Mac’s Bedside Manner

by Marie Ferrarella

  Mac waited for the cycle to end and the volume around him to lower to a manageable roar.

  “What’s wrong?” he repeated, raising his voice and leaning toward her. “You looked pained.” He indicated the salad in front of her. “Something wrong with your meal?”

  She shook her head and regretted the motion immediately. There were seven little men with large pickaxes working over her temple. “I think I’m getting a headache.”

  Mac laughed. That had been Carrie’s complaint when she’d come with them the last time.

  “This place’ll do that to you.” He looked around, watching an incredibly lifelike monkey climb hand over hand between three vines, then return again to the beginning. “I think they’ve got it engineered that way so that they get a faster turnover with their customers. If you’re over twelve, you can only stand this place for so long before it gets to you and you feel as if native drums are beating in your chest.”

  Maybe that was it. Maybe she was feeling the native drums beating in her chest. She was certainly feeling something unusual, sitting across from MacKenzie like this. She couldn’t hear him half the time, but she could see him. See him interacting with her daughter, who seemed to have no trouble hearing him and gleefully laughing at nearly everything he said.

  There was no doubt about it, the man knew how to exude charm just by breathing.

  But there was more to him than that, she had to grudgingly admit. She’d seen him with that poor excuse for a human being, Tommy’s stepfather, the other day. MacKenzie was a man who knew how to get his point across, how to champion an unpopular cause.

  Damn, she was beginning to think like someone in his fan club, not like a woman who should know better. A woman who knew that charming men were predominantly all facade, like the make-believe fronts that were made out of cardboard and used in movies. If you looked at them from the side, there was nothing there.

  Of course, when you looked at MacKenzie from the side, there was a lot there, a small voice inside her whispered. There was a chiseled profile, biceps that looked as if they wanted to bulge out of the sleeves of the shirt he’d rolled up. A chest that looked harder than granite…

  Stop that! she ordered herself.

  Because he didn’t want to shout and add to her headache, Mac leaned over the table and asked, “In the mood for anything else?”

  Yes.

  Her own silent response left Jolene feeling more than a little shell-shocked because of what had motivated it. Damn it, for a minute she was beginning to let her mind wander, picturing him as Tarzan, wearing nothing more than a loincloth. A small one. And she was Jane. Waiting in their tree house.

  Jolene ran her tongue over her lips before asking, “What?”

  Mac leaned in even closer. “You haven’t really touched your salad, I thought maybe you wanted something else.”

  It was an innocent enough statement, why was her mind coming up with loaded interpretations? Because she didn’t trust this man, she told herself, no further than she could throw him.

  “Popcorn,” was all she said in her defense.

  Though she’d been adamant about her resolve not to have any in the theater, Jolene would have been the first one to admit that she had a weakness for it. By the time the movie was over, she’d eaten more than half the container herself. But that was MacKenzie’s fault. He had kept the tub right within her reach the entire ninety-three minutes.

  Interpreting her single-word explanation, Mac accepted the blame gracefully. “Sorry about that. I should have bought a small.”

  She wasn’t about to let him be gallant about this. That would have made him noble somehow and she needed him as tarnished as she could manage. “No, I should have resisted it.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Sometimes, you just can’t resist, no matter how good you think your willpower is. It’s a fact of life. Everyone’s got some kind of weakness.” His eyes teased hers, or maybe it was just the lighting. In either case, the butterflies made a return appearance in her stomach. They were right at home, given the atmosphere. “I guess popcorn’s yours.”

  She was having trouble breathing. There were decidedly too many people in the small area. Too many people, too many things and too much of him.

  “I guess.”

  The smile in his eyes filtered down to his lips. She felt isolated, yet definitely not alone. “Any other weaknesses I should know about?”

  With effort, Jolene rallied.

  The look that came into her eyes told him to back away, reminding him that he dearly loved a challenge. “I like punctuality and people who know to leave when the party’s over.”

  Jolene found the smile that teased his lips particularly unnerving. And for some reason, the noise around them seemed to reinforce his words rather than drown them out.

  “I always do, Nurse DeLuca, I always do.”

  The hell he did, or else he would have left them at the movies. Right after he’d made the entire theater fade away.

  But what was important to her now was that he know that there was no way in hell he was coming into her house tonight—or any other night.

  “I guess then,” she said evenly, picking at the salad, “that it’s a matter of agreeing on the definition of just when the party’s over.”

  “I guess so.”

  It wasn’t until that moment that she realized he’d reached across the small table and had his hand over hers. Alarms went off in her head and she pulled her hand away as if she’d just been burned.

  Surprised, Amanda looked at her. “Got an ow-ey, Mommy?”

  “No, baby.” Jolene looked at the man across from her defiantly as she said it.

  And she didn’t intend to get one, either.

  “Don’t wanna go to bed,” Amanda protested as Jolene brought their car to a halt in the driveway right next to Mac’s vehicle.

  She knew this was going to happen. Bedtime was never an easy matter under normal circumstances and these were anything but normal. “It’s getting late, Amanda.”

