Till I Kissed You Read Online Free PDF Page A

it?” She wiggled all her toes. He took her big toe and maneuvered it around. “Not broken. Let me clean it up.”
    It took several cotton balls to clean her entire foot. When he stroked down her arch, she hissed and jerked her foot. “There’s something stuck. A piece of a pinecone, I think. Can you see it?”
    Now that it was clean, he could see the embedded thorn and the angry skin around it. “You got yourself good. Did that happen out here too?”
    â€œNo, it was when I went chasing … that man through the pine trees out back of Mother’s.” A thread of suspicion still lilted her words.
    He harrumphed. “It wasn’t me. I promise I was sound asleep when I heard you skid to a stop outside. Hang on. I need tweezers.”
    He grabbed tweezers from the medicine cabinet in his room. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he stopped. His hair was sticking up everywhere. He smoothed it down as best he could, but it was hopeless without getting it wet, and that would be too obvious.
    He returned to the kitchen. She had maneuvered her leg up and was examining the bottom of her foot in a feat of flexibility that had his southern regions jumping again.
    Clearing his throat, he sat down and pulled her foot into his lap. “Okay, this might hurt a little. You ready?”
    After a half-dozen tries, he got the thorn out. She had clutched the edge of the chair with both hands and was grimacing. “You got it,” she said on a sigh.
    He held up the quarter-inch long sliver of pinecone. Blood welled out of the site, and he pressed a cotton ball against it. At the same time, he rubbed her foot with his other hand, his thumb stroking along her arch and pressing into the ball. Her foot relaxed. He couldn’t recall ever giving her a foot rub when they’d been together. His teenage hormones had kept him focused on the more obvious parts of her body.
    Now though, he could appreciate her slender foot and delicate ankle and the endless length of leg attached to them. His gaze slid all the way up to where her soft thigh disappeared into her shorts and then higher to where temptation called. The outline of her breasts was barely visible under her pink T-shirt, but her nipples were peaked against the thin fabric.
    While he rubbed, something she said niggled at him. He quit his semimassage and tightened his hold on her foot. “Hold up. You chased some strange man through the woods? By yourself? Barefoot and wearing that ?” He gestured over her.
    â€œI thought it was you.” She half-shrugged, which only drew his gaze back to her chest. Part of him wished it had been him and that she’d caught him like last time.
    â€œDid you see his face?”
    â€œHe was wearing jeans like the ones you were wearing the other night. And a hoodie. But he was built kind of like you. Tallish and—” She shook her head and picked at fraying threads on the hem of her shorts.
    â€œAnd what?”
    â€œYou know”—she rolled her eyes and blew a piece of hair off her forehead with a huff—“not fat. Sort of muscular, I suppose. He took off for the river.”
    â€œWhat were you going to do if you caught up with him?”
    â€œI don’t know. Tackle him. Yell at you—him.”
    â€œWhat if he’d pulled a gun or a knife or hurt you, goddammit?” He held her foot in one hand and slid his other hand up her calf to squeeze. The thought of whoever this man was hurting her in any way set his blood on fire and filled him with a fear-tinged anger he couldn’t tamp down.
    She yanked her leg out of his hands, arched it to the floor, and stood. “It never crossed my mind it could be someone else, okay? First you come to the meeting, then I see you driving by last night. With your lights off. What am I supposed to think?”
    He stood, crossed his arms, and bent over to put them face-to-face. “Maybe you could assume that