0373659504 (R)

by Brenda Harlen

  “What do you make besides pasta sauce?” he asked.

  She bent to retrieve a large pot from the cupboard beside the stove, then filled it from the tap and set it on the back burner. “Enchiladas, jambalaya, chicken and broccoli—”

  He must have instinctively cringed at that, because she laughed, the unexpected outburst of humor surprising both of them and easing some of the tension.

  “You don’t like broccoli?” she guessed.

  “Much to my mother’s everlasting chagrin,” he admitted.

  “That’s too bad, because my chicken and broccoli casserole is delicious.”

  “Well, it’s been my experience that the right company makes any meal taste better, so it’s possible I could change my mind if you wanted to make it for me sometime.”

  She smiled at that. “Let’s see if we get through this meal before making any other plans.”

  He sipped his water as she went back to the fridge and retrieved various items for a salad. She washed the head of lettuce under the tap, then spread the leaves out on a towel to dry. It was apparent that she had a system and she lined up her ingredients and utensils on the counter as if they were surgical instruments.

  “I know how to chop and dice,” he told her.

  She glanced up. “What?”

  “I’m offering to help make the salad.”

  “Oh. Thanks, but it’s not really a two-person job.”

  And he could tell that the idea of letting someone else help—and mess with her system—made her twitchy.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “So why don’t you let me handle it while you go do whatever you usually do when you get home from work and don’t have someone waiting in your lobby?”

  She hesitated a minute before admitting, “I was hoping for a quick shower.”

  “So go take a shower,” he suggested.

  “I will,” she decided. “After I get this finished—”

  He took her by the shoulders and turned her away from the counter. “Go take your shower—I’ll take care of this.”

  She still looked skeptical. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Of course, I don’t mind. But if you’d rather I forget about the lettuce and come wash your back—”

  “I can wash my back,” she interjected. “You handle the salad.”

  As he tore up the leaves, he tried not to think about Avery down the hall in the bathroom, stripping out of her clothes. As he chopped up celery and peppers, he ordered himself not to envision the spray from the shower pouring over her sexy, naked body. As he sliced cucumber and tomato, he didn’t let himself imagine any soapy lather sliding over her breasts, her hips, her thighs.

  But damn, all the not thinking, envisioning and imagining made him hot and achy. He shoved the finished salad back into the refrigerator and put the cutting board and utensils in the dishwasher. He could still hear the water running in the bathroom, and the mental images he refused to allow continued to tease at his mind.

  Desperate for a distraction from his prurient fantasies, he decided to give himself a quick tour of her apartment. There was the spacious and stark living room, which he’d glimpsed upon entry into her apartment, then the kitchen and the dining room that was connected to the kitchen. The first door in the hall was a second bathroom. Like the kitchen, white was the color scheme in here, dominating the floor tile, the fixtures, even the towels and the liquid soap in the dispenser on the pedestal sink.

  Beside the bathroom was a spare bedroom that she’d set up as a home office. Two walls were covered in bookshelves made of pale wood and neatly filled with yet more medical texts and journals. Her desk, also in pale wood, was just as ruthlessly organized—with pens, pencils and highlighters neatly lined up in distinctly separate containers.

  The Twilight Zone theme started to play quietly in his head. There were no real personal touches anywhere. No indication of her interests or hobbies or insights into her personality, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think her career was the sum total of who she was.

  But he did know better. He’d kissed her and touched her, and she’d responded with a passion that had taken his breath away. She’d wrapped herself around him as he’d thrust into her body, shuddering and sighing and completely coming undone. Yeah, there was a lot more to Avery than the impersonal and sterile environment of her home indicated.

  A spot of green caught the corner of his eye, and he smiled when he noted the stubby plant on the windowsill, recognizing it as some kind of cactus. Even her plant carried the same hands-off vibe that she did. Except that beneath her prickly exterior, she was warm and soft and shockingly uninhibited.

  The challenge, of course, was getting past that exterior, and Justin suspected that scaling her walls once would only make a subsequent breach that much more difficult. He also realized he didn’t want to breach her defenses—he wanted to tear them down completely.

  He turned away from the cactus in the window to return to the kitchen. That was when he saw it. Another bookcase tucked into an alcove beside the door. He moved in for a closer inspection. The books here were mostly classical literature and popular fiction, with some surprisingly racy titles in the mix, all of them arranged alphabetically by author.

  On top of the bookshelf was a framed photograph—the only one he’d seen in the whole apartment—of a little boy and a little girl. The picture had been snapped from behind as the two children walked, hand in hand, away from whoever was in possession of the camera and toward the iconic castle at Disney World. He instinctively knew the children were Avery and her brother, Ryder, even before he looked closely enough to see their names embroidered on the matching Mickey Mouse ears they wore.

