Cowboy with a Cause by Carla Cassidy

of his stomach.
    It wasn’t until he began to wrap his arms around her that she once again stiffened and drew back from him. He instantly slid backward and got off the bed. Her lips were red; her eyes glazed with a hazy light.
    Adam raked a hand through his hair and offered her a tight smile. “I’d apologize for that, but to be perfectly honest I’m not a bit sorry.”
    The haze in her eyes slowly faded and she sat up straighter against the pillows behind her back. “And I’d demand an apology if I hadn’t wanted you to do that. But now that it’s been done, we both need to forget it occurred and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
    She picked up a prescription bottle from the table next to her bed. “I think I will take that tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    It was an obvious dismissal. Adam hesitated a moment, wanting to say something, but in the end he nodded and left her room. What he wanted to do was ask her why on earth it couldn’t happen again.

Chapter 6
    T he memory of that unexpected kiss filled Melanie’s head for the next three days. Adam’s mouth had been hot...hungry against hers and she’d wanted to lose herself in his heat, but she’d stopped the kiss before things had spiraled out of control.
    And it would have been so easy for her to allow the escalation of the kiss, but she didn’t trust it. Although she’d appreciated his gentleness in massaging her leg, she didn’t trust him. What man in his right mind would want to start something with a woman like her?
    She was no fool. Adam Benson was just passing time here in her house and with her. He was a cowboy boarder and nothing else. She’d gladly take his rent money, but she couldn’t allow him to get into her heart in any meaningful way, because she knew with a certainty that she would never be in his heart.
    Sure, he might want to kiss her, he might even want to take things further, but he was in transition, unsure of where he belonged in life, within himself. The one thing she knew to be true was that he didn’t belong here with her.
    Since the kiss, he had gotten up early in the morning and had stayed away from the house, arriving back only at night to go upstairs. When they did happen to be in the same room at the same time, there was a painful politeness between them that made her want to scream.
    She now glanced at the clock in the kitchen. Two o’clock. A glance out the window made her bones chill. It was a blustery day, the wind blowing with a briskness that portended the winter still to come.
    A nice hot cup of tea. Maybe that would banish the chill that threatened to overtake her when she thought of winter, when she thought of Adam.
    He stirred something in her, something that had never been stirred before. He made her think of all the things she hadn’t thought of before...like loving and marriage and children.
    There hadn’t been time for those kinds of thoughts, those kinds of yearnings when she was a working dancer. She’d always assumed eventually she’d have all that, once her career was winding down. It was only since she’d met Adam that a strange, alien wistfulness had welled up inside her, a vague desire for something more in her life, something more than what she had now, something more than being a dancer.
    She wheeled over to the cabinet where she kept the teakettle and opened the door, surprised to see an empty shelf where the teakettle should be.
    Had she mindlessly placed it in another one of the lower cabinets? She went down the line, checking in each one, but there was no teakettle to be found.
    With a frown she eyed the upper cabinets. Had Adam used it and put it in one of them? An irrational irritation filled her. Didn’t he realize it was difficult for her to get to those upper cabinets? Had that kiss somehow made him forget that she was a cripple?
    For one fleeting moment she wondered if he’d done it on purpose, to somehow punish her for halting what he’d begun in her bedroom two