by Lucy Ryder
“This,” he said, indicating the pale band of flesh where Lawrence’s ring had rested for two years. “Although that night the indentation left in your finger looked fresh. As though you’d recently removed your ring.”
Powerless to deny the truth, Sam sagged against the wall and studied the differences between their hands; hers pale and delicate against the large dark masculinity of his. “I had recently removed it,” she admitted softly, her gaze flying up when his fingers tightened. It was her turn to wrap her hand around his to prevent him pulling away. “But it’s not what you think,” she added hastily, suddenly hating that he thought the worst of her.
“And exactly what do I think, Samantha?” he growled, his gaze shuttered against her.
“That I slept with you while being engaged to another man.” After a moment, one brow rose up his forehead in query. “I um—” She licked her lips nervously and tried to think but it was more difficult that she’d anticipated. Finally, unable to utter the words with his amber eyes watching her with the intent of an eagle poised for attack, she dropped his hand and slid away.
When she could breathe, she said, “I’d already broken it off two days before we met,” over her shoulder without meeting his eyes.
“Why?”
The question jolted her around. “W-why?”
Propping his shoulder against the wall, he folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you break it off?”
Realizing that he probably deserved the truth, Sam blew out a breath. “I walked in on him and his—assistant having sex.” He grimaced but said nothing. Goaded, she added, “His assistant’s name is Ronnie, which is short for Ronald.”
Understanding flickered in his gaze. “Oh.”
“You got that right,” she muttered and then sighed. “I felt—betrayed.”
“Of course you did.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said heatedly, pushing her hair off her face. “I’ve known him forever. I believed him when he said he loved me. I thought he wanted to wait for the wedding night before we—um, before we—” She broke off, face heating with embarrassment when Adam’s eyes narrowed.
“How long were you engaged?”
She finally muttered, “Almost two years,” sighing with resignation when his eyebrows shot into his hairline.
“You were celibate for two years?”
She glared and folded her arms beneath her breasts, daring him to comment on her stupidity. “I was,” she muttered. “He, however, wasn’t.”
His face was a mix of emotions that might have been comical if the situation weren’t so mortifying. “Do you mean to tell me that night was your first time in two years?”
Her face flamed because it had been way longer than that. Embarrassed, annoyed and wishing she could escape, she set her jaw and demanded irritably, “What’s that got to do with anything? I was just trying to explain why rebound sex is a bad idea and—”
“Have you heard of destiny?” he interrupted mildly.
She blinked, confused by the non sequitur. “Destiny?”
“Fate, providence, predestination, chance, karma or kismet, if you will.”
“I know what it means,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m just not sure how it relates to this discussion.”
He pushed away from the wall and stalked toward her until she found herself backed against the tiled wall. Annoyed that she’d allowed him to put her in retreat, Sam lifted her chin and met his gaze head-on.
“Did you know,” he murmured, planting one hand flat against the wall beside her head, “that this is the fourth time we’ve been thrown together by events?”
“Events?”
“Yeah, you know destiny, fate.”
She made a sound of annoyance. “There’s no such thing. It was a coincidence.”
“That we were in the same bar, in the same hotel at the same time? That you tumbled into my lap and not one of a dozen men surrounding the dance floor? That we decided to call it a night at the same time and ended up in the elevator together to help bring a child into the world? And then two months later, you cross the continent to work on the same foundation because we’re both acquainted with Colleen Rutherford?” He paused to let his words sink in before leaning closer. “Not only don’t I believe in coincidences, Samantha,” he said softly, “there is no way I can ignore the fact that I already know you intimately.”
Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
“Don’t I?” he asked softly.
“That’s just ph-physical stuff,” she rasped, her body going hot at the reminder of how much he’d learned that night. “But that’s beside the point. Rebound sex—”
“Is a bad idea,” he interrupted roughly. “Yeah, I know. But here’s the thing.” He ran questing fingers up her arm, across her shoulder and down the neckline of her dress to where the two sides of her dress overlapped. “Rebound or not, I look at you and I can’t forget.”
“Well, I certainly won’t have any problem forgetting anything,” Sam lied, desperately ignoring the rush of sensation spreading out from the barely-there touch. “In fact, I’m really good at ignoring things that aren’t good for me.” For too long, she’d been really good at ignoring her own wants too, doing what was expected of a Gilford.
She pressed her hand against his chest in the hopes that he’d get the message and back off. “You’re in the ladies’ room. Now, please leave so I can get b-back to my p-plan.”
Adam’s eyes darkened and before she could squeak out a protest, he gently pulled her against him and brought his lips close enough to shock her into stillness and then strain for more. She yielded to temptation, slanting her lips against his and opening them to receive his invading tongue before she could remind herself that this was the last thing she wanted, that he was the last man she wanted.
But she did. Oh, God, she did. She’d wanted him in San Francisco and she’d wanted him while sitting across the boardroom table, pretending interest in what Aunt Coco was saying. She hadn’t heard a thing over the panicked embarrassment and excitement pounding through her blood.
