by Lori Wilde
“You did great,” CeeCee exclaimed, pounding Lacy approvingly on the back. “First time out of the hat and you dance with a guy! I’m so proud of you.”
“He dragged me around the dance floor,” Lacy muttered. “I don’t really call that dancing.”
“Jake’s a nice guy, though, don’t you think?” CeeCee glanced over her shoulder at the cowboy. “He was a good friend to help ease you over your first dance and break the ice.”
Jake the cowboy might be good friends with CeeCee, but he had let his hands do a little more roving than necessary. Lacy, of course, hadn’t had the courage to tell him to keep his hands to himself, so she’d suffered in silence.
Lacy sighed. It was this ridiculous eye-popping dress and these silly three-inch spike heels CeeCee had forced her to wear that caused the problem. In her scrubs, the cowboy wouldn’t have glanced at her twice, much less tried anything.
“Are you all right?” Janet asked. “You’re pale as a sheet, and you’re perspiring.” She placed two fingers on Lacy’s wrist. “Goodness, you’re tachycardic, too, and your pulse is thready.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Lacy confessed, remembering what she’d done.
“Put your head between your legs, take a few deep breaths. You’re going to be okay,” Janet said firmly. “It’s just an attack of nerves.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” CeeCee volunteered and sprang up from the table.
Janet laid a comforting hand on Lacy’s shoulder. “CeeCee doesn’t get it, but I know how hard this is for you. Hang in there. I promise flirting gets easier the more you do it.”
“He’s here,” Lacy whispered, ducking under the table and tucking her head between her legs. She studied the cement floor and noticed a piece of broken pretzel wedged in a crack and focused on it. She took several deep, cleansing breaths.
“Who’s here?” Janet asked.
“Dr. Sheridan.”
“Where?”
“Over near the restrooms.”
“Which one is he?”
“Tall. Black hair. Great build.”
“Nice tan?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, my, Lacy, he is gorgeous.” She heard the approval in Janet’s voice. “He’s definitely worth overcoming shyness for.”
Lacy closed her eyes. The nausea wasn’t getting any better. “I blew him a kiss.”
“What?” Janet asked in disbelief. She lowered her head beneath the table and peered at Lacy. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No,” Lacy said miserably. “That’s why I feel so shaky inside. I can’t believe I did it.”
“Well, that’s great. CeeCee’s right. You have made a lot of progress tonight.”
“It was a stupid thing to do. He’s going to think I’m some sort of hussy.”
“He will not. And even if he does, that’s the point. But tell me, how did you work up the courage to blow him a kiss when you can’t even speak to him at work?”
“I don’t know,” Lacy wailed. “You guys had me all gussied up in this sexy outfit, and I guzzled that wine.”
“You had half a glass,” Janet told her.
“I took your advice and pretended I was a sexy actress. I don’t know what came over me. It’s as if I was standing outside my body watching someone else inside my skin. I stopped, turned, and blew him a kiss.” She covered her face with her hands and groaned.
“It’s not the end of the world, sweetie. What’s the worst that can happen? He doesn’t ask you out.”
But he has to ask me out, Lacy thought desperately. He’s the one I’m going to marry! I felt the thunderbolt.
Suddenly, a pair of men’s shoes appeared under the corner of the table. Shoes that were presumably attached to a man.
“Did you drop something, Lacy?”
Bennett Sheridan’s voice made her cringe. Lacy wished she could curl into a tiny dust ball and blow away. What to do?
Lacy’s innate fear warred with her desire to get to know him better.
Janet was no help whatsoever. “I’m off to the ladies’ room,” she announced.
No, Lacy wanted to cry out, you can’t leave me.
“Take my chair, Dr. Sheridan,” Janet offered.
Janet stood up. Bennett sat.
You can do this, you can do this, you can do this, Lacy affirmed, then raised her head and peeked over the edge of the table to find him studying her with a bemused expression.
“Beach babe, she thought. Pretend you’re a gorgeous beach bunny. Sexy, breezy, without a care in the world, you’re irresistible to men. You wear toe rings and tattoos and string bikinis. Think sexy, Lacy.
Sitting up straight, she painted a smile on her face.
“Do you come here often?” he asked, amusement in his voice. His eyes twinkled, and he folded his hands on the table, as composed as a philosopher.
“Fairly frequently,” Lacy lied, surprised at her brazenness. Where was all this courage springing from? “I have a few other places I hang out at, too.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“I hadn’t pegged you for a party girl.”
“Oh sure.” She waved a hand. “I go out every night. Party, party, party.”
He looked surprised. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out, but I figured you weren’t the type of woman who went in for temporary hookups.”
I’m not that type of woman, Lacy longed to say, but instead she kept her mouth shut and waited for Bennett to continue. In fact, she’d never had a hookup and at twenty-seven, her virginity had become her secret shame.
“Since I’ve only got a week left in Houston, I don’t want to start something serious that I can’t finish. But I certainly would enjoy showing a beautiful lady a good time. Especially a lady who knows all the hot spots in town.”
“You would?”
“Sure.”
