Free The Quiet Seduction by Dixie Browning

back door, her silky brown hair windblown and her green eyes sparkling, and not react.
    Gratitude would have been an appropriate reaction. Friendship—sure, why not? He knew more about her now than her closest neighbor did—probably even more than her own son. And the more he came to know her, the more he found to like. To admire.
    The fact that it wasn’t solely friendship he was feeling was inconvenient, to say the least. Even that first night, when his head had felt like a busted melon and she’d come into his room wearing that shabby old bathrobe, shoved up his pajama leg and began massaging liniment into his knee, he’d felt the first stir of sexual awareness. Since then it had grown to the point where he was wary of being alone with her after Pete went to bed. With his mind an empty slate, he found it too easy to fill it with visions of himself following Ellen up those stairs—of Ellen stepping out of the showerand reaching for a towel. Of Ellen tossing restlessly in her bed, which happened to be right above the room he was using.
    â€œJudas priest, man, get a grip!” he muttered as he ran water into the washer, tossed in a pair of his jeans and two pairs of Ellen’s, and looked around for Pete’s things. He was supposed to have brought them down before leaving for school.
    Well, hell, if he could tote a basket full of wet laundry, he could handle a few stairs. All signs of inflammation in both his ankle and his knee had disappeared. The knot on his head was gone. Basically he was good as new, if only he could fill in a few Grand-Canyon-size potholes where his memory was supposed to reside.
    He’d quit using the crutch a couple of days ago. Now he held on to the banister, taking one step at a time. No pain, no gain. Where had he heard that before? Did that work in reverse? Because he didn’t feel so much as a twinge.
    He was grinning triumphantly by the time he reached the top of the stairs. That was, he was grinning until he saw Ellen. She was clutching her bathrobe and a pair of slippers in front of her. Jaybird naked, as far as he could tell.
    â€œOmigod,” she blurted.
    â€œI thought you were outside.” Stepping back, he grabbed the newel to keep from tumbling down the stairs. He was breathing heavily. From exertion, he told himself, trying hard not to stare at the satiny flesh above the chenille robe.
    â€œWhat are you doing up here? You’re not supposed to tackle stairs yet.”
    â€œI could ask you the same thing. I didn’t hear youcome inside.” To reach her bedroom she would have to pass close by where he was standing.
    â€œI came in the back way. Look, I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but if it can wait…?” She’d managed to slip her arms into her robe. Now she tightened the sash around her waist.
    â€œSure. I mean, I was only going to see if Pete had anything to wash. He forgot to bring his things down this morning.” Storm couldn’t take his eyes off her waist. Couldn’t be more than twenty inches—in another era, hers would have been called an hourglass figure.
    â€œSorry, I didn’t mean to stare—only, Ellen, you do know how beautiful you are, don’t you?”
    Her jaw fell. “I know what? Storm, have you been drinking?”
    â€œCoffee. That’s all, I swear. I just thought…I mean—” He shook his head. What did he mean? That she was beautiful? That was a given.
    That he would like nothing better than to open her bedroom door, lead her over to her bed and join her there?
    Absolutely.
    That he was acting like a man who’d lost not only his memory but every grain of decency he’d ever possessed?
    Yeah, that, too.
    â€œI slipped and fell down in the manure pile.”
    The way she was glaring at him, you’d have thought it was somehow his fault. He blinked and tried to control his grin. It was better than rampaging lust, but not a