She shouldn’t be kissing him. But she was and she didn’t want to stop. Oh, God, she thought as she closed her lips around his tongue and sucked it into her mouth. She didn’t want to stop the wild recklessness rising within her to give and take and then take some more.
And then, just as the edges of her vision grayed, he broke off the kiss with a ragged curse and backed away, leaving Sam clutching the vanity counter. Opening heavy eyes, she stared at him in confusion. He was half a dozen feet away, dragging air into his heaving lungs. After a slow burning stare, Adam turned and pulled open the door.
“Ignore that, if you can, Ms. Jefferies,” he growled over his shoulder in a voice that was hardly recognizable, and then he was gone.
CHAPTER SIX
“SUCTION,” ADAM SAID, pausing to allow the surgical nurse to remove the blood pooling in the chest cavity. “Release the clamp and test the vessel for integrity,” he instructed the surgical intern. “When you’re certain the graft will hold, we can proceed with closure.”
Satisfied that the young surgeon was coping, he looked up at the real-time image on the fluoroscope screen. So far, he couldn’t detect any leaks. The new bypass seemed to be holding steady but the next forty-eight hours would be critical.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of movement in the observation window overlooking the surgical suite and turned as a figure rushed from the room. He didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. That straight-as-a-ruler back and the warm fire of upswept chestnut hair gave her away.
His skull tightened and a tingle worked its way down his spine. Since the foundation meeting a fortnight ago, giving Samantha the space she’d wanted had been both easier and more difficult than he’d imagined. Easier beca
use there’d suddenly been a spate of new patients and he hadn’t had time to sleep let alone follow his instincts. Which was where the difficulty had come in.
Now that he knew the woman who’d dropped into his lap and shaken his world with her bright blue eyes and enthusiastic kisses was right here in San José, giving her space had been the last thing he’d wanted, especially with her habit of appearing in the observation room in the middle of intricate procedures.
If he were honest with himself, it had stung having her call what to him had been the best sex of his life a rebound mistake, and he’d reacted like a nerdy adolescent experiencing his first rejection.
“How’s the temperature holding, Mr Davis?” he asked the perfusionist, deliberately pushing thoughts of Samantha from his mind. The assisting surgeon had released the clamp and there was a collective inhalation as all eyes went to the fluoroscopy monitor. He caught the thumbs-up as everyone watched blood fill the graft section, then flood the heart. After a couple of shudders, it settled into a sluggish rhythm.
“Vitals?”
“Holding steady.” This from the anesthetist.
“All right then, bring the temp up, Mr. Davis. Dr. Guthrie, let’s proceed with closure.” He waited while the two halves of the sternum were brought together. “Talons ready?”
* * *
Six hours later, Adam left the elevator and headed down the passage toward the children’s ward. Four-year-old Katie Ross had undergone an atrial septal repair that morning and he wanted to check on her before calling it a day.
Although the procedure was a relatively simple one requiring a transcatheter repair and a tiny device—folded up like an umbrella in the catheter tube—deployed and attached over the hole, she would need careful monitoring over the next few weeks to ensure it did not detach and cause an embolism. Despite the septal defect, the little girl was a bouncy, bright-eyed little imp and keeping her quiet was going to take some doing.
He paused to check the ward register, then moved past the nurses’ station toward the wards, wondering why it was so quiet when the children’s ward was usually filled with the wails of distressed children and the murmured reassurances of nurses and mothers.
He caught the sound of murmured tones spoken into the hushed, expectant silence followed by a chorus of childish gasps. A low familiar feminine laugh sent him spinning back nearly three months.
He paused in the doorway to Katie’s room, finding a group of children, ranging from about three to nine, gathered around Katie’s bed. Some were leaning against their mothers while others practically bounced up and down in their excitement as the story unfolded.
Nurses quietly checked their vitals and the person using different voices to bring the story alive for the wide-eyed audience was none other than the woman he’d spent way too much time thinking about.
Samantha Jefferies. Not looking as out of place as she might with her upswept hair and off-the-shoulder half-sleeved rose-colored dress more suited to a fancy ladies’ luncheon than the children’s ward. Snuggled in her lap was a small boy with messy dark hair and sleepy eyes. Adam watched as she absently smoothed the overlong strands off his forehead before turning the page and continuing the story.
Disinclined to draw attention to himself and break up the story hour holding the children spellbound, Adam propped his shoulder against the open doorway and watched the engrossed little faces while a husky voice brought the story to life.
He sensed someone come up behind him and turned to see Janice Norman. The Paeds APRN arched her brow at him before turning her attention to the gathering around Katie’s bed. “She’s great, isn’t she?”
Adam turned back to the scene, his expression neutral. Janice had been in San Francisco the night he and Samantha had met and wasn’t anyone’s fool. She’d spot a weakness a mile away and take unholy delight in needling him.
“Ms. Jefferies come here a lot?” he murmured casually.
“Usually about this time,” she said absently. “And sometimes in the afternoons when the kids are restless. They love her. She’s a natural, and her stories distract them from all the poking and prodding.”
