“Women,” Mack said with a hint of exasperation. “You can’t tell them anything. That’s a lesson you need to learn at an early age, Tony.”
Beth did look up then, and the hand-held computer beeped and whistled as she went down in an apparent burst of video flames. She glared at it, then scowled at Mack.
“Tony, do not listen to a thing this man tells you about women,” she lectured primly.
“How come?” Tony asked. “Have you seen the babes he dates?”
At Beth’s sour expression, Mack bit back the chuckle that crept up his throat. He sensed that now was not a good time to reinforce Tony’s enthusiasm for Mack’s well-publicized social life. Nor was a denial that he had a stable of “babes” likely to be believed by either of them.
“I think what the doctor is trying to say is that I might not be the best example for you to follow when it comes to matters of the heart,” Mack said.
Tony stared at him. “Huh?”
Mack tried to control a grin and failed. “Yeah, I don’t get it either, but women are funny about things like this. We’ll have a man-to-man talk on the subject another time.”
“Not on my watch,” Beth said grimly. “Tony, you need to get some rest.”
“But I’m not tired,” Tony protested.
“I think she wants to get me alone,” Mack explained to him. “She probably wants to chew me out for being a bad influence.”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Beth muttered. “This isn’t about you. It’s about Tony not getting overly tired.”
“Hey, Doc, you were the one in here playing video games. I just got here,” Mack reminded her.
Frowning at him, Beth marched to the door and held it open, giving Mack a pointed look until he finally shrugged. He bent down to ruffle Tony’s hair, promised he’d be back tomorrow, then followed her from the room.
“Mind telling me what that was all about?” he inquired, regarding her with amusement. “Are you just a sore loser?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Jealous?” he suggested, surprisingly intrigued by that particular scenario.
She gave him a look that could have melted steel. “I don’t think so.”
“There must be some reason you don’t want me talking to Tony about women.”
“How about the fact that it’s inappropriate? It’s not your place. Besides that, he’s twelve, for goodness’ sakes. He doesn’t need to start thinking about girls in that way for a while.”
“I had a girlfriend when I was twelve,” Mack said, recalling the blue-eyed imp with curly hair rather fondly.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Beth responded irritably.
Mack smothered a laugh. “Something tells me you were not dating at twelve.”
“I wasn’t dating at twenty,” she snapped. “That’s hardly the point.”
“Then what is the point?” He studied her closely. “And why did you wait so long to date? You’re not bad-looking.” He deliberately chose the massive understatement just to see the flags of color brighten her pale-as-cream cheeks.
She opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut again.
“Not sure?” he taunted.
The fire in her eyes died slowly. She regarded him with a vaguely chagrined expression. “Not entirely, no.”
“Yeah, that happens to me sometimes, too. I lose track of what point I was trying to make. Of course, it usually only happens when a really sexy woman catches me off guard. Is that what happened here? I got to you in there, the adrenaline started rushing around, and you kinda lost track of things?”
The fire came back with a vengeance then. “In your dreams, bud.”
She whirled around and stalked off, leaving Mack to stare after, oddly aroused by the whole exchange.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me why you were such a late bloomer,” he called after her.
She pointedly ignored him, her spine rigid as she rounded a corner and disappeared from view. Only when she was out of sight did he stop and question exactly which one of them had actually won this latest little skirmish. Since he was standing here all hot and bothered, he had a feeling Beth had triumphed without even realizing the game they were playing.
Every positive point Mack had accumulated in recent days flew out the window as Beth walked away from his taunting gaze. The man was maddening. He was an immature, skirt-chasing rogue. Worse, he prided himself on it.
Giving Tony advice on women? Please! What was he thinking? If Maria Vitale heard about that, she’d probably ban Mack from ever seeing her son again.
Then, again, maybe she wouldn’t, Beth concluded with a sigh. Mack was good for Tony, inappropriate remarks and all. He made the boy laugh, and under current circumstances, even Beth could forgive him a lot for accomplishing that miracle.
That didn’t mean she had to like Mack or spend another minute in his company. She’d simply steer clear of him. It shouldn’t be that difficult. It wasn’t as if he was underfoot at the hospital all day long.
He had a job, an important job in the view of some people, even if she wasn’t among them. He had a family, even if at least one member of that family was in part responsible for pushing Mack into Beth’s life. He had a lot of community obligations. And, goodness knows, he had a social life. Given all that, it was astonishing that he spent any time at all at the hospital. Avoiding him should be a breeze.
Satisfied with her plan, Beth had barely made it back to her office when Mack appeared in the doorway.
“You!” she muttered, not sure whether she was more annoyed at him or at herself for not anticipating that he’d be right on her heels.
Mack chuckled. “You didn’t actually think we’d finished talking, did you?”
“I had high hopes that we had,” she told him. “Don’t you have a date or something?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he responded. “But I have time for this.”
“For what?” Beth asked warily as he strode across her office.
“This,” he said, lowering his head to touch his lips to hers.
