by Tracy Wolff
“A lot of men don’t feel that way.”
“I thought we were friends. Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m not most men?” He lifted a hand to her face, stroked his fingers gently down her cheek and she had to fight to keep her eyes open. Every nerve ending she had was shimmering in pleasure, urging her to relax and let him do again all the wicked, wonderful things he’d shown her earlier in the day.
“I’m lousy at reading signals,” she admitted as she shivered despite her best efforts to stay strong.
He smiled a little at that. Brushed his thumb across her lips. Instinctively she opened up, letting him in.
His jaw tightened and the tension between them ratcheted up about a hundred knots. He turned so that his palm could cup her face and it was then that she felt the rough scratch of scar tissue. She realized he’d been touching her with his injured hand the entire time. He’d never done that before, was always too self-conscious about his injury to draw any sort of attention to it at all.
Her lust-fogged brain struggled to make sense of what it meant. Was he finally relaxed enough around her not to worry about his hand? Or was she reading too much into it? She didn’t know and that was frustrating. “So you don’t expect anything from me? Despite our activities earlier this afternoon?” he asked silkily. The look on his face was smoldering, nearly melting her into a puddle. Which, she realized as understanding dawned, was exactly what he was intending. The jerk.
But what was good for the goose… Lowering her voice, she gave him her version of the seductive look he was currently leveling at her. “You really have to ask?” she said in her breathiest Marilyn Monroe impression. “How many times did I scream your name today?”
He reared back a little in surprise, but after a second his pupils dilated and he pressed closer, until his lips were a breath away from her own. “I stopped counting at twenty-seven.”
Her brain was so lust fogged that it took a few seconds for what he said to register. When it did, she gasped. “Twenty—”
His knowing grin confirmed everything. “You jerk! You’re playing with me.”
He pushed back from the counter with a smirk. “Really? I’ve been playing you, little miss, ‘we both had a really good time…’” He used his fingers to make quotations marks around the words.
“I did have a good time,” she told him.
“So did I,” Jack told her. “Which is why I’m wondering when we can do it again? Sans me falling into an orgasm-induced coma, that is.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Though she knew there was another side to Jack, one that was dark and tormented and hurt, she had to admit that she really liked the fun, playful side of him, too. She wished that she’d known him before the injury. Then maybe she’d be able to figure out who he really was. Was the charming, carefree persona a defense to keep others from seeing inside him? Or was it who he really was, underneath all the hurt?
“I kind of liked the orgasm-induced coma,” she told him, shoving her worries away, at least for the time being. “It gave me a chance to cuddle with you for a little while.”
“Yes, well, cuddling’s even better when both partners are awake for it,” he said, pulling her into his arms to demonstrate.
And she had to admit, he was right. It felt really nice to be pressed up against his beating heart, his chin resting on her head while his arms wrapped around her waist. As the pencil sharpener stopped whirring away upstairs and little feet clomped their way down the stairs, she told him as much.
His lips skimmed across her cheek. “You smell good.”
“Thank you.” She sniffed him. “And so do you.”
“Mom!” Noah’s voice drifted in from the family room, where she could hear the TV playing the theme song to Kyle’s favorite cartoon—an occasion that was sure to annoy Noah. “Are you guys coming?”
“Absolutely!” Jack called back. “Don’t roll any green guys without me.”
“He has a name you know,” Noah shouted.
“And you can tell us all about it in a minute,” she told him before reluctantly pulling her arms from around Jack’s waist. “Is that what we are now?” she asked him seriously. “Partners of some sort?”
He sighed. “I don’t know what we are. That whole thing that happened this afternoon was great, but it screwed everything up.”
Her heart clenched a little at that, but she battled the feeling back down. Just friends, she reminded herself. Nothing more. “I thought you said you didn’t regret it?”
“I don’t. Are you kidding me? But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish we’d done things in a more normal order. Defined the boundaries early on.”
“Like?”
“Like me taking you out to dinner, wooing you a little. You’re the one who gave me flowers.”
“Yes, but rumor has it you gave me twenty-seven orgasms, so I think we’re even.”
“Okay, so it was more like nine,” he said with a grin.
“Actually, it was more like eleven.” She picked up a piece of pasta from his dish and popped it in her mouth. “Not that I was counting or anything. Partner.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Jack was outside in his rapidly growing-out-of-control front yard, armed with a new pair of gardening shears and a black plastic bag, when Sophie breezed down her front walkway, Noah and Kyle at her heels. She looked beautiful and rested and serene, and it somehow managed to put him in an even grumpier mood because he was none of the three.
His shift had ended at six, and he’d come home with every intention of falling into bed. But yesterday had ruined even that for him. When he went upstairs to his room, all he could smell was Sophie. Which had aroused him, made him want her until he had no chance at sleep at all. Frustration had sent him out here to do something about the yard, but fifteen minutes of fighting his landscaping—and losing—had his patience wearing thin.
“Hey, Jack!” Kyle called.
