Luke

by Jill Shalvis

The curse of the redheaded temperament, she supposed, and self-consciously patted her long, red—and unruly—hair. Well, tough. He’d asked for her temper by being late. He had a duty, this Saturday and every Saturday for the next three months, to her and the clinic.

  She knocked again, louder now. Waited with what she thought was admirable patience. And started tapping her foot when no one answered. She glanced back at the car that assured her someone was indeed home.

  And knocked yet again, listening with some satisfaction to the echo of her pounding as it reverberated through the house.

  Sleeping, was he? Damn the man, snoozing blissfully while her life went down the tubes—

  Then the door whipped open, and suddenly she was staring right at a man’s bare chest. Tilting her head up, and up, she found her Dr. Luke Walker, and swallowed hard.

  She’d heard about him, of course, in the occasional article in the newspaper, especially once he’d made his infamous comments about her clinic. But Dr. Luke Walker in the flesh was like nothing she’d ever experienced. He was leaner, harder than she’d expected, the lines of his face more stark, his nearly naked body far tougher than she would have imagined.

  “Yes?” His vivid blue eyes had landed right on her, and for some odd reason she couldn’t find her tongue much less form a sentence.

  His dark, slightly wavy hair was short and bed-ruffled, his mouth grim. At her silence, a muscle in his cheek ticked.

  Oh, and he wore nothing but low-slung sweatpants that he hadn’t bothered to tie.

  Bad attitude personified, all one hundred eighty pounds of him.

  Clearly, she’d indeed gotten him out of bed, and yet there was nothing even halfway sleepy about his searing gaze as it swept over her. “Who are you and why are you trying to knock my door down?”

  “Faith McDowell,” she said, trying really hard not to notice all his corded muscles and sinews, all his smooth, tanned skin. For some reason the sight of him, up close and personal and practically naked, made her feel a little insecure.

  “Well, Faith McDowell, what do you want?”

  “I…” What did she want? Oh, yes, her clinic, her life. Her lioness claws came back out. “I came to drive you to the clinic, because clearly, your car isn’t working, which would explain why you didn’t show up at the clinic an hour ago when you were supposed to.”

  He just looked at her.

  She tried valiantly not to look at her watch or rush him along. “We have patients scheduled for you, remember?” Tell me you remember.

  “I remember.” He said this in a voice that assured her going to the clinic was the last thing he wanted to do, right after, say, having a fingernail slowly pulled out. “I just wish I didn’t.”

  “So…your alarm neglected to go off?” This time she didn’t hold herself back and purposely glanced at her watch. And then nearly panicked at the time.

  “It isn’t time for it to go off.”

  “Right, because as a doctor, you can breeze into the clinic more than an hour after it’s opened, with no concern for how that would throw off our schedule.” How could she have forgotten the arrogant God complex of doctors? “Look, I’m sorry you don’t want to do this, but we have a full load of patients today. Thanks to your tardiness, we’re already far behind. The longer I stand here waiting for you, the worse it’s going to get.”

  “My tardiness?”

  “If we get much more behind before lunch, trust me, it’s not going to be pretty.”

  He ran a hand over his jaw, and the dark shadow there rasped in the morning silence. “I was told 9:00 a.m.”

  “Seven.”

  “That’s not what I was told.”

  A misunderstanding then. Fine. Annoying, but they could get past this. “I’m sorry, but you were told wrong.”

  He scratched his chest, the one she was trying not to gape at. Obviously, he did something other than treat patients all day long because that body of his was well-kept, without a single, solitary inch of excess.

  “I wouldn’t have agreed to seven,” he said. “Seven is too early.”

  “Well, for three months’ worth of weekends, get used to it.” Surely, it had to be against the law to be so mouth-wateringly gorgeous and such an insensitive jerk at the same time. It was his fault he was in this spot. People were waiting for him right this very second, though she imagined that was the story of his life. Dr. Luke Walker had been born to heal, or so legend claimed at South Village Medical Center, one of the busiest hospitals in all of Southern California. His hands held and delivered miracles every single day. His patients worshipped him because of it.

