure Noelle’s long gone by now.”
“Hey, roomie.” His voice made her stop rummaging and look up. “One more favor.”
“Name it.”
“If you’re going to rifle through my delicates, I’m partial to the bright blue ones with Pac-Man on the crotch.”
* * *
“H
ERE
WE
ARE
.” Ivy fumbled with the key, her hands damp and shaky. After a few tries, she managed to get it into the lock and let them in. “Home, sweet temporary home.”
“Thanks.” Cade planted his crutches and maneuvered his way into the entryway with more ease than Ivy could have managed if she’d have been using the darned things for half a century.
She picked up the duffel bag she’d stuffed with clothes when she stopped at Cade’s apartment and followed him inside. “Let’s get you settled on the couch in the living room. I’ll show you your room later.”
“I’m not a cripple.” He looked down at his plaster-encased leg and frowned. “Well, I am, but I can hobble a few steps to the couch under my own power.”
“Stubborn man.”
“Persistent woman.”
“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” She dropped the duffel in the foyer and continued to follow him into the living room, smiling at his back as they went. “My house, my rules.”
He lowered himself onto the sofa and laid his crutches on the floor. “Do your rules include doing the deed? Or at least some heavy petting? Because I’m feeling kind of lonely down here. And horny.”
“The doctor said you should rest.”
“My leg. Not my...”
“Slow down, sailor.” She gently lifted his foot and propped a pillow under it. “We’ve got plenty of time for that. You’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.”
“I don’t consider it being stuck.” He caught her hand before she could move away. “And as my private-duty nurse, I should think you’d want to tend to my welfare.”
“Am I going to have to get you one of those annoying bells so you can summon me at will?” She tried to pull away, but he held fast, his thumb tracing figure eights on her palm.
“That’s not a bad idea. Or I can always yodel.”
“You yodel?” She gave in to the strange magnetism he seemed to assert over her and sat gingerly beside his prone form.
“I’ll learn.”
“I should warn you. I’m not the nurturing type.”
His hand snaked up and around to the back of her head, his fingers curling into her hair and drawing her down to him. “It’s not nurturing I’m looking for, sweetheart.”
“We can’t.”
His lips touched hers, and her breath hitched. “We can.”
“Then we shouldn’t.” She flattened her palms against his chest, intending to push him away but instead finding herself clutching his T-shirt. Heat scorched her hands through the soft cotton and she could feel his heartbeat under the hard muscles of his chest.
“Yes.” His lips brushed hers, and hot little shivers ran up and down her spine. “We should.”
“I’ll hurt you.” She glanced at his leg, stretched out on the couch behind her.
He cupped her cheek and turned her face back to him, bringing them so close his mouth was at her ear, his breath warm on her skin. “No, you won’t.”
But he would hurt her. That much was certain. She might be paying lip service to the “quiet and casual” plan, but the truth was she was already falling too far, too fast. And she didn’t know how to stop it. Or if she wanted to, even if it meant heartbreak at the end of the road.
He slid his hand to the small of her back. “Any other objections?”
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t think of one. Especially not with the long length of his erection pressing against her thigh.
“Nothing, eh?” He trailed kisses along her jawline. “Good.”
The trail ended at her mouth, which he took ruthlessly, coaxing it open with his tongue. It touched hers, wet and warm, and she sighed into him. He tasted like mint and wicked, wicked sex, and she was instantly drunk on him.
“Straddle me,” he moaned when they came up for air. “I want to feel you.”
“Your leg...”
“Will be fine with you on top, running the show.”
“Are you sure?” She rose onto her knees.
“Wait.” He grabbed her hips.
“Did I hurt you?” She bit her lip. “See? I told you this was a bad idea.”
“It’s a brilliant idea if we get naked first.”
“Naked?”
“Yeah, you know. In your birthday suit. Starkers.
Au naturel
.” Cade sat up and reached for the hem of his T-shirt. “I’ll get the ball rolling, if it makes you more comfortable. But you might have to help with my shorts.”
He pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor. “Now you. Tit for tat.”
“Pun intended?” Her mouth went dry and her palms itched with the need to explore every ridge and valley of his chest and abs, to burrow her fingers in the short, crisp hairs that dotted his pecs and formed a happy trail to his belly button and beyond. Unadulterated lust made her stomach turn somersaults, lust powerful enough to override her insecurities about showing off her extra fifteen—okay, twenty—pounds in the stark light of day.