Come Lie With Me by Linda Howard

unhappy with Serena—”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œI’m not blind. She’s devoted the last two years to you and virtually ignored her husband, and naturally he resents it. Why do you think he was so determined to find a therapist for you? He wants you walking again so he can have his wife back.” Perhaps she shouldn’t have told him that, but it was time Blake realized that he’d been dominating their lives with his physical condition.
    He sighed. “All right, I believe you. But just in case you start thinking how attractive Richard is, let me tell you now that the one thing I won’t tolerate is for Serena to be hurt.”
    â€œShe’s a big girl, Blake. You can’t run interference for her for the rest of her life.”
    â€œI can do it as long as she needs me, and as long as I’m able. When I think of how she was after our mother died…I swear, Dee, I think I’d kill to keep her from ever looking like that again.”
    At least she’d had a mother who loved her. Thewords were on Dione’s lips, but she bit them back. It wasn’t Serena’s fault that Dione’s mother hadn’t been loving. Her burden of bitterness was her own, not something to be loaded onto someone else’s shoulders.
    She pushed it away. “Do you think he really is seeing someone else? In a way, I can’t see it. He’s so besotted with Serena that no one else registers.”
    â€œ You register with him,” Blake insisted.
    â€œHe’s never said anything to me,” Dione replied honestly, though she was still stretching the truth a little. “How do you know? Male intuition?”
    â€œIf you want to call it that,” he murmured, leaning back against her as he tired. Her soft breasts supported his weight. “I’m still a man, even if I couldn’t chase a turtle and catch it. I can look at you and see the same thing he sees. You’re so damned beautiful, so soft and strong at the same time. If I could chase you, lady, you’d have the race of your life.”
    The soft words alarmed her in a way that was different from the panic she normally felt when faced with a prowling, hunting male. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and his weight was resting on her; his body was as familiar to her as her own, the texture of his skin, even the smell of him. It was as if he were a part of her, because she was building him, remaking him, shaping him into the gorgeous man he’d been before the accident. He was her creation.
    She suddenly wanted to rest her cheek on his shaggy head, feel the silky texture of his hair. Instead she denied the impulse, because it was so foreign to her. Yet his head beckoned, and she moved her hand from his shoulder to touch the dark strands.
    â€œYou’re beginning to look like a sheepdog,” she toldhim, her voice a little breathless and tinged with the laughter that they shared so often now.
    â€œThen cut it for me,” he said lazily, letting his head find a comfortable position on her shoulder.
    â€œYou’d trust me to cut your hair?” she asked, startled.
    â€œOf course. If I can trust you with my body, why not my hair?” he reasoned.
    â€œThen let’s do it now,” she said, slapping his shoulder. “I’d like to see if you have ears. Come on, get off me.”
    A shudder rippled down him, and he turned his eyes to her, eyes as blue as the deepest sea, and as primal. She knew what he was thinking, but she turned her gaze away and refused to let the moment linger.
    A nameless intimacy had enfolded them. She was jittery, yet she couldn’t say that she was really frightened. It was… odd , and her forehead was furrowed with a pensive frown as she plied the scissors on his thick hair. He was a patient, and she’d learned not to be afraid of her patients. He’d gotten closer to her than she’d ever allowed anyone else to get, even