  It was a snapshot of her childhood, a brief glimpse of a happy moment somehow made more poignant by the realization that she couldn’t have been more than eight years old in the photo and there were no other, later pictures to be found anywhere else in her apartment—or at least in any of the rooms he’d visited so far.

  “What are you doing in here?” Avery demanded.

  He glanced over, his heart doing a slow roll inside his chest when he saw her standing in the doorway, looking so naturally beautiful and sexy. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup, her hair had been released from its habitual ponytail and skimmed her shoulders. She’d dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and a long, fuzzy V-neck sweater in a pretty shade of blue that almost exactly matched her eyes. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted a bold crimson color that seemed out of character for her but which he knew was not.

  “I was looking for you,” he finally answered her question.

  She arched a brow. “You didn’t trust I’d find my way back to the kitchen?”

  “No, I meant I was looking for a glimpse of you somewhere—anywhere—in this sterile apartment.”

  She didn’t blink at his criticism. Nor had he expected her to. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to ruffle her feathers if they ruffled easily.

  “Remind me not to give you the name of my decorator,” she responded lightly.

  “I didn’t think the white was your choice.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, in a deliberate change of topic.

  “I think I did.” He held up the photo.

  She took the frame from his hand and carefully set it back into place on the bookshelf. “Dinner will be ready in—” she glanced at the watch on her wrist “—six and a half minutes.”

  He smiled. “Precisely six and a half? Not six or seven but six and a half?”

  “The pasta takes twelve minutes to cook and I dropped it into the pot approximately five and a half minutes ago.”

  “What would happen if you forgot to put the timer on and cooked it for—” he gasped dramatically “—thirteen minutes?”

  “Then we’d have to eat overcooked spaghetti,” she said matter-of-factly, but she frowned at the prospect.

  He shook his head. “Where did you go to medical school?”

/>   She seemed startled by the abrupt change of topic but, after a brief hesitation, she responded, “Harvard.”

  “Figures.”

  “I actually wanted to go to Stanford, but my parents thought Harvard was more prestigious.”

  “I bet you graduated summa cum laude, too, didn’t you?”

  “So? I worked hard and studied hard.”

  “I’m sure you did,” he agreed. “And I have no doubt you’re a better doctor because of it. But sometimes, instead of blasting a tunnel through a mountain, you should climb to the top and enjoy the view.”

  “If you have a point, I’m not seeing it,” she told him.

  “My point is that you’re obviously dedicated, focused and driven, and those are great attributes in the practice of medicine. But when they carry over into your personal life, it suggests that something happened that compels you to rigidly and ruthlessly control every aspect of your life.”

  “You’re reading an awful lot into the fact that I use a kitchen timer when I cook my pasta.”

  “It’s not just the pasta,” he told her. “You have your highlighters aligned in the spectrum of the rainbow.”

  “I didn’t realize being organized was a character flaw.”

  “I’m the same way when it comes to every examination and procedure I perform in the ER,” he admitted. “But when I walk out of the hospital at the end of my shift, I let that go and relax.”

  “Good for you.”

  “You should let go a little, too,” he suggested. “You’re wound up like a torsion spring and one of these days, all of the energy trapped inside of you is going to let loose. Or maybe that is what happened in the supply closet.”

  “That’s a better explanation than anything I could come up with,” she acknowledged. “And maybe, after more than two years, it was time to let loose a little.”

  His brows lifted. “Are you telling me that it was more than two years since you’d had sex?”

  “I’m sure it’s not some kind of celibacy record.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that—wow. Two years.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We both know you can’t imagine—that’s why I wanted the test.”

  Chapter Five

  “Right. The test.”

  For a few minutes, Justin had forgotten the reason he was here—the only reason Avery was making dinner for him.

  As if on cue, a buzzer sounded from the kitchen.

  “That’s the pasta,” she said, automatically turning away.

  He caught her hand, halting her before she reached the door. She glanced over her shoulder, a quizzical expression on her face.

  “I just wanted to say thanks—for offering to cook for me tonight.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said cautiously.

  “I know that you don’t really approve of me—”

  “And I know you aren’t really concerned about my approval.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “But you should know that only about half of the rumors that circulate around the hospital are true.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  “And while I can’t control what other people say, I don’t kiss and tell. Ever.”

  “I know,” she admitted.

  The timer in the kitchen buzzed again.

  “I really need to get that pasta off the stove.”

  But he still didn’t release her hand and there was a mischievous glint in his eyes that made her uneasy.

  “The noodles are going to be overcooked,” she said again, and that was when she realized what he was doing. “You’re stalling me on purpose.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked innocently.

  “To wind up my torsion spring.”

  “People don’t actually have torsion springs—I only said you were like a torsion spring.”

  “If you don’t let me get back to the kitchen right now, I’m going to let loose all of my tension in your direction.”

  He grinned. “Promises, promises.”

  But this time when she turned away, he let her go.

