by Lori Wilde
“I don’t care.”
“Really?” That surprised her. Mark would rather have his teeth pulled than sit on the ground in one of his tailored suits.
“It’s just clothing.”
That didn’t sound like any surgeon she knew. This guy was a horse of a different color. Elle cocked her head to study him. “Why are you getting involved?”
“Just give him to me,” Dante said, clearly not someone who liked explaining himself.
“How do you know it’s a him?”
“I had a good view of his backside while you had him tucked under your arm.” Dante took the fawn from her and held him in his lap with a firm grip.
His hand grazed hers.
The breath knotted tight in Elle’s chest, unable to find a way out. Hand tingling, she ducked her head and got up to retrieve the second bottle.
Together they sat side by side on the muddy forest floor, raindrops dotting their skin as they nourished an orphaned baby buck.
Her estimation of Dante Nash shot up a notch. She could tell he was a good doctor by the considerate way he held the deer. Gentle but firm. It was the kind of touch that would make any patient feel safe in his hands. She slanted a sideways glance at his face and discovered he was looking at her.
Their eyes met.
He winked.
A hot flush of sexual excitement raced through her. To Elle there was nothing sexier than a nurturing man. Quickly she dropped her gaze. No, no, she didn’t want this feeling. She did not want to like him. To want him. She’d just come out of a miserable divorce. This wasn’t the time for a relationship, and he, as one of her ex-husband’s friends, was not someone she should choose.
“You’re going to have to take him to the animal rescue center,” Dante said.
“I know.” Elle stroked the baby’s fur.
“Yet you’re getting attached anyway.”
She shrugged. “A fault of mine. Getting attached when I shouldn’t.”
“It’s not a fault. Just means you care.”
“Yeah well, it makes for a frequently broken heart.”
A long silence stretched between them, interrupted only by the sounds of the baby deer suckling. He finished one bottle and Elle started the famished youngster on another.
“Why’d you marry Mark?” he asked.
“What?” His question caught her off guard. She raised her head, stared at him again. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t get offended,” Dante said. “It’s just that you’re not Mark’s usual type.”
“No?” Of course not, Elle thought. Cassandra was Mark’s usual type—blond, beautiful and busty. Elle stared down at her own average-sized 34B bosom.
“You’re too smart for him.”
“You don’t even know me. How can you say that?”
“You have lively eyes.”
Elle snorted, but his words brought a heated rush of pleasure to her cheeks.
“Let me guess, you put Mark through medical school. Worked a full-time job, paid the bills and helped him with his homework.”
Dante was so right it hurt. “You know what?” Elle said. “That’s none of your business.”
“Touché,” Dante said. “He’s through.”
“Who? Mark?”
“No, the fawn.”
Indeed, the baby had sucked the bottle dry. Feeling an odd strangeness she couldn’t quite identify, Elle got to her feet and swiped at the mud on the knees of her scrubs. “My lunch hour is over. They’ll be wondering where I am.”
Dante stood up, the fawn cradled in his arms. “What are we going to do with him?”
Elle reached out for the baby. “I’ll call my sister-in-law. She’s interning for the vet at the end of the road. She’ll know who to call about disposing of the fawn’s mother and what to do about this little guy.”
Dante transferred the deer to her arms, their fingers brushing again in the process. Suddenly her heart was in her throat and she had no excuse for it.
“So tell me,” she said. “Did you satisfy your curiosity? Or are you still bored?”
He lowered his eyelids and gave her a sultry look. He raked his gaze over the length of her body, then went back to stare at her lips. He looked like a man whose appetite had just been whetted.
Then he said in low, provocative voice, “Not by a long shot.”
The baby kicked and she almost dropped him. Elle tightened her grip on the fawn and told her silly heart to stop beating so fast. The look Dante was giving her meant absolutely nothing.
3
HALF AN HOUR LATER, the animal control people came to haul away the mother deer’s carcass, while Elle’s sister-in-law, Charlotte, arrived in a van to pick up the fawn.