  The people who worked with him; the other doctors, nurses, staff—everyone understood and respected that extraordinary gift, but according to gossip—and there was never a shortage of that in her field—there weren’t many who held a great love for him personally. Faith knew much of that was simple pettiness and jealousy. After all, he was only thirty-five, and the rumors predicted he’d be running the hospital by the time he hit forty.

  If they could fix his habit of speaking his mind, that is.

  Because while he was astonishingly compassionate and giving and tender with his patients, he did not generally extend those people skills to anyone else, such as the people he worked with. Faith had heard the stories and figured he didn’t mean to be so gruff and hurried and impatient, he just didn’t suffer fools well.

  But now, she had to wonder if maybe he was just missing the be-nice-to-people gene. “I realize this isn’t important to you, working at the clinic, but you promised.”

  He let out a rough sound that managed to perfectly convey his annoyance, and for Faith, it was the last straw.

  “And really, this is your own fault anyway,” she pointed out. “If you hadn’t made that statement that got out to the press saying you thought our clinic was worthless, you wouldn’t be stuck paying penance for three months’ worth of Saturdays. You could be out golfing—”

  “Golfing?” His eyes widened incredulously. “Golfing—”

  “Or whatever it is you rich doctors do with all the money you make off your patients.”

  “My God, you have a mouth on you.”

  Yes. Yes, she did. It had gotten her into trouble plenty of times, but damn it, this was important to her.

  Still, what was it her mother had said… You could catch more flies with honey? With a sigh, she swallowed her pride. “I’m…sorry.” Not words she used often. “It’s just that we really need you.”

  With his arms crossed over that bare chest, and a frown still masking his chiseled-in-stone face, he looked far more like a thug than a doctor. A beautiful thug, but still a dangerous, edgy one. He let out a disparaging noise, shoved his fingers through his dark hair, making it stick up all the more. “I’d like to get one thing straight here. I never said the clinic was worthless. What I said was I didn’t understand why the hospital gave your clinic money when—” He took in her humor-the-jerk expression and broke off. “Okay, forget it. I’ll be there soon.”

  “I’ll just wait and drive you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I think it is.”

  “Why? Is there an emergency waiting for me right now?”

  “Uh…”

  “Are you in need of medical attention of any kind?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then I’ll be there. On my own. Soon.” He actually turned to go inside the house, dismissing her.

  Without stopping to think—a personality disorder she’d been saddled with since childhood—Faith slapped a hand on his front door and held it open. “I’d really rather wait for you.”

  Still turned away, Dr. Walker let out a long-suffering sigh, which brought her attention upward past the sleek, powerful flesh and sinew of his back to the widest, most tension-filled shoulders she’d ever seen.

  Unfortunately, he turned then, and caught her in the act of ogling him. Not a word came out of his mouth, but no words were necessary, not whe
n his highly vexed expression did all his talking for him.

  She cleared her throat and tried to ignore the blush that crept over her face. Another redheaded curse. “You do understand the clinic’s already full—”

  “Yeah.” He closed his eyes, then lifted his hands to his temples. The untied sweatpants shifted down an inch or so on his hips, revealing more flat belly.

  A hot flash raced through her body. That pesky tropical virus again. It had to be.

  “I don’t get it.” He sounded baffled. “Why do you even want me there? You know I’m into conventional, modern medicine. The good, old-fashioned, scientific stuff. So—”

  “Actually, the alternative means of medicine that we use is the good, old-fashioned way, thousands of years old in some cases. So really, your ‘conventional’ medicine, at only a couple of hundred years old, is the baby.”

  His jaw ticked again. “I still don’t see what massage therapy, aromatherapy, acupressure, yoga and herbs have to do with me.”

  “The alternative practices can be blended in with the more conventional ones, and with that, we can offer people something more. Something better.”

  “But I don’t know how to treat people that way.”

