Page 38 of Accidentally Mine
“She’s on the fifth floor,” the woman behind the desk replied, typing something into the computer.“It says she’s having some tests done right now.Take a seat in the waiting room and someone will let you know when she can take visitors.”
“Thank you.”I turned to the rows of chairs in the waiting room.It seemed so futile to just be sitting there, when my aunt, who’d done everything for me when I was a child, was in trouble.
I wandered to the seats and sat down.Rubbing my forehead, I noticed a gorgeous specimen of a man emerge from the gift shop with a giant bouquet of flowers.Some girl is really lucky.
I blinked as he walked right up and sat down beside me, and I realized it was Brent, and my aunt was the really lucky girl.
“Your aunt isn’t allergic to flowers, I hope?”
I leaned over and sniffed them.Gardenias.Her favorite.“No,” I said.“But you didn’t have to.”
The protest died in my throat as he gave me a deep, longing look that made my heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s.My stubbornness didn’t work at all with him.I was putty in his hands.Or, Iwantedto be putty in his hands, wanted every inch of me to be molded and worked over by those beautiful, strong hands of his.
As bad as I knew it would be for me.
“You need anything?”he asked me, his voice liquid sex.
This wasn’t an appropriate place for the answer I wanted to give.
“Thank you for coming with me,” I said, trying to keep myself from reacting to him in all the inappropriate ways my mind was conjuring.“But you see, I—”
“You have a real problem accepting kindness from people, don’t you?”
Emotion burned my sinuses, and I blinked rapidly to keep it at bay.“Not all people,” I argued.
Just ridiculously handsome men.No.Justthisman.
He seemed to read that message, loud and clear.“You don’t like feeling indebted to people.Is that it?”
I nodded.
“All right,” he murmured, placing the flowers on the seat beside me.“Let’s just clear the air then.I don’t expect you to pay me back in any way.I’m doing this for you to be a friend.That being said, you know I’m into you.But you have the control here.Should you wish to, I won’t turn down any kindness you choose to extend to me.Understood?”
I stared at him.“By kindness, you mean…”
His gaze darkened.“I’ll leave that to your imagination, Rebel.”
Oh, he did not want to do that.Because while I may have looked like the good girl, the truth was, I could imagine quite a bit.Quite.A.Bit.
Damn my aunt and her soft-porn.
9
Brent
Ihad as much a distaste for hospitals as I had for automobiles.
But I’d failed Roselynn when it came to driving her to Charlestown.I wasn’t going to let her down by leaving her now.
Three hours later, we were still in the waiting room.Ernest had come and told us that Marie was feisty and in good spirits, and I’d told him to go back to the house to get some dinner, since he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.The flowers had wilted some, but Roselynn hadn’t shifted position at all.She sat stick-straight and tense, in the same seat, staring at the same page of an office copy ofGood Housekeeping.
“Are you all right?”I asked from the seat beside her.
She looked at me and nodded, her hair falling into her face.She’d forgotten the hat in the back of the Buick.I’d imagined her without it a hell of a lot of times, but still, I was unprepared for how gorgeous she was with it falling loose over her shoulders.Wild and untamed, blonde with strands of a deeper blonde running through its length.I had to touch it.
Starting at her cheek, I lightly pushed a tangled spiral behind her ear.“She’s going to be okay,” I said.
She gave me a grateful smile and dropped her head onto my shoulder.Her hair smelled like shampoo.I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of clean, sweet flowers, and damned if I didn’t feel her in every pore of my body.
