Shiver

yet delicate and were echoed in miniature by her son’s. She was wrapped in the thick white robe, which precluded him from seeing any real detail of the curves that had made him burn earlier. But the robe parted just below the belt that she had cinched tight around her waist as she’d run away down the hall, high enough so that he could see a silky white triangle of cloth curving between her legs. He realized that what he was seeing was a little bit of the underwear he’d felt sliding against his shorts earlier, and his body responded with an instant surge of heat. He assumed that the panties, like the boxers he was wearing, had come with the town house, and seriously doubted that they were the kind of underwear she would choose if she had been choosing. Whatever their origin, just a glimpse of those thin white panties was enough to turn him on. To add to the problem, below that triangle of white her bare legs were on full display. They were long and lithe, and looked very tan against the white sheets. Her thighs were slender, her calves well shaped. Her feet were long and narrow.
    He had no trouble at all imagining her legs wrapped around his waist.
    Do not go there. But it was too late. The instant, involuntary mental picture had already made his heartbeat quicken. His body hardened faster than quick-set cement. With the best will in the world for it not to happen, his mind instantly shot backto those hot kisses. To the soft roundness and hard little nipple that was her breast.
    Damn it to hell, anyway.
    Cursing himself under his breath, Danny abruptly turned away. Clumping along the hall to his own room, he did his best to replace the image of Sam in that bed with anything and everything else he could call to mind, anything that he thought—hoped—might drive her out of his head. But the image of her lying there sleeping, that silky triangle of white promising all kinds of luscious secrets yet to be revealed, her sexy bare legs just about begging to be wrapped around him, was, he discovered, impossible to override.
    When he slept, finally, his dreams were so erotic as to be embarrassing when he woke up and semiremembered them. By then, it was morning. And not early, either. He could tell that by the quality of the light that was filtering in through the curtains that covered the single window. One result of dreaming about rather than actually having an orgy of hot sex with his pretty companion in hiding was that he felt grouchy as all hell. And really, really horny. Plus his head ached. Practically every bone and muscle in his body hurt. And to top it off, as he had expected, his leg felt like a thousand angry wasps were going to town on it with red-hot stingers.
    What could he say? Another day in the life.
    Moving gingerly, he barely managed to suppress a groan. Even the slight weight of the covers lying across the bandage now felt unbearable. He tossed them aside.
    Bring on the Lortab. Quick.
    No. Not going there. From here on out, it was cold turkey all the way.
    Cursing silently, grimacing, Danny tried to go all Zen and practice mental control and block out the pain.
    Didn’t work.
    Gritting his teeth, hitching himself into a sitting position, getting ready to carefully swing his legs off the bed preparatory to standing up, Danny glanced around in search of his crutches. In the process of doing so, he discovered that he was the object of what appeared to be fascinated attention by a pair of big blue eyes.
    Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how he looked at it, they didn’t belong to Sam.
    It was Tyler who stood in the open doorway watching him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
     

     
    “P ancakes,” Sam called out to Tyler in as cheery a tone as she could muster, scooping up the last of the golden brown disks from the skillet where they had been sizzling and sliding them onto a plate with the others. The unmistakable smell of breakfast—pancakes, plus bacon and coffee—filled the air. It made her stomach growl, and she realized that despite the circumstances she was actually very hungry. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was clean, completely furnished and well equipped down to the dish towels, decorated in earth tones, with a big sliding glass door at the far end that was only partially veiled by sand-colored vertical blinds. Having already filled another plate with a dozen crispy strips of bacon, she picked up both plates and turned around to set them on the table. That’s when she discovered