by Janice Lynn
Perhaps she didn’t even want him here.
Was that disappointment shooting through him?
No way. He hadn’t really thought Eleanor had sent for him. He hadn’t even expected her to be here as she’d told him the night before that she lived in an apartment of her own. Ty had known it was her father planning to whip out the shotgun and tell him to keep his good-ole-boy hands off his precious daughter.
No worries. He’d already decided to do that.
“Glad you could make it, Dr. Donaldson.” The senator stuck out his hand and Ty shook it firmly. “Have a seat. Next to Eleanor, of course.”
Senator Aston had a future in acting should he ever opt out of politics because no way was that welcoming tone real. Had he really just invited Ty to sit next to Eleanor?
Wondering what he’d gotten himself into, he sat.
“Can we get you some breakfast, son?”
Son? What the …?
“No, thank you, sir. I’ve already eaten.”
“Coffee, tea, juice?”
What was with the host with the most?
Eleanor was now shooting daggers at her father.
“No, thanks.” He searched her face, but she wouldn’t even look his way. When she finally stopped glaring at her father, she just stared at her breakfast, which it didn’t look like she’d much more than touched. So he met Senator Aston’s eyes and decided to cut to the chase. “You asked to see me?”
The man smiled and a shiver ran up Ty’s back.
“I wanted to meet the man who spent the night with my daughter.”
Ty didn’t wince or glance away from the man’s penetrating gaze. He wouldn’t show weakness around this man who was obviously used to everyone bowing to his command. “Eleanor is a grown woman and surely makes her own choices as to who she spends her time with.”
Which wasn’t what he should have said. He should have pointed out that they hadn’t spent the night together.
Only a very public evening. Something about the man got Ty’s hackles up.
“Until I saw this morning’s paper I hadn’t realized she was spending time with anyone,” the senator countered smoothly, taking a sip from his coffee cup. “She tells me you work together.”
Her shoulders having dropped at her father’s words, Eleanor’s face now glowed rosier than any bloom in the flower arrangement. Once again, Ty found himself feeling protective.
“Yes, she’s a brilliant pediatrician. One of the best Angel’s has.”
Senator Aston waved off Eleanor’s accomplishments and focused on the real reason he’d summoned Ty. “What are your intentions regarding my daughter?”
That’s more like what he’d come expecting to hear.
“Daddy! Please.” Eleanor scooted her plate back, stared at her father. “I told you that Ty and I are only work colleagues.”
Ouch. Why did Eleanor’s words sting?
“Ty?” Her father’s brow arched, then his dark gaze settled directly on Ty in question.
Here was his opportunity to set the record straight and get the hell out of Dodge.
“It’s too early to say what my intentions are regarding your daughter.” Which wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but those words had somehow come out anyway.
“What?” This had come from a very shocked, very red-faced Eleanor. “But you … you didn’t …” Her voice trailed off, not verbalizing that Ty hadn’t kissed her when they’d said goodbye.
Ty’s gaze remained locked with her father’s.
“I’m very protective of my daughters.”
Ty bit back a grin. “I imagine so.”
Eleanor’s father leaned back in his chair, eyeing Ty as if he were sizing up an opponent. He took a sip of his coffee and calmly announced, “I want you to accompany Eleanor to my fund-raiser ball next week.”
That surprised him, but Ty only shrugged. He wouldn’t be bullied by this man. “I’m busy.”
“Get unbusy,” the senator ordered, as if whatever Ty’s plans were they couldn’t possibly be more important than his.
“Eleanor may have other plans.”
“She doesn’t.” Had there been humor in the man’s tone? “This is important to my career and the perfect opportunity for me to get to know what type of man my daughter is spending her time with.”
Ty wasn’t sure how he felt about going to the fund-raiser. He liked Eleanor, but hadn’t he already decided that he needed to stay away from her? That she would expect more from him than he’d ever give? But there was something about the way her father was discussing her as if she weren’t in the room that got Ty’s hackles up, made him want to puff out his chest and stand in challenge.
What was it about the woman that gave him all these protective, testosterone-filled urges?
“I prefer to arrange my own dates.”
The senator sat his coffee cup down on the table and eyed Ty intently. “Fine. Arrange one. Now is as good a time as any. I’m sure Eleanor is available the night of my fund-raiser.”
“Daddy.” Eleanor’s voice sounded so humiliated Ty wanted to whisk her out of the room. Hell, he knew exactly how she felt. Hadn’t his own father loved to put him in his place every opportunity he got?
His father. His family. Which only served to remind him of his own family issues and the fact that his mother wasn’t letting up on him coming home to attend Swallow Creek’s annual rodeo, which his father was hosting. Just the thought of going home, seeing the shame in his father’s eyes as he expounded on what a disappointment Ty had turned out to be, turned his stomach. It would be the first time he’d be face-to-face with dear ole Dad since their big row about Ty moving to New York.
He’d be damned if he was going to face it solo when presented with such a golden opportunity.
“Fine,” he agreed to the senator’s suggestion, liking the idea that had struck him. “I’ll go to the fund-raiser.” Just as the pompous man started to smile, Ty added, “On one condition. I want Eleanor to go to Texas with me six weeks from now to attend a rodeo my family is hosting.”