  “It’s just a way of life,” she said. “You’ll have plenty to offer. Mostly credibility at first, but…” She broke off when he put his hands on his hips.

  Her gaze glued itself to his loose sweat bottoms, her breath blocking in her throat. If they slipped just another fraction of an inch or so—

  “Look, I had a really long night.” His weary tone drew her eyes back up to his exhausted ones. “And I thought I had an extra few hours. I’ll hurry, but I don’t need an audience, so if you don’t mind—”

  “Well actually, I—”

  The door shut in her face.

  CHAPTER 2

  CARMEN SHOWED UP in Luke’s inside hallway, having clearly just let herself in the back door. She blocked his path to the stairs with that look on her face that told him he was getting no peace until she spoke her mind.

  “Gee,” she said. “Hard to imagine how a man with all your charm could still be single.”

  Ignoring her, he headed wearily up the stairs. He’d been up all night, shifting through nightmares that forced him to relive losing six-year-old Johnny Garcia to the war zone that had become Los Angeles. “Just wake me in ten minutes, okay?” If he could catch a few more minutes, he’d be okay. He’d be human. He’d be able to remember that on most days he loved this life, loved what he did for a living.

  “She was a sweet girl,” Carmen said, disgusted. “Coming to pick you up. And you chased her off.”

  “She was a woman, not a girl.”

  “So you did notice.”

  Yeah, he’d noticed. Faith McDowell’s sexy softness contrasted with her cool voice and clear green eyes, and any red-blooded male would have noticed. She had long, curly hair the color of a fiery sunset and had worn a pair of scrubs decorated with smiley faces covered by a lightweight, open sweater that hugged her body, showing off creamy skin and lush curves. Disgusted with himself, Luke put a hand on the wood banister and started climbing.

  He’d definitely been too long without sex if scrubs with smiley faces had turned him on.

  But now, if he was very lucky, he could close his eyes for a few more minutes. Sleep was far more important than sex these days. Then he’d shower, grab some steaming, black coffee, and maybe, just maybe, feel sane again.

  “How are you supposed to start a family someday if you chase off all the women?” Carmen called up the stairs. “Answer me that.”

  He answered that with one concise muttered word.

  Carmen tsked. “You were rude, and isn’t she your boss at the clinic?”

  Yeah, and just what he needed, yet another politically correct bureaucrat telling him what to do. And yet… Maybe Carmen had a point. If he tried harder, added a smile, even turned on the charm he used to relax his patients…he might actually get his sentence reduced.

  Luke pictured the woman’s wild, gloriously red hair bouncing in the morning sea breeze. The sparks in her eyes. He thought of the way she’d drawn in a huge deep breath just before she’d blasted him, as if she was so amazingly angry she could hardly think.

  Nope. He doubted he could get her to reduce his “volunteer” time. She wanted his head on a platter—her platter. He’d written his own death sentence, damn it.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Ah, hell, what now?” He looked down at Carmen. “I’ve had five hours sleep in two days.”

  Carmen’s entire face softened. “Yes, baby. You work too hard.”

  “I just need a few more minutes of shut-eye. You can chase her off, okay?”

  “What if it’s an emergency?”

  “It’s not. It’s just Red, looking to take a piece out of my hide for being late.”

  Carmen grinned. “She did seem to be a natural, temperamental redhead, didn’t she? You know, rumor has it you used to be able to soothe a woman. They say you even used to like women.”

  He still did. In bed. But right now he was too tired to think of sharing his mattress, plus he doubted Faith McDowell would be interested anyway. She seemed to expect more out of a person than what he had in mind.

  He didn’t have more. He gave it all to work and his patients, gave everything he had so that at the end of the day, there wasn’t anything left.

  Maybe it was the way he’d been raised, with parents who’d rarely taken the time for him or his brother, Matt, pawning them off like unwanted luggage on everyone and anyone who’d take them. Maybe it was because it’d been so long since he’d taken a breather, he could hardly remember who he really was. He didn’t care.

