Donovan's Child by Christine Rimmer

get her up, that he share with her what he’d found out. She was going to be so happy, so relieved. It was all coming together, and it would be a really fine piece of work, something they could both be proud of.
    He wheeled over the threshold and into her private space. The bedroom door, in the far corner to the left as he entered, was wide open, so he went for it, rolling the length of the sitting room and then into her bedroom.
    The blinds were drawn against the morning light, the bed unmade. And empty. The bathroom door, directly across from the door to the sitting room, stood open. The light was on in there. And he could hear the unmistakable sound of the shower running, feel the moisture in the air…
    He backed and turned, approaching the bed. He saw the black dress she’d worn the night before, laid across the bedside chair. Saw her cell phone on the nightstand, beside a half-full glass of water, and a framed snapshotof a bunch of good-looking, smiling people. He picked it up, that picture, for a closer look.
    Her family. They stood out in the country somewhere, in front of a weathered cabin. Father and mother. Seven broad-shouldered brothers. Abilene—but younger, her face a little rounder than now. And another girl who resembled her.
    Carefully, he set the picture back exactly where he’d found it.
    He knew where she had to be, of course. Had known when he saw the light from the bathroom, heard the sound of the water running in there. He knew he should wheel around, roll into the sitting room, and on out the way he had come.
    But he didn’t wheel away. All he could think was that she had to see what he had to show her.
    He backed up, turned his wheels toward the sound of running water, and rolled on through that open bathroom door.

Chapter Seven
    S he was in there, as he had known she would be.
    In the shower. The doorless, open shower.
    Wearing nothing but the slim, smooth perfection of her own skin, facing away from him, her head tipped up to the shower spray, eyes closed, soap and water sheeting down over her pink-tipped breasts, her concave belly, her gently curving hips, her perfect bottom, her long, lean thighs.
    He stopped the chair without a sound.
    And he watched as she turned her body in a gentle, side to side swaying motion, rinsing herself, letting the spray carry the bubbles away. He saw her from the back, and then in profile, and then full front.
    At first, it was the same as when he watched her in the pool. A pure appreciation of something so beautiful, so smooth—her skin flushed, steamy; the secret shadowbeneath her arm as she slicked her wet hair back. The soft, round curve of the side of her breast.
    But in seconds, everything changed. It became more than just about the perfect picture she made, more than the slim, womanly shape of her, more than the frothy dribble of bubbles sliding down sleek, youthful skin.
    He saw her as a woman.
    Desirable to him.
    More than desirable.
    Wanted. Yearned for. Craved.
    The reality of the situation became all at once blindingly clear. He had been lying—to her, and more than to her, to himself. He’d treated her callously, cruelly.
    Because she stirred him. She…excited him. From their initial meeting, in the studio, when Ben brought her to him on that first day, he had felt it—the brisk wind of change on the air.
    Felt a sense of possibility, of promise. As if she had marched into a darkened, stuffy room on those long, strong legs of hers, run up the shut blinds, and thrown the windows wide.
    He’d been blinking and whining and sniping against the light ever since. Like some cranky old man.
    Yes. Like an old man. An old man awakened abruptly from a long, fitful sleep. He’d been digging at her, taunting her, trying to get her to give up and go, to leave him in peace—but at the same time he couldn’t help but be drawn to her.
    She was not only a joy to look at, she had an incisive intelligence. She