by Lori Wilde
“Oh, dear,” she murmured anxious to put a little distance between herself and Bennett. Anything to give her time to think. “My great-gramma gave me that bow.”
Forgetting about her precarious high heels, Lacy slipped her arm from Bennett’s grasp and charged after her errant hair ribbon.
The bow blew off the sidewalk and tumbled toward the wooden railing separating the path from the river embankment.
It hung for a moment on a tall clump of grass. Just as she got close enough to reach for it, the wind gusted again, and the bow took off, taunting her.
Lacy lurched over the soft ground, damp from recent rains, determined to retrieve her bow before the wind sailed it into the river below.
“Lacy,” Bennett called, “be careful.”
But his warning came too late. The heel of her right shoe sank to the hilt. She jerked her leg forward in an attempt to extract herself.
The other heel stuck, too.
She stood with her legs three feet apart, barely able to stand.
She tottered to the right. Lacy windmilled her arms, tried to correct, and overcompensated. Her balance swung to the left.
The next thing she knew, she was falling forward. Her left foot had pulled free of the infernal high heels, but her right foot, oh, her poor right foot, was still strapped into the shoe, which was twisted at a very odd and uncomfortable angle.
She lay face down in the dirt, her bottom sticking in the air, dress hiked around her waist, her racy stockings and black lace Victoria’s Secret panties clearly on display.
Ducky. Just ducky.
“Lacy,” Bennett exclaimed. Immediately, he was on his knees beside her, his hands going to her foot, undoing the buckle at her ankle.
“I got the bow.” She scrambled to pull her dress down and maneuver herself into a sitting position without putting any weight on her foot. She held up the wayward hair ribbon and tried her best to ignore the intense throbbing in her right ankle.
“I hope the bow was worth spraining your ankle over.” Gently, Bennett manipulated her foot.
“Ow!”
“I’m sorry.”
“How bad is it?” She struggled to peer over his arm, then gasped when she saw her ankle had already mushroomed to grapefruit size.
“Hard to tell. With luck, no worse than a second-degree sprain, but we need to get it iced and elevated, STAT”
“Oh, no,” she moaned. “I won’t be able to work.”
“Surely you’ve got sick time available.”
He didn’t understand. She didn’t care about missing work. What she cared about was missing him. He only had another week left in his rotation at Saint Madeleine’s. If she wasn’t able to go to work, she’d probably never see him again after tonight. Her bottom lip quivered at the very thought, and she feared she might burst into tears.
“It’s okay to cry,” Bennett said. “I know it hurts like the dickens. I sprained my knee skiing one Christmas.”
The ankle pain she could handle. It was the other pain, the one deep in her heart, that made her want to cry. She couldn’t let him slip through her fingers. If she had to, she would limp to work on crutches.
“Let’s get you home.” He slid one arm under her knees, the other around her back.
“Wait, my shoes.”
He scraped the mud off CeeCee’s high heels as best he could and handed them to Lacy. They were definitely worse for the wear. Then he bent, scooped her into his arms, and rose to his feet.
“Where to?” he asked.
“You can’t carry me the whole way!” Lacy protested.
“Nonsense. You don’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds.”
“A hundred and seven,” she corrected. “And my apartment in the River Run complex is three blocks away. Just leave me here and go back to the Recovery Room and get my friends.” She didn’t want him to go, but neither did she want to give him a herniated disk.
“Don’t be silly. I’m not about to leave you sitting out here alone in pain in the middle of the night.” His tone brooked no argument.
My hero, my Prince Charming, my thunderbolt!
He held her close to his chest and started walking.
Her legs dangled over his bulging forearms. By this point, her ankle was pulsing with pain at every beat of her heart.
What a ninny. She had to be the klutziest woman on the face of the earth, but the wondrous effects of being held so close to the man she dreamed of outweighed the downside of a sprained ankle.
“I know you’re hurting,” Bennett said. “The best way to deal with that is to distract yourself. Close your eyes.”
She peered at him.
He looked down and smiled. They had already covered half a block, and he wasn’t even winded.
“Close ’em,” he commanded.
She obeyed, letting her eyes drift shut.
“Okay,” he soothed. The sound of his voice rumbled in his chest, lulling her. “I want you to think of your favorite place. A beach, a meadow, a mountain. Do you have a mental picture?”
Her favorite place? Why, right here in his arms. But yes, she’d play along. “Uh-huh.”
“What do you see?” he asked.
See? Hmm, it was hard to visualize when there were so many distractions, the least of which was her sore ankle. Unable to visualize a picture of her own, she stole one from Great-Gramma Kahonachek.
“A meadow in the mountains with a babbling brook running through it.” She recited by heart the description of Great-Gramma’s girlhood home outside Prague.
“Very good,” Bennett said.
What was very good was the heavenly way he smelled and the sound of his voice wrapping around her ears like the most lyrical of melodies.
“What time of day is it?” he crooned softly.
“Early afternoon.”
“And the time of year?”
“Spring.”
“Can you feel the sun on your skin? Can you smell the scent of lilies in the air? Can you hear cattle lowing in the field?”
