Just Around the Corner

There was a good reason. Phyllis didn’t think it was a smart idea to have him around.

“Please.”

And then she saw that look in his eyes. The one she’d seen when they went to Tortilla Flat. The one that had been haunting her ever since. Matt Sheffield was a man carrying around some pretty deep hurts.

And Phyllis, a healer of hurts, couldn’t refuse the father of her baby this little bit of peace he was seeking. If he’d feel better about himself by helping her out, then she could certainly put up with seeing him occasionally.

He wanted a relationship between them even less than she did, if that was possible. She’d laid down her rules and he’d readily agreed to abide by them. The baby was all hers.

In the past weeks he’d been as good as his word and had left her alone.

She was in control. She felt sure of what she wanted. What she didn’t want. Knowledge was freedom.

As long as she knew which turns to avoid, she’d be fine.

And she knew. She’d spent long years learning every last one of them.

CHAPTER SIX

GOD, SHE WAS LOVELY. Her short, sassy red hair splayed on the pillow propped behind her head, Phyllis made a face at him while a nurse checked her blood pressure.

Matt grinned, more relaxed then he’d been in…forever. This woman was easy to talk to.

His kid was going to be one lucky son of a gun growing up with her for a mother.

“Perfectly normal,” the nurse said to the accompaniment of ripping Velcro. Once the cuff was removed, the woman made a note on the piece of paper she was holding and left the room with a swish-swish of panty hose and rubber-soled shoes.

“Guess the personality gods skipped her,” Phyllis said as soon as the nurse had closed the door to the private room.

“She was just lusting after your French fries.” Opting to forgo hospital food, Matt had made a run at dinnertime, returning with burgers and fries for him and Phyllis to share.

“She could’ve had them. I’m stuffed.”

“And you haven’t gotten sick once since we’ve been here.”

Phyllis grimaced. “It usually happens in the morning.”

As the hours had passed that afternoon—surprising Matt with their swiftness—he’d found himself having an increasingly hard time keeping his eyes from straying to her breasts, hidden and yet revealed by the thin cotton of the hospital shift she was wearing. He might not know the woman well, but he sure remembered the feel of those breasts….

“You really don’t have to stay,” Phyllis said for about the fiftieth time, laying her arm gingerly on the mattress beside her.

Her hand looked so slender, so fragile, with the IV needle inserted and taped to the top of it. She was going to have a bruise there in the morning.

He’d gladly have borne it for her.

“I’ve got nothing else to do,” he told her now. “But if you want to sleep or watch TV or something, go right ahead.”

“I don’t watch a lot of television.”

He didn’t, either. “Do you like to read?”

They’d already covered favorite foods, recent and not-so-recent movies and music that afternoon. Phyllis was a fascinating combination of classic and fad.

“I love to read,” she said now, one hand resting her cup of takeout coffee on the hospital sheet covering her lap. “I read at least a chapter of something everyday. How about you?”

Matt nodded. Reading was his salvation. His closest friends lived between the well-worn pages of the books lying all around his house. “I’m reading a great nonfiction book right now. Our Sacred Honor. Ever heard of it?”

She shook her head. Her attention seemed to be fully engaged while she waited for him to continue.