Gritting his teeth, he fought back his irritation and sent the kid the most genuine smile he could manage. “Hey, Yahtzee King. Where you going?”
“To the lake! We’re going to rent some kayaks and go rowing. Plus Mom brought some bread to feed the ducks.”
“Wow. That sounds like fun.”
“It is!”
“Well, have a good time. And feed some ducks for me, will you?”
“You could come with us, if you’d like,” Sophie said as she headed over to him. “Feed the ducks yourself.”
He dropped the shears into the bushes before she got too close. Call it ego, call it pride, but whatever it was, he didn’t want the woman he was currently sleeping with to see how much he was struggling with the shears. It was a stupid gardening task, something Kyle could do without much difficulty, and he was barely able to manage it. With his left hand, which was more than strong enough to work the shears, he had almost no control, so he kept snipping off the wrong branches, while his right hand didn’t even have enough strength to get the blades open let alone closed again when a branch was between the blades.
He should have simply hired a gardener as he’d originally intended, but his physical therapist had suggested the shears as a way to strengthen his hand, get more mobility back, both of which he desperately wanted. But it turned out what was a great suggestion in theory, left him totally screwed in practice.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” Sophie asked, curious.
“Just checking everything out. Seeing what needs to be done.”
“Oh.” She nodded at the shrub he was currently standing in the middle of. “That needs to be cut back before it gets cold. Otherwise, it’ll die.”
No shit, Sherlock. That’s why I’m out here making a damn fool of myself. The retort came automatically, but he bit it back. No use hurting Sophie’s feelings jus
t because he was in a bear of a mood.
“I’ll make a note of that,” he finally answered, teeth clenched into a smile that felt—and probably looked—more like a grimace of pain.
“I have the name of a good gardener. Maybe you could call him? He’s the brother of one of my clients and—” She broke off abruptly. “Is something wrong? You look…” She was quiet for a few seconds, searching for the right word, but finally settled on, “You look savage.”
He felt savage. And stupid. And so many other things he didn’t even know where to start. But most of all, he felt crippled. He hated every second of it. Shoving his good hand through his hair in frustration, he made an effort to smooth out his face. To smile. It took a second, but he managed it. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” For a minute he thought she was going to say something else, but then she just looked at him. “So, do you want to go?”
“Go where?”
She nodded toward the boys. “To the lake with us. To feed the ducks.” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Is any of this sounding familiar to you at all?”
“Oh, right. Of course.” He shook his head. “I can’t go.”
“Big plans?” she teased with an arch of an eyebrow.
“Something like that.” Drowning himself in self-pity. That counted as big plans, didn’t it?
“Well, have fun. And good look with the yard. I guess I’ll see you tonight?”
He nodded. “Seven o’clock.”
“You want me to meet you at your house? That way—”
“I’m not so crippled I can’t pick my date up at the door, you know.”
Sophie reared back in surprise, her eyes darkening with an empathy he couldn’t stand to see. He didn’t want empathy, any more than he wanted sympathy or pity or any of the other emotions people seemed to feel when they looked at him these days. He wanted to go back to being Dr. Jack Alexander, trauma surgeon and clinic supervisor. But these days, that guy seemed a long way off.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know exactly what you meant.” He kept pushing at her, acting like a total jerk. But he couldn’t help himself. He’d put up with that look from Amanda. From Simon. From his family and coworkers and friends. He’d even put up with the look from his patients. But he would be damned if he would put up with it from his lover. “Yes, I was shot. But that didn’t make me less of a man. I thought I proved that to you yesterday.”
She blanched, pressed her lips tightly together as they stood there, staring at each other.
Finally, when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to say anything else, she said, “I don’t think I’m the one you need to prove that to. I only suggested meeting you at your house because your car is parked over here. But by all means, feel free to drive thirty feet to pick me up.” She paused to look him over from head to toe, the glint in her eye saying clearly that she found him lacking. “I’ll be waiting with bated breath.”
Then she spun and headed back to Kyle and Noah, who were waiting for them with wide eyes and happy grins. He watched their shoulders slump a little when she told them he wasn’t coming and ushered them toward her SUV, watched as she got Kyle strapped into his booster seat and a picnic basket stowed in the trunk.
The indignant swish of her hips as she walked around to the driver’s side door made him feel like even more of an ass than he already did. Which was exactly what she’d intended. And exactly what he’d deserved.
* * *
SOPHIE WAS PISSED. There was no other word for it. Not angry. Not annoyed. Completely and royally pissed. She didn’t know what the hell kind of bug had crawled up Jack’s spine between last night’s Yahtzee game and this morning’s sidewalk debacle, but something clearly had.
Which was fine. He was entitled to his moods. He was a doctor, after all. He saw a lot of rough things on a pretty regular basis. Plus, he was probably tired from his shift in the clinic as it was too early for him to have slept much. Not to mention the fact that it had been obvious he was in pain from the way he kept flexing his hand and shifting his weight onto his good leg.
