Free Ever After by Jude Deveraux Page B

breaths. He was such a contradiction! she thought. On the surface he seemed to not have a serious thought in his mind, always teasing and laughing, but his body felt like a tightly coiled spring. If she could just get him to fully relax, maybe he wouldn’t need pills to help him sleep.
    She couldn’t help wondering what had made him so tense.Was there a recent tragedy in his life? A brush with death for him? But she knew better than to flat out ask him. He’d change the subject.
    They spent an hour together doing exercises. Jamie called them “girly” and frowned, but she could tell that the breathing movements were helping him. At one point she saw his eyes flicker as though he were sleepy. The thought that she’d helped enough that he might not need pills for sleep made her feel good.
    When she finished with him, he lay on the thick rug, his eyes closed, and smiling. “Feel better?” she asked.
    “I do, actually.” He sounded surprised.
    She stood up and looked down at him. He’d said that he was truly beginning to
like
her and she felt the same way about him. She’d never before felt so comfortable with a man. Sometimes they even seemed to have the same thoughts at the same time.
    With the few boyfriends she’d had in the past, she usually couldn’t wait to get away from them. Growing up, her neighbor Mrs. Westbrook, Braden’s mother, had been a best friend to her. She used to say that Hallie’s problem was that she chose men like the people she knew. Hallie asked what she meant. “Larry was slow and easy like your grandfather, and Kyle was never available, just like your father. And Craig sat in a chair and let you wait on him. He was a male Shelly.” At the time, she’d laughed at the very accurate description of her past relationships, but she knew she didn’t want to repeat herself.
    Of course there was one man they hadn’t spoken of: Braden. They both wanted the same thing, for her and Braden to get together, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen.
    As Hallie looked at Jamie Taggert, still lying on the floor, she wondered if it was possible that they could have a future together.
    Slowly, Jamie opened his eyes and looked up at her. Some of what she was thinking must have been showing because his expressionchanged from sleepy to an invitation. He held up his hand for her to join him on the floor—and Hallie knew where that would lead. A quickie with him in his big sweatsuit. It would probably be wonderful, but in the morning she’d be angry at herself for mixing business with pleasure.
    She had to turn away or she’d let the pleasure side win. “Can you get up by yourself?” Her back was to him.
    “Sure,” he said, his voice flat. He sounded like a man who’d just been rejected—which, in a way, he was.
    She heard him as he held on to the bedpost and got up. When he was standing, she looked back at him and gave a smile as though nothing had happened. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “All right,” Jamie said, his voice cool and distant. But then his head came up. “How do
you
work out?”
    “The usual way,” she said. The truth was that between taking care of Shelly, multiple jobs, going to school, and, well, taking care of Shelly, gym time had been left out. She’d told herself that the practice sessions where she’d learned the proper form for rehabilitation had been enough.
    The wary expression left Jamie’s handsome face and the tension between them was gone. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to work out with me.”
    “No, I’m not,” Hallie said quickly. She’d seen him in the gym. He’d probably hand her fifty-pound dumbbells and say, “Now, let’s see what you can do with them.”
    “I’ll see you at six A.M. Goodnight.”
    “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
    With an almost menacing look, he came toward her on one crutch and Hallie backed up. She didn’t realize she was in the hall until he closed the door in her face.
    She started to