by Jill Shalvis
With a sigh, she started straightening her clothes.
He looked down at himself and tried to figure out if a doctor’s coat could possibly cover the biggest erection he’d ever had.
“So, have we come to terms?”
He stopped in the act of tucking in his shirt and looked at her. “Terms?”
“About…you know.”
“Sleeping together?”
She shook her head. “Actually, sleeping would be a bad idea.”
His head was spinning. “But you just said…”
“Sleeping implies some sort of relationship, when we both know a relationship between us would never work. In fact,” she said earnestly, “sleeping together would only backfire.”
“Right. Backfire.” And she was right. Hell, she was so right. He’d gotten sidetracked in her glorious body, but the truth was staring him in the face. He didn’t want a relationship, and neither did she. So why his hands itched to grab her close again and talk her into exactly that was beyond him.
She finished buttoning herself up—though not correctly—and scooped her hair up off her face, holding it there with some clip she pulled out of her pocket. Immediately, strands of long red hair escaped, making her look like…like she’d just been in the storage closet being ravaged. “I’ll see you,” she whispered and turned from him to reach for the door.
Let her go.
Instead, he grabbed her and turned her back to him. Reaching out, he fixed the buttons on her blouse. The woman needed a goddamn keeper. Not a job he wanted to apply for. Nope. He was going to walk away. Hell, he was going to run—
She kissed his cheek, sent him a smile that made his heart tumble in his side. “Thanks.”
Then she was gone.
Luke stood in that closet for a good long time, until his coat was no longer tented with his obvious hard-on. Until he’d decided that yes, the right thing was to walk out of the closet and right out the front door of the clinic.
So he walked out of the closet.
Walked down the hall.
And then turned right instead of left, and went to see which patients needed his attention.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, FAITH sat alone on her couch staring at the wall. She’d done yoga, had given herself an aromatherapy session and had eaten dinner with Shelby.
None of the normally calming, soothing rituals had soothed her. Nope, she was keyed up, strung tighter than a cheap guitar, and for once it wasn’t nerves or anxiety over money or the clinic.
She’d thrown herself at Luke today.
She’d like to blame the heat of the moment, especially with his mouth on hers and his hands…oh goodness, his hands. Things had gotten so fiery so fast in that storage closet, they’d practically singed off any unwanted body hair with the fire they’d generated.
Yeah, blaming the heat of the moment sounded like a good excuse for how shameless she’d been. How else could she explain offering him sex for the next two months?
So damn it, where was he? She looked out the window. The only car in the lot below was hers.
He should be here now, easing her tension with his hands, his mouth, his body.
Why wasn’t he?
But after the last patient had gone, so had he.
And here she sat, alone, thinking about sex until her body hummed.
Only a few weeks ago she’d have said that sex, no matter how consensual, how healthy, should never be used outside a loving, monogamous relationship. But only a few weeks ago she hadn’t met Luke Walker.
With a sigh, she got ready for bed alone, and plopped onto her mattress.
And then proceeded to stare at the ceiling imagining all she could be doing if Luke had shown up.
Since sleep wasn’t going to come—and neither was she or Luke apparently—she padded downstairs in her oversize T-shirt and favorite bunny slippers to hit the paperwork until she felt suitably tired.
Flipping on the light in her office had her blinking like an owl. Her desk was definitely threatening to burst at the seams. Looking at the stack of unpaid bills, her tummy flip-flopped. It would be nice to have someone to call right now, right this minute, someone to talk to, someone who understood her, through thick and thin.
But her mother and father, while wonderful, giving people, had never really been the kind she could go running to. They dealt with people who needed them on a daily basis, and in return, expected more of their offspring.
She supposed she could call her sister, but the truth was, Faith didn’t even have a contact phone number for her. That had always seemed so independent, so modern, but now she only felt…sad. She could call Shelby, but her friend’s answer to loneliness tended to be sex, and she would have wondered what Faith had done wrong to scare off Luke before she’d struck it rich.
Truth was, Faith didn’t have any idea what she’d done wrong. Clearly she wasn’t good at seducing men, but she’d never claimed to be good. She would have bet the bank that a man—being a slave to his penis of course—would have leapt at her offer of unencumbered physical relations.
Which didn’t speak so well of her desirability.
Maybe what had happened tonight—or hadn’t happened—was for the best. And honestly, had she really thought she could keep a big, sensual, earthy, edgy man such as Luke sexually satisfied?
Clearly, he’d done them both a favor by not showing up, he really had. Besides, now that she was thinking clearly, she remembered the truth about sex. It was like chocolate, fun in the moment but messy afterwards.
Yep, she was far better off without it.
With a pathetic sigh that didn’t fool even herself, she moved toward the desk and her stack of bills, determined to keep her chin up. Sure, yes, she’d rather be experiencing an orgasm beneath Luke’s hands at this very moment, but that was life. She wouldn’t waste time with regrets.
Besides, what she did here in the clinic was important to her, and deserved her time and thought. All she wanted, all she’d ever wanted, was to ease unnecessary suffering. She was doing that now, on a daily basis, and felt extremely proud of it.
