Free The Wrong Sister by Kris Pearson Page B

said. There was no need for the instruction—Fiona had already gasped at his touch. Christian lifted her with gentle care and tucked another pillow behind her shoulders.  
    Fiona ran her tongue around suddenly dry lips, and flicked her eyes from side to side to absorb every glorious detail of him. He was close enough for her to see every one of his long black eyelashes, every dark whisker-stub, each thread in his dark blue shirt—and his deep golden hair-hazed chest where the shirt’s front gaped open as he bent over her.
    “Comfortable?” he asked as he withdrew his hands. The sides of her breasts burned as his fingers slid by.  
    Mmmm,” was all she could manage.  
    ‘Comfortable’ was the understatement of the year. She was so far from comfortable that torture would have been preferable.
    “I bought some fruit on my way to collect you from hospital.” He lowered the folding legs of the tray-table either side of her lap. She nodded, grateful at least to have more of her body concealed from his probing dark eyes. He’d set the tray with a linen placemat, a crystal jug of water clinking with ice-cubes, a matching tumbler, a silver fork and a big white bowl full of strawberries, raspberries, huge ruby grape-halves, and cubes of melon, pineapple and mango.  
    “I’ll never manage all that,” she protested.
    “I cut up enough for two.”    
    Fiona watched as he moved the jug and tumbler aside to the chest of drawers. Then tensed as he walked around the bed, lowered himself with care so he didn’t cause her any further pain, and reached for the fork.
    Her body surged with fire again. Flooded with heat and longing. Christian was now only inches from her, apparently perfectly at ease. Why couldn’t she relax as well?  
    “It looks lovely,” she croaked, and cleared her throat.  
      He positioned the fork above a melon cube and impaled it.
    “It was about all Jan felt like eating near the end. I got quite good at fruit.”
    Fiona blanched. Jan was gone but never far away from them. She was a silent loved presence who haunted every corner of the house. And her out-of-bounds husband was now propped up on one elbow, horribly terribly wonderfully close. She parted her lips.

    Christian willed his body to behave. He knew Fiona’s bruised and wrenched arm would still be able to lift a forkful of fruit. She wasn’t helpless, just slow and awkward, but he was testing his resistance to her, trying to prove to himself he could stay well clear. There’d be no kissing this time. No touching. No bodily contact at all.
    As Fiona opened her mouth, he inserted the melon cube, watching as her soft lips closed around the fork. Naked lips. Warm lips. Lips that he’d kissed not long ago and then castigated himself for with bitter curses.  
    She flicked him a glance and gave a slight nod. He withdrew the fork. While Fiona bit into the juicy melon, he speared himself a strawberry and tore it off the fork-prongs, savoring the sweet red flesh as though it was her lips.
    “Christian,” she said, after she’d swallowed.
    His eyes met hers.
    “I’m sorry about before. About asking you not to leave. Of course I didn’t mean it the way it must have sounded.”
    He watched her with total attention. It was as he’d feared. She’d been delirious, or drugged, or simply in pain. Any small surge of hope he’d felt was now firmly squashed.  
    “It’s just...I needed to say thank-you for letting me stay here. I know it’s not what you wanted. You’d already made that more than clear.”
    Shame needled at him. He’d prayed to be rid of her, yet itched for her to stay. Fate had thrown her back into his arms when he’d least expected it.
    “You’re in no shape to travel yet.”
    “But still, it was kind of you.”
    His face burned, and a rapid pulse pounded in his throat.
    “I wouldn’t throw you out on the street in this condition.”  
    What a cop-out! I’d move heaven and earth to keep you here...
    He turned his