Beckett's Cinderella by Dixie Browning Page A

hands on his shoulder, and he lifted her down. “JudasPriest, woman, don’t do this to me. With PawPaw in the hospital, my dad hooked up to a breathing machine, my cousin in a cast and my favorite aunt forgetting where she lives, I don’t need any more problems.”
    â€œWell, it’s going to rain and the roof leaks,” she said, looking at him as if she thought he’d lost his mind. Funny thing, though…she didn’t move out of his arms. Just went on staring up at him while his senses absorbed her soap-and-shampoo smell, the heat of her skin and the birdlike delicacy of her bones.
    At six-one, 182 pounds, he was not a huge man by today’s steroid standards, yet she felt fragile in comparison. For one fleeting moment, before other impulses kicked in, she reminded him of a stunned dove he’d once briefly held in his hands after it had flown into a window.
    Reminded him, too, of just how long it had been since he’d made love to a woman. She was staring up at him, her eyes wide with…shock?
    Yeah, well, he was feeling his share of that, too.
    When it came to women, Beckett’s record was less than impressive. A generous man might describe him as cautious. He’d come close to falling in love a couple of times, but since his first disastrous affair, he’d made it a policy to steer clear of anything resembling commitment. Bad case of Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
    So far as he knew, bachelorhood didn’t run in his family. Just the opposite, in fact. His parents had fallen in love on their first blind date, married three months later to the day and never looked back, as hismother made a point of reminding him each time she launched into one of her latent-grandmother talks. Even PawPaw, when he used to talk about his Emaline, would get a certain look in his eyes.
    Oh, yeah, Beckett thought wryly. The marriage gene was one family trait that had passed him by.
    Not that what he was feeling had anything to do with marriage.
    He’d held the woman’s hand, eaten her scrambled eggs and tried to give her some money. He’d gone a lot further than that with dozens of women.
    During his second year at Clemson he’d been involved with an art teacher who was really into New Age stuff. Claimed she’d recognized him from a former life. At the time, he’d been more interested in sports than philosophy, which had pretty much ended that affair.
    But maybe there was something to the karmic theory. Why else would a woman he barely knew affect him the way this one did? Lust, he could understand, but this feeling of…of something else, that was harder to explain.
    Karma. Sure. Like maybe you ripped her off in a past life, and now you’re trying to make amends.
    He’d been standing there for what suddenly seemed like hours, holding her—staring at the way her mouth looked up close, full and gleaming with moisture after she’d run a nervous tongue over it once or twice.
    It would’ve been nice if one of them had a functioning brain. What the hell did a man say at a timelike this, when he was visibly aroused with no chance of doing anything about it?
    She was wearing a thin cotton top again, and it was pretty obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath. Or if she was, it was no match for those nipples of hers. They were standing at attention. Which sure as hell didn’t help his condition. Here it was, broad daylight; they were standing out in the front yard, and he had no more control over his urges than a teenager.
    He was about to make some inane remark about the weather when she reached up, brushed the hair off the back of her neck and said, “I wish it would hurry up and rain, leaks or no leaks. We need some relief from this heat.”
    Lady, you don’t know the half of it. “You’re not worried about the storm?”
    She frowned up at the sky, which had taken on a nacreous tint as the first wave of clouds moved in.