“Boy, your diet really has taken a turn right off the nutritional charts, hasn’t it?” Jason commented, sliding into the chair opposite her.
Beth glared at the radiologist. “Keep your snide comments to yourself.”
“Tough morning?” he asked, then struggled with a grin as he added, “Or a tough night?”
She stared at him trying to gauge what on earth he knew or thought he knew. “If you have something on your mind, just spit it out. I’m in no mood for games.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Jason said, his grin spreading. “The chocolate’s a dead giveaway, especially before lunch. Usually you don’t have one of these attacks till around four, right after rounds.” He gestured toward the little pile of candy. “Even for you this is a bit over the top.”
Beth was not half as amused by his observations as he clearly was. “Did you come over here to hassle me or is something else on your mind?”
The radiologist regarded her innocently. “Can’t I do both?”
“Not if you expect to live,” Beth said sourly, tearing open the M&M candies and popping several into her mouth.
Unfortunately, Jason didn’t look daunted. If anything, the level of amusement in his eyes increased. “Called your house looking for you earlier,” he said. “You were running late. I got worried. Beth Browning is never late. She never misses an important meeting.”
Her gaze flew to his. “What meeting?”
“Peyton called one to talk about Tony. He wanted to go over a few things with our entire oncology team before Tony’s transfusion this morning. You didn’t know?”
“Oh, hell,” Beth moaned. “Yes, I knew. It completely slipped my mind. Was he furious?”
“Actually, I think he was relieved. It was the first sign any of us have ever had that you’re human and fallible.”
Beth covered her face with her hands. “What is wrong with me? How could I forget a meeting like that?”
“Maybe it had something to do with that man who answered the phone at your house when I called,” Jason suggested mildly. “Could that be?”
Beth had honestly thought it impossible to be any more embarrassed, but with her cheeks burning and her stomach churning, she discovered she’d been wrong. This was a thousand times worse.
“You, um…” She gazed into Jason’s laughing eyes, then sucked in a breath. “You spoke to my house-guest?” There, that was a good, safe, anonymous description of Mack, though she intended to be sure that he was never her guest again.
“That I did,” Jason said gleefully. “Funny thing, too. He wasn’t much more communicative about his identity than you’re being.”
“Maybe because it’s none of your business who he is,” she replied testily.
“My money’s on Mack Carlton,” Jason responded.
Beth fought the panic creeping up the back of her throat. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Informed guess,” Jason told her. “And the fact that I recognized his voice.”
“From meeting him once?” she asked incredulously.
Jason laughed. “For the moment I’ll ignore the fact that you as much as admitted it was Mack and say that his voice is familiar because he’s interviewed on TV about every ten seconds during football season.” His expression suddenly sobered. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Beth? This guy has a reputation, you know.”
“Tell me about it,” she said glumly.
“Don’t get in over your head.”
Because she desperately needed someone to talk to, because she could use a male point of view and because she trusted Jason to keep his mouth shut, she muttered, “Too late for that, I’m afraid.”
Jason regarded her with shock. “You’re not actually falling for him, are you?”
“No!” she said so fiercely that Jason whistled in disbelief. She scowled at him. “Oh, shove a sock in it.”
“That will severely limit my attempt to give you some well-meaning advice.”
Beth sighed heavily. “Okay, then, talk, but try not to sound smug or disgustingly macho. Remember, I’m your friend and your colleague. Mack’s just some football idol you met once.”
Jason opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again, his expression going blank.
“Jason?” Beth prodded.
“I think the cat’s got Jason’s tongue,” Mack said, pulling up a chair to join them. “Isn’t that right, Jason?”
“Pretty much,” Jason said. “I think I’ll go take some X rays or do some radiation treatments or maybe lock myself in a convenient closet.”
Mack gave him an approving look. “Thanks. Nice talking to you earlier. That was you on the phone, I assume.”
“Yep,” Jason said.
Then he took off like the little weasel he was. Beth had expected better of him. Hadn’t he just warned her about Mack? Then why would Jason turn right around and leave her alone with the man? It must be some tacit, male, nonpoaching, noninterference agreement that women weren’t privy to.
“You answered my phone this morning,” she said accusingly, frowning at Mack. “What possessed you to do that?”
He shrugged. “It was ringing. I thought it might be important.”
He sounded so blasted reasonable, she wanted to strangle him. “And it never occurred to you that it could prove embarrassing for me?”
“I thought it would be more embarrassing if you missed being notified of an emergency.”
“If it had been an emergency, someone would have beeped me,” she said.
“Never thought of that.” He nodded in the direction in which Jason had gone. “He sounded a little miffed to find me there. Something going on between you two that I should know about? Until this morning I had the impression you were just friends.”