  With the inborn instincts of every child who had played one parent against another, Amanda looked toward Mac to rescue her. She strained in her car seat, trying to lean forward.

  “P’ease, Man.”

  “Man” was as close as Amanda could manage any part of MacKenzie, or even Mac. He got a big kick out of hearing her call him that.

  “I’m afraid you’ve gotta listen to your mom, Amanda.” Jolene slanted him a look he couldn’t read, but he could hazard a guess. The woman was waiting for him to say something to contradict what he’d just said. “Tell you what, would you go to bed if I read you a story?”

  Amanda clapped her hands together, her eyes bright in anticipation. “Stow-ee.”

  Leaning back, Mac ruffled Amanda’s hair affectionately. “I guess that settles it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Jolene said firmly. Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned to look at him. “Reading a story means that you’d have to come in.”

  “Unless you want me to sit outside her window and do it.”

  She hated being patronized. “Her room’s on the second floor. You’d have to sit in a tree.”

  Mac assumed she meant the large oak on the side of the house, and he pretended to crane his neck and look at it. “Hard, but not impossible.”

  Amanda clapped her hands again, bringing their attention back to what was ultimately important here. “Man weed stow-ee.”

  Mac shook his head, looking at Jolene. “How can you resist this face?”

  Talk about an ego. Jolene narrowed her eyes. “I can resist your face just fine.”

  His face was the picture of innocence. How could someone so guilty look like that, she wanted to know. “I meant Amanda’s.”

  Embarrassed, Jolene could feel color creeping up her neck and face. She didn’t want to continue arguing. “All right, you can come in and read her a story. But just one.”

  The warning was issued to both Mac and his cheering section.

&n
bsp; A symphony of boundless energy, the instant she was taken out of her car seat Amanda grabbed Mac’s hand and dragged him to the front door, moving well ahead of her mother. It was obvious that Amanda was taking no chances that she would change her mind.

  Mac said nothing, maintaining his innocent facade and smiling at Jolene as she unlocked her door.

  One story, just one story, Jolene consoled herself. She’d give him a short one and then he’d be on his way. Maybe one of Dr. Seuss’s stories. Still fighting for composure, she tossed her purse onto the sofa.

  Mac looked around. It was a small, cozy house from the looks of it, made somewhat crammed by the stacks of opened and unopened boxes that were lining the opposite walls of the living room.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.” He watched her, his eyes dancing. “What do you call this kind of decor?”

  “I call it not-finished-unpacking, wise guy,” she informed him tersely, closing the door behind her.

  This was a mistake, letting him come in here, she thought. And it was feeling like more and more of one every moment.

  She extracted the little girl’s hand from MacKenzie’s. It took a little more doing than she’d thought. Amanda seemed determined to hang on to her prize.

  Jolene wrapped her own hand around her daughter’s. “Let’s get you ready for bed, young lady.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Mac agreed.

  The only problem was, he was looking at her when he said it.

  Mac laughed out loud as he watched the storm clouds quickly gather in her eyes. His smile softened into one that could have melted an iceberg at twenty paces.

  “Sorry, I just couldn’t resist, seeing as what you think of me.”

  “You—” she raised her chin pugnaciously “—don’t know the half of what I think of you.”

  No, he had a hunch he didn’t. But he also had a hunch he could turn her around quickly enough, given the chance. He took a step toward Jolene, his smile inviting, his meaning clear.

  “Maybe you can tell me after the story.”

  The hell she was. “All I’m going to tell you after the story is goodbye,” she promised.

  He wasn’t about to make his case, not in front of the little girl. So instead Mac shrugged casually. “Whatever works for you.”

  That proved it, she thought. He was in it for the conquest, nothing more. She squared her shoulders. As Jolene DeLuca, she meant nothing to him. She was just another warm body he meant to climb on and then over. He undoubtedly thought of them as two ships passing in the night, nothing more.

  Except that this ship wasn’t about to have her bottom scraped by him. She was going to stay in port and nothing he could do was going to make her put out to sea. She’d been there. The trip wasn’t worth it.

  Closing her hand more tightly around her daughter’s, Jolene went up the stairs.

  Amanda looked over her shoulder. “Man.” It wasn’t a question, it was a summons.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be up as soon as your mother gets you ready for bed,” he promised. “Be sure you pick out a good story.”

  Though she had no idea why, Jolene looked back down the stairs herself. She saw MacKenzie looking at the books she’d managed to unpack and put on the bookshelves that buffered the fireplace.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she warned.

  His hand on the spine of a book of poetry, he offered her an engaging smile. “Don’t worry, I get sanitized at the hospital daily.”

  Rolling her eyes, Jolene took her daughter the rest of the way up the stairs and to her room.

  The man was leaving the moment he uttered the last word in the story he was going to read to Amanda—and not an instant later.

  Jolene waited for MacKenzie in the hallway, watching impatiently as he eased his way out of Amanda’s room, then slowly closed the door.

