“Darlin’,” he said, “I lose brain cells every time I look at you.”

His voice melted her all the more. Unfair, very unfair. “Well, if this does it for you…” She gestured down to her military-green cargo pants and plain white T-shirt. “Then you have even bigger problems than I thought.”

His see-all blue eyes never left hers. “It has nothing to do with what you’re wearing. Or how you look.”

Oh, God. Why did he say such things? No one had ever said such things to her, and she had no idea how to handle it. If she’d been hands deep in an emergency surgery, or up to her eyeballs in X rays…those she could handle.

But this wasn’t work, this was far more personal than work had ever been, and she was at an utter loss. She inhaled a breath and held it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Scary shit, huh? Let’s go eat, Nicole.”

“Because Taylor said to?”

“Because I can’t get you out of my head. We might as well spend some time together and see where it goes.”

“It’s going nowhere.”

He smiled again. “Let’s go see.”

“No.” She fumbled for her car door, slid in. “I’ve really got to go.” She turned the key.

And the engine simply coughed.

She turned it again, with more force, but she got that ridiculous wheezing noise that told her the battery was dead. Again. “Damn it.”

“Sounds like battery trouble.” Easy as he pleased, he opened her door, tugged her out. “Lucky for you, my car runs like a sweetie. I’ll drop you off at the hospital, then charge your battery while you’re at work.”

“I don’t want-”

“It’s no trouble.”

Naturally he didn’t take her right to work, but stopped at a cute little sidewalk café a few blocks away. “For sustenance,” he explained as he got out and came around for her.

Came around for her. Nicole stared at him as he led them to a table, while she tried to remember the last guy who’d opened a door for her.

Or put his hand lightly on the base of her spine, touching her as they walked.

Her skin still tickled. That it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience had her head spinning. “Who are you?” she said over the table, bewildered, which wasn’t a common problem for her.

He lowered his menu and smiled. “What you see is what you get.”

“Why do I sincerely doubt that?”

“I don’t know. What about you? Is what you see what you get?”

She glanced down at her plain clothes, ran a finger over the silver hoops in her ear and lifted a shoulder. “I think so.”

“Tell me about the earrings. What do they mean?”

“How do you know they mean something?”

“A hunch,” he said, which she didn’t like, because it was true.

How did he seem to know her so well? “There’s one small hoop for every year of medical school,” she admitted. Her own personal badges of honor, during a difficult time when she’d been struggling to survive in a fast-paced, adult world while still in her late teens.

With a slow smile that bound her to him in a way she didn’t understand any more than the ease with which he seemed to know her, he lifted the sleeve on his own shirt, revealing the tattoo she’d seen before. It was a narrow band around his tanned, sinewy bicep in a design that was incredibly sexy. Just like the rest of him.

“I got a part of it for every year I made it through college,” he said. “Finished it when I graduated and started my internship in Sydney.”

“Badge of honor,” she whispered, and at this unexpected common ground of a deep, soul-felt connection, she felt herself warm to him in a new, different way.

The waitress came, and when Nicole tried to order just coffee, Ty took over and ordered enough food for an entire third-world country.

“I’m a growing boy,” he said with a shrug and a big, unrepentant grin. “And besides, I promised Taylor I’d feed you.”

“Is that why we’re here? Because you promised Taylor?”

His smiled faded, but before he could speak, the waitress came back with bread and butter. When she was gone, he grabbed a piece of bread and said, “We’re here because I wanted to spend time with you.” He slathered butter on the hot bread. “And I think, behind all that cool-as-ice stubborn orneriness, you want to spend time with me as well.” He handed her the bread.

“This is not headed to the bedroom.” She took his offering because the butter was melting all over, making her stomach growl. “Not yours or mine.”

“Of course not.” He sank his teeth into his own piece of bread. “You have to go to work.”

She took in his innocent gaze. “I mean ever. This isn’t going to the bedroom, yours or mine, ever.”

“Well, now, that’s just a crying shame, given how combustive we are just sitting here, much less kissing.”

Hearing him say it, in the Irish accent he didn’t acknowledge, made her pulse quicken. “We need to forget that kiss.”

Now he laughed, the sound rich and easy.

“We do,” she protested.

“Much as I’d like to oblige you, darlin’, I’m going to be around. A lot. We’re going to run into each other. Nobody’s going to be forgetting anything.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Hell yeah, I’ve thought about this.” His eyes were crystal-clear, and very intent on hers. “Last night I decided never to so much as look at you again.”

“What happened?”

“What happened?” He shook his head, and as the waitress come back with their order he dug in with a gusto that forced her to do the same. “You happened.”

Since she didn’t intend to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole, they ate in silence. Nicole had to admit, it felt good to fill her belly. How she managed to forget to eat so often was beyond her, but she liked this feeling of…satisfaction. Since she intended to deny herself any other kind of satisfaction-say sex with Ty, with which she was quite certain he would have no trouble satisfying her-food would have to do.

“So.” After inhaling enough food for an army-where did he put it all in that long, hard body?-he leaned back in his chair. “What’s up for today, doc?”

“Surgeries. Meetings. More surgeries.”

“Are you good?”

“The best.”

He smiled. “I bet you are. Did you always know this is what you wanted?”

“From day one.” She wondered the same about him. “Were you always going to be an architect?”

Some of his good humor faded, just a little. So little, in fact, she thought maybe she’d imagined it. “Not always,” he said lightly.