Any of those reasons alone gave him the right to be a little short, a little antagonistic. She understood that. In the months after Jeff had died, she hadn’t exactly been at her best. But Jack had gone way beyond grumpy. He had been downright rude when she had done nothing to deserve it. That was what she really didn’t appreciate.
What had she ever done to make him think his injuries were an issue for her? He claimed he’d proved his manhood in bed with her the night before. She barely stifled a snort at the absurdity of his accusation. Hadn’t she proven that she enjoyed being with him, enjoyed knowing him, bum hand or not? She really didn’t think she could have been any more responsive had she tried.
Ugh. She slammed her hands against the steering wheel in frustration. Why did men have to be so egotistical and annoying? For God’s sake, she’d offered to walk to his house, not trim the damn bushes for him. Though she knew very well that was what he’d been out there trying to do. She’d seen him struggling with the hedge clipper from her living-room window, long before she’d ever set foot outside.
The way he thought about himself drove her absolutely nuts. With everyone else, Jack was a bottomless well of compassion and patience and understanding. She’d seen him with her boys, listened more than once in the past couple of weeks as he called patients to follow up with them when any normal doctor would be asleep. He answered their questions with no hint of impatience or annoyance, yet he expected so much more from himself. He wouldn’t stand for any weakness on his own part, even though it was obvious he’d been through the wringer and that he was still trying to work a lot of stuff out. Which was fine with her. Really. But he didn’t need to be such a jerk about it.
Swinging the car into a parking spot, she helped her boys out and then headed down the path that led to the lake, determined to snap out of the bad mood Jack had put her in. She and the boys hadn’t done a fun outing in weeks and she was determined to relax and focus on them instead of Jack and the chaos he’d added to her already-full life.
“Mom, Mom!” Noah called as he ran a little ahead of her. “Can we get the blue kayak?”
“Is it a three-seater?”
“No, only two.” He grinned angelically. “But we don’t really need three seats. Kyle can swim next to the boat, can’t you, Kyle?”
Her youngest son turned white. “But I’m only learning how to swim! I can’t swim that far.”
“Sure you can. It’ll be good practice for you. Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”
“I’m not! If you’re so brave, why don’t you swim?”
“I already have. Duh. When I was five, Mom tossed me out of the boat and left me to swim or drown. You’d better be careful because she’ll probably do it to you. Maybe even today.”
As Kyle’s lower lip started to quiver, Sophie stepped in, praying for patience as she did. “Knock it off, Noah! No one’s going swimming.”
Kyle ran up to her and burrowed into her side, his little arm wrapped around her waist. “Promise, Mommy? You won’t toss me in?”
Sighing in exasperation, she shot Noah a look that told him to knock it off. His only response was an even more innocent grin. The little stinker. What was it about older brothers that made them feel like they had the right to torture their younger siblings? One would think that resentment at being usurped as the only child would only last so long, but it seemed that they could carry a grudge for years. Or at least Noah could. It drove her nuts.
Squatting down so that she was eye to eye with Kyle, she wrapped him in a big hug and told him, “I promise not to toss you in. I don’t, however, make the same promise about Noah.”
Noah laughed like a hyena, completely secure in the fact that she would never do any such thing. But Kyle, despite everything, defen
ded his brother. “Don’t do that, Mommy. Noah could drownded.”
“Are you sure? Isn’t it a good punishment for him being mean to you?”
“No, Mommy! I love Noah. Don’t make him drownded.”
She narrowed her eyes, pretended reluctance. “Well, if you insist…”
“I do, I do!”
“Okay, then. Let’s go get the big yellow kayak.” She pointed ahead of them. “It looks like a three-seater.”
“But I don’t like yellow!” Noah started to whine. But when she shot him a you’re-on-thin-ice glare, he shut up pretty quickly.
The rest of the morning went pretty smoothly. Within ten minutes she had rented a kayak and started the fun, but slightly arduous, task of rowing them from one end of the lake to the other. The boys tried to help, but the truth was they were often more hindrance than help. Which was fine. She hadn’t brought them out here to win a race, after all.
No, she thought, as she fell into a rhythm guaranteed to leave her with sore shoulders in the morning, she came out here with the boys because she loved being with them without the distraction of TV and video games. Loved listening to them as they chattered about school and superheroes and their favorite movies. What she had with them was so different than what she had with her own mother—or with any of her foster moms—that she wanted to grab on to it with both hands and never let go.
Which was a problem, she admitted, because she had a tendency to want to hold on too tightly. She loved Noah and Kyle, loved them with a fierceness she never would have imagined possible nine years ago. She loved their smiles and their sweetness, their penchant for mischief and their indomitable spirits. Honestly, she loved everything about them.
Some days she stood at their doors and watched them sleep, overwhelmed by the knowledge that these beautiful, amazing creatures were hers. The first people in the world she’d ever truly loved. The first people in the world to ever truly love her.