reached behind her with her left hand and the bra gave way with delightful ease. She stepped out of it and let it fall in the heap with her tights and skirt.
The nightgown should be simple. If she left it hanging up as it was on the back of the bathroom door, she could just stick her head up under it, and it would practically put itself on. She grunted with satisfaction as she managed to get inside her nightie, put her left hand through the armhole and release it from its peg.
The nightie settled around her like a burka, her head covered, her face out the neck hole. That was okay. This angle should be good for getting her right arm up through the right armhole.
She tried to get her casted arm up. The nightie shifted up over her head as she found the right armhole and shoved. Of course, the blouse bunched around the cast prevented it from clearing the hole. It snagged on something.
So she was stuck with her arms in the air, and her head inside her nightgown.
She wiggled. Both arms. And her hips. Nothing happened.
With her left hand, she tried to adjust the nightie. She tugged down the neckline. Now half her head was out, one eye free. She turned to the mirror and peered at herself with her one uncovered eye. Her nightgown was hopelessly caught in her blouse, and her arm was stuck over her head.
And it hurt like the blazes.
She plunked herself down on the toilet seat and wriggled this way and that. She was sweating again.
There was a knock at the door.
She went very still.
“I made that list.”
“Good,” she croaked.
“Nothing on it I didn’t expect. What do you think about the floors?”
She could not think about floors right now! She grunted as she tried again to free herself from her nightgown.
“Everything okay in there, Jessica?”
“I told you to stop asking!”
“I heard a thumping noise. You didn’t fall, did you?”
“No.”
“Are you okay?”
“Um—”
“It’s a yes-or-no answer.”
“Okay, then,” she snapped with ill grace. “No.” She unlocked the door.
He opened it. He stood there regarding her for a moment. She regarded him back, with her one eye that was uncovered, trying for dignity, her nightie stuck on her head, and her arm stuck in the air. “Don’t you dare laugh,” she warned him.
He snickered.
“I’m warning you.”
“You are warning me what?” he challenged her.
“Not to laugh. And don’t come one step closer.”
Naturally, he ignored her on both fronts. Naturally, she was relieved, about him coming over anyway. Her arm was starting to ache unbearably. The smile on his lips she could have lived without.
Because there was really nothing quite as glorious as Kade smiling. He was beautiful at the best of times, but when that smile touched his lips and put the sparkle of sunshine on the sapphire surface of his eyes, he was irresistible.
Except she had to resist!
But then the smile was gone. Kade was towering over her. It occurred to her, from the draft she felt and the sudden scorching heat of his eyes, that the nightie was riding up fairly high on her legs.
Wordlessly, the smile gone, his expression all intense focus, he reached for where the blouse was stuck in the right-hand armhole of her nightgown. He began to unwind it. It gave easily to the ministrations of his fingers.
She said nothing.
“You see,” he said softly, “there’s nothing you can threaten me with that will work. Because the worst has already happened to me.”
“What’s that?” she demanded. How could he say the worst had happened to him when she was the one sitting here, humiliatingly trapped by her own clothing?
“You’re divorcing me,” he said softly. And then his face hardened and he looked as if he wanted to choke back the words already spoken.
THE NIGHTGOWN BROKE FREE, and her casted arm went through the right hole and the rest of the garment whispered around her. She used her left hand to tug the hem down to a decent level over her legs.
He bent his head and put his teeth on the fabric of her blouse, and the stubborn seam released. With one final, gentle tug that did not hurt Jessica’s arm at all, the blouse was free from the cast.
“A good tailor can probably fix that,” he said, laying the destroyed blouse in her lap.
“I’m not divorcing you,” she said. “We’re divorcing each other. Isn’t that what you want?”
He found where her sling was discarded on the floor and looped it gently over her head.
“It seems to be what you want all of a sudden,” he said. “There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
She felt suddenly weak, as if she could blurt out her deepest secret to him. How would it feel to tell him? Kade, there is going to be a baby after all.
No, that was not the type of thing to blurt out. What would be her motivation? Did she think it would change things between them? She didn’t want them to change because of a baby. She wanted them to change because he loved her.
What? She didn’t want things to change between them at all. She was taking steps to close this door, not reopen it! She was happy.
“Happy, happy, happy,” she muttered out loud.
“Huh?”
“Oh. Just thinking out loud.”
He looked baffled, as well he should!
“Go to bed,” he told her. “We’ll talk later. Now is obviously not the time.”
He had that right! Where were these horrible, weak thoughts coming from? She needed to get her defenses back up.
With what seemed to be exquisite tenderness, he slipped her cast back inside the sling, adjusted the knot on the back of her neck.
His touch made her feel hungry for him and miss him more than it seemed possible. He put his hand on her left elbow and helped her up, and then across the bathroom and into the bedroom.
He let go of her only long enough
