Lucas was very aware of the fact that, although his hands might not be hurting as much as they first had, the kitchen still looked as if it had been hit by a mini hurricane.
“Why don’t you entertain Heather and I’ll clean up?” he suggested to Nikki.
But Nikki shook her head. “That would necessitate you using your hands and it would be better for you if you just let the ‘fairy dust’ sink in. Why don’t we switch assignments? That way, you can entertain your daughter and I’ll clean up.”
That didn’t seem fair at all. He hadn’t invited her over just to put her to work. He was supposed to be repaying her for what she’d done for Heather.
“Won’t I need my hands to entertain Heather?” he questioned.
“Make faces,” she instructed, deliberately using a deadpan, serious voice. “That way, you don’t have to touch her.”
Lucas laughed. “Are you ever at a loss for an answer?”
Lots of times, Nikki thought. She was at a loss as to why she always seemed to have a tendency to gravitate to proverbial bad-boy types, even though she knew that things would only go badly for her at the end.
But out loud, she merely grinned at his question and told him, “I’ll let you know.”
“That’s what I thought.” Angling his daughter’s high chair closer to him, he slid on to a stool, watching the doctor.
As was Heather, he noted.
Meanwhile, her pediatrician had located a broom and had begun cornering the runaway vegetables, curtailing their freedom.
Lucas shook his head. “I really feel guilty about you having to do this.”
“You could feel guilty,” she told him, scanning the room for a dustpan, “only if you planned this.”
Sensing what she was looking for, he pointed under the sink, to the left. When she opened the door, she found the dustpan and the garbage. Not exactly a trifecta but it would do.
“If you didn’t plan this stint of labor, then there’s no reason to feel that way. Accidents, despite what Freud thought to the contrary—” she felt compelled to add “—can and do happen. There’s no real harm done,” Nikki assured him, nodding at the floor.
Very quickly, she rounded up the vegetables, sending them into an orderly pile.
The next minute, as if to prove her theory about the randomness of accidents, Nikki felt her feet suddenly start to go out from under her as if she was ice-skating on the tile.
Chapter Eight
Nikki’s sudden, surprised gasp slipped out at the same time and mingled with Lucas’s sharp intake of breath as he made a grab for her. The quick, firm contact as he wrapped his fingers around her arms had generated a fresh volley of stinging pain through them.
It all happened so fast.
Grabbing her arms to keep Nikki from falling down and hurting herself, Lucas instinctively pulled her to him. And then, time, which had been zooming by, suddenly seemed to slip into a heated, almost trance-like slow-motion pace. One second, he was making a grab for the woman, the next, he’d pulled her up to him until her body was completely against his. There was not so much as room for a breath between them.
They were all but sealed together.
His fingers weren’t stinging anymore, at least not that he could notice. But an ache of a different kind definitely existed, materializing out of nothing and growing prodigiously.
Her breath was against his face. It smelled sweet. Enticing. Stirring up other, long-dormant sensations within him.
Was it longing?
Lucas wasn’t sure.
Wasn’t sure of anything right now, except that his knees had grown strangely wobbly.
He could have sworn that not only was there no space for anyone or anything else in his life beyond his daughter, but he would have made a fairly high bet, wagering the sum of his bank account and the roof over his head—he was that certain—that he was never going to feel anything remotely approaching a sexual reaction to another woman ever again.
Carole had been his world. They’d grown up together. On both sides of the marriage. They’d played as children, they’d played in a different way as young adults. He had firmly believed that Carole was the only woman for him. From a very young age, he’d been certain of that.
It hadn’t even occurred to him to look around, to “sample” being with other women. He didn’t want to “sample,” he just knew. He was a one-woman man and Carole had been that woman.
And yet, right here, right now, Lucas was keenly aware that he was wondering what it would feel like to kiss his daughter’s doctor.
Was he going crazy?
She stood very, very still, hardly drawing a breath. An electricity crackled between them, Nikki could swear to it. Like an unexpected summer storm, it had come out of nowhere, bursting on top of her before she even realized that there was a cloud in the sky, much less that it was directly overhead.
What did she do? Did she give in to the almost overwhelming attraction and kiss him? Or did she force herself to take a step back, hoping that distance would somehow help to cool what was clearly her critically overheated jets?
If she gave in, it wouldn’t exactly be orthodox, but then again, it wasn’t as if Lucas Wingate was her patient. It was his daughter she’d treated and this was really a social visit, not a professional one. She was here as a “friend,” not a doctor.
A friend staring into an incredibly gray area.
So what are you going to do? You can’t just stand here forever like some statue. Do something.
And then, to Nikki’s overwhelming relief and surprise, the ultimate decision was taken away from her. Lucas had freed her of the responsibility. Slipping his hands into her hair and framing her face with a movement as soft and as gentle as a whisper, Lucas touched his lips to hers.
At first, it was just the barest of contacts, but then the contact grew, blossomed, flowered into something that wasn’t just fleeting, but something that left an imprint on her soul. An imprint that went far deeper than his lips initially had.