His brown eyes met hers and Lacy gulped. The thunderbolt galloped through her, quick and hot. Her great-grandmother was right. There was no mistaking the sensation. It was at once electrifying and calming, stimulating and peaceful, passionate and serene.
So bizarre and unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
Bennett looked awfully delicious in his crisp white cotton shirt, starched blue jeans, and casual penuche-colored loafers. This was the first time she’d seen him in casual clothing, Lacy realized, and he did not disappoint.
“Are you asking me out, Dr. Sheridan?” Her heart did a free fall right into her stomach.
“Would you say yes if I did?”
“For fun only?”
“That’s right.” He cocked an elbow against the back of his chair.
“Nothing that would monkey with our jobs?”
“Absolutely.”
“No strings attached?”
“None at all.”
Damn it. Why wouldn’t he stop staring into her eyes? Lacy felt as if she were falling, falling, falling into the abyss of his soul. Flustered, she peered at her hands and fought the heat rising to her cheeks. She was in trouble here.
Bennett leaned forward. He was so close she had only to reach out her fingers an inch or two and she could touch his tanned skin.
“You’re not looking for entanglements, are you, Lacy?”
What was it CeeCee had told her? That all men were nervous about commitment. That they shied away if a woman acted too interested, too eager, too anxious to have a man in her life. The male of the species wanted a challenge, a competition, a prize.
“Me?” Lacy placed a hand on her chest and forced a laugh. “Want a commitment? Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I don’t know. In the operating room you strike me as rather old-fashioned. Not that there is anything wrong with that at all.”
“And what gave you that impression?” Lacy was amazed at the ease with which she spoke to Bennett, but this was important.
He was the one, and she’d do whatever it took to convince him of that. Even if it meant pretending that she w
asn’t particularly interested. The logic was perverse, but CeeCee knew what she was talking about. Men battled for the honor of dating her red-haired friend.
“It’s the way you blush every time I look at you. The way you can’t hold my gaze for long. Like right now.”
What the hell? In for a penny, in for a pound. She picked up her half-filled wineglass, downed the contents, then swung her gaze to smack head on into Bennett’s.
It took everything she could muster not to cough and sputter. The tepid liquid burned her throat, and she tried not to blink. She had to maintain eye contact to convince him she was wild and bold, not shy and tame.
He stared at her.
She stared right back.
The room seemed inordinately warm and humid, steamy almost, and the music was too loud. They were stuck in motionless observation.
Glued.
His eyes peered deeper and deeper. He was inspecting her, scavenging her face for clues to her emotions.
He did not want to get involved in a long-term relationship. He was looking for something casual, light. He’d made himself perfectly clear. To pretend she wanted the same thing was folly, and yet, if she did not, he would not ask her out. She harbored no doubts about that.
Getting him to date her was the key. Once they went out, once Bennett got to know her, then he would learn that he could not live without her. He would move to Houston and finish his residency here. He would discover there were no obstacles to their love.
According to the women in her family, the thunderbolt was never wrong. Going out with him on the pretext that she was expecting nothing more than a good time couldn’t backfire.
This would work.
Then something horrifying occurred to her. What if he was married and looking to cheat on his wife with her? Maybe he just wanted an out-of-town affair.
Lacy narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not married, are you?”
“Do you think I’d say yes if I was?” His eyes twinkled. “No, Lacy. I’m not married. I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a cheater.”
She let out her breath. Thank heavens for that. But she had to act nonchalant, as if she wouldn’t mind dating a married man because she was that disinterested in a long-term romance.
“Because it wouldn’t matter to me if you were,” she fibbed, and hoped the heavens would forgive her a few off-white lies. It was for a good cause, after all.
“Really?” He looked surprised for the third time that night.
“Yes.”
“I would never have believed that. You’re an enigma, Lacy Calder, sweet on the outside, naughty on the inside.” He wagged his finger at her and grinned. “My grandmother used to say, ‘Always watch out for the quiet ones, Bennett. They’ll fool you every time.’”
“Your grandmother is very wise,” Lacy said.
“Was. She passed away five years ago.” A sadness came into his eyes then and the look touched her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“Very. She practically raised me.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“Mom and Dad are both physicians. Their work usually came before changing diapers. Or their marriage, for that matter. They got divorced while they were still in med school. I was two at the time. They were going to put me in daycare, but Nanna had a fit and insisted she be allowed to take care of me instead.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Only child. How about you?”
“I’m the second out of six. Two sisters, three brothers.”
“Must have been fun growing up in a huge brood.” Bennett sounded wistful.
“It had its moments.” Lacy smiled, thinking of her boisterous childhood.
“Nanna was my best friend,” he admitted, and that vulnerability touch her heart.
She liked hearing about his grandmother and how much he had loved her. It reaffirmed her belief in the rightness of her feelings for him. Bennett was the man of her dreams.
“Nanna sounds like a very special person.” Lacy understood. She was very close to every one of her grandparents.
“She was.” His soft smile was laced with more sadness.
Touch his hand, Lacy. Comfort him.
Her fingers ached to follow her brain’s command, but did she have the guts? Mentally bracing herself, she reached out and covered his left hand with her right.
Mistake!