  He wanted sleep.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Tell her I’ll be there soon.”

  “Clearly, she needs you now.”

  With a groan, he padded back down the stairs, glaring at Carmen, who unlike everyone else in his life, didn’t back down from him. “This is why I hired you, you know. You’re supposed to scare people away.”

  “Stop being so curmudgeonly.”

  Stopping in midstride, he stared at her. “Curmudgeonly?”

  “It’s someone who’s grumpy, and—”

  “I know what it means, and I’m not—Oh, forget it.” He settled his hand on the knob and hauled it open, finding himself looking down into the intelligent, and still fuming, eyes of the woman who was to be his boss at the clinic for the next three months’ worth of Saturdays.

  You used to like women.

  Oh, but he definitely still did. He just wasn’t used to being looked at as if he was pond scum, especially by a wildly attractive woman with steam coming out of her ears.

  Absolutely too long without sex.

  “You’re still not ready,” she said exasperated.

  Deciding there should be a law against facing a furious woman before having a cup of coffee, no matter how lovely she was, he shook his head. The question was, would he ever be ready for a day full of aromatherapy and yoga? God save him. Despite his to-the-bone-fatigue, his lips quirked. “I need more than sixty seconds.”

  Her gaze appeared to be riveted on his chest. “We don’t have more than sixty seconds,” she murmured.

  He’d stumbled half-naked out of bed to get the door earlier, and now, given the way she looked at him, he glanced down to make sure his sweats covered all the essentials. Yes, he was covered, but if she kept staring at him like that, as if he was a long, tall glass of water and she was dying of thirst, those essentials were going to make themselves known regardless of his irritation.

  “Here.” Carmen materialized from behind him and wisely shoved a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. He nearly cried in gratitude, and might have actually hugged her, but then she said to Faith McDowell in apology, “Give him until the coffee’s gone. Two minutes tops, he’ll be human again. I promise.”

  “Oh.” Faith smiled sweetly. At Carmen, not Luke. “Yes
, I understand. Thank you.” Kindness and genuine caring poured from her. Her voice, light now that it was directed at someone other than him, was the most amazingly sweet, musical voice Luke had ever heard.

  It reminded him of…sex. Unbelievable, what sleep deprivation could do to a man.

  Carmen and Red—her hair was whipping around her shoulders, long and wild—watched him with twin expressions of expectation, waiting for his coffee to work the miracle that wasn’t going to happen, not to day. “I’m going upstairs now,” he said carefully. “To get showered and dressed.”

  “Is that going to take more than five minutes?” His new boss glanced at her watch, quivering with impatience.

  “Ten,” he said, then paused as if he really cared what she thought. “Is that okay?”

  She considered this. Considered him. “Just remember, the patients are counting on you.” Her voice was cool again. The wind picked up, and with a sound of annoyance, she tossed back her wild hair. Her sweater, thin and ineffective against the chill, slipped off one shoulder, revealing the fact she was…chilly.

  In an odd reaction, considering he didn’t like her, Luke felt a physical stirring at the sight.

  Sleep deprived, he reminded himself. A dangerous thing.

  Shrugging back into the sweater, Faith crossed her arms over her chest. “This is really a two-way street, you know. I’ll be helping you, too.”

  “How, exactly, is that possible?”

  “You’ll be practicing—and hopefully improving—your people skills.”

  It was one thing to be so tired as to be lusting after a woman who thought him an insensitive idiot, but it was another thing entirely to let her think he needed her in any way. He needed no one, and he certainly didn’t need help with his people skills.

  “You might not realize this, but one of the basic people skills is charm. I can help you there.”

  Carmen laughed at that, but when he whipped around with a murderous expression, she vanished into the kitchen.

  “In order to charm,” Faith said. “You need to stimulate the people around you. Can you do that?”

  He thought of the inexplicable way his body had reacted to her. “Stimulation isn’t a problem,” he managed with a straight face.