With her by his side, his family would be on their best behavior, would be distracted by him bringing a woman with him, and maybe, just maybe, his father wouldn’t launch into how he’d screwed up his whole life and let the entire family down by following his own dreams rather than to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“Done.” Smiling again, the senator stuck his hand out for Ty to shake.
“What?” Eleanor’s chair flew back from the table, almost toppling she stood so quickly. “Th-this is crazy. You’re talking like I’m not even here.” She glanced back and forth between them. “You’re both crazy. I’m not going to Texas.”
Wondering what the hell he was doing, Ty shook Eleanor’s father’s hand before any of them could come to their senses.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELEANOR AUSCULTATED ROCHELLE’S tiny chest, distinguishing each sound and praying the baby’s lungs remained clear of fluid or pneumonia despite her many risk factors.
“Hey, you.”
Eleanor jumped, startling the baby. Talking softly to Rochelle and stroking her finger over the baby’s tiny hand, she mentally gathered her wits. What she needed was someone to talk softly to her and calm her nerves before she acknowledged who’d surprised her.
“Don’t do that,” she ordered, spinning to face the man she wasn’t quite sure what to think of. Not that she hadn’t thought of him. She’d thought of little else since yesterday morning when she hadn’t been able to take any more of her father bargaining a date for her.
That she understood.
What she couldn’t understand was why Ty had agreed, why he’d even suggested her going to Texas with him.
That made absolutely no sense at all to her. No matter how many times she’d tried to work out his reasons, she kept coming up blank.
Looking as gorgeous as ever, Ty grinned that sexy Southern grin that, along with his Texan drawl, had all the NICU nurses swooning over him. Eleanor’s bo
dy did a little swooning of its own, too.
“Sorry, darlin’.” His eyes twinkled. “Didn’t mean to startle you or the babe. How’s our girl doing?”
At his “our girl” Eleanor’s throat clogged shut. Why, she didn’t know because it was the silliest of phrases and she knew he meant their patient and … Oh, what was she prattling on in her mind for? Just answer the man and be done with it.
“She’s holding her own.” A complete sentence and no stutter—yeah! If nothing else, spending time with him at the ribbon-cutting and reception seemed to have cured her of that habit around him.
He nodded his understanding. “A babe’s fighting spirit makes all the difference.”
“Speaking of fighting spirit, why did you agree to my father’s crazy suggestion that you go to his fund-raiser ball?” She tried to keep her voice light, as if his answer was no big deal. “They aren’t that much fun.”
He shrugged. “Maybe good ole country boy me just wanted to see what it’s like to hang with the big city-slicker politicians.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You can cut the good-ole-country-boy act. The big city-slicker politician ran a background check and obviously liked what he found. He could probably tell me what type of baby formula you were raised on.”
“I wasn’t.”
She stared at him in confusion. “You weren’t what?”
“Raised on formula.” He puffed his chest out. “My momma breast-fed me and my brother.”
“I didn’t need to know that.” Actually, she had a hard time envisioning Ty as a baby, as anything other than the gorgeous man he was.
“Sure you do,” he countered. “Can’t have you showing up in Texas as my date and not knowing a thing about me.”
As his date?
“That’s another thing.” Her brows pulled tightly together. “Why on earth would you want me to go to Texas with you?”
He didn’t seem concerned, just pulled his stethoscope out of his scrub pocket then met her gaze. “Why not? We had a nice time together at the ribbon-cutting reception and you’d be doing me a favor.”
“Just as you’re doing me a favor by going to my father’s campaign ball?”
Ty’s gaze cut to hers. “He really wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I just worked a Texas travel buddy into the bargain.”
“A travel buddy? If you think I’m going to—”
He held up his hand. “Stop right there. I’m not thinking any such thing, but am quite shocked at how quickly your mind went to the gutter, Eleanor.” He tsked, his eyes full of naughtiness.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t hold back her smile. “Try selling your innocence to one of your many fan clubs, Dr. Donaldson. I’m sure they’d be impressed.”
His brow arched. “Not much impresses you?”
Tired of fidgeting nervously with her stethoscope, she put the tubing around her neck and shoved her hands into her lab-coat pockets. “Lots of things impress me, but not your innocence. I’ve seen snakes with more saintly backgrounds.”
“As in the background check your father did? He couldn’t have turned up anything too bad or he wouldn’t have been rolling out the red carpet.” His grin took on a mischievous little-boy gleam. “Sure, I tipped a few cows in my younger days, but—”
“Tipped a few cows?” She hadn’t read her father’s report. He’d offered, but she’d refused on principle. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so haughty.
“You should see what we did to the sheep.” Ty’s brows waggled.
His outlandish comment had Eleanor smothering a laugh and a few of the nurses looking their way.
“Quit distracting me from the real issue,” she warned. “Why do you want me to go with you to Texas?”
This time he was the one fidgeting with his stethoscope. “I like you.”
Her cheeks grew hotter than asphalt on a midsummer day. “You like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He liked her? Not meeting Eleanor’s eyes, Ty stalled by checking out Rochelle, listening to her tiny heart, lungs and surgically repaired belly, which still had various tubes and drains in place.
