we’ll see how he does there.”
“I think the real estate agent can do the list of what needs to be done.”
She’d already talked to a real estate agent. He shrugged as if he didn’t feel smacked up the side of the head by her determination to rid herself of this reminder of all things them.
“Your real estate agent wants to make money off you. He is not necessarily a good choice as an adviser.”
“And you are?”
He deserved that, he supposed.
“Okay. Do it your way,” Jessica said. “I’ll pay half for the handyman. Do you think you could come in fairly quickly and make your list? Maybe tomorrow while I’m at work?”
He didn’t tell her he doubted she would be going back to work tomorrow. Her face was pale with exhaustion and she was slumped in her chair. No matter what she said, now was not the time for this discussion.
“I’m going to put you to bed,” Kade said. “You’re obviously done for today. We can talk about the house later.” He noticed he carefully avoided the word divorce.
“I am exhausted,” she admitted. “I do need to go to bed. However, you are not putting me to bed.” She folded her one arm up over her sling, but winced at the unexpected hardness of the cast hitting her in the chest.
“I doubt if you can even get your clothes off on your own.”
She contemplated that, looked down at her arm in the sling. He knew at that moment, the reality of the next four weeks was sinking in. In her mind, she was trying to think how she was going to accomplish the simple task of getting her clothes off and getting into pajamas.
“I’ll go to bed in my clothes,” she announced.
“Eventually,” he pointed out, “you’re going to have to figure out how to get out of them. You’re going to be in that cast for how long?”
“A month,” she said, horror in her features as her new reality dawned on her.
“I’ll just help you this first time.”
“You are not helping me get undressed,” she said, shocked.
He felt a little shock himself at the picture in his mind of that very shirt sliding off the slenderness of her shoulders. He blinked at the old stirring of pure fire he felt for Jessica. She was disabled, for God’s sake.
It took enormous strength to wrestle down the yearning the thought of touching her created in him, to force his voice to be patient and practical.
“Okay,” Kade said slowly, “so you don’t want me to help you get undressed, even though I’ve done it dozens of times before. What do you propose?”
Her face turned fiery with her blush. She glared at him, but then stared at her sleeve, bunched up above the cast, and the reality of trying to get the shirt off over the rather major obstacle of her cast-encased arm seemed to settle in.
“Am I going to have to cut it off? But I love this blouse!” She launched to her feet. He was sure it was as much to turn her back to him as anything else. She went to the kitchen drawer where they had always kept the scissors and yanked it open. “Maybe if I cut it along the seam,” she muttered.
He watched her juggle the scissors for a minute before taking pity on her. He went and took the scissors away and stepped in front of her. Gently, he took her arm from the sling, and straightened the sleeve of the blouse as much as he could.
There was less resistance than he expected. Carefully, so aware of her nearness and her scent, and the silky feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, he took the sharp point of the scissors and slit the seam of the sleeve.
She stared down at her slit-open sleeve. “Thanks. I’ll take it from here.”
“Really? How are you going to undo your buttons?”
With a mulish expression on her face, she reached up with her left hand and tried to clumsily shove the button through a very tight buttonhole.
“Here,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
She realized she could not refuse. “Okay,” she said with ill grace. “But don’t look.”
Don’t look? Hell’s bells, Jessica, we belong to each other. Instead of getting impatient, he teased her. “Okay. Have it your way.” He closed his eyes and placed his hand lightly on her open neckline. He loved the feel of her delicate skin beneath his fingertips. Loved it.
“What are you doing?” she squeaked.
“Well, if I can’t look, I’ll just feel my way to those buttons. I’ll braille you. Pretend I’m blind.” He slid his hand down. He felt her stop breathing. He waited for her to tell him to stop, but she didn’t.
It seemed like a full minute passed before Jessica came to her senses and slapped his hand away.
He opened his eyes, and she was looking at him, her eyes wide and gorgeous. She licked her lips and his gaze went to them. He wanted to crush them under his own. That old feeling sizzled in the air between them, the way it had been before her quest for a baby had begun.
“Keep your eyes open,” she demanded.
“Ah, Jessica,” he said, reaching for her buttons, “don’t look, but keep my eyes open. Is that even possible?”
“Try your best,” she whispered.
“You are a hard woman to please.” But, he remembered, his mouth going dry, she had not been a hard woman to please at all. With this memory of how it was to be together, red-hot between them, his fingers on her buttons was a dangerous thing, indeed.
Kade found his fingers on the buttons of her shirt. She stopped breathing. He stopped breathing.
Oh, my God, Jessica, he thought.
He did manage to keep his eyes open and not look. Because he held her gaze the whole time that he undid her buttons for her. His world became as it had once been: her. His whole world was suddenly, beautifully, only about the way the light looked in her hair, and the scent of her, and the amazing mountain-pond green of her eyes.
His hands slowed on her buttons as he deliberately dragged out the moment. And then he flicked open the last button and stepped back from her.
“There,” he said. His voice had a raspy edge to it.
She stood, still as a doe frozen in headlights. Her shirt gapped open.
“You want me to help you get it off?”
She unfroze and her eyes skittered away from his and from the intensity that had leaped up so suddenly between them.
“No. No! I can take it from here.”
Thank God, he thought. But he could already see the impracticality of it. “I’m afraid you’ll fall over and break your other arm struggling out of those clothes,” he told her. “The
