A French Whipping Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the dojo every day and run himself to exhaustion every night, but he still hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d even resorted to calling her after work to make sure she’d arrived home okay rather than getting within a mile of her.
    Now she glanced at him, but didn’t say anything. He squatted down next to Emily sitting across from Blake, her tiny ears sticking out from the sides of her bald head, a nasal tube connecting her to the oxygen tank at her side.
    “Hey, Em,” he said gently. She reminded him of a doll, with her tiny, delicate frame. She was drawing a picture of a brown dog with small round black eyes and an engaging grin on his face—a picture of the animal was sitting on the table in front of her.
    “Hi, Nick.” She smiled at him, displaying small, square teeth. “This is Joey.” She handed him the picture she’d drawn, and he studied it carefully. She’d captured the shape of the dog’s face and the round eyes.
    “This is wonderful. He’s sure to get adopted now,” he assured her gravely.
    She nodded cheerfully. “I know.”
    Smiling at the girl’s confidence, Nick looked up and met Blake’s eyes, not sure what to expect exactly. Coolness? Irritation?
    She didn’t seem upset, or even irritated with him. She was still smiling, but her eyes seemed heavy-lidded, slumberous, and her gaze kept falling toward his mouth. Blake Webster was looking at him as if she found him the most desirable person in the world. He had a hard enough time being around her when she wasn’t staring at him as if she had been on a diet for two weeks and he was a piece of chocolate cake.
    He felt his breath catch in his throat. She was seducing him. He stood abruptly and took a step back, but managed to keep from an outright retreat.
    “If you have a few minutes when the kids head back to their rooms, I’d like to talk to you,” he told her. He sounded like an ass—he could hear it in his voice. An uptight ass.
    “All right,” she agreed, her green eyes amused, her smile turning slightly mocking.
    He swallowed, careful to keep his breath even, his heart rate calm and controlled as he walked back over to Chuck and took a seat across from the kid.
    “You want an overhand loop, not an underhand, on that one,” he directed and nodded as the kid made the adjustment and continued with the knot. Underhanded. God, she didn’t know what she did to him when she looked like that—she couldn’t know. He wouldn’t allow her to know.
    Grabbing on to the task of showing Chuck knots like the lifeline it was, he picked up a length of rope and tied a knot that he’d actually used when he’d gone fishing with his father—an anchor bend. It was difficult without an anchor to attach it to, but he managed, holding it up for Chuck’s inspection.
    “What do you think this one is used for?” he asked the kid.
    Chuck studied the knot, holding his own knot unfinished. “Well, it looks like you’re securing something to the end of the rope—and you have a backup knot . . .”
    “It’s called an anchor bend. And there’s a backup knot because losing an anchor sucks.” Nick couldn’t help himself—he glanced back at Blake, only to find her watching him steadily.
    “’Kay. What else could you use it for?”
    Nick turned back to Chuck, untying the knot in his hands with practiced ease. “I’ve used it to tie balloons to tables, and once we used it at the office to make a flail.”
    “What’s a flail?”
    “You know, in video games, that weapon with the spiked ball on the end of a chain.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “We made one for office war games.”’
    “Awesome. Wish we could do something like that here.” Chuck looked glumly around the entertainment room. The couches and comfortable chairs that normally filled the place were pushed to the side to make room for the folding tables and chairs the kids were sitting in now. The small stage in the front of the room was currently being used to hold an enormous screen for