Adam scratched his jaw and wondered if Janice knew that his heart was pumping a little faster, that a buzz had started at the base of his spine and traveled all the way to the top of his head at the sound of that husky voice. A voice he recalled urging him on. Don’t stop, she’d ordered, Harder, and then on a sexy little hitch, Oh...oh...right there.
Just the memory had his body hardening, and by the knowing little smirk on Janice’s lips, she recognized Sam and wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to rag him.
“You know,” she remarked idly after a couple of beats, confirming Adam’s worst fears. “I can’t help noticing how much she reminds me of someone.” Having known her since his intern days, she knew him better than anyone and enjoyed making him squirm. Schooling his features, he just grunted even as Samantha finally looked up and noticed she had another audience member.
She stopped abruptly mid-sentence, her eyes widening as she stared at him for a couple of beats before flushing and looking away. But in that moment, Adam had seen both anxiety and vulnerability beneath the surprise. The vulnerability got to him in a place he hadn’t expected. His chest. Or more specifically his heart. It clenched hard and all he could do was rub the heel of his hand against the sharp ache.
Dammit, he snarled silently. The last thing he needed was to feel anything for the woman who’d relegated him to a rebound mistake. Even if he’d never thought to see her again.
“So...” Janice said casually. “You and the Prom Queen, huh?” Without waiting for him to reply, she glared at him and demanded, “When were you going to tell me that the woman from the bar in San Francisco is related to Dr. Rutherford and working for the foundation?”
Amused by the censure in her tone, Adam shrugged because he hadn’t wanted to talk about Samantha with anyone. He wasn’t sure why; what had happened between them was just too private to discuss. Even with friends.
“They’re not actually related,” he said absently, before hitting her with what he hoped was a look of male bafflement that he didn’t for a minute think she bought. “I think the connection has something to do with her grandfather.” He let his gaze drift over the yawning kids, then squinted at his watch. “It’s a bit late for story time, don’t you think?”
Narrowed eyes promising retribution, she growled and shoved past him, leaving Adam relieved that he’d narrowly escaped a grilling. The relief was short-lived, however, when his gaze drifted back to Samantha and their eyes locked again. Hers widened and darkened as wild color rushed beneath the creamy skin, making him wonder if she was remembering that night too.
But did her determination to ignore what he felt between them stem from the fact that he was a doctor; that she’d only recently broken off her engagement and didn’t want to jump into a new relationship too quickly; or because of his background? Not that he was looking for a relationship, he assured himself. She wouldn’t be the first woman to sleep with a man because of the thrill of the forbidden and she probably wouldn’t be the last.
His own mother had treated his father as a temporary thrill while she sowed her wild, youthful oats before marrying a man worthy of her blue-blooded status. He’d often wondered if falling pregnant had been a way to rebel against the strictures of her family or if she’d just been young and stupid. Whatever it was, he’d ended up collateral damage and spent most of his life fighting the prejudice of having one foot not only in his mother’s culture but in his father’s too.
He had no desire to repeat his parents’ mistakes or be anyone’s rebellious one-night stand. He thought too much of himself for that. He’d had to work twice as hard to be given even half the respect other students or doctors expected as their right. He’d never minded the hard work since it had put him on Coco Rutherford’s radar and helped him become
a top cardiothoracic surgeon.
He certainly didn’t need a curvy chestnut-haired woman reminding him of his childhood and making him feel as though he was always on the outside looking in. As though he was good enough for wild rebound sex but not for anything more open or long-term. He refused to yearn for scraps of attention the way his father had, finally hitting a spiral of depression and alcohol because some vain, shallow debutante had only wanted a quick thrill.
Reminding of a past he had no intention of repeating, Adam pushed away from the door frame, suddenly needing fresh air. He would come back later, he told himself as he left the ward. He’d return to check on Katie when the ward was quiet—when he could think past the urge to mess up Samantha’s sophisticated perfection in an effort to find the warm sexy woman from San Francisco.
* * *
Pulse jumping, Sam saw Adam’s eyes change—narrow and cool—before he turned and disappeared. It was as though he’d come to some decision that she knew should have relieved her, but didn’t.
Oh, boy, it really didn’t.
And with that realization, she sucked in a sharp breath and cringed as her thoughts tumbled one over the other inside her head. Had she—had she secretly wanted Adam to ignore what she’d said about rebound sex and not give her the space she’d said she needed?
Her belly bottomed out and a rush of heat washed over her at the images that popped into her mind. Oh, God, she had, she thought with horror. In some silly feminine part of her, she’d secretly hoped that he wouldn’t be able to stay away. That he’d ambush her, push her up against the nearest wall and kiss her senseless.
Her lips tingled but she ignored it, because it made her a vain and shallow person who said one thing while meaning another because he was hot and buff and made her feel like a sexy, desirable woman. Which meant, dammit, that for all her talk of changing her life, changing herself, she was still not taking charge of anything.
Cringing at the knowledge that she was falling back on old habits, she dispensed a few hugs with a promise to be back the next day. A headache squeezing her forehead, she returned Janice Norman’s greeting with a wan smile and headed for the exit, eager to escape the woman’s speculative gaze.