She could claim there was and put an end to things with Mack right here and now, but then he’d wonder about what kind of woman she was to sleep with him while she had some sort of relationship with Jason. She might accept that there wasn’t ever going to be anything more between her and Mack, but she didn’t want him to think badly of her. She had too much self-respect to leave him with an impression like that, as convenient as it might be at the moment.
“Jason is a friend,” she confirmed finally. “If he implied it was anything more, it was only because he’s worried that I’m in over my head with you.”
“It wasn’t anything he said,” Mack admitted. “Just something in his tone. He sounded possessive.”
Something in Mack’s tone sounded a wee bit possessive, as well. Beth studied his expression for a minute before it sank in what was going on in his head. He was jealous. At least for one tiny fraction of a second Mighty Mack Carlton, of the date-a-night gossip, was actually jealous that there might be another man in her life. She had to fight to keep from chuckling aloud. This was definitely a twist she hadn’t anticipated.
Unfortunately, the twist felt a little too welcome, especially after she had spent most of the morning warning herself to cut Mack out of her life before she got burned. Heck, she was sitting here downing chocolate before lunch to forget about him.
“Jason and I have known each other since med school. He’s protective, not possessive. There’s a difference.”
“He thinks you need protection from me?”
She grinned at his vaguely incredulous expression. “Don’t you?”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said sharply.
Beth leveled a look straight into his eyes. “Too late,” she said quietly.
Then, before he could react, she stood up and headed for the nearest exit at a clip that few people could keep up with. Mack, of course, could have caught her in a few long strides had he wanted to. That he didn’t even try told her all she needed to know.
Or at least she thought the message was pretty plain, until she walked into her office an hour later and found a little mound of candy bars in the middle of her desk. She recognized them as the ones she’d left behind in her haste to leave the cafeter
ia. More disconcerting was the sight of Mack sprawled out on the sofa where she caught catnaps on the nights she couldn’t get away from the hospital. He had an open medical journal on his chest, but his eyes were shut tight. The steady rise and fall of his chest suggested he was sound asleep.
Beth stood there staring at him in consternation. The memory of waking in his arms just a few hours ago was still a little too fresh in her mind. A part of her wanted to crawl onto that sofa with him and recapture that amazing feeling.
Because of that, she deliberately walked behind her desk and sat down, cursing the loud creaking in her old chair. Mack’s eyes promptly snapped open.
“Ah, you’re back,” he said, “I figured you’d turn up here sooner or later.”
“Good guess, since it is my office,” she said tartly. “What are you doing here?”
He gave her an oddly bemused look that made her heart flip over.
“Not sure entirely,” he admitted.
“That must be a first.”
“It is,” he said. He met her gaze. “You confuse me.”
She found his honesty a little too charming. Maybe it was part of some game he played. “I’m a fairly straightforward kind of woman.”
“I get that,” he said.
“You are not a straightforward kind of man,” she added bluntly.
“I’m trying to be, at least with you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I wish to hell I knew. I sat there after you’d left the house this morning and tried to figure it out, but I still don’t entirely get it.”
Beth lost patience. She was in over her head with Mack and she didn’t like it. That she’d slept with him at all was probably a huge mistake. That she wanted to do it again was pure insanity. Hearing that he was beset with uncertainties was not reassuring. One of them surely needed to know what the hell they were doing.
“Well, since it’s such an obvious struggle for you to figure it out, maybe you should just stop trying,” she said. “We spent one night together, Mack. We didn’t make a commitment. You don’t do commitment. From what I’ve read in the paper, you don’t even go out with the same woman twice. I get that. My time is up.”
He frowned at her. “You’re making this hard.”
“What am I making hard?” she asked, unable to hide her growing exasperation. “I just let you completely off the hook. No harm, no foul. Go forth and do whatever the hell you do without giving me another thought.”
“That would be the sensible thing for me to do,” he agreed.
“Then do it.”
He shook his head. “Can’t.”
“Why not? There’s the door. Walk out and that’s that. No big deal.” She held her breath waiting for him to take her advice and go. Instead, he sat right where he was, his expression glum. Beth sighed. “Mack, what is going on?”
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“I’ve had coffee and candy. In my book that qualifies.”
“Not in mine. Let’s go.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You do for this,” he coaxed, his lips twitching when her stomach growled. “I’ll have you back in an hour, like always.”
“It’s twelve-thirty. There’s not a decent restaurant anywhere that won’t be mobbed at this hour.”
“I’ll have you back in an hour,” he repeated.
Since he’d never before broken that promise, Beth finally gave in. And since the coffee and caffeine definitely hadn’t done what she’d intended—taken her mind off Mack—maybe another hour in his annoying company would do the trick. At least she’d be well fed at the end of it.
“Okay,” she relented. “One hour, and we don’t talk about us.”
“Deal,” he said.
Once again, the instant they reached the very popular crab house on the Potomac River, a table magically appeared. Their food arrived moments later—a dozen steamed and spiced crabs with coleslaw and potato salad.
