A Profiler's Case for Seduction(89)

Finally he had to come to terms with the guilt and a faint simmer of apprehension that threatened to grab him by the throat when he thought of Sam, the older brother he loved, who was currently in jail, facing charges of attempted murder.

Now Adam was moving into a house with a woman who obviously had issues of her own. Once again he wondered what had happened to her that had placed her in a wheelchair and why nobody in town seemed to know much about Melanie Brooks despite the fact that her mother had been a resident of the small town all her life.

He frowned and reminded himself that no matter how pretty he thought she was, Melanie Brooks was a mystery he definitely didn’t need to explore.

* * *

It was almost nine that evening when Melanie wheeled herself into the room that had once been a formal dining area and had been turned into a downstairs bedroom after her mother had taken ill.

At the time of the renovation Melanie had had no idea that she was overseeing the construction of a room that would eventually become part of her own prison.

With the grace of a lame elephant she managed to pull herself up and out of the wheelchair and careen onto the bed. She straightened to a sitting position, undressed and then pulled her nightgown over her head and released a deep sigh of exhaustion.

She ignored the chronic tingling pain that radiated down her right leg as she reached for the lamp at the side of the bed and turned it off.

Adam Benson. She’d been surprised when he’d shown up on her doorstep, inquiring about the room, but she’d been positively stunned by an immediate, visceral attraction to the long-legged cowboy.

Tilly Graves, her mother’s best friend, who now came in to clean and help out three times a week, had gossiped a lot about the Benson brothers over the last couple of months, but she’d never mentioned that Adam Benson had shiny black hair with just enough curl to make a woman’s fingers itch with the need to ruffle through it. Tilly had never said that Adam had blue-gray eyes with long dark lashes that a woman might covet.

Finally, Tilly had never mentioned that Adam Benson had broad shoulders, slim hips and long legs that would easily turn a woman’s head in his direction.

She stared up at the dark bedroom ceiling and felt the frown that tugged her lips downward. She’d hoped to rent the rooms to a woman. That had been her goal when she’d initially hung the sign, but it had been months since then and Adam had been the first and only person to inquire about the room. Besides, the truth of the matter was that Melanie desperately needed the rent money.

It had never been her plan to be stuck here in the town she’d escaped on her high school graduation day, bringing in only a disability check that barely met minimal living expenses.

This wasn’t supposed to have happened to her. She’d had a life plan since she’d been seven years old and no place in that plan had there been a wheelchair.

She closed her eyes as tears burned and the familiar taste of bitterness surged up the back of her throat. Rude? Sour and cranky? Is that really what people were whispering about her in town?

She told herself she didn’t care what other people thought about her, that she had every reason to be all those things and more, but the truth of the matter was his words had stung her.

She certainly hadn’t had much interaction with anyone since her mother’s death. Once a week her groceries were delivered by a teenager who worked at the Shop and Go, and a month ago she’d had to contact Abe Dell, the local plumber, to take care of a leak beneath the kitchen sink. Had she been cranky with those people? Probably, she thought with a touch of shame. She felt as if she’d been stuck in a place of anger for a while, but surely she had good reason.

For all intents and purposes her life had ended seven months ago at the bottom of the stairs that led down to the basement. It had been exactly a week after she’d buried her mother.

Still grieving, she had been in the process of packing up some of her mother’s things to donate to a local charity. She had started down the stairs to retrieve a couple of empty boxes when her foot missed a rung and plunged her into a free fall.

Melanie’s right leg had been bothering her for weeks before the fall, but as a professional dancer she’d been accustomed to aches and pains for so long that she’d ignored the warning signs of unusual numbness and burning.

The fall hadn’t been what had put her in the wheelchair. The stumble on the stairs had simply been a symptom of a more serious underlying condition.

She now shifted positions in the bed and consciously willed away thoughts of that day and the moment when she’d realized any dreams, any hopes she’d once had for her future had been destroyed.