Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“Um . . .” Eve didn’t blush very often, but she was now. Why? “I think that beeping is coming from your heart monitor.”
Without missing a beat, Madden ripped off the round white stickers and their connecting wires from his chest, rendering the room mostly silent, though the number of voices in the hallway could only be muffled, not quieted completely. “It has always done that when you’re around,” he said, ignoring the burning of his earlobes. “Now you know.”
Eve’s features softened, her chest dipping and rising, yet she remained glued in place by the door, her purse clutched to her stomach.
Deal’s off. I want more than six months.
Those words were like a stick of dynamite crackling between them.
Maybe that demand had been a mistake, but he’d make it all over again. He simply wasn’t built to let this woman go. Eve wasn’t merely in his blood, she’d become his blood itself. She ran in his veins. His inner thoughts often presented themselves in her voice. Eve lived inside him. And maybe Madden had some barbarian blood, too, because the crank of possessiveness had turned another revolution when she admitted to waiting for him. Admitted to not trusting anyone else with her body. She felt this too.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, finally setting her purse down on a chair, folding her hands at her waist, and walking toward the bed. “You freaked all of us out.”
“I’m fine. It’s just a bruise.” Although, damn, his shoulder was beginning to feel pretty stiff and raw. “Sorry about all the drama. The trainer asked me to stay down at the plate until they could determine if anything was broken.”
Eve nodded. “Elton knew what was coming as soon as the guy started running toward home plate. I think he might have psychic powers.”
“Nah, he just knows me. I don’t budge.” Madden gave in to the impulse to reach out and take her hand, pulling her closer. “Not on anything.”
“You don’t waste any time addressing the elephant in the room.” They both watched in fascination as their palms fused together, followed by the slow threading of their fingers. “What ever happened to small talk?”
“We’ve never made small talk. That’s not us.”
“Can we try?” Eve took a measured breath. “I don’t do nerves very well.”
Madden’s thumb paused in the act of swiping right to left against the pulse of her wrist. “What’s wrong with your nerves?”
She gave him a meaningful look. “I don’t love hospitals, I guess. I didn’t like the first time you were in one and I don’t like it now.”
“Ah, love.” They stared at each other for long moments, remembering. “I’m fine, I promise. Who has the kids?” he finally asked, his voice quiet.
“The Pages,” she said, making an effort to surface from the past. “They’ll be Olympians by the time I pick them up.”
“Or shell-shocked from the freakishly competitive environment. One or the other.”
“That’s also a possibility.” She grinned, studying him, her gaze lingering on the thick bandaging and ice on his shoulder. “You’re kind of good at baseball. Did you know that?”
“I was just showing off for my wife.”
The pulse he rubbed with his thumb went skittering. “I hear she was impressed.”
Damn. The amount of pride he felt over that probably amounted to a sin. And speaking of sinning, he had a lot of it on his mind, even with a busted shoulder. “Impressed enough to spend the night with me?”
“So much for small talk, huh?” Eve glanced toward the door and back at Madden, visibly wrestling with something. “When I was on my way here, I got a second call from the family liaison. He told me to enter at the rear of the hospital to avoid all the cameras.”
Confusion landed, followed by the sinking sensation of dread. “Cameras?”
“It’s one of those internet wonders, you know.” She huffed a laugh, but her eyes held a touch of anxiety. “You’re a lot more famous now than when you woke up this morning.”
“I don’t want to be famous.”
“I don’t think you have a choice.” Eve reached out and traced the contour of Madden’s brow, as if she was memorizing the texture of him. “They’re going to want to know everything about you. It’s going to take barely any digging at all to find me.”
“Good. Let them.”
She was already shaking her head. “I know you want more than six months from this marriage, but maybe it’s for the best if—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he rasped.
They stared at each other in stony silence, the distance between them scant, but it might as well have been a mile—and Madden desperately needed that gap to be narrowed. Desperately. Who knew standing his ground at the plate today would be the thing that drove Eve away? To Eve’s way of thinking, her reputation and profession would taint his own and there didn’t seem to be anything he could say to convince her he didn’t give a shit. Not even if he said it a million times and meant it with every fiber of his being.