It began as a gentle, exploratory kiss, maybe meant to tease, maybe to shock. Beth reached up to shove him away, but instead found herself clutching his jacket just to hold herself upright. Her knees were suddenly unsteady, her heartbeat frantic. In some distant part of her brain, she heard herself saying that this was crazy, that it was stupid, that it was dangerous. The litany of warnings went on and on, as did the kiss until her brain shut off and her senses took over.
She heard a soft moan of pleasure and realized it came from her as Mack’s mouth plundered hers, making her blood sing and her head reel. This was bad. Really, really bad.
But oh, so good, she thought with a whimper of dismay as he slowly pulled away, one arm still firmly behind her back, one hand gently cupping her chin.
As her eyes fluttered open, she was looking into his steady, turbulent gaze. She couldn’t have looked away if her life depended on it.
“What the hell just happened here?” Mack murmured under his breath.
Beth had a hunch he was asking the question more of himself than of her. Even so, she was tempted to offer Destiny’s explanation of chemistry, which she was pretty sure she totally understood for the first time in her life. She wondered how Mack would react to the idea that she and his aunt had had a little tête-à-tête about sexual attraction. She had a hunch he’d be more stunned and exasperated than he already seemed to be.
“I’m actually asking,” he said, when Beth remained silent. “What just happened here?”
Something in his tone irked her even more than his assumption that he could walk into her office and kiss her senseless. “I would think a man of your worldliness and sophistication would recognize a kiss that got out of hand better than most,” she snapped, jerking away and moving to stand behind her desk. It wasn’t much of a defense, but she’d take anything she could get. “I think you should leave now.”
To her annoyance, Mack seemed vaguely amused
by her response, or maybe by her actions.
“Retreating to a neutral corner, Doc?”
“No, trying to get some work done. I’ve already wasted enough time on you for one day.”
“A great kiss is never a waste of time,” he told her, his lips curving into a smile. “Especially for a woman who didn’t start dating till after she turned twenty. You have a lot of time to make up for.”
Great? He thought the kiss was great? Beth had certainly thought so herself, but as he’d just reminded her, she sure as heck didn’t have his level of expertise on the subject. How flattering was that? One of the region’s most eligible, sought-after bachelors thought she was a great kisser. It almost made her exasperation with him fade.
“Go away,” she said, because she was pretty certain that letting him stay another second was a bad idea. She just might be tempted to throw herself at him to see if the kissing could get even better.
Suddenly she recalled what Mack had said when he’d first entered her office. He had a date. The man had a date and he’d been kissing her. Maybe that was par for the course in his life, but not in hers. It seemed a little sleazy, in fact. No, a lot sleazy. She frowned at him.
“Go away,” she repeated more emphatically. “I wouldn’t want you to be late for your date.”
“Date?” he echoed blankly.
“You told me you had a date,” she said tightly.
He muttered an expletive and got out his cell phone.
“You can’t use that in the hospital,” she told him.
He muttered something else, then picked up her phone and dialed, punching in the numbers so hard the phone practically bounced on her desk.
With his gaze locked with Beth’s, he offered some sort of halfhearted excuse to whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up.
Beth stared at him. “You broke your date?” she asked incredulously.
“I broke the damn date,” he said, not sounding especially happy about it.
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking you to dinner instead.”
She bristled at the assumption. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I just broke a date for you. The least you can do is have dinner with me. You don’t want me to spend the evening alone, do you?”
Beth couldn’t decide which part of his recitation to react to first. “Okay, let’s get something straight,” she began. “You did not break that date for me. I didn’t ask you to do it.”
“No, but after that kiss we shared, you’d have been furious if I’d gone through with it,” he said.
“Furious? I don’t think so. I might have thought you a little sleazy,” she admitted, “but then I don’t have a very high opinion of you to begin with, so that shouldn’t be too worrisome for you.”
“Cute.”
“I’m not finished,” she said. “Whether or not you spend the evening alone or with a steady stream of willing women has nothing whatsoever to do with me.”
“I didn’t think so, either, at least not until a few minutes ago,” he agreed pleasantly.
“What happened a few minutes ago?” she asked cautiously.
“I kissed you and decided I’d rather take a chance on getting to do that again instead of going out with a sure thing.” He settled down in the chair beside her desk. “If you have things to do, I can wait.”
Beth sorted through his latest outrageous claim and tried to decide whether to be flattered. Since listening to flattery was dangerous around Mack, she concluded it was smarter to ignore it.
“I could be a long while,” she told him to test his determination. “A really long while.”
He picked up a medical journal from the corner of her desk. “Take your time. This doesn’t look like fast reading. It ought to keep me occupied for hours.”
She stared at him, thoroughly bemused. “You’re really not going to leave, are you?”
“Not without you,” he said, already flipping through the journal.
“I don’t understand you,” she said plaintively.
Mack looked up and met her gaze, looking almost as bemused as she felt. “To tell you the honest truth, Doc, I’m not real sure I understand what’s going on here, either.”
Beth’s pulse did a crazy little lurch. “I suppose I can spare an hour for dinner,” she said ungraciously. “Not one second more.”
