It was the warm touch of Ian’s hand against her skin that finally calmed her nerves. His hands were gentle but, unlike her father’s, they were rough and callused, which she found surprising.
“My dad says a surgeon’s hands are his most important tool,” she said.
But this man wasn’t afraid to use his hands for something other than the operating room, and with the feel of his hands on her leg her thoughts went into fantasy mode, imagining his hands sliding a little bit higher on her bare legs... She bit her lip. The temperature in the room had shot up. She forced her rebellious mind back to the present.
“Important, yes, but I’d have to say knowledge is the most important tool. And intuition,” Ian said.
“I call that going with my gut. You’re talking about that feeling you get in your gut when you know something isn’t right with your patient but you can’t put a diagnosis on it, right?” she said.
“Yes. You take that, and add the knowledge you’ve gained from experience, and you become a powerful tool. Add that to the latest technology and you can fix almost anything.”
She pulled her leg away from him at the shock and sting of the adhesive he’d applied.
“It’s okay, I’m almost finished,” he said. “You still haven’t told me how you ended up in psych. There are many other fields besides surgery that you could have gone into after pre-med.”
She knew he was trying to get her mind off her knee, but it really wasn’t necessary. She hadn’t thought of the blood since his hand had moved over her skin. Her body was buzzing with anticipation as it waited to see what he would do next.
She fought against her body’s reaction. This was a chance for her to explain how important her job really was to her and why.
“My father had plans for me to be a surgeon from the moment I was born, I think. Even when it became apparent that I didn’t have the stomach for it he insisted that once I got to hold a scalpel in my hand everything would be different.”
“I take it that it wasn’t?” he said.
His question didn’t sound nosy or judgmental. He seemed truly interested. Could she be honest with him? So few people knew the real reason she had chosen to go into psych, and even fewer knew the reason she had such a problem with the sight of blood.
“I never got that far,” she said. “I applied for psychiatric medicine as soon as I got out of pre-med.”
“You could have gone into other fields of medicine where you didn’t have to deal with blood,” he said as he looked up and started removing his gloves.
“I could have. And, believe me, when I told my dad that I was not going to be a surgeon and had chosen the field of psychiatry, he tried to sell me every other medical profession from dermatology to podiatry.”
“But you didn’t bend?” he said.
“No. I think I had always known I wasn’t going to go into a typical medical job. I definitely knew that surgery was not going to be for me long before ‘the incident.’ That’s what my dad refers to it as—‘the incident in the OR.’”
“So what was it that drew you to the psych world, exactly?” he asked.
She watched him cleaning up the leftover supplies. Very few people knew the reason she’d chosen her field of study. She’d tried to discuss her reasons with her father but, as with anything that dealt with her mother’s death, he’d refused to listen to her. For some reason she felt safe to talk about it with Ian.
“I was seven years old when my mother committed suicide. She’d suffered from depression all her life, and from what I know now I suspect she had bipolar disorder and that it became worse after I was born. I wanted to know more about what had caused her to leave me the way she did. I took my required psych classes in college and found I wanted to know more.”
Ian had stopped cleaning up and now sat back, studying her. Not judging, not censuring like her father—just studying her.
“That’s why you want to work with kids? You want to help the ones traumatized like you were when your mother died?” he said.
How did he know that that was the reason behind what she did? She had expected him just to offer the usual sympathy for the loss of her mother, as most people did. The few people who did know the circumstances of her mother’s death had expected her to go into adult psychiatry, and had been surprised when she’d chosen child psych, but he understood the reason she was drawn to kids—kids like her. The surprise at his understanding sent a small flutter into her chest.
“You can look now,” he said.
She bent her head and looked down at the small pucker of skin where he had aligned the sides of the cut perfectly. It didn’t look pretty, but at least it wasn’t the bloody mess it had been before. She looked up to where Ian sat between her legs—and froze. Her face was only inches from his, their lips just a breath apart.
Her eyes met his, and the shocked look mirrored her own.
“Oh...” The word escaped her mouth.
The room had suddenly become too small and too warm. The flutter in her chest had increased, causing her breath to catch. There it was again—that magnetism that drew them to this point every time they were together.
Their eyes stayed locked together, each of them waiting to see what the other would do next. The desire between them was palpable—a living, breathing thing that rolled across her body, setting each inch of her on fire with a need so surprising it left her gasping in another breath. Never had she felt anything like this.
Her lips parted as his came closer. Just a couple more inches and she would finally taste the lips of Ian Spencer. Warm lips met hers, gentle but firm, then probing and demanding.
She raised her hands to his head, wanting to rake her fingers through his dark curls. He stood as they kissed and drew her to the edge of the countertop and into his arms. Her knees spread instinctively, and then she wrapped her legs around him.
