Straight from the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

save me a lot of time and trouble if we’re in the same neighborhood.”
    “Oh, yes, by all means!” she said. “Why go to a lot of extra trouble? I might as well be handy!”
    “Becca, that’s not how I meant it.” His thinning patience was evident in his tone of voice. Just enough steel came through the flannel softness to warn her she wasn’t the only one who’d had a long day. She’d pushed him about as far as he was going to allow. Yes, he deserved her sarcasm. Yes, he’d expected a show of temper. But he wasn’t going to be a martyr about it.
    Rebecca took her gaze off the road just long enough to glimpse the stern look on his face—a look that quickly turned to a grimace of pain as one of her front tires dropped into a pothole. With a cry of pain, he squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his injured knee.
    “Oh, Jace! I’m sorry!” She swerved the car to the curb and slammed it into park. Leaning across his crutches, she reached for his leg, gently pushing his hand away and replacing it with her own. “Lean back and try to relax. Tensing up the muscles will only prolong the pain.”
    Jace gasped for air as he forced himself to sit back. The pain that had driven into his knee like red-hot pokers gradually receded as Rebecca gently massaged his thigh. It felt like heaven, even through the heavy elasticized brace he wore. A feeling of weakness shivered through him as he relaxed.
    “Better?” she questioned softly, her hand steadily kneading the cramped muscle.
    He nodded, his head falling back against the plush gray seat.
    “You’ve been on it too much today, haven’t you?”
    “I guess.” The bus ride from Chicago hadn’t done it any good either, but he didn’t feel much like talking about that at the moment.
    “Does it feel as if it’s swelling?”
    “Like a balloon.”
    Rebecca clucked her disapproval. “You always were a horrible patient. As soon as we get you to Muriel’s, I want you to elevate this knee and get some ice on it to take the swelling down, then go to a warm compress to stimulate blood flow. Did Dr. Cornish give you a prescription for pain pills?”
    “I don’t want any drugs.”
    “Jace, you’re in pain—”
    The look he gave her ended the argument as surely as his words did. “No drugs.”
    Rebecca raised her free hand in surrender. “Fine. No prescription drugs. But please, take some aspirin. That will help take the inflammation down as well as making you more comfortable. I doubt you’ll be able to sleep tonight without it.”
    He nodded again as his body relaxed another degree. Pain in his knee wasn’t the only thing that was going to keep him awake, he thought, biting back a moan. Rebecca continued to rub his thigh absently as she quizzed him about his injury. As if they had minds of their own, her fingers crept up under the frayed edge of the cutoff leg of his jeans. Flesh massaged flesh with no barrier to dull the pleasure. Jace let his imagination draw her hand upward an inch at a time.
    He wanted her. He hadn’t wanted a woman since the accident, nearly two months before, but he wanted Rebecca Bradshaw. Memories rushed back of the way she’d felt beneath him, around him. All the tastes and sounds and scents of her filled his mind until he had to fight them off as a matter of self-preservation. He had to remind himself that Rebecca was a long way from welcoming his advances, even if her fingers were doing a little reminiscing of their own.
    Jace knew the instant she realized what she was doing. Her brilliant green eyes seemed to double in size. She jerked her hand from his leg and stared at it in a most accusatory way, as if it had betrayed her.
    “Don’t stop on my account,” he said in a warm lazy voice.
    His head lolled to one side as he watched her skitter across the seat until she was practically jammed up against the door on the driver’s side. A blush rouged her cheeks. Jace chuckled. “Do you think aspirin will take care of the swelling in other