Unforgiven by Anne Calhoun Page B

portion of the walls. The upper sections were painted in shifting shades of blue, white, and gray. Two dark gray towels hung from heated towel racks.
    Pride wouldn’t allow her to make light of her accomplishments. “She was fun to work with. She’s got a great eye for color and lines.”
    When he leaned toward the door to get a better look at the bedroom, she turned away from him and pulled up the hems of her long-underwear shirt, turtleneck, and sweatshirt, shrugging them over her shoulders to expose her back.
    Mission accomplished. He stared at her bared back, gaze flicking from one reddened spot to the next between her bunched shirts and the waistband of her flannel-lined jeans. While the flush on his face outside might have been due to the cold, this time it was all embarrassment, and that gave her pause.
    “I fucked splinters into your back,” he said.
    “Pretty much,” she said. “Most of the woodwork in the house is smooth as silk, but I didn’t anticipate repeated, forceful, bare-skin contact with the pantry shelves.”
    Expecting ice cold fingers like her own, she sucked in air when he lifted his hand to her back, but his palm was blessedly warm between her shoulder blades. His touch bent her forward a little more. The contact of rough palm to her back tipped her ass toward him, and the look in his eyes went heated, dark, dangerous.
Oh yes.
She looked down at the faucet and broke the connection.
    He touched a finger to a spot just below her left shoulder blade, gently pushing the skin up a little. “Here?”
    In her mind’s eye she saw the tiny, enflamed circle. “Yes.”
    A moment of concentration, then a slight tug under her skin’s surface. The tiny sliver of wood dropped into the sink in front of her, and a long moment passed before another gentle stroke, higher up and just to the left of her spine. “Here.”
    This time she just nodded. The air in the room was quiet, close, his breathing even and regular while hers sounded shallow and erratic. It was as hot as sex, but in a different way. It was . . . intimate. Sex didn’t have to be intimate. It could be emotionless, almost animal. Like it was last night.
    This time he gently pinched to force out enough wood to grasp with the tweezers before dropping the splinter in the sink. “I hurt you,” he said.
    “It’s not the first time,” she replied.
    His gaze flicked up to meet hers in the mirror. After a pause she pulled her shirt over her head and held it to her breasts with one hand while with the other reaching around to indicate a spot on her upper shoulder blade, maddeningly just beyond the reach of the tweezers. He cupped her shoulder and turned her back into the light to remove the last splinter. Without asking, he reached past her and opened the medicine cabinet, found a tube of antibacterial ointment, and dabbed a bit on the tip of his index finger. When he laid the side of his pinky at the nape of her neck to steady his hand, goose bumps rose along her shoulders.
    His finger dabbed the ointment on a splinter spot. “You’re pretty quick with a door, tough girl,” he said.
    “It’s easier to keep someone out than get them out once they’re in,” she said.
    His glaze flicked up to hers in the mirror, but she didn’t add anything. Chris was an unpredictable drunk, with good nights and bad nights, but if he wasn’t discussing Delaney, she wasn’t dragging her marriage into the ring.
    “You’re a menace with that truck, too.”
    “I knew exactly where the mirror was in relation to your head,” she said, stung by the slight to her driving ability.
    “I don’t doubt it.” He didn’t add anything, and this time when she looked up at the mirror he kept his gaze focused on her back. Heat radiated from his body to her bare back, one hand rested loosely on her shoulder as he dabbed a little more ointment on the last splinter site.
    “There were no girls between Delaney and you,” he replied without meeting her eyes.
    The