Beyond the Rules by Doranna Durgin

she lay on her side with her head propped on her hand and utter confidence on her features while they grinned great big toothy grins, arms up overhead and hands carefully placed to keep her balanced.
    Kimmer could see herself in that same position. Four brothers, scrawny and triumphant, doing their best to keep their younger sister balanced overhead while she squirmed and fought. When they put her down it would be into a slop of mud or the cold river during winter or over the edge of the hayloft with very little on the floor below to break her fall .
    Oh, and this one was good…a family portrait. Predictably stilted pose, but their smiles were real enough, and something about the look in Rio’s eyes made Kimmer think he’d just pulled some sort of silliness on the photographer. He looked so young, even in his midteens; his beautiful bright wheat hair fell over his brow just as it did today, but the angles of his face were still forming—the basic structure present, but the lines not yet clean, not hardened into the masculine beauty she had first seen in a roadside gas station in rural Pennsylvania, back when she thought she could avoid meeting him altogether.
    Family portrait. At that age, no mother, just a blank spot. And there she’d be, edging away from her brothers while her father bestowed upon her a mighty frown. The only question in Kimmer’s mind was whether the picture would be snapped before or after her father reached for her.
    She put her head down on the pillow, fingers still tracing the edges of the pictures no longer within her line of sight, and tried to use what she’d seen in those pictures to imagine what it was like to be Rio and to be worried about his grandmother.
    Nope.
    Still couldn’t do it. Not for lack of trying. She could see it, as though viewing those emotions from a distance. She could almost reach out and pull those feelings toward her. But ultimately, she just closed her eyes and fell asleep.
     
    Rio hadn’t expected to find her here. He’d seen her car, knew she was home, but still hadn’t actually expected that to be the case.
    He’d been out driving. Thinking. Don’t come , they’d said. We need to keep things as simple as possible while we sort things out . The medication, the home nurse visits, the relearning of Sobo’s limitations and abilities.
    But he wanted to go. He wanted to go, now.
    Being good sucks.
    But being observant was useful, so when he’d come inside to none of the usual puttering noises Kimmer made while at home, he’d gone quiet and gone looking.
    Unlike Rio, Kimmer scarcely ever simply sank into a chair for reading or even helping with one of his crosswords. She’doffer suggestions, but she’d do it while she was working with the weights or cooking something decadent or refinishing furniture or…
    Perpetual motion machine. That was Kimmer on her own turf.
    But now she was still. Sleeping. Her mouth relaxed and lips just barely parted—and so much more appealing in its natural color than in the bright lipstick she’d used in her undercover persona when they’d met. She must have showered; the scent of cinnamon lingered in the room, and her dark curls, even this short, had the untamed look that meant she’d hadn’t brushed them out when they were wet. He took another step toward the bed, but still out of reach, for he’d come to appreciate more and more how ill-conceived it was to startle this woman. Sleeping or just distracted, she came back fighting first, asked questions later—and she kept herself in training and condition to do just that. Her very sweet little ass peeked out from an oversized T-shirt and the cotton throw in a bare-cheeked way that made him look twice.
    Hoo boy .
    And her legs—not long and runway-model lean, but at Kimmer’s height, legs didn’t often come in long . They did come perfectly proportioned, muscled even in repose—and were those bruises?
    Rio shifted, moving closer to the side of the bed instead of the end