The Surgeon and the Cowgirl (Harlequin American Romance)

by Heidi Hormel

  Jessie tried to stop the moan, but when her tongue touched his, the heat shot from her mouth into every inch of her body. She wanted more and clutched at his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. His hips brushed against hers and the kiss deepened. His hair was soft under her fingers as she held his mouth to hers. Then his lips were on her neck, in the one place that he knew would drive her crazy. She sucked in her breath and pressed herself against him. She didn’t want him to stop. He nuzzled that sweet spot that only he knew. Just when she was going to push him away before she totally melted, he moved back to her lips, nibbling at the edges.

  “You taste the same. How could you taste the same?” Payson asked softly, not pulling away.

  “Hmm.” She tried to get her brain working again. “The same toothpaste?”

  He chuckled low and deep, holding her against him. “That could be.” His mouth covered hers again, exploring her thoroughly. When he finally leaned back, he whispered, “Only you could make toothpaste sexy, Jessie.” His hand roamed to the curve of her waist and the slight flare of her hips. “How can you be so soft? When I watch you walk, all I can think about is touching you. Will touching you now make me forget that?”

  “Touch me,” Jessie breathed. She used her mouth to explore his lips and spoke softly against his cheek, so he could feel her breath moving across his skin, “God, Payson, why would we want to forget this?”

  “Jessie,” he said, and let her go. She wrapped one long leg around the back of his knees to pull him back to her. He resisted for one second, then his fingers skimmed along her back as his mouth tasted her lips, her neck and her cheek.

  When she thought she’d never take a full breath again and knew next they would be getting naked, she made herself take one step backward. They stood looking at each other, and she waited a moment for the space between them to cool.

  She hoped when her brain—instead of her other parts—worked again, she’d figure out a way to see Payson every day and not remember this kiss, not remember that he tasted even better than on their long, slow wedding night. Jessie didn’t need to be a genius like Payson to know that the kiss was the stupidest idea she’d ever had. Even worse than asking for Payson’s help in the first place. She already craved his touch again. And, now, for the first time, she wondered why she’d filed for divorce when she still felt this sexual connection. Dang.

  “So, what do you think?” Payson asked and then cleared his throat. His voice had been thick and deep. “Did our experiment work?”

  She tried to get her thoughts into a coherent string. “It might not seem like it now,” she said, and stepped back to put more distance between them, “but can’t you feel that, um, we didn’t really have the same connection?”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It was different.”

  “Yep. Totally different,” she continued to lie. “Maybe we should call it a night. We proved our point.”

  Chapter Five

  Jessie savored the quiet of the morning, needing to figure out how to respond to last night’s “experiment.” She’d been pushing back her first impulse to get mean and go on the attack, to hurt Payson before he hurt her. She knew he didn’t deserve getting guff for agreeing to kiss her. She considered pretending that they hadn’t kissed. As tempting as that was, pretending wasn’t going to make the feelings go away. After exhausting every possibility while she tossed and turned, she’d accepted that the two of them needed to sit down and talk.

  In the years since the divorce, Jessie had considered picking up the phone and calling Payson every so often. She didn’t want to get back together or anything, but she wanted—needed—to apologize for a passel of nasty comments she’d made in those last months of their marriage. She also wanted to say sorry for blaming him for not coming to her right away at the Vegas hospital and that she forgave him—even if she maybe didn’t completely—for not being with her when she needed him most.

  The kiss was different.

  She feared the memory of that one kiss would stick stubbornly in her brain forever. So what was she going to do? First, make sure that she and Payson weren’t alone together—except she wanted to apologize and wasn’t going to do that in front of an audience. Dang. She refused to call her mama or sister about this. They would tell her what she didn’t want to hear, that she’d been crazy, stupid, idiotic to think the kiss was a good idea.

  Jessie stumbled suddenly as a pony head butted her. She turned and with exasperated affection said, “Hey, Molly, how did you get out? I should have called you Houdini. Never knew a pony who was so good at escaping.”

  She took the little animal’s halter and led her back to the pen she shared with Bull, a mean-spirited chestnut gelding that Jessie boarded for her brother. Bull was smitten with Molly but pretty much hated the rest of the world. If he was out, too, Jessie’s morning would be really, really crappy—as if it wasn’t already. She didn’t want to wrestle the big horse back into his stall. Even with Molly around, he could be difficult. She hurried, her knee already aching with the thought of getting the cranky horse to cooperate. Maybe her brother should have named him Payson. She chuckled at that.

  “You won’t think it’s funny if I let go of his halter,” Payson said.

  She clamped down hard on her tongue to stop a screech and said through clenched teeth, “What are you doing here? How did you catch Bull?”

  “I wanted to speak with you before this place filled up with people. When I got to the barn, Molly was standing in front of this big guy. I grabbed him and she trotted off. I wasn’t sure where she’d gone. I figured she’d taken off to find apples.”

  Jessie was stunned into speechlessness. First, Payson had shown up looking for her after last night, and second, he’d voluntarily dealt with one of the horses, especially a troublesome one like Bull. “Molly was trying to keep Bull in? I figured she was the one trying to escape. She does it all the time when she’s in the big corrals.”