When she just looked at him, he sighed. “Let’s just say I didn’t have the most auspicious of beginnings.”

She felt a smile tugging at her lips. “A troublemaker, were you?”

“Of the highest ranking.”

“I’m shocked. Were you-”

“Oh, no. This is about you.” He lifted a brow. “Your mom is something.”

Nicole stared at him. “You met her, too?”

“Darlin’, the way she stormed the building, everyone met her. What a dynamo.” He smiled. “You’re like her.”

“I am not.”

His smile went to a full-fledged grin. “Are too.”

She set down her fork. “She has a bazillion kids, a husband, two bazillion grandchildren and runs her world like Attila the Hun.”

“Yeah, you share that last part. So what was it like, growing up with such a large family?”

He wasn’t just idly asking, he’d leaned forward, his entire attention on her face. He really wanted to know. “Well…” She thought about it. “I never had my own bed. And I had to wait hours for the bathroom. Oh, and I wore a lot of hand-me-downs.” She hesitated, then admitted, “But there was always someone around when I needed them.” Always. And, she also had to admit, she hadn’t thanked any of them enough for it. “What about you?”

He suddenly didn’t look so open. “I already told you, I don’t have a family.”

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

“Well, I never knew my father, and let’s just say my mother is better off forgotten.” Expression closed, he reached for his iced tea. “Need a refill?”

“No, thank you.” Behind his nonchalance, she saw his regret, and a sadness she couldn’t reach. But more than that, pain. “Ty-”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “Please, don’t.”

Before she could respond, he tossed some money on the table and stood. “Let’s get you to work.”

“And after that?”

His light-blue eyes gave nothing of himself away now. “What do you want to happen after that?”

“If I said nothing?”

“I’m not sure I’d believe it.”

“Ty-”

“Look, Nicole…do we have to figure it out right now?” He touched her cheek, let out a smile that was short of his usual levity. “Do we really have to decide right this very minute?”

With a shake of her head, she took his offered hand, and shocking herself, tipped her face up when he leaned in for a sweet kiss. Or what should have been a sweet kiss, but was instead only an appetizer.

He pulled back, and she opened her eyes. There was a question in his, but she shook her head. “Work,” she said.

“Work, then.” And he took her outside.

Work would be good. At work she could bury her thoughts and concentrate on what mattered. Her job.

Not the man who had unexpected depths and a touch she couldn’t seem to forget.


AND SHE DID MANAGE to bury herself in work. The emergency department was overloaded due to a strange and violent outbreak of a flu, which had severely dehydrated an older woman to the point that her kidneys failed. After that, they’d taken out an appendix from a hockey player, and then sewn a finger back on a carpenter who’d managed to cut it off with his table saw.

By the end of the shift she’d nearly managed to for get all about Ty. As she stood in front of a vending machine in the reception area of the hospital on her way out the door, her cell phone rang.

“Honey, I dropped off some food for you. Your nice landlady let me in, so I stuck it in your fridge.”

“Mom.” Nicole had to laugh. “I have food.”

“No, you had a rotting head of lettuce and two sodas. Now you have food. Taylor is very beautiful, isn’t she? Is she married? I didn’t see a ring, but-”

“Mom-”

“Just say thank you, Nicole.”

“Thank you, Nicole.”

“Funny. Don’t forget to come to dinner this Sunday.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try harder than last Sunday. I’ll even shamelessly bribe you. I’ll make you brownies. Your favorite.”

“Mom-”

“Double fudge brownies.”

Nicole had to laugh. No matter how long and bloody her day had been, her mother never failed to bully a smile out of her. With her mom, she always felt warm and loved, even when she wasn’t warm and lovable at all.

And some people never had this in their life. Some people, like Ty. “I love you, Mom.”

“Well.” Her mother’s voice got thick, and she sniffed. “I love you, too, baby. See you soon.”

“See you soon,” she promised, then sighed. She would have to make sure she did before her mother showed up at her place with more food she wouldn’t eat.

Her eye on the chocolate caramel bar in the vending machine, she put a dollar in.

It ate the money and didn’t spit out the candy.

“Why you-” She kicked it. This had always worked in the past, but now the machine mocked her with silence.

“You have to have the right touch.” Dr. Lincoln Watts glided his body directly up behind hers, so close that she nearly choked on his expensive aftershave. His arms surrounded her as he reached past her to punch in the buttons on the machine.

The candy bar dropped.

Nicole stepped forward until she was practically kissing the machine before she turned in his arms. “Thank you.” He had until the count of three before she used her fists.

“Now you owe me.” There was a little smile on his lips that she was certain he considered sexy, but it creeped her out. No wonder all the nurses hated him.

She’d already changed back into her own clothes, and his eyes were eating her up. “Do you have any interesting tattoos to go with all those earrings of yours?” he asked a little huskily.

She stared at him. “Is that an official question?”

“Go out with me tonight.”

“Dr. Watts-”

“Linc,” he corrected gently, with a not-so-gentle look in his eye as he stroked her cheek.

She pushed his hand away, met his gaze to make sure he saw her anger, and spoke carefully so as to not confuse the idiot. “I don’t go out with people from work. I don’t mix work and my personal life. Ever.”

“I’m not ‘people.’ I’m a doctor.”

“I don’t care if you clean bedpans, my answer is the same.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes became distinctly not so friendly. “You’re turning me down again?”

What was it with too-smart, too-good-looking men? “Yes. I’m turning you down. Again.”

“That’s a bad plan, Nicole.”