Mack handed her a wooden mallet with a grin. “Pretend you’re bashing me upside the head, and you’ll get through these in no time.”
Cracking crabs was messy work, but the succulent meat was worth the effort. And thinking of each red shell as Mack’s hard head did give her a certain amount of perverse pleasure as she hammered away. She uttered a little sigh when she’d finished the last one. Only then did she realize that Mack had eaten very little.
“Weren’t you hungry? This is the second time today when you’ve sat there and watched me eat.”
“I’m trying to fatten you up,” he said.
“Planning to have me slaughtered like a pig?”
“Nope. Looking for a little more flesh to hang on to.”
The comment brought an immediate flush to her cheeks. “Mack!”
“Sorry,” he said at once, though he didn’t look especially repentant. “I promised you we wouldn’t talk about us. I suppose that precludes any talk of sex, as well.”
“There is no us,” she said flatly, refusing to get drawn into any discussion of sex.
“Yeah, you would have thought so, wouldn’t you?”
She stared at him, not sure how to take the wry note in his voice. “Meaning?”
“We’re not much alike. You’re serious. I’m not. You’re brilliant—”
“So are you,” she said impatiently, tired of him using his own stereotypical image as some sort of cop-out. “Stop denigrating your intelligence. You have a law degree, which you earned while playing professional football. You can’t juggle all that without being smart. And it must take some intelligence to run a successful football franchise, even if I don’t happen to get why you’d want to.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I think.”
“Since you’re busy laying out all our differences, how about this one? I’m a struggling researcher and physician and you’re very, very rich.”
He grinned. “Too obvious and not that important, unless, of course, you’re trying to decide whether to go after me for my money.”
Beth smiled as she was struck by a brilliant idea to get her research project moving along at a swifter pace. Maybe she should test the waters and see if he was open to the idea. Hopefully he wouldn’t conclude that she really was in this just for the money. “Actually I’m trying to decide whether to get you to fund a new research project,” she retorted cheerfully.
“Just tell me what you need,” he said matter-of-factly.
She stared at him in shock, totally unprepared for his immediate agreement. “I was joking,” she protested. “Or at least half joking.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, not quite daring to believe he was as serious as he sounded. She had grants, but with just a little more funding she could hire the kind of assistant who would enable her to move her research along much more quickly.
“While it’s always nice to show your appreciation of a Higher Power, in this instance you should really thank football and wise investments,” he teased. “Of course, if you can’t bear the thought of taking any money earned playing such a stupid game…”
“I’ll give it some thought,” she replied oh, so seriously, then added a quick, “Yes. When it comes to saving more kids, I’m not proud. If you’re really serious about this, I’ll get together with my team and put a proposal together by the end of the week.”
Mack nodded. “I’ll be in to pick it up.”
She studied him intently, then shook her head at the unexpected turn the day had taken. It was yet more proof that she had seriously misjudged Mack. If the sex had been predictably incredible, then this gesture was equally mind-boggling in its unpredictability and its generosity.
“You’re not at all what I expected,” she admitted.
“Not so dumb?”
She flushed. “I thought we’d already established that as a lie. More important, you’re amazingly kind to Tony. And this whole playboy thing, I’m beginning to think maybe that’s more an image you’ve created for the
media than a fact.”
“You think that after last night?” he asked, regarding her with evident surprise. “And all that fancy footwork I danced through this morning?”
Beth thought about it and finally nodded slowly. “Yes. Now that I look back over the last few weeks, I realize that you never seem to have a date. You’ve been spending every evening at the hospital.”
He gave her long, simmering look that made her pulse race.
“What do you think you and I have been doing?” he asked quietly. “I mean even before last night.”
“Grabbing a quick meal on the run,” she said, confused by the hint of amusement in his eyes.
“You with an eligible man. Me with a beautiful, intelligent woman. In my book, those are dates.” His grin spread. “And just look where they led.”
She sat back, stunned. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Somehow she’d dismissed all that earlier stuff as casual, friendly, inconsequential get-togethers, while he’d seen it as some sort of foreplay.
“I doubt you’ll be damned, unless of course you let me take advantage of you,” he taunted. “Any possibility of that happening again? Not right this second, of course, but sometime when you’re not due back at the hospital in less than five minutes?”
Before last night, Beth would have said there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of her letting that happen. Even this morning, with his stinging reminder that he wasn’t to be taken seriously, she would have said a flat no.
Now, seeing the faint vulnerability in his eyes as he awaited her reply, guessing that he was stepping far outside of his own relationship comfort zone to even ask such a thing, she was tempted to see where this could lead.
With her heart hammering in her chest, she met his gaze evenly. “You never know.”
Mack laughed, as if he’d never expected a different answer. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Has any woman ever actually said no to you?” she asked curiously.
“More than you might imagine. Then again, I’ve probably asked the question a lot less than you’ve imagined.”
Millionaires' Destinies Page 29