Elle stood at the back entrance to the hospital cradling the trembling animal in her arms, Dante at her side. She wondered why he was sticking around, but she didn’t ask.
“Ooh, Elle,” said her sister-in-law’s assistant, Linda when she spied the baby. Linda was a middle-aged woman with a welcoming smile, dimples in both cheeks and dog hair all over her lab jacket. “Look what you’ve got there.”
The receptionist looked from the fawn to Elle and then to Dante, and then an appreciative gleam came into her eyes. The look on Linda’s face proved Elle’s suspicion that the man attracted feminine attention wherever he went.
Charlotte came around to the front of the van where Elle, Dante and Linda were standing. Elle’s sister-in-law wore her dark-brown hair in a short, stylish cut that accentuated her gamine features. Underneath her lab jacket she wore jeans, a yellow T-shirt and scuffed cowboy boots. She was wiry and petite. Elle had a hard time imagining her wrangling large farm animals.
Charlotte immediately zeroed in on the fawn. “What happened?”
“His mom got hit by a car. Animal control came for her.”
Charlotte sighed. “Poor little guy.” She turned to Dante. “Hi.” She stuck out a hand. “My name’s Charlotte. I’m married to Elle’s younger brother, Tom.”
“Dante Nash,” he said and shook Charlotte’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Dante’s the new surgeon at Confidential Rejuvenations,” Elle explained. “He was with me when I found the fawn.”
“Oh really?” Charlotte got that matchmaking look in her eyes. Ever since she’d married Tom, Charlotte was relentless about trying to hook up her single friends and family members. She was still in the starry-eyed honeymoon phase, convinced that marriage was the solution to everyone’s problems. “So tell me, are you married, Dr. Nash?”
“I’m not.”
“No?” Charlotte glanced at Elle and wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Dante was Mark’s best friend in college,” Elle said and sent Charlotte a look that said forget about fixing me up.
“Not best friends,” Dante corrected. “Mark and I were just roommates and football teammates.”
“There you go,” Charlotte said. “Clearly he knows Mark’s true colors if he’s not claiming him as a friend. Score one for Dante.”
“Char,” Elle said through gritted teeth. “This fawn is getting heavy.”
“Oh yeah, sorry. Right this way.” She led them to the back of the van where she opened up the double doors, and Elle settled the fawn down on the floor.
Dante stood behind Elle, silently watching the proceedings. Elle felt weird having him hang out with her, especially after what Charlotte had just said, and she wondered what on earth he must be thinking.
“I gave him some baby formula from the hospital nursery,” Elle said.
Charlotte looked up, a serious expression on her face, the matchmaking temporarily forgotten. “Good thing you found him when you did. If he’d been out in the cold overnight without his mom, I hate to think what would have happened. Either coyotes or bobcats would probably have gotten him. You saved his life, Elle.”
Warmth spread from the center of her heart outward in a sweet glow. Elle smiled and softly scratched the fawn behind one ear. She’d save
d a life. Nothing made her feel happier than that.
“I’ll keep him at the office for a while, make sure he’s going to be okay and then we’ll take him to Dr. Levy’s sanctuary.” Dr. Levy was the vet Charlotte was training under and he had donated several hundred acres along the Colorado River as an animal sanctuary.
“Thanks. I knew you’d know what to do.”
Charlotte looked over at her assistant. “Hop in the back with the baby, Linda. I’ll drive.”
“Will do.”
Linda climbed inside the back of the van. Elle gave the little buck one last parting look and sighed wistfully as Charlotte shut the door.
“Elle’s going to make a great mother someday,” Charlotte said to Dante. “She’s so good with babies, whatever the species.”
“No doubt,” Dante said.
Elle sneaked a glance over at him, but she couldn’t read a thing from his impassive face.
Sorry for my matchmaking sister-in-law, she telegraphed him with her eyes.
He gave her an enigmatic smile and a slight shrug as if to say: Family, what are you going to do?
