LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t want a sheet,” she said lightly.

      “Do I need one?”

      “No.” She returned the folded flannel to the cupboard. “Some people prefer to be covered. The room can feel cold at times.”

      “It’s warm enough in here,” Spencer said.

      Warm? Definitely.

      Maybe even hot.

      Certainly her body temperature seemed to have spiked.

      She gave a passing thought to checking if Darren was back from lunch yet and asking Spencer if he’d be more comfortable having the other therapist work with him on his rehab.

      Except that the question implied that she was uncomfortable with the situation. Which she was, but she wasn’t eager to admit as much to the man who seemed completely unaffected by any memories of the last time they’d been together.

      Of course, after seven years, it was entirely possible that he didn’t even remember the events of that night.

      “Do you want my pants off, too?” Spencer asked.

       Yes.

      “No!” she responded quickly.

      And maybe a little too vehemently.

      He quirked a brow.

      She cleared her throat. “We’ll just focus on the shoulder today—get everything loosened up and assess your recovery.”

      “Okay,” he agreed.

      “Lie down on the table,” she instructed, determined to assert control of the situation.

      “On my front or back?”

      “Front.” She could manipulate the muscles of his chest and back from either position, but if he was on his front, she wouldn’t have to worry about him watching her with those deep blue eyes that had always seen too much of what she was thinking and feeling.

      He stretched out on the table, his arms at his sides.

      She breathed a quiet sigh of relief, because now she could pretend he was just a patient, like any other patient. No one special.

      But the tingle that danced through her veins as her hands stroked over his skin said something very different.

      * * *

      As Kenzie gently probed the injured area with her fingers, Spencer acknowledged that this might have been a mistake.

      It was true that he’d been so eager to start therapy he hadn’t asked who would be treating him. He hadn’t imagined it would matter, because he hadn’t known that Kenzie worked at the clinic.

      In fact, he knew very little about where she’d been or what she’d done over the past seven years, because he’d never asked anyone. Because asking would have suggested that he thought about her, and when he’d left Haven, he’d been determined to put all thoughts of his little sister’s best friend out of his mind.

      Still, he’d be lying if he said that he’d never thought about her. But the truth was, whenever he did, he remembered the girl she’d been. A kid with barely a hint of feminine curves and an obvious crush on him.

      He hadn’t been the least bit interested in any kind of a romantic relationship with her in high school, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings, either. So he’d mostly tried to keep his distance from her, and he’d succeeded—until the night before he was scheduled to leave for UNLV.

       He’d made plans to meet his current girlfriend in the barn at Crooked Creek Ranch that night. The meeting was Ashleigh’s idea, so that they could say goodbye in private.

       He knew what that meant. And when he climbed up to the hayloft, his body was already stirring in anticipation of what was going to happen. But he was a little wary, too, because Ashleigh had made no secret of the fact that she didn’t want him to go—and that she’d do almost anything to make him stay.

       But Spencer wouldn’t let anything distract him from his goal of getting out of this one-horse town—especially not a girl he’d only been dating a few weeks. So despite her assurance that she was on the Pill, he had a condom in his pocket, unwilling to trust his future to anyone else’s hands.

       He sure as heck wasn’t going to end up like his buddy, Mason, whose wedding was scheduled for the last week of September and whose baby was due the following April. And while Gina’s pregnancy might not have been planned, at least Mason and Gina were in love.

       Spencer wasn’t in love with Ashleigh. But she was pretty and popular and willing to go all the way, and he was eager to use that condom in his pocket.

       But when he got up to the hayloft, instead of Ashleigh, he’d found Kenzie waiting for him.

      “What are you thinking about?”

      Kenzie’s softly spoken question forced him to put the brakes on his trip down memory lane.

      “Nothing important,” he said.

      “Are you sure?” Her hands—so much stronger than he would have guessed—moved over his shoulder, probing and kneading.

      She knew what she was doing, and he’d had enough massage therapy that ordinarily his muscles would respond to the skillful touch. But his brain couldn’t seem to let go of the fact that this was Kenzie’s touch, and it teased him with intimate memories of the last time she’d touched him—and let him touch her.

      “I’m sure,” he said.

      “Because you’re strung tight as a drum,” she noted, her fingers sliding over his skin, pressing into the knotted muscle.

      He was also hard as a rock.

      Thankfully, his facedown position on the table allowed that to remain his own little (or not so little, he amended immodestly) secret.

      “Some clients like to talk while they’re on the table.”

      “I’m not fond of chitchat,” he told her.

      “Imagine that,” she said. “And you used to be such a chatterbox.”

      The situation was awkward and uncomfortable—probably for both of them—but he felt his lips curve in response to her dry remark.

      “And you never used to be a smartass,” he added.

      She chuckled softly before acknowledging, “Probably because I could barely put together a coherent sentence around you.”

      “I guess it’s true that people do change,” he noted.

      And obviously she’d done so. The skinny, geeky teenager he’d remembered had grown into a confident and attractive woman.

      A very attractive woman.

      She didn’t say anything else after that as she focused her attention on doing her job.

      And while she continued to work on him, he couldn’t seem to focus his attention on anything but how good it felt to have her hands on him. At least until he started to imagine how it might feel to have her hands stroking other parts of his body. And, of course, the harder he tried not to think about her touching those other parts, the harder he got.

      Unfortunately, his life was already complicated enough without adding any extracurricular activities—or relationships—to the mix.

      And that realization was admittedly a little bit disappointing.

      * * *

      The day before, when Spencer had passed the Welcome to Haven sign on the highway (if the seldom-used rural road could be called a highway), he’d experienced a sense of recognition and familiarity, but not much more than that.

      There’d been no sense of homecoming. As far as he was concerned,

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