Free Showdown at Lizard Rock by Sandra Chastain Page A

about
that.
    He threw back his head and laughed. “Kaylyn, darlin’, do you know how tempting your request is?”
    “Would you rub some lotion on my back? It’s driving me crazy and I can’t reach it.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Will this mean that we’re engaged?”
    “It means that I trust you to be a
responsible
doctor. Harold said you have some calamine lotion in your medicine cabinet.”
    “For once in his life Harold said the right thing. Come with me.”
    He took her hand and pulled her along a narrow corridor to the room at the end. “Just lie down and I’ll get the lotion.”
    Kaylyn looked at his bed and began to laugh. It was big and it was red.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “I’ve heard of
king
-size beds, but this is ridiculous.”
    “Well, I’m a big man, and it didn’t seem to matter if there’s room to walk. I told the builder to leave me just enough space to make the bed up.”
    Kaylyn eyed the room. An open door indicated a bath area on the far side of the bed. “He obviously ignored you. There’s no place to stand.”
    “I just get in the middle and spread out the sheets from there. Let me see your rash, Kaylyn.”
    “I don’t suppose you could do this in the dark, could you?”
    “Kaylyn, darlin’, if we turn out the lights, what we’ll do in the dark won’t have any effect on your poison ivy.”
    “Ah. Good point.” She stretched out on her stomach on the bed and shrugged the robe down her back. King went into the bathroom and returned with a small bottle of pink liquid and climbed on the bed with her. He straddled her body with his powerful thighs and began spreading the lotion between her shoulder blades.
    “Hmm, it’s warm,” she murmured. “I’m surprised.”
    “It was cold until it hit my hands,” he said rakishly.
    He caressed her back lightly, sliding his fingers across her shoulders and down her spine.
    “You’re tense,” he said, following the corded muscles up the side of her neck and under the base of her skull. “Relax. I once knew a lady who had fingertips that could practically commune with the spinal column. Let me show you.”
    She took a deep breath. The fingers kneading her back were bringing new meaning to the term
show-and-tell.
She felt the heat emanating from his hands. It dug into her pores like the heat of the sun on a white-hot Florida beach in mid-July. And the heat skittered across her skin and down her legs, where she felt the slight, instinctive movement of her inner thighs.
    “Thank you,” she said. “I think I’m relaxed now, as relaxed as I’ll ever be on this bed.”
    “Oh, no, you’re not. Sooner or later you’ll be muchmore relaxed—on this very bed.” His hands stopped and lay still on her back. She felt the rise and fall of his touch as he breathed. There was no mistaking his arousal, pressing hotly against her.
    There was no mistaking the noise outside, either. Something large and probably expensive had crashed into something equally as large and probably just as expensive. King leapt off the bed and headed for the door to the hall. Kaylyn took a moment to pull his robe back over her shoulders and followed.
    He threw the trailer door open, and she stopped beside it, watching him pull on rubber boots and a rain poncho. She peered out into the darkness, but all she could see was a frightened-looking Matilda.
    “What is it, King?”
    “I’m not sure, but it sounded like equipment crashing. You stay here. I’ll check it out. I’ll be right back.”
    But he didn’t come right back, and when the rain stopped, Kaylyn stepped outside and listened to the distant sounds of machines moving. Mac, dirty and disheveled, walked by the trailer.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    “One of the men left a tractor out of gear. It rolled down a hill and into several other machines. King and I have a night’s work cut out for us.”
    He politely avoided staring at her, but she knew that he was wondering what she and King had been doing