Sarah's Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

was Sarah who needed comforting. And it was odd how good it felt to give that little bit of comfort. He had been trying so long to make a difference in the world by patching up the wounded and sending them back out into the war. Yet just this one small gesture made him feel better. Maybe he had given up thinking the world could be saved by his meager efforts. Maybe he had seen too much of people who had lost all respect for humanity. He had certainly seen far too much of needless suffering and senseless death. And here was this one simple, sweet Amish woman, touched by his pain. He wanted to kiss her just for caring.
    Hell, he just plain wanted to kiss her.
    “You know what I could use, Nurse Troyer?” he said softly, trying to coax a smile out of her.
    Sarah shrugged, too shaken to trust her voice.
    “Some breakfast. I'm starved.”
    She nodded and managed a tiny smile. “Ya, a good big breakfast. You need your strength for healing.”
    She moved to rise, but the pressure of Matt's hand on hers kept her seated beside him. Her heart did a little flip as she looked down at the sight of her small hand engulfed in his. His was wide and capable looking with blunt-tipped fingers and neatly manicured nails. It felt warm and gentle, and she suddenly couldn't remember the last time she'd been touched that way.
    Seemingly with a will of its own, her hand turned over and rubbed palm against palm with Matt's. The friction generated a heat that sizzled through her, burning her breath away in her lungs and igniting fires in all her most secret womanly places. It should have felt forbidden, but it didn't. It felt good. She felt alive.
    She could sense Matt's dark eyes searching her expression, and she made a little face and pulled her hand back to the relative safety of her own lap.
    “You have no calluses,” she said quietly. It came out sounding like an accusation, as if it were a wicked, sexy secret he had deliberately kept from her.
    “I get paid a lot of money to keep these hands as soft as a baby's,'
    “It seems strange to me,” she admitted. “Most of the men I know are farmers. Even their wives have calluses.”
    “I can't afford them. As a doctor my sense of touch has to be sensitive, acute. I have to be able to read people with my hands,” Matt said. “Here. Ill show you.”
    Sarah sat as still and wary as a doe, watching him as he lifted his hands to cup her face. He closed his eyes, thick dark lashes sweeping down like lace fans. His fingertips stroked along the surface of her skin like a whisper, following the ripe curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. The pads of his thumbs brushed the outer corners of her mouth, and her lips parted in unconscious invitation.
    “Beautiful,” he whispered. “Delicate. Sweet.”
    His fingertips slid into the soft tendrils of hair that curled down along the nape of her neck, and he drew her forward gently, inexorably, so that she felt more like she was falling than being pulled toward him. Her own eyes drifted shut, lulled by the sensuous spell he had cast over her And his lips brushed over hers with as light a touch as his fingers', sampling, tasting.
    “Sweet,” he murmured again, the word itself a kiss.
    For Sarah, time stood absolutely still, and she was aware of everything about the moment: Matt, the warm, minty taste of him, the feel of his hands cradling her head, the softness of his mouth, the scent of fall drifting in through the window on a warm Indian summer breeze, the rustling of the dry leaves on the big maple tree that stood beside the house, the crack of a branch, and the surprised cry—
    Sarah bolted from the bed. “What on earth?”
    Blossom hurled herself across the room, howling like a hunting hound in full cry. She reached the open window just before Sarah, flinging her front half onto the sill, and her speckled nose up against the screen.
    “Bow-ooooo! Bow-ooooo!”
    With her hands clamped to her ears, Sarah peered out, scanning the tree limbs for