The kiss stole both her breath and her concept of time away, igniting a flame within the campsite of her feelings that she could have sworn had long since just died out. Her blood surged and a fragment of some catchy melody circled around in her brain.
For the first time in two years—maybe longer—she felt alive. Alive, and really, really confused.
She shouldn’t be doing this.
But she liked it.
She more than liked it.
Her heart pounded, sending messages to every inch of her body by the time the kiss ended and Lucas finally took a step back, creating a space between them. Nikki realized that she couldn’t go anywhere. Her back was pinned by the stool that was built against the counter.
At least she couldn’t fall down, she thought. Very carefully, Nikki took a deep breath, trying to steady her erratic pulse.
“If that was supposed to get my mind off dinner,” she began slowly, doing her best not to sound breathless, “it succeeded.”
His laugh in response had just the tiniest hint of awkwardness to it. In all honesty, he had no idea what the kiss was supposed to accomplish. He’d kind of fallen headlong into it himself. The only thing he really did know was that it succeeded in confusing the hell out of him.
He’d acted, he realized, not only out of character for him, but more to the point, out of his mind. He was unendingly grateful that she hadn’t gotten angry or demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing. He had absolutely no experience in going with his gut.
She might still become angry, he thought.
Lucas grasped at the first topic that occurred to him in hopes of diverting her attention from what had just happened. “Why don’t we order pizza so that the evening’s not a total loss?”
Her eyes met his for a long, pregnant moment. “Oh, the evening’s not a loss,” she assured him quietly, thinking to herself that she’d just uttered one of the biggest understatements of her life. “But I have to admit that pizza do
es sound pretty good.”
Especially since, as it turned out, there wasn’t all that much to salvage on the dinner front. There was nothing inside the stove or the microwave. She had a feeling that Lucas had neglected to remember to make a main course. Tactfully, she refrained from asking about it.
Lucas took the number to the closest pizzeria down from the refrigerator where a magnet had held it securely in place.
“What’s your favorite kind of pizza?” he asked as he reached for the telephone.
“Flat.”
He laughed. The woman couldn’t be this easy, could she? “Can I have a little more to go on?”
Nikki shrugged. “Add anything you want,” she told him. “If it’s pizza, I’ll eat it.” But that, she realized, wasn’t exactly true. “Except maybe if they want to put on pineapples.”
Well, at least it was something. “Not a fan of pineapples?” he asked, amused.
“I like pineapples just fine—just not on pizza.” She worked as she talked, discovering that kissing Lucas had given her an incredible surge of energy she needed to work out of her system.
She carefully swept up the last of the vegetables then ran a mop over the area to prevent another mishap—although a repeat performance of sliding into his arms was not without its charm.
“God made pizza to taste chewy and tangy with all that cheese and sauce on it. And sausage,” she added belatedly. “It seems like a sacrilege to smother all that taste with pineapple chunks.”
Lucas attempted to hide his amusement. “And there’s no negotiating this?”
It suddenly occurred to her, as she put the mop and broom away and dusted off her hands, that Heather’s father might be a fan of Hawaiian pizza. She didn’t want to dictate what they were having for dinner. She just wouldn’t eat that much of it.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound so rigid. This is your house. You should be able to get whatever you want.”
He was tempted to comment on that, but he didn’t. Instead, he fell back on basic etiquette. “But you’re the guest.”
“The unintentionally fussy guest,” she pointed out. “Please, don’t let me sway you. Get anything you like.”
The thought occurred to him that he already had. A wave of warmth enveloped him. Lucas kept the thought to himself.
Turning from the sink where she’d just washed her hands, Nikki saw the somewhat reddish hue that was working across his face.
Men blushed?
She didn’t think so. It was warm in here. She’d felt a wave a moment ago herself. That would explain why he’d flushed.
Their eyes met and Nikki realized that he knew what she was thinking. A last minute save had her making a joke out of it.
“Obviously the idea of a naked pizza—except for the stringy cheese—turns you on.”
Lucas found himself growing at ease again. “Is that what you want?”
“Naked pizza or to turn you on?”
Hearing her own voice utter the words nearly made her clap her hands over her mouth. She had no idea what had prompted her to say that. She was not the type to push anything on a private level in any manner, shape or form. And she wasn’t the type to just blurt things out or be blunt.
Right now, she thought, the less she said, the better the situation was for both of them.
With that one snappy-sexy line she’d inadvertently uttered, she’d just killed any chance of keeping what had transpired between them quiet, hoping to have it die a natural death.
Clearing her throat, Nikki focused on food. Of the two, it was definitely the safer topic. “Pizza, I was thinking of the pizza, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed.
Lucas had no idea why he felt so much like smiling, even as he found himself wrestling to stuff newly escaped feelings back into the box they’d just leaped out of. He had strong suspicions that he wasn’t going to be having much luck with that effort tonight. Consequently, he went to Plan B: ignoring those feelings. As thoroughly as he could manage.
Picking up the receiver, he hit the numbers on the keypad that would connect him to the closest pizzeria.