It was as if her body had taken all control from the rest of her. The kiss changed, becoming raw and needy. She added a touch of desperation as she tried to get closer, her body rocking against his with its need.
If one of them didn’t stop soon she’d be scratching Have sex on a kitchen counter off her bucket list tonight.
He ended the kiss and pulled back from her. She tried to get her legs to let go of him, but they refused. They’d danced around this thing, this need between them, for days. They needed to get it out of their system—and soon.
Now sounded like a good time to her.
She watched as some of the heat in his eyes diminished, though she could still see the embers of their kiss in the depths of them, and she could still feel the hard length of him where their bodies remained joined. He’d been right there with her in those kisses, but she could tell he had begun to regret it now.
The question was, did she regret it?
Her body’s arousal answered that question for her. She didn’t regret a moment of it. The only regret she had was that he had pulled away from her.
She’d never considered having sex with a man she wasn’t involved with, but she’d never felt anything like what she felt for Ian before either. Would it be so wrong for the two of them to be involved? To see where this took them?
The attraction was there—neither of them could deny it—and they were both adults.
* * *
Ian shouldn’t have been surprised by the heat that had flared between the two of them. He’d learned years ago in welding class that once sparks began flying it was only a matter of time before there was a fire, and if you were smart you always had a fire extinguisher on hand.
Frannie had set him on fire with a desire so strong that he had made himself forget about the need for that fire extinguisher. He should have been more careful and kept away from her. He’d let Frannie get too close, and if he wasn’t careful he would hurt her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...”
“Why?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t you have? Why shouldn’t we?”
“Frannie, you know it wouldn’t be smart for either of us to let this continue,” he said.
“Are we back to your ‘not playing with your co-workers’ rule?” she asked.
Surely she had to see how getting involved together would complicate their professional lives, but she didn’t seem to care. Of course she’d never been the subject of hospital gossip before—not like he had been, at least. She’d never walked into a nurses’ station and had all conversation stop, or had people stare at her as she walked through the hall with gossiping behind her back.
He’d had to live that way with all the gossip that had surrounded him after he and Lydia had broken up. He didn’t want to go through that again and he didn’t want Frannie to have to go through it either.
He should have moved away from her, but he found himself mesmerized by those dark brown eyes that were as deep and treacherous at that moment as the Mississippi River flowing down into the Gulf of Mexico. His breath still came fast, and he tried to slow it down. He needed to think this out. He’d made mistakes in his life, and he didn’t want Frannie to be another one of them.
He felt the heat where her legs still locked them together. Where had the demure woman wrapped up in a lab coat and hiding behind those wretched glasses gone? He could have reasoned with her. But this woman, with her almost naked bottom sitting on his kitchen island, was impossible to deal with.
And why had he picked now to remember that the only thing between the two of them right then was his old button-up shirt and a pair of panties? Did she wear tiny bikini ones or did she go for sturdy cotton white ones? A week ago he would have sworn it would be white ones, but now...
And why was he standing there contemplating what kind of underwear the woman was wearing? He felt like he was back in high school.
He drew in a deep breath and forced his limbs to move. He lifted his hands between them and went to push off from the counter—except instead of the counter he found his hands around Frannie’s waist, and heaven help him if she didn’t pick that moment to wiggle herself closer to the edge.
“You know this isn’t smart...” he said as he ran his hands up her sides, over curves that fitted so well into his hands as they wandered over her body. She was so soft, so beautiful, sitting there with her lips red from his kisses and her eyes burning with need.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s the smartest thing for us to do,” she said, before she bent her head and nestled it into the crook of his neck.
“And how exactly do you figure that?” he asked.
He couldn’t wait to hear what psychological rationale she was going to use to justify what they were both contemplating.
His body wound tight as she brushed her lips against his collarbone. He ached with the desire to take her as each touch of her lips increased his need for her.
“Ignoring this attraction between the two of us could escalate the stress between us,” she said, and then she drew back from him. “Look, maybe this is crazy, but it feels right. Doesn’t it?” she asked.
He tried to deny it, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t been with a woman since his divorce—hadn’t wanted to—but with Frannie he’d found the desire that had been missing. He wanted her, even though a part of him knew he shouldn’t for so many reasons.
Her fingers walked down his shirt and he let her unbutton it, watching as her breath came faster as his shirt opened. He paused for a minute, trying to remember all the reasons this wasn’t a good idea, but his mind was fogged with a desire that burnt straight through him.
Only one desperate thought managed to get through to his consciousness: the need for a condom.
His mind grasped at the one problem his body couldn’t ignore, and then he remembered the small foil package he’d found in his guest room, where his brother had stayed a few weeks before.
She let out a small squeal as he swept her off the island, then laughed as he walked them both up the stairs, with her still wrapped around him, their lips and tongues teasing each other with licks and bites as they took each step.