Lacy tried to concentrate on the mental image, but what she felt were Bennett’s arms holding her secure as steel cables. What she smelled was the fresh scent of starch on his crisp white shirt. What she heard was his guiding voice, distracting her from the pain in her ankle.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m there.”
“And we’re here.”
“Where?” She opened her eyes, and sure enough they were standing in front of her apartment complex.
“Which apartment?” he asked.
“Two seventeen.”
“It would be on the second floor.” He winced, but he certainly didn’t look as if he’d just carried a one-hundred-and-seven-pound woman three blocks.
“You can put me down. I’m sure I can make it from here.”
“No way.”
“Please, Bennett, you’ve already done more than enough.”
“Don’t argue, Lacy.” He started up the steps.
She thrilled at his forcefulness. Here was a man who took care of his lady. No doubt about it. He made her feel safe, protected.
“Keys?” He stopped outside her door.
She fished in the tiny purse and extracted her keys. She was startled to see her hand tremble. She’d never brought a man to her apartment before. Ever. Not that anything was going to happen between them now that she’d sprained her ankle. Lacy was both relieved and distressed at this.
He took the key from her and braced one knee against the doorframe. He juggled her against his leg to get one hand free to open the door.
A few seconds later, he swung the door inward, shifted her in his arms once more, and stepped over the threshold.
“Hang on,” she said. “I’ll get the light.” Fumbling along the wall in the darkness, she found the switch and bathed the room in unexpectedly brilliant illumination.
They both blinked, then Bennett kicked the door closed with his heel, effectively shutting out the rest of the world.
“Would you like somethi
ng to drink?” she asked. “Coffee, tea, soda? I’m afraid I don’t have any beer.”
“You’re not up to playing hostess.” He stepped across the room to settle her onto the sofa. “How about I brew you a cup of hot tea and then have a closer look at that ankle?”
“That sounds heavenly,” she admitted. The only man who’d ever made tea for her was her father.
Bennett took CeeCee’s shoes from her hands and tossed them in the corner. Then he plumped up two sofa pillows around her before peering at her ankle.
“The stockings have got to come off.”
Lacy looked into his eyes. How was she going to get them off by herself? Yet how could she ask him to help?
He didn’t even give her a chance to waffle. He leaned over and ran his hands up her leg.
She squirmed, giggled.
“Ticklish?” His grin made her insides quiver.
They were face-to-face, Lacy leaning back against the couch, Bennett bent over her, his hands under her skirt, fingers searching for the thigh band of her stockings.
“Good thing there’s no one to walk in on us and misinterpret this situation,” he said.
“Good thing,” she repeated breathlessly.
What if her mother could see her now? Or her grandmother Nony, or her great-gramma Kahonachek. Would they be shocked at her behavior?
Or pleased?
Bennett’s unintentional caress built a heated fire inside her. Lacy had to bite her bottom lip to keep from moaning her pleasure.
Oh! When would he finish this exquisite torture?
At last his fingers curled around the top of her stocking, and he inched it down, past her thighs, over her knees, then carefully eased it off her ankle. He repeated the process with the second stocking.
He rolled the stockings into tidy balls and dropped them on the floor beside CeeCee’s shoes. Afterward, he took a third pillow and slid it under her right foot.
“Try to keep your ankle elevated. I’ll bring an ice pack along with the tea. Although by the size of that ankle, we might already be too late to reduce the swelling. Do you have frozen veggies in your freezer?
Lacy nodded, too overcome by the tender way he cared for her to even speak.
Don’t take it personally, Lacy. He’s a doctor. He’s supposed to take care of people. That’s what he does.
Bennett disappeared into her tiny kitchen, and she heard him opening cabinet doors, running water, turning on the microwave. She leaned back against the pillows, gritting her teeth against her aching ankle. Now that he wasn’t coaching her through visualization techniques and his comforting presence was several feet away, the pain attacked with a vengeance.
“Do you take milk or sugar?” he asked.
“Plain is fine, thanks.”
There came the sound of her sliding glass door opening.
“Hey,” Bennett said, “you’ve got a balcony.”
“Yes,” she called. “It’s what attracted me to this apartment.”
“And you’ve got an herb garden out here. Rosemary, dill, thyme.”
“How did you know what they are?” she asked, pleased and thrilled that he was so knowledgeable about plants. Lacy often dreamed of the day when she would have her own plot of land and could raise a real garden.
The microwave dinged, and a second later Bennett came into the room with a cup of hot water and a tea bag in one hand, a makeshift ice pack fashioned from frozen corn wrapped in a kitchen towel in the other hand.
“My grandmother,” he replied in answer to her earlier question. “She had a green thumb. Some of the happiest days of my life were spent puttering in the garden with her. Of course she had me convinced I was the world’s greatest weed puller.”
“Aww. I love that image of you helping your gran in the garden.”
He handed her the cup of hot water, then took a seat beside her on the sofa. Carefully, he applied the ice pack to her swollen ankle.
He looked downright boyish with that wide smile and his hair falling across his forehead. Lacy had a hankering to reach over and gently brush the errant lock aside. Instead, she focused on dunking the tea bag into the steaming water.
