Free Always a Lady by Sharon Sala Page B

was a shame that Case lived in it alone.
"Lilleee!" Buddy repeated, only louder and longer.
She took the stairs in double-time.
    "Coming," she called, and met him ambling out of his room with a shirt in one hand and a string tie in the other.
    "What's wrong now?" she asked with a grin, as her beloved Buddy shoved both objects toward her with a panicked look on his face.
    "The top button is off, and I don't know how to tie this tie."
    "Lord love a duck, Buddy. I thought you were being killed or something."
Buddy grinned helplessly and shrugged.
Lily's sigh was one of loving disgust.
    Buddy was the second oldest, but the least able to cope with problems. He lived in a world of computers and machines that didn't allow the human connection. He was a computer programmer and just shy of brilliant. But he was the least likely to ever marry. He evaded personal relationships like the plague and the only female allowed in his world was his baby sister, Lily.
    "Something wrong?" Case asked, as he burst through the bathroom door with nothing on save an oversized bathtowel.
    Oh God! I didn't need to see this. I know I wondered if he was brown all over, but I really didn't want to know. Now how am I going to forget?
    "Ooops," Case grinned, and grabbed at the twist of towel at his waist, just to make sure that it was still secure. "I didn't know you were up here, Lily. I was in the shower and heard someone yelling over the racket the water was making. Thought someone was in trouble."
    Yes, someone is in trouble now, if they weren't before, and the someone is me, Lily thought.
    "Sorry," Buddy said. "Button off, can't tie my tie."
    Case grinned at the look of shock Lily was wearing and then swallowed the seed of hope that burst forth as he saw something more spreading across her face. If he wasn't dreaming, it looked a bit like interest. In fact, it might even be described as . . . intrigue.
    "There's needle and thread on the top of my dresser," Case said, as he started back into the bathroom. "And a button box beside it. Help yourself, Lily. As for his tie, when he's ready to put it on, I'll help him. Can't have this L.A. man out of step tonight. Too many pretty ladies coming."
Buddy looked like he'd swallowed a worm. Women?
    "Give me the darn shirt," Lily grumbled, and yanked it out of his hand before he could think of an argument for not attending the barbecue.
Buddy ducked back into his room.
    Lily let him go, but she knew it would take more than food to get him back out again. Case shouldn't have mentioned the women. Lily knew all about Buddy's nervousness because she felt it herself. She needed to get away from the sight of Case . . . and all that tan skin . . . those long muscular legs and arms . . . that damn towel . . . and what she couldn't see.
    She flew into his room and then stopped in mid-step. She'd never been past the door, and the shock of his bed was more than she'd been prepared for. It was the biggest, tallest four-poster she'd ever seen. And the bedspread! It was black satin, and Lily had never been so entranced in her life. This dirt and no-nonsense cowboy slept beneath black satin?
    Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the thread from the dresser and unwound a length from the spool before biting it from the bolt. The images that kept springing to mind did nothing to help her thread the needle she'd confiscated from the pincushion. She slipped the end of the thread into her mouth and then pulled slowly, carefully wetting the end of the fiber before trying to slide it into the tiny eye of the needle.
    Case watched her look of intense concentration and growing frustration as she kept missing the eye. He couldn't take his sight from the way she kept snaking her tongue out to catch the end of the errant thread and redampening it before trying to slide it back through the needle. My God the thoughts that tongue evoked!
"Need any help?" he asked quietly.
    Lily jumped. The needle fell to the floor and the button she was holding