Free Courting the Enemy by Sherryl Woods Page B

sofa opposite it. Karen regarded him with narrowed eyes for a heartbeat, then sat next to him, albeit a careful few inches away. He barely hid a grin.
    He pressed the start button on the remote, and Lauren’s gorgeous face filled the screen. She was a beautiful woman, but she had nothing on the woman beside him, Grady reflected. As the images on the screen flickered, it wasn’t the story, or even Lauren, that captured his attention. It was Karen.
    She was totally absorbed in the romantic comedy, her eyes alternately shining with pleasure or misty with unshed tears. From time to time her lips curved into a smile.
    When the movie ended, Grady couldn’t have said what it was about, but he knew every nuance that had registered on Karen’s face.
    “That was wonderful,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
    “Yes, it was,” Grady said, though he was talking about something else entirely. Watching her when her guard was down had been a revelation. The laughter had been close to the surface, completely uncensored. The flow of tears had been uninhibited.
    He lifted his hand and touched her cheek, then brushed away the last traces of happy tears. She trembled, but she didn’t move away.
    Once again, it was up to him to stop, up to him to be rational. The tests were getting harder and harder…the results more and more uncertain.
    “I still can’t believe that glamorous woman on the screen is my friend,” she said, her voice a shaky whisper. “She used to steal the Twinkies out of my lunchbox.”
    “Did she ever steal your boyfriends? That would be a far more serious crime.”
    “Never,” she said fiercely. “Despite her reputation for having romances with her leading men, despite the two well-publicized marriages and divorces, the Lauren I knew was a shy girl. Most of the dates she had in high school were ones we set up for her. Buteven if she’d been some junior femme fatale, she would never have stolen our boyfriends. It would have gone against everything she believed about friendship.”
    She looked at him. “What about you? Were you a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy?”
    “Nope,” he said, responding to the question as solemnly as she’d asked it. “Only one girl ever stole my heart, and then she broke it. I haven’t been anxious to repeat the experience. Haven’t had time, either, for that matter.”
    “You seem to have a lot of time on your hands now,” she pointed out lightly. “Or do you justify all your time here as work? Part of your self-declared mission in life?”
    He bit back his irritation that they were once again on the subject of her distrust of him and his motives.
    “I’m here because I want to be,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You need some help, and I can provide it.”
    “And?” she prodded.
    “That’s it,” he insisted, getting to his feet and heading upstairs before he did something to prove just how badly he wanted to stick around.
    “Grady?”
    He stilled, commanding himself not to turn back, fearful of what might happen if he did.
    “There are towels in the bathroom, the blue ones,” she said. “And your room’s at the top of the stairs on the left.”
    “And yours?” he asked, unable to stop the question.
    “Down the hall,” she said
    “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said quietly.
    And in the meantime, he’d say a little prayer that it was a very long hall.

Chapter Six
    K aren snapped awake in the morning to the scent of coffee brewing.
    Caleb, she thought for a heartbeat, before she remembered and her mood shattered.
    No, not her husband, but his worst enemy, she realized, sinking back against the pillows and drawing the covers up. The gesture was partly because it was cold, but also a halfhearted attempt to hide, to pretend that just outside her door nothing was different. Burrowing under the covers had been her way of trying to escape notice since childhood, when she hadn’t wanted to leave the warmth and safety of home to go to school.
    Of