“Are you still planning on coming to the family softball tournament? It’s three weeks from Saturday,” Charlotte asked Elle. “Tom’s ordering this year’s jerseys and I need a head count.”
“As if I could skip out. Dad would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t show.” Elle said. The first weekend in May the Kingstons staged an annual family reunion centered around a weekend-long softball tournament. It had been a family tradition long before Elle was born.
Charlotte tucked her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans and sized up Dante. “Why don’t you come, too?” she asked. “Our team is short a catcher since Mark divorced Elle. If you don’t come we’ll be forced to play Aunt Gertie.”
Mortified at her sister-in-law’s forwardness, Elle couldn’t bring herself to look at Dante. “Char, for heaven’s sake, let it be. Dante has no interest in playing softball with the Kingston clan.”
“Maybe not,” Char said. “But he might have interest in spending some time with you.”
Kill me now, Elle thought.
“Thank you for the invitation,” Dante said. “It sounds like a lot of fun, but I have to check and see if I’m scheduled to be on call that weekend.”
“Just know that we’d love to have you,” Charlotte said. “Aunt Gertie can’t catch to save her life.”
“We’ve gotta go now. Thanks for looking after the deer.” Elle said, and then lowered her voice so only Charlotte could hear her. “You are so dead.”
Her sister-in-law laughed. “You’ll thank me on your golden anniversary.”
“I gotta get back to work,” Elle said, turned on her heel and hurried back inside the hospital before her matchmaking sister-in-law found yet another way to embarrass her.
AFTER ELLE WENT BACK inside the hospital, Dante returned to the office to find Mark waiting for him.
Mark took one look at the damp, muddy suit that would have cost Dante half a month’s salary if he’d been the one to pay for it and shook his head. “Hell, man, what happened to you?”
“Got lost in the forest.”
“Huh? What were you doing in the woods?”
“Never mind.” Dante shook his head. “Where could I get a set of scrubs to change into?”
Mark shook his head. “No, no, we’re going to lunch in Austin with Covey and Butler. You can’t wear scrubs.” Mark eyed the width of Dante’s shoulders. “We’re still about the same size. You can wear one of my suits.”
“You keep extra suits at the office?”
“Don’t you?”
“You forget,” Dante said, following Mark into his office. “I’ve been working for a county hospital.”
That was the phony cover the FBI had provided for his résumé. And he’d worked at enough county hospitals as both an intern and resident that he knew they were as different from Confidential Rejuvenations as Park Avenue was from the streets of Baghdad.
Mark stepped to a mahogany wardrobe in the corner of his massive office and threw open the door. Inside were four suits, all much more expensive than the one Dante was wearing. “Long way from our UT dorm days, huh?”
“You’ve done very well, Mark.” Dante selected a navy-blue suit from the wardrobe and looked over at his colleague. They’d shared a dorm room and the football field, but they hadn’t been the best of friends, mainly because Dante never let anyone get that close. Still, he couldn’t help feeling like something of a traitor.
If Mark’s involved in this mess, he’s going down. You have no reason to feel guilty.
No, he shouldn’t feel guilty, but lying didn’t come easily. “Thanks for the loaner,” he said. “I’ll go change.”
After returning to his office, Dante closed the blinds on his window before changing into the clean suit. As he reached for the string on the louvered blinds, he found his gaze drifting to the edge of the forest and his memory flashed back to Elle.
He thought about how she’d looked with her auburn hair curling up around her face in the rain. She really could have been a water nymph with her dewy skin, mischievous lips and womanly figure.
The setting hadn’t been sexual, but he’d gotten aroused. It had taken every bit of the self-control he possessed not to kiss her. When Dante had touched her hair, he’d come so damned close to falling into the abyss.
It scared him.
Not only because she was just as much a suspect as anyone else at Confidential Rejuvenations, but because she made him feel things he had no business feeling.
He wanted to take her to bed.
Bed? Hell, he’d wanted to take her right there on the forest floor.
And she’d looked at him as if she wouldn’t resist.
