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face between her hands and
kissed him deeply. “Yes, I ‘want to give it a whirl and see what
happens.’”
    She yelped as he suddenly jerked her blouse
over her head and popped off her bra, baring her breasts to his
gaze.
    “Tommy, what are you doing?”
    “I’m using those lips and those fingers like
you told me to do,” he said, snaking his tongue out and finding her
breast. Christi gasped as he took the nipple full into his mouth
and suckled gently, turning it into a hard pebble of desire.
    “Tell you what,” he added as he gave his
wheelchair a powerful shove toward the front door. “I’m going to
carry my lady off to bed tonight and use everything I have,
whatever that turns out to be, to make her happy.” He looked into
Christi’s eyes then and promised, “I love you, Christi. And I’m
going to try like hell tonight to show you just how much.”

Chapter Four
    Tommy Joe shut
his eyes to the morning sun peeking through the window shades and
tried to convince himself to go back to sleep, but the brightness
and angle of the light told him the sun was up and had been for a
while. It was time to get up and face the music, as it were. Still,
he lay frozen for a few minutes and let himself relive the
lovemaking he and Christi shared the night before.
    What would be Christi’s take on it? As
promised, he’d kissed and touched and caressed her as he knew she
loved to be touched. She’d flown apart in his arms, whimpering deep
in her throat as he made damn sure she enjoyed climax after climax.
But that had only been half the story. It was the other half that
had Tommy Joe worried.
    Well, there was no way around it. Regardless
of his hopes, his lovemaking wasn’t what it used to be. Yes, he
could still function some, and the sensible part of him was damn
grateful for that, but he was far from the horny, insatiable cowboy
she’d fallen in love with. That stung, especially after hearing
Doug’s words last night. He and Christi would have to talk about
going forward, and he was afraid what she would have to say to him
at the end. Yes, she’d promised to try to work through everything,
but was what he could offer her these days enough, or would she
want to find another man, one who could make love to her like a
woman like she deserved?
    Where was she? He would give anything not to
talk about it this morning, but she’d been right last night. They
had to start tackling all of their concerns head-on, starting with
this. If she decided he wasn’t man enough for her, he would just
have to understand. He loved her enough to do whatever she
needed.
    He sat up and pulled himself to the edge of
the bed then did a double-take at the time on the alarm clock. Good
grief, he’d slept away half the morning! Christi had probably been
up for hours.
    Cursing a little at the time it took to
dress, Tommy pulled on jeans and a disreputable old T-shirt before
adding a threadbare western shirt to ward off the mild morning
chill. He moved toward his usual spot in front of the window, but
he stopped dead as he spotted Christi waving him to from outside.
Intrigued, he wheeled himself out to the barn where Christi was
struggling to lift a heavy hay bale into Muffin’s feeder. Some
calves were watching, waiting for their hay.
    “Here, you’re stronger than me,” she called.
“You finish feeding these darlings while I go make coffee.”
    An enigmatic expression on her face, she
leaned down and gave him a hard, swift kiss. Tommy fought back
surprise as she dropped a pair of work gloves and wire cutters in
his lap, and before he could protest she hot-footed it out of the
barn and up the front porch stairs into the house.
    What the hell? How was he supposed to carry a
bunch of hay bales to the feed troughs? Tommy Joe started to follow
her to the house to protest, but he was waylaid by the sound of
Muffin chuffing at him from her stall and looking hungrily at the
pile of hay bales in the corner. “Okay, girl,” he muttered,