And yet…she could admit here, alone with her bunny-slippered feet up on her desk, that maybe, just maybe, she was a little lonely because of it.
“Oh, get over yourself.” She sat up straight and opened her bookkeeping program. She started flipping through the bills to figure out which ones she could pay now and which could wait.
Most went into the wait pile.
After only a few minutes of this, as the unpaid pile grew, her head started to swim. Damn it, she wasn’t run down, she’d gotten her sleep…why would she be feeling these all-too-unwelcome symptoms of the virus now? Stress? The only stress she felt at the moment came from unfulfilled sexual urges, thank you very much Dr. Luke Walker, aka Dr. Universe, aka best kisser in the free world.
Looking for calm, she lit a few vanilla scented candles, her favorite, and practiced her breathing techniques for a few moments. And okay, maybe she stole a quick little bite of chocolate from her secret stash. Sue her.
Feeling better, she finished up sorting the bills, then sent the files to be paid to the printer. Now all she had to do was load the checks into the printer and she could hit the sack. Again. Sure, she’d have to hit it alone, but she was used to that, very used to it.
Unlocking her bottom drawer, she let out a rather unladylike oath when she saw she’d run out of checks. Figures. For a moment she let the overwhelming feeling of impending doom shake her. Help would be nice. An easing of the burden of running this place alone would be nice. Someone else keeping up the positive feelings for once would be really nice.
But she had her pride. Asking for help wasn’t a part of her genetic makeup. Besides, who would she ask? Her employees already gave everything they had. Her family didn’t have anything left to give. And there was no one else…
Luke, said a little voice, which she firmly ignored. She knew what he thought of this place, she knew he’d only come back out of a
sense of duty. And guilt.
With another loud sigh, she pushed to her feet and headed out of her office. Naturally, the box of new checks was high on the shelf of the storage closet—the same one where Luke had turned her into one puddle of sexual urge earlier, but someone had moved the ladder she needed. She remembered seeing it in the staff room, and grumbling, she moved back down the hallway, still grumbling, into the staff room—
Whoa.
On the other side of the back door was a shadow of a man. She grabbed the handy dandy, trusty baseball bat she kept in there to make her feel strong and brave, and hoisted it to her shoulder, squinting into the room, trying to figure out why that outline seemed so unbearably familiar—“Luke?”
His fist, raised and ready to knock, loosened, and he slowly, still staring at her, waggled his fingers.
Suddenly dizzy again, she put a hand to her head and tried to think. There was only one reason why he was standing there, and that reason had to do with her very bold, very brazen, rebel woman speech she’d given him earlier about having wild sex for two months and then walking away.
Now she stood there, fully lit by the staff room light in an oversize T-shirt with a rip over the collarbone and—oh my God—bunny slippers.
Oh yeah, utterly seductive sex siren. That was her.
CHAPTER 7
LUKE DIDN’T KNOW what had driven him back to Faith’s. It was late, he was tired, and he had to be at the hospital at the crack of dawn.
Okay, he knew. Faith. She’d driven him here.
Since she simply stood on the other side of the door under the glow of the overhead light, staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights, he had to let out a low laugh directed fully at himself.
She’d changed her mind. Good. Great. At least one of them had come to their senses. But he hadn’t taken two steps off the porch, toward his car, when the door whipped open behind him.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly, pushing her long, glorious hair out of her face.
“Hi.”
“You’re just in time. I can’t reach the box of checks, could you…?”
Then he was staring at her very fine ass because she’d grabbed his hand and was tugging him down the hall and back into the very storage room in which he’d nearly lost his mind with her earlier that day. “I’ve got to tell you, Faith, this is becoming my favorite room in the place.”
“There,” she said, dropping his hand and pointing to a shelf high above him. “Could you…?”
But his gaze was locked on what she wore. Or on what she didn’t wear. “Um…huh?”
“Oh, never mind.” And right before his eyes, she started climbing the shelves.
Shamefully, it took him a long moment to stop her, but that’s because he was busy absorbing the thin T-shirt that came to the tops of her thighs, a shirt that looked as if it had seen better days. The neckline, torn a little, left one creamy shoulder completely bare, the hem allowed him to gaze upon long, long, lean legs, all the way down to…her bunny slippers.
Then she got to his eye level and shot him a jaw-dropping view of white bikini panties with pink hearts on them.
“Forget you saw these,” she said, still climbing.
He concentrated on not swallowing his tongue. “The bunny slippers or the hearts?”
“Oh, damn. Close your eyes!”
Yeah, right. He had them wide open. He’d never met a woman like her; so adorable he wanted to gobble her up, and so naturally, wildly sensual at the same time. “Faith, get back down here. I can—”
“Almost got them.” She reached out, then her hand wavered, in tune to the utter loss of color from her cheeks. “Oh, damn,” she whispered again.
“Faith—” But she wasn’t listening and she was going to fall, so he did what any man would have done, he wrapped his arms around her thighs, pressed his face to her butt and pulled her away from the shelves.
The box of checks came tumbling down.
So did the two of them, though Luke managed to cushion her fall for her—with his body.