Very unlike him to hesitate to give an answer.
Usually he was smooth with the lines with the ladies. Usually.
Maybe it was because he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted with Eleanor that he was thrown.
That was exactly what was throwing him.
He’d decided not to pursue a relationship with her but had ended up with a date to her father’s campaign ball and with her going home for the weekend with him. Not exactly consistent with staying away from her and avoiding the attraction he felt toward her.
He glanced up, studied her slightly flustered expression, uptight hairstyle, thick-framed glasses and tried to go back to seeing her as just Dr. Aston and not the intriguing woman he’d spent an evening with.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t look at her and not see beneath the surface to the woman she hid below. Couldn’t not want to peel away the layers to let that woman out, to free her, and to sit back and watch the explosion.
More than watch, he wanted to experience that explosion in every shape, form and fashion.
“What are you thinking?” She licked her lips nervously.
That he wanted to lick those soft pink lips, to taste her mouth, to take his time and kiss her all night long.
He cleared his throat. “That our girl is going to make it.”
After frowning at him a moment, Eleanor took his bait and cut her gaze to the baby. “I hope so. She’s such a sweetheart.”
“They all are.”
Surprise flickered in her gaze. “You really like babies, don’t you?”
The question seemed a no-brainer to him, but he understood what she meant. A big macho Texan like him choosing to take care of babies. Could a man choose a more emasculating profession? Not according to his father. In Harold Donaldson’s eyes a man might as well chop off his big boys as to “play with babies all day.”
Ty didn’t quite see things the way his dad did and hadn’t from the point he’d realized he wanted to be a doctor. During his early academic career he’d discovered he specifically wanted to be a neonatologist. Despite his father’s hee-hawing and ho-humming about the “shame of having a son who played with babies,” not once had Ty felt less of a man because of his profession.
He liked what he did at Angel’s, liked making a difference in his tiny patients’ lives and their families’ lives. He’d been blessed with a God-given talent and he was where he was supposed to be in life.
Only he had no choice but to go home for the rodeo. His mother had threatened to have the entire crew converge on him in New York if he didn’t. Of course, seeing his father in downtown Manhattan might be worth it.
Then again, those skyscrapers might bow in the presence of his giant of a father.
“Ty?”
He blinked, realizing he’d totally blanked out on Eleanor. “Sorry. I got lost in my thoughts.”
“I noticed.” She smiled tentatively and the gesture tugged at something in his chest.
She was pretty. Why had it taken him seeing her all decked out for him to notice those eyes, that generous mouth, that porcelain skin? That phenomenal body?
“Would it help to talk about it?” she gently offered.
“Hell, no.” His mother had talked about the problems between him and his father till Ty was blue in the face. Nothing was going to make his family understand his need to be a doctor.
He sure didn’t want to talk about his reaction to her since the ribbon-cutting. How could he explain to her what he didn’t understand himself?
“I didn’t mean to pry.” Obviously embarrassed, Eleanor’s eyes dropped. Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath.
Ty knew his gaze shouldn’t drop to watch the shifting of the material across her body, but it did. A crying shame when a grown man was jealous of a cotton scrub top, but he was.
Guilt hit him on sever
al counts.
“Offering to listen isn’t prying,” he countered, smiling at her and hoping she took his peace offering. “Besides, if you’re the little darlin’ doing the listening, I’d be happy to give talking a whirl.”
Her gaze lifted and she stared at him in confusion. A slow smile curved her lips. “You would?”
“Oh, yeah.” Which surprised him, but for some reason he enjoyed talking to Eleanor, enjoyed seeing the uninhibited emotions play across her lovely face. “Go to dinner with me tonight?”
Hands digging deeper into her pockets, she eyed him suspiciously. “Is my father paying you to be nice to me? To take me out?”
Ty laughed, put his hand on her lower back and led her away from Rochelle’s incubator. “Is that how your sister has a new beau every week?”
Eleanor’s face lost some of its sparkle. “If you have to ask that, you obviously left my father’s place without having met my sister.”
Brooke hadn’t made an appearance during the few minutes Ty had remained after Eleanor had disappeared.
“If she’s anything like you, she’s a knockout.”
Eleanor’s eyes rolled behind her thick-framed glasses. “Right.”
“Definitely.”
When had they fallen into step together? Where were they even headed? To the new wing, he realized. More and more of the neonatal unit was being transferred to the area.
“Seriously, if it means going to dinner with you, I’d spill my guts on all the reasons why I want you to come to Texas with me.”
She considered him a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Ty, you have a deal. You get to feed me and I get to listen.”
“I get the better end of that deal.”
Her brow lifted and she grinned with an almost flirty gleam in her dark eyes. “You haven’t seen me eat.”
Watching Eleanor eat should be X-rated.
Ty was positive he’d never seen a woman take so much delight in food. Most of the women he knew barely picked at the few scraps of lettuce put on their plate, much less actually enjoyed each bite with such unabashed pleasure.
He was also positive that he’d never been turned on at watching a woman eat, but he was turned on.