Her Baby's Bodyguard. Ingrid Weaver

anticipated to what extent. “It’s not really relevant.”

      He gripped her knee and leaned closer. “I think it is, or you wouldn’t be hiding it. Dr. Petrova, who is Katya’s father?”

      There was no hint of a smile around the edges of his eyes now, yet she glimpsed sympathy in the depths, a softness at odds with the determination that showed in his tightened jaw. His hold on her leg was firm, but his touch was still gentle. She wouldn’t have expected that in a man of his size. It made her remember how carefully he’d cared for her wound and how tenderly his fingertips had skimmed over her bare skin.

      At the thought, the sexual awareness that she’d thought she’d suppressed sprang back full force. He was leaning close enough for her to catch the scent of his body. It was the same clean tang of soap, wool and man that had clung to his coat. It enveloped her in a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire. She wanted him to touch her again. She wanted to feel the strength of his arms around her and the warmth of his breath on her ear….

      All at once, she realized that she could no longer feel the tug of Katya at her breast. She glanced down. The baby’s eyes were closed, and her jaw was slack with sleep. A drop of milk drizzled over her chin as she let Eva’s nipple slide out of her mouth.

      A blush seared Eva’s skin from her cheeks to her chest. She’d wanted to use conversation to distract both Sergeant Norton and herself from this intimacy. It had worked too well. How could she have relaxed? How could she have forgotten, even for one second, that she was still sitting with her breast bared in front of a veritable stranger? She quickly shifted Katya’s limp form to her shoulder, using her bent arm to cover herself. Only then did she risk a glance at Sergeant Norton’s face.

      He swallowed, then withdrew his hand and curled it over the back of his chair. His casual pose didn’t change, yet she sensed a new tautness in the way he held his body.

      She knew he couldn’t have missed seeing her bare nipple. The fact hung in the silence between them. And the sexual awareness she should not—must not—feel strengthened until it was as tangible as the crackle of the flames on the hearth.

      Eva lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be uncomfortable over this. She hadn’t been deliberately exposing herself. She certainly hadn’t been trying to entice him. Under the circumstances, that would have been absurd.

      Therefore, it was also absurd for her pulse to be accelerating. And for her blush to be deepening. She was no innocent young girl, she was a thirty-year-old woman, a mother. She had nothing to blush about. Above all, she certainly shouldn’t be studying Jack’s large, long-fingered hands and thinking about how before tonight it had been almost a year since she’d felt a man’s touch.

      She shouldn’t be thinking of him as Jack either. He was Sergeant Norton.

      The door swung open behind her to the sound of men’s voices and the stamping of boots. Flames crackled and shot up the chimney as cold air swirled along the floor. In one swift motion, Sergeant Norton got to his feet and placed himself between her and the other men. “Hang on for a minute, Kurt,” he said. “We’re not done.”

      “Come on, Jack. You said you already slapped on a Band-Aid. What more do you need to do?”

      “Do I tell you how to drive?”

      “All the time.”

      While the men spoke, Eva laid Katya on her lap and hurried to fasten her bra and straighten her clothes, a task made more difficult because her hands were trembling. The sergeant was using his body to shield her and Katya again, only this time he wasn’t trying to protect them from bullets. He was blocking them from the view of the other soldiers.

      His gallantry only made her feel worse. He was doing his best to act respectfully. She really shouldn’t be thinking about his touch on her body.

      “Leave the firewood by the door, junior.”

      “We’ll need more before the night’s over,” Matheson said, moving toward the fireplace. “I haven’t seen weather like this since I left Wyoming.”

      Sergeant Norton shot out his arm to stop him from going farther. “I said wait.”