“Ouch,” he said from flat on his back, with her sprawled on top of him.
She turned over to face him. “You didn’t have to play He-man. I told you, I almost had them.”
“You were going to fall.”
“No, I wasn’t. At least not until you reminded me I was wearing bunny slippers.”
“And panties with hearts on them,” he pointed out.
Faith ignored that and wondered why it felt so good to be sprawled on top of him. “I should have just gotten the ladder myself. And worn heels. Then I could have reached the checks.”
“What if you’d known I was coming? What would you have worn then?” Visions of lace and silk danced in his head.
“Armor.”
Face-to-face, body-to-body, he lifted his head off the floor and searched her expression for a clue to her thoughts. “The bunnies are as much a turn on as the heels would have been.”
She eyed him as if he were an alien.
He laughed with the woman he wanted to take to bed—a first. Feeling good, feeling sure of himself, he slid his hands down her body to her hips. “Really.”
Her lips quirked as she studied his face. “You’re a sick man, Luke Walker.”
Tugging her a little off balance so that more of her was sprawled over more of him, he buried his face in her hair. “Did you mean it, Faith?”
“Did I mean what?”
Gently he lifted her head to look into her eyes. “About being together.”
She didn’t play coy and ask what that meant exactly. She knew. “I, uh, meant it at the time.”
“At the time?”
“Yeah.” She backed off him, sat cross-legged on the floor and clasped her fingers together, staring down at the chewed-to-the-quick nails. “Ever since I said it, I’ve been telling myself it was silly, you couldn’t really want me. That I’d been too bold, that I’d scared you off. That you were afraid of me. Or didn’t know how to reject me kindly. Or maybe—”
He shut her up with his mouth.
With a little squeak of surprise, then a moan of acquiescence that nearly killed him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. “Are we insane?” she asked.
“Without a doubt,” he assured her, and leaned in.
Only to jerk back at the pounding on the clinic door. They both leapt to their feet.
“I’ll get it,” Luke said, pushing her behind him. “You stay here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is my clinic, I’m going—”
“It’s dangerous,” he said, thinking of the hospital, and how they’d had a rash of crazy punks trying to get drugs from the lockup late at night. At least there they had an armed guard, but here Faith had no one to protect her. “Just let me go see—”
“No.” She grabbed a doctor’s white lab coat from a hanger and shrugged into it, covering that hot little bod except for those silly slippers. “Say another word about these slippers and you’re dead meat.”
And with that, she was gone.
* * *
WHEN FAITH SAW WHO was at the clinic door, she ran toward it, hauling it open. One of her patients, Ally Freestead, fell into her arms sobbing in relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she cried. “I need to sit down.”
No wonder, she was nine months pregnant. Faith looked around to grab a chair, but Luke was already there, supporting the now panting Ally.
“How long have you been having pains?” he asked, putting his hand on her big belly and looking at his watch.
“Since the day I slept with the no good son-of-a-bitch who got me this way.” Ally scrunched up her face and whimpered through the contraction.
“Hospital?” Luke asked Faith, seating Ally into a chair.
Ally panted. “No! I want Faith to deliver my baby here. Damn, this hurts! Give me a shot or something!”
Faith reached for her hand. “Do you remember the breathing exercises we’ve been doing?”
&
nbsp; “Screw the exercises. I want drugs! Now! Oh God, now my legs are cramping, too!”
Faith dropped to her knees beside Ally and started rubbing her legs.
“Are those…bunny slippers?” Ally panted.
“You’re hallucinating. Keep breathing,” Faith said.
“Drugs!” Ally screamed.
“Ally, you wanted to do this naturally, remember? Now if we just breathe together—”
“Faith—” Ally grunted through the last of the pain and let out a lusty breath of relief when the contraction passed. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this sucks far worse than you said it would.”
“I know, but we can do this—”
“Oh, God, here comes another!”
Luke looked at Faith and shook his head. “We need to get her into a room.”
“No, don’t move me!”
“Ally—”
“I have to push!”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Ally was resting peacefully, and Luke was holding a squalling, red-faced, furious little boy who’d been brought into the world in less than fifteen minutes and two pushes.
A miracle, he thought, staring raptly down as the infant waved a fist wildly, his lungs in fine and full working order. “Who in the world are you so pissed at already?” he murmured, laughing softly when the infant hushed, startled, at the sound of Luke’s voice.
“You okay?”
Turning, he found Faith in the doorway watching him. Was he okay? He’d just watched her, as he had over and over again now, get thoroughly engrossed in her work. She’d panted alongside Ally, sweated and laughed and cried with her as well, giving, as she always did, one hundred and ten percent to every single patient she had.
God, he loved that about her.
“Want me to take him?” she asked, holding her arms out for the baby.
“I’m fine. He just came out hungry.”
“Ally wants to try to put him to her breast. I thought I’d check his diaper first—”
“I already did.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“Aren’t doctors allowed to do that?”
“Well, yes, but—”
He stroked the soft, downy head of the little boy who was slowly winding up for another temper tantrum. “Because in case you haven’t noticed, this patient and I are having a deep discussion on life’s meaning.”