Nikki took the small amount of vegetables that had survived the fall and remained in the pan, transferring them into a bowl. She placed the pan into the sink and filled it with sudsy water. As she cleaned, she heard Lucas ordering two large pizzas, both with extra mozzarella cheese.
Looking for a towel to dry her hands, she came up empty. She used a paper towel instead.
“Two?” she questioned, crossing to the wastebasket and throwing the paper towel away. “Just how hungry are you?”
Until just a few minutes ago, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was.
But he was going to have to put that into perspective, he warned himself. If you hadn’t had water in seven months, the first taste of water might make you act irrationally. Any attractive woman’s kiss would have sent his head spinning. It had nothing to do with Heather’s doctor.
Focus, Wingate.
“Cold pizza the next morning has always been one of my favorite breakfasts,” he told her.
She smiled at that. “Contains all the basic food groups,” she agreed, straight-faced. “So, then you were stocking up.”
He opened a jar of strained bananas and took out a spoon to feed Heather. “Something like that.” He began to sit down, but Nikki took both the spoon and the jar from him and sat down in his chair. “They promised to get here in twenty minutes or less.”
“That’s fast,” she commented. Making a silly face to entertain Heather, she slipped the first semifull spoon between the rosebud lips.
“Not really. The pizzeria is on the other side of this development. They take a short cut to get here.” Watching her feed his daughter, he marveled at her precision. How did she manage to get so much into Heather’s mouth instead of on her face and bib? There had to be a trick to it and he for one was not above taking lessons. Whenever he fed his daughter, he was lucky if half the jar made it into her mouth. It was usually less than that.
Another spoonful went in. “You’ve ordered from them before.”
“A number of times.” He continued watching. There was hardly any of the strained banana getting on the bib. He doubted that he could ever approach being that good. “What gave me away?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder as she fed Heather. “The grin of anticipation.”
Lucas wasn’t aware that he was grinning, but if he was, it wasn’t because of the pizza that was about to arrive. But that was something else he decided was better if he kept to himself.
He couldn’t keep shoving things under the rug. Eventually, there’d be a bump under it big enough to trip him and send him sprawling. Best to nip it in the bud before it got to those proportions.
Taking a breath, Lucas cleared his throat. “Listen, about before—”
Nikki instantly became alert. She didn’t want Lucas to feel as if he was on the spot and that she wanted him to explain. Conversely, she didn’t want to be on the spot, either. She hadn’t been the one to initiate the kiss, but she hadn’t pulled away either, and circumstances were a little murky, but she might have been the one to perpetuate the kiss.
“No need to say anything,” she told Lucas cheerfully as she fed an animated Heather the last of her strained banana. “Sometimes, things just happen without any rhyme or reason.”
That kind of explanation applied to shifts in the weather, not to him. If anything, he was too predictable. It had been Carole’s only complaint about him and yet, at the same time, it was one of his qualities, she’d told him, that she liked. It comforted her to know him inside and out, to know that he wasn’t unpredictable and that she could depend on him because she knew that whatever he did, it would be true to form. True to her.
“Things might,” he allowed, “but I don’t.”
Nikki got up, leaving cleanup to him while she washed out the baby’s spoon. “Sure you do,” she insisted. “You just did.” Heathe
r made a squealing noise. “You can’t still be hungry,” Nikki protested, then saw what it was that the baby was trying to “tell” them. Heather was blowing bubbles, creating them out of the excess saliva that was in her mouth. Nikki knew what that was all about.
She turned toward Lucas. “I’ll leave you some more of that numbing solution for her gums,” Nikki promised. “Otherwise, you’re going to have another sleepless night, maybe even tonight.”
“You see another one breaking through?” he asked, coming up behind her to look into Heather’s mouth in order to see for himself.
“No, it’s not breaking through yet.”
“Then how—?”
“Bubbles,” she pointed out. “Heather’s drooling again. Remember what that means? Babies drool when they’re teething.”
All of this was still pretty much a mystery to him, he thought, wondering if he was ever going to get the hang of it completely. “Right,” he agreed, then confessed, “I forgot.”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him easily. “You have a lot on your mind. This’ll all be old hat to you eventually.”
“By the time it is, she’ll have grown past teething and cutting teeth,” he lamented.
“And on to another phase,” Nikki promised. “At this age, it’s all about phases. They go from one to another like social butterflies table hopping at a charity function. It’ll get to the point that you think it’ll never end.” She flashed a grin at the uncertain, somewhat hopeless look that crossed Lucas’s face. “That’s how they separate the strong dads from the ones who can’t make it.” Without thinking, she gave his shoulder a quick pat. “My money’s on you.”
Too bad he didn’t share her confidence. He already felt like a man who was very close to drowning. “I never realized that parenting could be so hard.”
That didn’t surprise her. “That’s because you’re the male parent.”
He looked at her, confused. “And that makes a difference?”
“Damn straight it does,” she said with feeling. Even in this day and age, she’d listened to her share of mothers complaining about their husbands. “Male parents get to pass the buck at this stage, letting their female counterparts handle everything except for the essentially sweet things, like tucking the babies into bed and watching them sleep.”
Doctoring the Single Dad Page 9