Then he thought about how tender she’d been with the baby deer. A true earth mother. That thought made him feel something else entirely. Longing, sadness and a bittersweet loneliness he hadn’t experienced since his mother had taken off when he was a kid.
He smiled, remembering about how flustered she’d gotten over her sister-in-law’s matchmaking attempts. Clearly Elle was still touchy on the subject of marriage, not that he could blame her. From all accounts, she’d been through a rough time with the divorce.
Dante shook off thoughts of Elle along with his muddy suit. He was a professional, an undercover FBI agent. These emotions could only trip him up. There were only two feelings he could afford to indulge in.
One was justice.
The other was revenge.
Elle Kingston was Mark’s Achilles’ heel. No one knew more about a man than his wife. And no one could flip faster than an ex-wife scorned. She was Dante’s route to Lawson’s downfall.
He knew then what he had to do. He must capitalize on the chemistry between them. Get closer to her. Find out exactly what secrets she was keeping about her ex-husband. He would have to use her, manipulate her and then, in the end, he was going to have to walk away.
It was a dirty job.
But he’d been assigned to do it and Dante Nash never shirked his duty.
TWO DAYS AFTER ELLE’S strange encounter in the woods with Dante, she met her two best friends, Vanessa and Julie, at Stevie B’s, a popular blues bar down by the marina, not far from Confidential Rejuvenations. They met once a week, usually on hump day, to blow off steam and offer each other moral support. It was a weekly ritual Elle had come to rely on since her divorce. She had no idea how she would have made it through such a rough patch if it hadn’t been for her friends.
Elle was the last one to arrive. Vanessa and Julie were already sitting at a casual picnic style table in the back overlooking the Colorado River. Catamarans glided majestically through the water, the setting sun cast golden lights over the sails. It was early, the crowd was still light. The band wouldn’t start playing for another hour.
Vanessa and Julie weren’t watching the boats. Instead, they were engrossed in a game of “Sex or Dinner” and they hadn’t s
een her come in.
“Jerry Seinfeld,” Julie said to Vanessa with a toss of her ash-blond hair.
Julie was one of those petite women who men seemed to instantly gravitate toward and want to take care of. Even dressed in the pink scrubs of the newborn nursery where she worked as a registered nurse, Julie looked incredibly feminine. She had a certain romantic naiveté about her that didn’t jive with the earthy, no-nonsense personality shared by the majority of nurses. If Julie weren’t so darned sweet, Elle would have been jealous of her.
“Strictly dinner,” Vanessa answered. “Jerry’s funny, but sexy he’s not. How about Colin Ferrell.”
“Seriously, you have to ask?” Julie blushed.
“I gotcha, chica.” Vanessa flashed a sly smile. “Sex all the way with that delicious Irishman.”
“Sex sounds fabulous,” Julie said, “but you know I’d be too shy to see it through. Good thing Colin is just the stuff of my midnight fantasies.”
“What about that cowboy sitting over there on the bar stool underneath the Coors sign?” Vanessa nodded at a lean-muscled, good-looking man in a Stetson at the end of the bar. “Sex or dinner?”
“Hmm,” Julie said. “This game makes me nervous when it leaves the realm of celebrity fantasies.”
“Please, you’ve been working at Confidential Rejuvenations long enough to know that celebrities are no different than the rest of us. They just think they are. I mean come on, Mark managed to snag Cassandra Roberts.”
“But Mark is rich and good-looking and a doctor.”
“So sex or dinner with Mark?”
Julie shuddered. “Neither. Besides the fact he’s Elle’s ex, there’s something about him that’s just…”
“Hi, guys,” Elle said, rushing to let her friends know she was standing there before they kept talking about Mark. She plunked down beside Julie and hooked her purse over the back of her chair. “I had to restock the crash cart before I left work. We had a code at the end of the shift. A teenager.”
“Oh gosh, it’s especially awful when it’s a kid. Survivor?” Julie asked, nibbling her bottom lip.
Elle nodded and smiled triumphantly. It was always a good day when they saved a life. “We got her back.”
