“Breaking?”She winced.She’d never heard herself squeak before.
“Yeah, come here, honey.I’ll show you.”
He dragged her across the room before she could argue and all the while she was moving she kept telling herself to do something—say something—anything except follow him across the room!But she didn’t.She went where she was led as if she didn’t have a brain in her head.When he leaned over the bed and picked up a pillow, adrenaline shot through her body like a bullet out of a gun.
Oh God, oh God, this is happening.It’s really happening.
And then the pillow hit her square in the face.
She staggered, tasting fabric and feathers and reeling from shock.“Why on earth did you—?”
He sidestepped her and the question with a grin on his face and swung again.The blow landed on her backside, sending her sprawling facedown on the mattress.She grabbed the other pillow out of reflex, but it was instinct that made her swing and roll at the same time, crowing with delight as it caught Ryder up by the side of his head.
“That’s nothing,” he warned.“You’re no match for me.”He began to circle the foot of the bed.
“I’ll make you eat those words,” Casey cried, and leaped up on the mattress, using it as a bridge to get to the other side and away from Ryder’s intent.
She was turning around as he drew back his arm and let fly.
The pillow shot through the air like a padded cannonball and stifled the jeer she’d been about to make.Within seconds, she found herself eating more feathers.But there was an upside to his latest attack.She now had both pillows.
“Aha!”she shouted, waving a pillow in each hand.The glee on his face made her nervous.When he started toward her, she began to retreat.
“Aha?What the hell isaha?I’ve never been hit with anahabefore.Do they hurt?”
Casey panicked, threw both pillows at once and then ran.“No fair,” she screamed.
He caught her in a flying tackle in the middle of the bed, at once mashing her face into the mattress and himself onto her.The weight of him was so great that breathing was almost impossible, and then just when she thought her lungs would burst, she found herself flat on her back and gasping for air.When she could talk and breathe at the same time, she looked up.Ryder was sitting on her legs with his arms above his head in a triumphant gesture.
“I hereby declare this bed has been thoroughly christened.”
Casey doubled up her fist and thumped him in the middle of his belly.
“You cheated,” she said, and tried to hit him again.
“Easy,” he warned, and caught her fist before it could do any more damage.“Justice men never cheat.We just rearrange the odds.”
Casey tried to stay mad, but the grin wouldn’t stay off her face.“That’s priceless.”
“What’s priceless?”he asked.
“Rearranging the odds.Delaney Ruban would have loved you.”
Ryder’s expression stilled.He couldn’t quit looking at the woman beneath him.At the joy in her eyes.The smile on her face.Her hand on his leg.
He touched her.First her hair, then her face.And when she bit her lower lip and looked away, he heard himself asking, “What about his granddaughter?How does she feel?”
Casey felt as if all the breath had been knocked from her lungs.She was all too aware of his weight on her legs, his hand on her face, the need in his eyes.
“I…”
“Never mind,” he whispered, and braced himself above her with an arm on either side of her face.“I think I’d rather find out for myself.”
She knew what the shape of his mouth felt like.They’d kissed before.Once, and just before dawn, in Judge Harris’s front parlor on the day of the wedding.She thought she was prepared for what was about to happen.She couldn’t have been more wrong.The man she’d kissed before had been a stranger.This time it was different.She’d seen this man wearing nothing but a towel—walked into his embrace on the day of her wreck—slept in his arms—laughed with him—cried with him—fought with him.She closed her eyes and tensed as his breath swept her cheek.
The gentle brush of mouth-to-mouth contact was familiar, even comfortable, and all of that changed when Casey’s arms automatically wrapped around his neck.Ryder groaned and then rolled, taking her with him until she was the one on top and he was pinned beneath.She heard him whisper her name.Felt his hands in her hair—down her back—cupping her hips.Urgency sparked between them as their lips met again, then again, and then again.
* * *