  It had taken not one but three stories before the little girl had finally fallen asleep. Each time one ended, Amanda would beg for another, insisting she wasn’t “sweepy.” Mac had good-naturedly gone from one book to another, reading the parts as if he was giving a command performance before the Queen rather than reading to a bossy two-year-old.

  Shoving her hands into the back pocket of her jeans, Jolene fell into step beside Mac. Though she wasn’t happy about it, she supposed she had to give credit where credit was due.

  “I didn’t expect you to make it through one story, much less three,” she admitted as she led the way down the stairs.

  Reading out loud was something he’d picked up when Carrie’s children were still in the diaper stage. It soothed him after a long day to drop by and read to his niece and then his nephews.

  He shrugged off her thanks. “I thought I owed it to you to read her to sleep, seeing as how I’m the one who got her wired by bringing her to that restaurant.”

  Jolene waved away his notion. There was no need to apologize for that. “Amanda was born wired. Well—” She looked toward the front door, her meaning clear.

  Mac cleared his throat, then asked, “Would you mind if I asked you for a glass of water? My throat’s a little dry.”

  Normally she’d hold the request suspect, but he had read to Amanda for over an hour, doing different voices. One of which had been particularly high and scratchy. She couldn’t just send him off coughing. “Sure, come this way.”

  The kitchen, located at the back of the house, was no less cluttered than the living room had been. Maybe more so, given the boxes of appliances and pots and pans that still hadn’t found a home.

  Mac leaned against the sink as she ran the water. “How long have you been here?”

  She knew he was referring to the clutter. Jolene handed him the glass.

  “Six weeks.” Her tone was a little defensive. It was hard being a nurse and a mother, much less an interior decorator. “I just haven’t found the time to unpack.”

  That sounded reasonable. He took a long drink of water. “Need help?”

  Oh, no, she wasn’t going to have him volunteer to help her unpack her boxes. There was no way she was going to have him riffling through her things and she had no doubt that, with him, one thing would only lead to another.

  “Need time,” she corrected.

  She was watching his every move as if she expected him to pounce on her. Mac set the empty glass down on the counter.

  “All right, since my services are no longer needed, I guess I’d better be going.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. Jolene was already striding out into the living room. “Well, thanks for everything. Amanda had a great time.”

  He noticed that she said nothing about herself. Was that because she hadn’t had a good time—or because she had and didn’t want to admit it?

  He stopped just short of the door. “Is this your version of the bum’s rush?”

  “No, I was just clearing a path to the door in case you forgot where it was.” She pulled it open, waiting for him to go so she could finally let go of the breath she was holding. The one that was making her pulse race and her temples throb.

  “I know where the door is, Nurse DeLuca.”

  Mac paused, looking at her. Wondering why, when she had done everything she could to block every one of his moves, he was still so damn attracted to her. It wasn’t as if she was the only woman in the world, or that she’d even won his heart.

  Just his determination.

  He ran the back of his fingers along her cheek and watched in fascination as her pupils grew large. He leaned in just a little. Cutting off both their air supply.

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious, Nurse DeLuca?”

  “No,” she lied. Why wasn’t she pulling back? Why wasn’t she pushing him that last six inches over the threshold and slamming the door?

  Why was she standing there like some pea-brained possum, watching the headlights of the car coming right at her?

  She hadn’t a single plausible answer.

  “Well, I am,” he told her.

  Tilt
ing her head back ever so slightly, his eyes on hers, Mac touched his lips to hers.

  And the earth was suddenly rocked with a second Big Bang phenomenon.

  Chapter Nine

  She’d meant to pull away, not be blown away.

  Nothing seemed to matter but what was going on right here before her front door.

  She was in complete and utter meltdown.

  There was no other way to put it and there were a million things she could blame it on, not the very least of which was that she hadn’t been with a man since her divorce.

  Hell, she hadn’t been with a man even before her divorce. Intimate relations had all but become nonexistent between Matt and her since around the time she’d become pregnant with Amanda. That meant three years without being touched, without being made to feel special or feminine.

  A woman had needs just like a man.

  And MacKenzie was definitely stirring up her needs, making them sit up and beg. Making her acutely aware of just how long it had been since she’d been made love to by a man.

  How long it had been since she’d even been kissed by a man.

  That was all that was responsible for her reaction, her logical brain insisted: needs, desires, random passions, nothing more. It had nothing to do with the man on the other end of her lips.

  It had everything to do with the man on the other end of her lips.

  Without realizing it, Jolene moaned, leaning her body in to his. Savoring the way it heated: instantly like a fire-eater’s torch. Savoring the way MacKenzie pressed her to him, the hard contours of his body fitting against hers. Taking her a step higher.

  Igniting the ashes that were left in the wake of the meltdown.

  He’d known it. Known it the instant that he’d first seen her. The lady was definitely hot. Sex on toast once you got passed the waspish tongue and the attitude.

  Mac felt a deep sensation of pleasure taking root and flowering within him as he slid his hands from her face and encircled her shoulders, bringing her closer to him.

  The funny thing was, the closer he brought her, the more it wasn’t close enough.