  She had a colander in the sink and a distinctly unhappy look on her face when he returned to the kitchen. She dumped the noodles into the bowl and carried them to the table she must have set when she got out of the shower.

  “If dinner is ruined, it’s your fault,” she told him.

  “Dinner is not ruined,” he promised, retrieving the salad from the fridge.

  But she still looked skeptical as she scooped penne out of the serving bowl and into her pasta bowl. She ladled sauce on the top and waited until he had done the same before she picked up her fork.

  “Did your mother teach you how to cook?” he asked, after he’d sampled his first mouthful.

  She shook her head. “My mother is a senior research supervisor at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta—she can isolate a pathogen but I doubt she knows how to pound or purée.”

  “So who taught you how to cook?”

  “I took a few recreational cooking classes at a small culinary institute in Boston while I was doing my residency.”

  “Did you graduate with top honors from there, too?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t for grades, it was for fun.”

  “For fun?” he asked skeptically.

  Her lips curved, just a little. “It was more fun than starving.”

  “Well, your pasta gets top marks from me,” he told her.

  “The sauce was good,” she allowed. “The noodles were overcooked.”

  “Maybe by about thirty seconds,” he acknowledged, smiling at her.

  She smiled back, a wordless acceptance of the truce he’d offered. “Okay, maybe I could learn to relax a little bit.”

  “I’d be happy to teach you.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to be that relaxed.”

  He chuckled, unoffended.

  “I didn’t make anything for dessert, but I do have ice cream,” she told him.

  “I don’t think I have room for dessert—even ice cream,” he told her.

  “It’s cookies ’n’ cream,” she said, in a tone that suggested no one could refuse her favorite flavor.

  But he shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  When she started to stack the dishes, he pulled the lab report out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her.

  Avery’s heart pounded as she unfolded the page.

  Her eyes skimmed the document quickly the first time, then again, more slowly. She’d been right. Just as she’d suspected, his results were all clear.

  She exhaled a grateful sigh. There was nothing to worry about. But she’d needed to be sure—just in case there were other repercussions from that night.

  “That’s it, then,” she said, almost giddy with relief as she pushed away from the table to help clear it. “There’s no need for either of us to ever again mention what happened on New Year’s Eve.”

  He leaned back against the counter, holding her gaze for a long moment before he finally asked, “Are you sure about that?”

  She hugged the salad dressing bottles she carried closer to her chest and eyed him warily.

  “There are other potential consequences of unprotected sex,” he reminded her.

  She nibbled on her lower lip, as if she didn’t know where he was going with the conversation. Because she hadn’t expected him to go there, she hadn’t expected the possibility to cross his mind. And maybe it hadn’t. “What do you mean?”

  He continued to hold her gaze, his own unwavering. “I mean a baby,” he told her. “Is it possible you could be pregnant?”

  She shook her head as she turned away from him to put the dressings back in the fridge. “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the scowl in his voice. “Well, that’s the best I can do right now,” she admitted, shifting around some items in the door of the refrigerator to a
void facing him.

  “You’re not on the pill or the patch?” he pressed.

  “No.”

  “You didn’t take the morning-after pill?”

  She shook her head.

  He nudged her away from the fridge and firmly closed the door. “Why not?”

  “I—I didn’t think about it.”

  His hands settled on the counter behind him, his fingers curled over the edge. “You’re a doctor, Avery. You know how babies are made—and you know there are steps that can be taken to prevent a baby from being made, even after the fact.”

  She felt her cheeks burn, but she nodded. “You’re right. And I did get a package of morning-after pills from the clinic—the morning after.”

  “So why didn’t you take them?”

  “Because when I stopped at the hospital after I left the clinic, to check on Callie’s sister and her baby, something inside of me...yearned.”

  She’d hoped for some kind of understanding, but the darkness of his scowl warned her otherwise.

  “I know it sounds stupid,” she continued to explain, “but that’s how I felt. Then I got home and I sat at the table with the package in front of me, and I stared at it for a really long time. Because the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy completely freaked me out, but the possibility of a baby...somehow the possibility of a baby didn’t freak me out at all.”

  She looked at him, silently begging for his forgiveness—or at least acceptance. “I mean, I’m not a teenager, and I do want to have a baby someday, so I decided that if I did get pregnant, having a baby might not be the worst thing that could happen to me at this point in my life.”

  “Not the worst thing that could happen to you,” he echoed, pinning her with his hard and unyielding gaze. “Did you give any consideration to what it might mean to me? Did you think, for even one minute, about how a baby would affect my life?”

  “No.” She whispered the admission, ashamed that it was true. She hadn’t thought about him at all. She hadn’t thought about anything but how the possibility—minuscule as it might be—of having a baby filled her heart and soul with joy. “All I could think about, all that mattered, was that I might finally have the baby I’ve always wanted.”