The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom by Dixie Browning Page A

life.
    â€œLook, you can have the other bedroom. At least it’s dry. I’ll put on clean sheets, but I’d better warn you in case you’re a late sleeper, the morning sun comes barreling in through the window like a five-alarm fire. You might’ve noticed I don’t have shades or curtains.”
    â€œThis is fine. The view’s nice, and if you have a board I can put between the springs and the mattress, it’ll be perfect. I don’t care for a soft bed.”
    â€œYou mean a sagging bed.”
    â€œThat, too,” she admitted with another of those half-shy smiles that came and went almost too fast to register.
    Curt slid his hands down his hips, hooked his thumbs under his belt and tried to remember if there was any scrap lumber left over from the roof repairs. If not, he’d rip a few boards off one of the sheds. He really didn’t want to give up his own bed—not that he wouldn’t be willing to share.
    Not that sharing would do him any good.
    First thing he’d done when he moved in was to send off for a good, firm mattress. He’d still worn a back brace then. On damp days he had occasionally been forced to resort to using use his crutch, but he’d tossed both items after the first week. The medic had given him pain pills, which he’d refused to take until a nurse had explained that if he truly enjoyed being miserable, that was up to him, but the pills were supposed to reduce the inflammation and speed up the healing process.
    Good thing he’d been in peak physical condition whenthe SDV had bought it, else his body might not have been able to stand the compression. As it was, he’d got off easy. A few broken ribs, a few burns—a blown eardrum, a compromised lung, along with some nasty bugs he’d picked up from spending all that time buried up to his neck in stinking river mud. He was dealing with it. With that and the guilt that went along with being the lone survivor.
    Â 
    With her room aired out, her sagging bed reinforced and spread with clean, if musty-smelling linens, Lily looked around for a place to set up her computer. “All I need is a corner with a small shelf and a chair,” she said. “Maybe a card table? You did say the power here was reliable, didn’t you?”
    Curt’s stomach growled. It had occurred to him that he was probably expected to feed her as long as she was sharing his roof. Hell of a note. “Computer?” he repeated.
    â€œThat thing with the screen and the keyboard?” she reminded him.
    â€œOh. Yeah.” Could her hair possibly be as soft as it looked? The last woman whose hair he had touched had been bleached, curled and sprayed. Definitely not touch tempting.
    â€œI guess you could set up in my office for as long as you’ll be here,” he said reluctantly. It was hardly likely they’d both be working at the same time. He worked whenever he couldn’t sleep, which was a portion of almost every night.
    So he showed her into the room he called an office. “I’ll slide this stuff over. You can set up your equipment on this end, plug into the back-up power supply and I’ll rig another light.”
    The single overhead bulb was hardly sufficient. He used a clip-on with a drop cord, but a hotshot lady novelistprobably had fancier requirements. The room was small. He figured it had once been a back bedroom, but there was no way to know for sure. Not that it mattered.
    Even setting up, they were in each other’s way. Each time he brushed past, shifting the stacks of papers, files he’d been meaning to organize and back up on disks when he had the time, he was aware all over again of the dangers of getting involved with a woman like Lily O’Malley.
    With any woman at all. But O’Malley was particularly dangerous because he had only to look at her body to find himself wanting to know more about it—wanting to explore at leisure every dark,