Worth the Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

that and Petey saw him look to the little windowed booth where his doctor sat. He couldn ’t see what looks passed between them, but the tech was silent and a little more careful as he readied Petey.
    “ Okay, we’re ready to begin. First, you’ll—”
    Petey held up a hand, interrupting the young man. “It’s okay. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
    Again, the tech looked beyond Petey and must have gotten the permission he needed to skip the preamble. He patted Petey ’s shoulder—which Petey should have found comforting but didn’t—and left the room.
    The machine started up and his bed moved down into position. They were giving him instructions through the intercom, but he didn ’t really hear them. He didn’t need to, as he’d been through this a few times. And he didn’t want to think about where he was and what was bound to come next.
    Think of something else. Think of—
    Her shapely legs wrapped around his waist as he drove into her, her ankles locked together like she couldn’t get enough of him. Later, her sweet little ass curled into him, letting him hold her while she slept .
    Aw, shit. So not where he wanted to go, even if it distracted him from the whirring of the machine that would be the messenger of bad news.
    He ’d relived the night of Katie’s and Darío’s wedding a thousand times in the months since he’d awakened alone in Alison’s hotel room. Sometimes in frustration, sometimes in regret. Many times as a prelude to…well, the road could be a lonely place and there were nights where he just didn’t want to go through the work it’d take to leave the room and find a willing bedmate in a bar somewhere.
    And the memory of his night with Alison would be the final thought that got him off by his own hand in the shower.
    To see her walking toward him down the hospital corridor—after fantasizing about her for months—had made him wonder for a moment if the pain in his knee had driven him to hallucinations.
    She looked the same as she always did, petite but curvy body, smooth, flawless skin a few shades darker than most of the heavily Finnish population of the Copper Country. Alison was Finnish—and not just on the Jukuri side—but she was what was known as a dark Finn, her ancestors hailing from Lapland.
    So she didn’t have the white-blond, baby-fine hair that Katie—and many others in the area—did. Hers was a deep, rich brown that took on gold highlights in the summers when they’d all be outside all the time. She always wore it in a shorter style. Lately, it was cut with longer bangs in the front that kind of did this swoopy thing, but still short in the back, showing off her nape.
    Nothing sexier than a woman ’s exposed nape.
    Nor did Alison have the blue eyes that so often accompanied the light Finns. No, Alison had the most amazing, huge, expressive brown eyes that could relay compassion (for others), and irritation (for him) with a single look.
    And those eyes had looked at him once—well, technically twice, but he’d been too young and stupid to recognize it at the time—with such passion, intensity and all-around lust that sometimes just remembering that look in her whiskey-brown eyes was all it took in the shower.
    But she wasn ’t there for him. Lizzie’d made her keep him company until the cavalry arrived.
    He ’d let her off the hook and told her to go, but she said she’d stay. He didn’t really know what to expect as they finished up with the tests and wheeled him back to the holding area or whatever it was called.
    Alison was there with one of those electronic book readers in her hands. She looked up as they drew near and then stood. “How’d it go?” she asked.
    “ They don’t tell you anything there. The doc will be around in a few minutes to tell me I need surgery.”
    “ How do you know that?”
    He shrugged— Shit, even that seemed to hurt his knee —and said, “I know the drill.”
    She accepted that without question. They all knew when he