He groaned when she wiggled against him as he bent down in the guest room and laid her on the bed. He unbuttoned the shirt he’d loaned her and removed her bra. He tried to stop the trembling that had started as soon as he’d bared her breasts. Her body was glorious, with curves and dips in all the right places.
He let his hand graze over one breast, then the other, and managed to get his shoes off while she unzipped his pants and pushed them down. He stepped back and removed them, and realized he had lost his shirt somewhere on their trip up the stairs.
He covered her body with his and helped her work her panties off. They weren’t white granny panties, he noticed as he ripped the foil package open.
She reached out and helped him, then pulled him back down to her. He loved her greedy kisses as she moved her lips from his shoulders to his chest. Her hand reached for him, then urged him inside her.
Taking her mouth with his, he thrust into her and groaned at the feel of her. He slid his hands behind her and cupped her bottom as she wrapped her legs around him once more.
They matched their rhythm together as he thrusted and she ground against him, and they both reached for their peak together and then tumbled over.
* * *
Frannie stared up at Ian, her brain fuzzy and refusing to focus—how could it when all the blood in her body had just rushed south, into parts that had been ignored for way too long? She felt drunk as the feel and taste of him still flooded her senses.
She’d had two lovers. One a short college fling. The other a handsome young surgeon she had met in her first year of residency, whom she had thought had broken her heart when she’d learned he had just been using her to get an introduction to her father.
A few boxes of tissues later she’d realized that what she had felt for him had had more to do with the loneliness she had been feeling than with the man himself.
What she had experienced here with Ian could not even be put in the same category as what she had shared with those other lovers. She’d felt a connection to him that had been lacking in her other relationships.
Lying in his arms, she felt a feeling of belonging curl around her, making her feel safe and cared for—something she hadn’t felt in years...not since the death of her mother, when her whole world had turned upside down, leaving her a scared little girl.
She could have cried when he rolled off her, leaving her alone once more. He tensed, then swore. Then rose from the bed and headed to the bathroom.
If the word he’d said was a reflection of how he felt about what they had just experienced together, then their lovemaking had meant nothing to him. Except she would have sworn he’d been right there with her, relishing every moment that had wound the two of them together till they’d both shattered. Yes, her experience was limited to her two lovers, but she still knew that what they had shared had been special.
He came out of the bathroom, but instead of joining her back in bed he reached for his pants, his jerky movements and the grim line of his mouth telling her he was upset.
Without speaking a word, she rose and started to dress.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked at last.
What had happened between the time he’d held her in his arms and him coming back from the bathroom? She couldn’t imagine. Had she done something wrong? Was he disappointed in their lovemaking? No, she refused to believe that. She’d seen the desire in his eyes and felt the need in his hands as they’d caressed her.
“I don’t know...” he started, then took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. “We shouldn’t have.”
She watched as the heat in his eyes disappeared and his eyes shuttered closed. When he opened them and looked at her again all emotion was gone. The passion they had shared, everyt
hing that had happened between them, was gone too, and once more he was the untouchable Dr. Spencer.
How could she have thought there might be something between the two of them? They could barely have a conversation without disagreeing. Had she really thought that the attraction between the two of them would be enough for them to forge a relationship? Had she thought at all? Or had she just let her emotions blind her to the truth?
She had buttoned his shirt around her but still she felt cold and bare.
“I need to change,” she said, and then left him behind in the bedroom as she headed down the stairs to the small powder room to retrieve her torn jeans.
He was waiting outside the door, his face even stonier. She’d managed to ignore the stiff dried blood on her jeans as she’d put them on, but she still wore his shirt.
“This can’t happen,” he said, and he wagged his finger between the two of them.
He was using the intimidating voice he used on her at work, when he was trying to press his position on a case. But he was mistaken. “This” had already happened. Her throat tightened, but she forced herself to respond. She wouldn’t let him see how much his words hurt.
“‘This’?” she said, copying his motions with her own finger. “What ‘this’? There is no this. That was just sex, Ian. Nothing more.”
She turned her back to him, unable to take the way he had withdrawn from her. He’d made it plain that there could be nothing more between them.
“Now, if you could give me a ride back to my car I would appreciate it,” she said.
She spotted something on an old shelf on the living room wall across from the entry. A silver-framed picture of a small baby sat alone there—the only thing in the room that wasn’t covered in dust.
“Frannie, wait,” he said. “It’s not—”
She turned back toward him. “Please don’t.”
“There are things...” he said, then stopped and looked away from her. “I’m not good at these...relationships...”
She stood and watched him. There was pain in this man, and an insecurity that she hadn’t expected.
The Surgeon's Baby Bombshell Page 5