  Payson shrugged and Bull leaned down and snuffled his hair. Payson pushed him away. Jessie waited for the horse to take off a finger. Nothing.

  “Let me take him, and I’ll get him and Molly back in their stall.”

  Jessie stepped forward and Bull immediately backed up, pulling Payson with him. The whites of the gelding’s eyes showed. Jessie stopped moving before Bull got more upset. The horse immediately settled and stepped closer to Payson. “Let me take him,” he said.

  Jessie watched her horse-hating ex-husband lead Bull into his stall with Molly trotting after him like the sheepdog she thought she was. Payson gave each animal a hearty pat before he left them in the stall. Jessie stood and watched, speechless again.

  “There are a few items we need to discuss,” Payson said into the silence.

  “Wait. What was that about?” Jessie said waving her arm in the direction of the stall. “You hate horses. When Candy Cane got out one night, and I asked you to help, you said that there was no way you were losing sleep over a ‘dumb animal.’”

  “Jessie, I was in the middle of my residency and had just come off a forty-eight-hour shift. I was exhausted. Plus Candy Cane always came back by morning. You used to say that she must have had tomcat in her because she liked to roam at night.”

  “When we lived out near Carefree that was fine. There weren’t any busy roads and people watched for critters. But then we moved to town so you’d have a shorter drive, which meant we were near a ton of major roads, including the 10. She wasn’t used to that and could have gotten hit.”

  Payson didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, stunning her for a second time this morning. “I didn’t even think about that. You had never worried before when she got out. I thought you were trying to punish me for missing your birthday.”

  She’d completely forgotten that. The week before Candy Cane went missing Payson and she had planned a nice evening to celebrate her
twenty-fourth birthday. Then at the last minute he’d been called in to cover an extra shift. “I was upset that we didn’t get to go out that night. It had been weeks since we’d spent any time together, but I understood. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s not what you said. You said that if I had loved you, I would have said no to the shift. But I couldn’t. The only time you could say no to shifts was if you were in the hospital yourself—in ICU.”

  “I said that? I’m sorry. I was being a real witch with a B, as Mama would say. Really, I barely remember the missed dinner,” Jessie said.

  “Amazing what sticks with you. We weren’t as good at talking about our problems as we thought.”

  “Obviously. Or we wouldn’t have gotten divorced,” Jessie said. She felt the air suck out of the space between them, in anticipation of the blowup that would come after mentioning the big D. She stared at Payson, gauging his reaction. He looked thoughtful. “Sorry,” she apologized again. “I shouldn’t have...”

  “Told the truth? We were so young—you’d just turned nineteen when we got married,” he replied as if that explained everything.

  “My parents got hitched young, and they’re still together.”

  “They were both rodeo people.”

  “No, they weren’t. Mama met Daddy when he was riding in a show down in Texas. She was in her first semester at Texas A&M.”

  “Still, she was from a ranch family,” Payson said.

  “Yeah, but growing up on a small cattle operation isn’t the same as raising horses and following the rodeo. Gram and Gramps barely spoke with her for years. Mama and Daddy were just as bad when we came back from Vegas. Mama said that we should just have lived together and not gotten married. I thought an alien had taken over her body because that was certainly not the woman who had raised me and insisted that living together was for sissies. She used to say that brave people got married.”

  “You didn’t tell me that your parents weren’t happy about us getting married.”

  Jessie took a deep breath. Another tricky bit of their shared past reared its ugly head. “I knew how upset your parents were. I thought dealing with them was more important. I knew Mama and Daddy would eventually be okay with us being married, as long as we were happy. I never thought that with your parents. I heard your mother threw a party when you were finally rid of that ‘tacky rodeo girl.’”

  “What?” Payson said. “She didn’t throw a party.”

  His denial sounded less than truthful. She learned after a few years of marriage that nothing she did would satisfy Marquessa. The woman regularly made digs about everything, from Jessie’s hair to her career. She’d told Jessie that she needed to act like a surgeon’s wife, not “a vulgar circus tramp.”

  They stood for long minutes not talking, the silence not uncomfortable. The sadness of remembering what could have been tinged that space between her and Payson. Was it finally time to clear the air and get it all out there? He’d been right that they hadn’t been so great at talking.

  They were older now, but Jessie wasn’t convinced she was any wiser. Talking about their past might show wisdom or be a big fat mistake, just like the kiss.

  “Payson,” Jessie started and felt the words freeze up in her throat. “I think we need to talk.” He waited politely for her to continue. “Later. We don’t have to do it today.” She needed to work up to laying her heart open about the one day that had changed everything for her and for them. Plus, she’d only had one cup of coffee; she needed at least ten more to be up for this conversation.

  “No. If you feel we need to have a conversation. Let’s do it now.”

  “Next week will be fine.” The idea of talking tightened the muscles in her throat, choking her, just as the tension moved to her neck and shoulders, shooting up into her head. She rubbed her temples.

