Free Jude Deveraux by First Impressions

through the doorway into the kitchen and he heard nothing but
silence for several minutes. He knew why. The kitchen was a mess. Yesterday
he'd thrown food into cabinets and the refrigerator as fast as possible so he
could start scouting the area before the Palmer woman got there. He'd run in
twice to make himself a sandwich and had left everything as it was. He figured
that after she moved into the house he'd have plenty of time to straighten up.
    A few
minutes later, Ms. Palmer came out of the kitchen with a little tray filled
with food. He could smell what seemed to be homemade vegetable beef soup. The
women he liked were very understanding and tolerant of what he did for a living,
but none of them were cooks. It seemed to be a law of life that women who took
their clothes off for a living didn't cook, while women who went to church did.
    'I, uh
. . . ' she said hesitantly. 'I'll just leave you to, uh, heal, and, again, I'm
sorry that I . . . ' She looked at his eye, which he knew was huge and black
and purple, and which distorted his face as though he'd had a stroke. On the
other side of his face were two deep scratches from her nails.
    Jared
couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw tears form in Eden Palmer's eyes.
'Could you put the food a little closer?' he whispered, as though talking was
painful — which it was. 'I think I can reach it if it's a bit closer.'
    'Yes,
of course,' Eden said quickly, then moved the tray to the table next to Jared's
chair.
    He
pulled his uninjured arm from under the blanket and made a shaky attempt to get
a spoonful of soup, but he dropped the spoon back into the bowl. He gave Ms.
Palmer a look that said he was trying but couldn't quite make it.
    In the next
second, Eden had pulled up a chair and was feeding him. It was all Jared could
do not to smile at such luxury. But he had to concentrate on playing the
invalid, and that meant no smiling.
    It took
thirty long minutes to feed him all the food, and they didn't talk during that
time. While he chewed, she scurried about the room, straightened up, and lit
the logs in the fireplace.
    'Thank
you,' Jared said, collapsing back against the chair. 'I needed that. Since I
got out of the hospital I haven't been able to do much for myself. I'm sorry
the house is such a mess. You must think that I'm — '
    'I
don't think anything at all bad about you, Mr. McBride. It's me who's at fault.
When I think about what you were doing for me last night and what I did to you,
I . . . Well, I . . . '
    Jared
reached out for her hand. Nice, he thought. Soft. He started to move up her
wrist but then remembered himself enough that he gave a tiny moan of pain and
flopped back against the chair.
    'Can
you walk?'
    'A
bit,' he said heavily. 'I can get to the . . . you know, by myself.'
    Standing
up, she put her hands on her hips, and when Jared groaned, it was for real. He
hated that hands-on-hips stance that women put on. It was the Earth Mother
pose, and it suited this woman much too well. Deliver me, thought Jared. He was
about to throw back the blanket and tell her to go home when she spoke. 'I
insist that you stay in my guest room until you can take care of yourself,' she
said.
    Jared
wasn't sure that any woman had ever been able to take his breath away in the
same way that she had just done. 'No, Ms. Palmer,' he said softly. 'I couldn't
move in with you.'
    'I'm
not asking you to move in with me. It's just until you can take care of
yourself.'
    He gave
a sigh, then a wince as he moved in the chair. 'This is a small town and people
will talk.'
    'They'll
talk more if they think I've left a man I've rendered helpless to fend for
himself.' She sat down on the chair in front of him. 'I'm going to be honest with
you. I feel very guilty about what I did. Someday, maybe, I'll tell you what
happened inside my mind when you touched me in that dark room. It brought back
some very unpleasant memories for me, and for a while I lost it. I apologize.
But I can't go back and undo