“I bet you were the world’s greatest weed puller.” She could see him now. Dark-haired and small, smiling at his grandmother, a handful of crabgrass clutched in his chubby palm. She caught her breath at the notion that someday she might have a miniature Bennett of her own, helping her in their garden.
“I smelled tomato plants when I was on the patio, but I didn’t see them. Where are they?” he asked. “There’s no mistaking that distinctive aroma.”
“Along the outside rail.” His interest in her garden tugged at her heartstrings. How could her feelings for him be wrong? A man who loved plants as much as she did? He had to be her thunderbolt.
“What kind of tomatoes?” He gently rotated her ankle. Lacy barely realized he was engaging her in conversation about the tomatoes so he could keep her mind occupied while he examined her ankle.
“Cherry and porter. My favorites.”
“Mine, too.”
“No kidding?”
“They’re both so sweet.” He paused, then added in a murmur, “just like you.”
Their eyes met.
Oh, heavens, she thought. He’s too wonderful. I’m going to ruin this somehow.
“When do you have the time to garden? I mean between nursing and your active night life.”
Lacy gulped and shrugged. She wanted to tell him the truth. That she didn’t go out often. That if it weren’t for CeeCee and Janet, all her spare time would be spent either at the hospital or puttering around her apartment.
Instead, she said, “The plants don’t take up much time.”
“Still,” he insisted. “Most of the driven career women I’ve known don’t have much time for anything else. I haven’t quite figured you out.”
He thought she was driven? Hmm. Lacy didn’t think of herself that way, but maybe she was. “What do you mean?”
He waved a hand at her skimpy dress. “You look like a sultry siren, and heaven knows you kiss like one, but you garden, and you’re very polite, and you don’t drink much. You’ve got an old-world charm missing in a lot of people now days. I like it.”
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“I know, it’s just that...” An expression she couldn’t decipher crossed his face.
“What?”
“Never mind.” He got to his feet. “You’re going to need an anti-inflammatory for the swelling, and you could probably do with a mild pain pill. I noticed there’s an all-night drugstore next door to the hospital. I could go there, get you a prescription, and be back in thirty minutes. Will you be okay?”
“Fine. But you don’t have to go to all that trouble. My friends should be home soon. They’ll check in on me.”
“It’s no trouble, Lacy. None at all. I want to help.”
What could a girl say to a gallant offer like that? Lacy smiled and nodded.
“Are you allergic to any medication?” He paused at the door to ask.
“No.” She shook her head, distracted by the handsome figure he cut standing in the archway.
“Hang in there, kiddo.” He smiled, and her heart swelled to capacity. “I’ll be back in a flash.”
He shut the door behind him, and Lacy let out a deep breath. At last she had Dr. Bennett Sheridan exactly where she wanted him, and all she’d had to do was sprain her ankle.
Who knew being a klutz had an advantage?
7
In a daze, Bennett Sheridan wandered the streets of Houston, his mind beguiled, bewitched, bewildered.
He walked down the block, past an all-night convenience store and gas station. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lacy and her smoking hot green dress, and those make-love-to-me-big-boy shoes.
And that black lace underwear he had caught a quick peek of when she had taken that tumble in the grass beside the river. Who would have guessed she was a racy lingerie af
icionado?
And those stockings he’d had to remove. Whew!
At the memory, his body swamped with a sultry heat. He recalled massaging his hands up her silky thighs, peeling the stockings over her legs like he was unwrapping expensive Swiss chocolates.
And the way she giggled. The sound had affected him like the effervescent giddiness of the finest French champagne.
She’d responded to his touch. There’d been no mistaking her languid movements, the ardent glimmer in her gaze, the deep, whispered intake of breath when his hands had briefly grazed her bottom.
Bennett groaned inwardly and fisted his palm against his forehead.
He wanted her too much.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to consider anything but those innocent eyes blatantly contradicting that wickedly sexy kisses she’d plastered on his lips back at the bar.
She was as changeable as quicksilver. Shy one minute, strangely bold the next. He couldn’t begin to explain her or his dangerously strong desire for her.
He remembered the feel of her in his arms, her soft derriere cuddled against his lap. He could still smell her scent on him. He held the sleeve of his shirt to his nose and inhaled deeply.
Roses, soap, and pure sensual woman.
Paradise.
But why Lacy? Why here? Why now, when his career aspirations prevented him from getting romantically involved with anyone long term?
What was it about her that so captivated him? This was not a good sign, not good at all.
It’s been too long since you’ve had a woman, Bennett, old boy. That’s all there is to it. End of story.
He did want her. He wanted her badly. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What scared Bennett most of all was the way he longed to take care of her.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “Here’s what you do. You get the pills, take them back to her, make sure she’s set for the night, call her friends to come look in on her, then go the hell home. You’ve only got a week left in Houston. With that sprained ankle, Lacy won’t be back to work for at least that long, and by then you’ll be gone. You’ll never have to see her again.”
Why was that prospect so unattractive? He should feel relieved, not disappointed.
He wanted to be with Lacy, that’s why. Wanted to be with her in every sense of the word.