  His mouth worked and she braced herself for another demand. He surprised her when he said, “I’ll make another pot of coffee. Maybe that will take care of your headache.”

  “Thanks.” How had he known the pot was empty and she desperately needed more? An hour of cleaning stalls would help loosen the grip of the headache, too. Working in the barn had always been how she’d dealt with a problem. When they were married, she’d race out of the house and brush Candy Cane till the poor horse was nearly bald. Of course, Payson ran away, too, but saving a little kid’s life sounded so much nobler than brushing a horse.

  * * *

  PAYSON WALKED INTO Jessie’s office, ignoring the memory of their kiss as he concentrated on the coffeemaker. His mood lightened as he took comfort in how well he knew Jessie. She always had one cup of coffee before going to do her barn chores, chugged down like medicine to get the caffeine flowing. Then with the precision she’d perfected in her trick riding, she’d brew a full pot so its last drip fell into the carafe as she finished her work. Two or three cups into that pot and Jessie would finally be human. He could tell this morning that she hadn’t had enough coffee yet, and on top of that, he’d seen the tension in her upper body that had made her rub at her temples. He knew she had a headache, which meant whatever she wanted to talk about was unpleasant. Her insistence, after bringing it up, that it could wait made him positive that the conversation she wanted to have centered on their shared past.

  Talking would be a novelty for the two of them, since most the communication during their marriage had been nonverbal and between the sheets, which had gotten them into the bad habit of trying to solve their problems with sex. When they’d parted ways...not parted ways...when she’d walked out on him, he’d been fine with leaving their business unfinished because he never wanted to talk to her again. Ever. He’d shoved thoughts of her and their divorce into the same dark corner where he’d hidden the major reason for their breakup.

  He watched the coffeepot’s slow drip and decided he needed a mug, too. After last night’s kiss, he’d barely slept, which is why he’d put that little experiment into his dark corner. He worried that his strategy would turn around and bite him in the butt. How could all of their baggage stay packed away when he worked with Jessie every day, stood next to her and felt the subtle heat of her body?

  He glared at the slow drip. Who was he fooling? No dark corner would work for this. They needed to clear the air. Then they’d be able to move on—whatever the hell that meant. If it meant that he’d be able to start dating, he was all for it. Really. Since the divorce, he’d been living more or less like a monk—which now that he used his allegedly considerable brain power—he could directly link to his reaction to last night’s kiss.

  “Helen,” he said into his phone after hitting speed dial. “I’ll be running a little late. Can you push back my first two appointments?”

  “That will mean you’ll miss lunch.”

  “I’ll grab a bite between patients.” He pinched the phone between his ear and shoulder to pour coffee. The phone slipped and he missed what Helen said. He repositioned the phone. “What?”

  “I said, I guess I’ll grab a bite between patients, too.”

  “I’m sure I can handle the office for a half an hour so you can get lunch.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Helen said.

  Payson knew that she didn’t mean it was fine. When he got to the office, he’d convince her to take lunch. “I shouldn’t be very late. I just need to clear a few things up here.”

  “You mean like why you and Jessie got divorced?” Helen asked shrewdly.

  Payson stood with his coffee partway to his mouth.

  Helen went on, “That’s why you’re going to be late?” A pause and he could hear the soft static of the connection. Helen gasped. “Payson MacCormack! Don’t tell me you...”

  “No,” Payson protested, feeling his face burn. He added quickly, “If we did, I don’t think it would be any of your business.”

  “You think it’s
none of my business? Who’s the person who has to put up with you? Who’s the person who has to explain to patients why Dr. Mac is grumpy like Oscar the Grouch? Hmm?”

  “Reschedule the patients, please,” he said carefully and ended the phone call.

  He took a slug of coffee, hoping to God that the jolt of caffeine would get him through the unpacking of his baggage. For Jessie’s coffee, he pulled the smiley mug out of the stack. Maybe it would put her in a better mood.

  He found her at the entrance to the indoor arena with her phone pressed against her ear and frowning ferociously. Too far away to hear what she was saying, he hurried, a little worried that she might have gotten bad news about one of the children.

  “You soulless...drone! We’re talking about children’s lives here,” Jessie said into the phone, then listened for a moment. “Fine. I’ll do that.” She shoved the phone into her pocket and turned to start back to her office. He knew the second she spotted him. Her face went from fury to fear. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Bringing you coffee. Is something wrong?”

  “Why? What did you hear?”

  “Not much, but you looked totally pissed off,” he said, holding out the mug.

  She took the coffee and stared into its depths. “Just a supplier who’s being a pain. I’ll work it out.”

  “Of course, Jessie the Lone Ranger never needs help from anyone.”

  “That’s right,” she said fiercely.

  “Fine,” he snapped, then took a deep breath. Rehashing a familiar argument would get them exactly nowhere. “We shouldn’t wait to talk. I rescheduled two appointments. That will give us enough time to have the discussion we need to have in order for this—”

  “Just like that? You set up a meeting and expect me to drop everything and rearrange my schedule?”