A big one.
Alarm bells went off. Fireworks, the likes of which she’d never experienced, shot through her. Suddenly all colors shone brighter; all sounds were magnified; all aromas smelled stronger.
Strobe lights flashed from the dance floor. The throbbing beat vibrated up through the floor. Voices buzzed around them. In the cramped room, she smelled beer and popcorn, cigarettes and aftershave.
He felt it, too.
She saw the flicker of response in his eyes. They were instantly forged. She to him. He to her. Cemented. Bound. Joined.
No escape.
This was absolutely crazy. Her breath flew from her body. All moisture evaporated from her mouth. Her skin tingled at the feel of his muscular hand beneath her own. Her heart leaped at his spicy, clean scent.
“I want you,” he said, “very much.”
He wanted her. She saw the desire in Bennett’s handsome face and knew it was true. She shivered. All her life she’d hoped, yet feared, that she would one day be the target of such stark desire.
Lacy had ached for the thunderbolt to crash into her life, while at the same time dreading the inherent loss of control that accompanied it.
She couldn’t take the pressure. Could not keep staring into those mesmerizing eyes. She dipped her head and sucked in air through her open mouth, desperate to get enough oxygen to clear her addled brain.
Lacy knew she should say something, respond to his bold declaration, but her shyness flooded back, more vicious than ever. She simply couldn’t speak.
Trepidation welded her teeth shut. She wanted him, too. More than he would ever know. But if she told him that she accepted his proposal, if she agreed to his no-strings-attached proposition, could she surely change his mind? Was the thunderbolt really as infallible as her family insisted? Could she, after all, trust her emotions? Was she willing to proceed on blind faith when logic and common sense urged her not to be foolish?
“Lacy?” He murmured her name. He’d taken her hand in his and was gently caressing her fingers with his thumb. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Uh-huh.” That utterance was all she could manage.
“I want you so badly I can taste it, but I don’t want you to get hurt. If this isn’t what you want, Lacy, if you are looking for something special, no harm, no foul. We don’t take this any further.”
What to say? If she agreed to a frivolous fling, she could end up with a broken heart despite what her family said about the thunderbolt being a sure thing. What if this feeling she had for Bennett was not the thunderbolt at all but merely a severe case of lust?
If that were true, Lacy had never lusted after anyone before, not even a movie star. This thing she had for Bennett was mental as well as physical. At least two dozen times over the past five weeks, she had anticipated his every need in the operating suite, handing him instruments before he had even asked for them.
A rational-minded individual like Janet with a healthy skepticism for anything as fanciful as the thunderbolt might argue that Lacy was such a good scrub that she automatically knew what any physician would need under the circumstance.
But it was more than that.
In her mind, she could hear Bennett say “Kelly clamp” or “Abbott retractor” before the words came from his mouth. Once he needed a rarely used tool, and she’d placed it in his hand before he’d even finished asking if she had one on her tray.
That’s how closely attuned they were.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” he said.
“Me, too. That is, er, you, I me
an, not me,” she stammered.
“Would you like to dance?” He gifted her with a gentle smile.
Things were moving way too fast. Flustered by the pressure of Bennett’s hand on hers, disturbed by her vacillating emotions, and swamped by shyness, Lacy knew she had to get away from his distracting physical presence so she could think this through.
Frightened that she might say yes before she had time to consider the consequences, she pushed back her chair and got to her feet. The way she was going, if he asked her to shimmy out of her black lace panties, she would break her neck complying.
“Lacy?” A frown creased his handsome brow. “Are you all right?”
“Bathroom,” she muttered.
A rowdy drunk winding his way through the tables bumped into the back of her chair. Lacy teetered on her absurdly high heels.
“’Scuse me,” the drunk mumbled, then lost his balance and stumbled against her.
“Oh!” Lacy breathed.
She saw alarm on Bennett’s face, then watched him push back his chair and lift his hands to catch her as she tumbled headlong into his waiting arms.
5
Momentum drove Lacy’s backside into Bennett’s lap. Her legs flew into the air, exposing yards of creamy skin. Reflexively, he curled his arm around her waist, and cradled her body against his elbow.
“You’re all right,” he whispered.
The sexy feeling of his rock-hard thighs beneath her soft buttocks robbed her of speech. An acute throbbing sensation hummed straight up through her bottom, and unless Lacy was mistaken, she had raised an equally compelling reaction in him.
He wanted her.
Their gazes collided again.
She saw hot desire in his face—hungry, raw, dangerous. For her! Her excitement shoved into overdrive. Not even in her wildest sex fantasies had she imagined anything could be like this.
Don’t blush, don’t blush, don’t blush.
How could she convince Bennett she was a freewheeling party girl if her cheeks turned crimson at the slightest provocation? She had to prove that she was brash, brave, and bewitching. She could not risk retreating into her protective shell of shyness. Not unless she wanted to risk losing him forever.
Bennett had made it clear enough he wasn’t interested in long-term commitment. Of course, he didn’t know about the thunderbolt yet, but he would soon enough. Until the feeling caught him the way it had snared her, she had to convince him that she was anything but the marrying kind.
