For His Brother's Wife

“Are you all right?” Cole asked, levering himself to her side.

“Yes, I’m...fine,” she said, feeling unsure of what he might think of her. “Cole...I—”

“If you don’t mind, I’m pretty tired,” he said slowly, as if he felt as uneasy as she did. “Why don’t we talk in the morning?”

Nodding, she started to get out of bed, but he tightened his arms around her and shook his head. “It’s still raining and I promised I would hold you so you can get some rest.”

“But it isn’t storming.”

“It might start again,” he answered, sounding sleepy.

If the gravity of the situation hadn’t already settled in, she might have laughed. But there was nothing funny about what she had done. She had practically insisted that Cole make love to her.

What on earth must he think of her?

Embarrassed by her uncharacteristic behavior, she feared she had destroyed the tentative friendship they had developed over the past week. She just hoped there wouldn’t be an awkwardness between them that was so uncomfortable it proved insurmountable.

* * *

Around dawn, Cole pretended to be asleep while Paige gathered her clothes and returned to her room. He wasn’t exactly being a coward about facing her in the morning light. He just didn’t know what he was going to say to her. What could he say?

What he’d done was unforgivable. He had known she was vulnerable and shaken by the lightning strike, and she probably hadn’t been thinking clearly. But he had wanted her so badly, he’d lost his perspective and taken advantage of her weakness. Hell, he’d even used her fear of the storm as an excuse to get her to stay in his bed after they’d made love because he hadn’t wanted to let her go.

He had known as surely as the sun rose in the east each morning that in the light of day everything would change between them. And it wasn’t going to be for the better.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he sat up and buried his face in his hands. After she had drifted off to sleep, he’d lain awake the rest of the night, alternating between feeling guilty and hating himself for his own weakness. He wasn’t feeling a lot different this morning.

He had done everything he’d told himself he wouldn’t do. In less than a week he had abandoned his vow to respect his brother’s memory and marriage, and he’d made love to Craig’s wife. He might have even destroyed the tentative friendship he and Paige had started to build.

When his cell phone rang, Cole abandoned his self-loathing to glance at the caller ID. It was one of the members of his work crew.

“What’s up, Harold?” he asked, taking the call.

“The rest of the guys are still sick as can be,” the man reported. “Do you want me and Terry to come on out there to the ranch and see if there’s something the two of us can work on?”

“Yeah, a tree came down and broke a couple of windows during the storm last night,” Cole answered. He told Harold what replacement windows and other materials to pick up at the lumberyard to make the necessary repairs. “It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get the job done, then you and Terry can have the remainder of the day off. Maybe the other guys will be back on their feet tomorrow and we can resume work on the barn.”

“Sounds good, boss. We’ll see you in about an hour,” Harold said, ending the call.

Tossing his cell phone back onto the bedside table, Cole got up, grabbed a change of clothes from the dresser and headed for the shower. He wasn’t surprised that his men were still out sick, but he certainly wasn’t happy about it. Besides the fact that building the barn would take that much longer, he wouldn’t have the excuse of working to get him out of the house for a while to figure out how he was going to make all of this right with Paige.

He supposed he could drop by the TCC clubhouse for a few hours and see who was hanging out in the club’s sports bar, but that wasn’t going to give him the solitude he needed to think. Deciding he couldn’t do anything until after his men repaired Paige’s windows, Cole finished his shower, got dressed and headed downstairs to see if Paige was even talking to him.

As he entered the kitchen, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when he found a note by the coffeemaker, telling him that she had gone to the Texas Cattleman’s Club for a breakfast meeting of one of her charities. She was going to be away most of the morning, but she had taken the time to see that he had a decent cup of hot coffee. Maybe by the time she returned, he would know what to say to her and how he was going to make it up to her for his weakness.