Mack dropped the journal on her desk, his eyes filled with something that might have been relief. “Let’s go, then.”
He steered her out of her office, a hand possessively placed in the center of her back. Beth liked the touch more than she cared to admit.
When they turned toward the front of the building, rather than toward the cafeteria, she regarded him curiously. “I thought we were going to the cafeteria.”
“Not tonight,” he said tightly.
“We only have an hour,” she reminded him.
“Believe me, you have made the timetable abundantly clear. It may take a little finesse, but I will have you back at your desk in an hour.”
A few minutes later they pulled up in front of one of the hottest new restaurants in Washington. The gossip columns were filled with lists of society bigshots and power brokers who’d been turned away each evening. Mack had barely stopped the car, however, when the valet parkers converged, gave him a ticket and ushered Beth to the curb.
“I’ll need the car back here in front in fifty-five minutes,” Mack told the valet.
The man checked his watch, made a note on the ticket, then said, “No problem, Mr. Carlton. It’ll be here when you’re ready to leave.”
Inside the crowded foyer, Mack spoke to the maître d’ in a hushed tone that Beth couldn’t hear. Two minute later they were seated and practically no time after that two steaming meals were placed in front of them, along with a chilled bottle of sparkling water.
“Since you’re going back to the hospital, I took a chance that you wouldn’t want champagne,” Mack said.
Beth nodded slowly. “The water’s perfect.” She looked at the grilled salmon on her plate, the tiny Red Bliss potatoes with parsley, the perfectly steamed green beans, then lifted her gaze to Mack’s. “So is the meal. How did you manage this in…?” She glanced at her watch. “Less than five minutes.”
Mack shrugged. “No big deal. In a place like this, it’s all about who you know.”
“And you know the maître d’?”
“Among others,” he said.
“The owner?”
“Yes.”
Beth shook her head in amazement. “Given that crush of people out there waiting to get in, I know we took someone else’s reserved table. Are there other diners in here who are still waiting for these particular meals to appear?” she asked, glancing around worriedly.
He grinned. “Don’t feel guilty, sweetheart. They’re probably having wine to tide them over.”
“Probably?” She regarded him incredulously as the reality of the extremes to which he’d gone sank in. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of it. “You really did steal someone else’s dinners? And you bribed them with a bottle of wine?”
“Not me,” he claimed with suitable indignation. “I never left your side.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Eat up, Doc,” he encouraged, clearly unwilling to be drawn into the discussion. “That clock of yours is ticking and I, for one, intend to have the crème brulée for dessert. I’d recommend the chocolate soufflé, but we’re a little short on time for that.”
“Unless, of course, some unwary couple already happens to have their order in,” Beth teased, not sure how she felt about a man who could snap his fingers and make this happen, apparently without offending anyone. In some ways, that was the most astonishing thing of all.
“Good point,” Mack said, and immediately beckoned for their waiter.
“Mack, don’t you dare,” Beth said.
“You’ll settle for the crème brulée?”
>
“I think that’s best,” she said, even though she was sorely tempted to throw caution to the wind and opt for the chocolate soufflé. “Otherwise we’re liable to start a riot.”
Mack grinned. “I guess it will be the crème brulée for dessert, John. Give us about twenty minutes, though, okay?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Carlton.” He leaned down to whisper conspiratorially. “Of course, if you’re on a tight timetable, there’s a soufflé that should be ready in a half hour. I could put in another order for those diners and put this one in one of our takeout containers. Would that work?”
Mack glanced at Beth. “What do you say? Dessert at your desk?”
There were a lot of things in life that Beth could resist. Chocolate wasn’t one of them, and a warm chocolate soufflé just out of the oven had the power to smash her resistance to smithereens. There were many things she might not like about Mack, many more things about which she had serious reservations, but if he could get her that dessert, she was willing to forgive a lot.
Giving in to temptation, she said, “The chocolate, definitely.”
Mack regarded her with fascination as the waiter walked away. “Good to know,” he murmured, his gaze on her filled with heat.
“What?” she asked, her voice surprisingly shaky.
“That your weak spot is chocolate.”
“That’s one of them,” Beth agreed, since there seemed little point in denying the obvious, not when she’d just caved and renounced several of her scruples to get a soufflé for dessert.
Mack lifted his glass of water. “To discovering the rest,” he said, his tone soft and his gaze serious.
Beth returned his gaze and tried not to notice that her heart and her stomach were turning cartwheels. Sweet heaven, was there any female on the face of the earth who could remain immune to this man once he set out to be charming? She certainly prayed she’d turn out to be one of the rare ones, but right at this moment she didn’t give herself a chance in hell.
Chapter Five
Mack had absolutely no idea how his evening had taken such an unexpected shift the night before. One minute he’d been looking forward to his date with a woman who undoubtedly would never speak to him again now. The next minute he’d been irresistibly drawn to Beth’s office just for the simple pleasure of stealing a kiss. It didn’t make a lick of sense.
Millionaires' Destinies Page 24