Catching Hell: A Hot Contemporary Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

dozen words after they’d gone back to Tucker’s room. They’d both been intent on letting the kid rest, letting him sleep through the worst of the pain.  
    But it had been a real comfort having her there. He’d been able to look across the hospital bed at her quiet face, try to figure out what she was thinking. It made him wonder how many other times they’d been in rooms together. Every single time he’d reported to Old Man Benson. The handful of times he’d watched games from the owner’s box. Random visits to Coach’s office, some of the pressers when there was a particular management issue in play.
    He’d seen her hundreds of times, maybe thousands. The same age as his youngest sister, she’d had that same tomboy look—blue jeans and scuffed tennis shoes, shirts that never stayed tucked in. She’d kept her hair pulled back in a ferocious braid, and he’d heard her tell Old Man Benson that it just got in her way if she let it down.
    Her hair had been down last night, though. It had felt soft against his fingers as he’d smoothed it back from her face.  
    He sighed and folded his hands into fists, wincing a little at the pull of bruised flesh across his left knuckles. He’d almost made a fool out of himself, standing there in that hospital waiting room. He’d only meant to offer her a bit of comfort, to tell her everything was going to be all right.
    His dick had meant something else, though. Something else entirely. His entire goddamn body had acted like he was sitting in the back row of a movie theater, watching some tearjerk movie with his high-school sweetheart.  
    Screw that. He hadn’t been thinking of Anna Benson like a high-school anything . He’d been thinking of her as a woman. A woman who had been in total, complete control of an absolute disaster. And he felt like a total shit, making her lose that control, breaking her composure with his smartass question. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”  
    But of course, she hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to solve the real problem—the kid lying down the hall, wondering if he was ever going to play ball again. And Zach just had to find the perfect pressure point, to push her over the goddamn edge.  
    And his cock hadn’t known the difference between honest regret—trying to fix the problem he’d made with his own idiot question—and raging teenage lust. He’d regressed twenty-five years in a heartbeat.
    At least now that he was a grown man, he’d had the presence of mind to lead the distraught Anna to one of those waiting room chairs. He’d forced some distance between them. Occupied himself by passing her Kleenex after Kleenex until he could be sure his stupid cock remembered the rules.  
    Shit. Maybe it was like those stories he’d heard—about people who narrowly escaped death in a car crash, or a natural disaster. They went at it like rabbits, trying to affirm the supreme beauty of life or some crap like that.
    Sure. That’s all it was. He’d watched Tucker’s career collapse in one bad play. He’d seen one woman bring order and logic out of the chaos. And his dick had wanted to affirm the supreme beauty of…
    Yeah. Right.
    The trick would be figuring out what he’d say to Anna the next time he saw her. Sure, they’d managed to joke around in the hospital waiting room, even after he’d made an ass out of himself. They’d talked about suspension. They’d made sure Tucker was comfortable.
    But the next time they talked? He’d be stuck thinking about his hard-on, and she’d be thinking about… What would she be thinking about? If he was lucky , she’d think about the quiet hours, the way they’d shifted the kid’s hands on top of his blankets, curving his fingers to a more comfortable angle. The way they’d worked in tandem, him holding a Styrofoam cup of water while she raised a soaked sponge to the kid’s dry lips.
    Any of that, all of that was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
    Dammit.