Tempted in the Tropics

by Tracy March

  Lane entered the Ruritan Hall to the liveliest scene he’d ever encountered at a blood drive. He’d never witnessed so many enthusiastic people—most of them older—except at his former voting precinct in his parents’ hometown of Richmond, Virginia. The Red Cross would never have to beg for blood if the turnout for all of its drives was as good as this one.

  Heads turned as people realized the new doctor was there, those who recognized him likely cluing in the others who hadn’t seen him yet. Lane smiled and nodded, unused to all the attention. Red Cross volunteers staffed the registration table where he checked in, then a pleasant middle-aged woman settled him in to a lounge, took his vitals, then cleaned his arm and pricked it.

  “I’m a friendly vampire,” she said, smiling.

  “Too bad it’s not Halloween; your timing would be perfect.”

  An older lady who sat on the next lounger over wearing flip-flops in January grinned and said, “She’s gentle, too. She was my vampire last year. Didn’t hurt a bit.”

  “Back by popular demand?” Lane asked the phlebotomist.

  She smiled. “I’m here every year. Best blood drive I’ve staffed. The people in this town are so… I don’t know how to explain it. Kind. Giving. Eager to help. You don’t find that as much anymore.”

  “We’re a crazy old bunch,” the flip-flop lady said.

  Lane couldn’t argue. At least she hadn’t mentioned magic.

  After Lane was relieved of about a pint of blood, the gentle, friendly vampire put a bandage on his arm. After he’d sat quietly a while, she asked, “See you next year?”

  “Not likely. I’m just passing through.”

  “Too bad.” She smiled. “This place could use some young blood.” She gestured toward the back corner of the hall. “If you’re not feeling dizzy, head on over to the refreshment area and have a snack before you leave.”

  Lane made his way to the snack table, where a group of Red Hat ladies sat at a large round table, drinking orange juice from plastic martini glasses and eating cookies served on china plates. Nothing like making a party out of a blood drive.

  “Dr. Anderson!” one of the ladies exclaimed.

  Lane remembered seeing her as a patient a few days ago. Good thing she hadn’t had on the hat she was wearing now—a red cloche with a confetti of purple feathers randomly attached, presumably from the pair of purple birds precariously perched on top. He would’ve felt compelled to perform a thorough mental assessment of anyone who would willingly wear a hat like that, he thought with a smile. But in this context, it made more sense—if only just a little. Another woman wore a red boa, and a tiny white-haired lady wore a pair of purple-sequined suspenders and a red baseball cap with a curly W on the front.

  “Have a cookie.” Bird Hat Lady offered up a platter of cookies that looked like a picture from a recipe book.

  Lane picked an oatmeal-pecan-chocolate-chip concoction and took a big bite. “Wow,” he said before he even swallowed his first chunky-chocolaty-cinnamon bite. His Miss Manners mom would kill him if she were here. “These are awesome.”

  “Did you make a wish?” Nats Lady asked.

  He shook his head, eyebrows lowered. “Should I have?”

  The ladies looked knowingly at one another.

  “They’re magic,” Bird Hat Lady said. “Paige made them. All her mama’s recipes have a little magic in them. I had a brownie at Sweet Bee’s one day, then went over to the drugstore and won fifty dollars on a scratch-off.”

  Lane winced.

  “I lost five pounds eating fat-free muffins,” another woman said. “That’s magic enough for me.”

  “I’ve got you all beat,” Nats Lady said. “I bought one of those Nats pies before the World Series. Ate a slice during every game—and they won!”

  Lane caught her eye. “Go Nats!”

  “World Series champs.” She raised her orange-juice martini and took a sip. She’d probably freak out if she knew Lane was going to play his guitar for Cole Collins’s wedding.

  A lady sitting next to her said, “I hear you don’t believe in Paige’s Special Recipes.”

  Here we go.

  “You can ask her about it yourself,” said one of the women who hadn’t yet spoken. She pointed at something behind Lane and he turned.

  In the corner, Paige stood behind a table, serving cookies and happily chatting with her dad and a bald man wearing overalls. Lane’s heart leaped at the sight of her wearing snug jeans and a long-sleeved pink T-shirt with a yellow Sweet Bee’s logo on the front, her hair all long and loose. Her dad whispered something to her and she tipped up her chin and laughed out loud, not seeming the least bit self-conscious. Had he ever seen Stephanie that relaxed and comfortable with herself? Or any of the prim-and-proper girls he’d dated over the years?

  He turned back to the Red Hat ladies. “You all enjoy yourselves. Thanks for the cookie.”

  “Cheers,” they said, nearly in unison, and lifted their glasses to him. He had a sneaking suspicion they’d done that plenty of times before, and not necessarily with orange juice.

  He debated whether to sneak by Paige and leave, or grab another cookie and sit for a few minutes as he knew he should after donating blood. The last thing he was in the mood for was a rehashing of the dinner at Hawthorne Manor or an argument about freakin’ magic. He’d gotten his travel information from the agent handling the wedding arrangements, so maybe that was something they could talk about that wouldn’t be contentious.

  Paige was restocking some of the cookie varieties when he walked over, so she hadn’t seemed to see him coming. “Would you like a cookie?” she asked pleasantly without looking up, then she lifted her head. “Oh.” She gazed at him flatly, all signs of the carefree, happy girl he’d seen a minute ago gone.

  Lane swallowed hard. “The Red Hat ladies gave me an oatmeal-chocolate-cinnamon-pecan-awesome one.”

  Paige glanced over at the group of women who appeared more than casually curious about their conversation. She shook her head and flashed them a genuine there’s-nothing-to-see-here smile. By the time she faced him again, her smile was gone.

  Suddenly Lane felt a little light-headed. Had giving blood made him feel faint, or was he dizzy from trying to keep up with her changing expressions?

  “Have another one if you want,” she said. “Or a different kind.” She shrugged. “Whatever.”

  For some masochistic reason, he was determined to have a conversation with her. “Did you get your travel information for St. Lucia?”

  “Sure did.”

  “I’ve got an early flight out of BWI.” He picked up a half-chocolate, half-vanilla cookie. “You?”

  She treated him to a slow, sexy grin. “I’ve got an early one, too…out of Dulles.”

  Hearing she didn’t have to travel with him had finally made her smile.

  Chapter Seven

  Lane had made it all the way through customs in the Hewanorra airport in St. Lucia, and he hadn’t seen anyone he recognized. Not that he’d recognize too many people who were coming to the wedding. But he expected he might run into someone he knew, especially once he arrived, although his parents weren’t getting in until late that night. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the e-mail he’d printed from the travel agent. The next thing he needed to figure out was how he was actually getting from here to the resort.

  “I think I’ve got what you’re looking for,” a woman said from behind him.

  He turned to see Paige standing there with a smart-ass smile on her face and a suitcase nearly as big as she was. His heart threatened arrhythmia as he checked out her incredibly sexy legs that seemed to go on forever even though she wasn’t tall. Nice. She wore short shorts and a snug tie-dyed T-shirt that had him nearly dizzy with all the colorful swirls rising over the swell of her breasts. Her hair—minus the pink stripe—was swept back in a sleek ponytail with a few stray strands framing her face. Lane hoped she didn’t notice the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard. Things were s
tarting to feel pretty tropical already. He flashed her a genuine smile. She definitely had what he was looking for, but they were too different and too pissed off at each other to do anything about it.

  She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, riveting his attention. “I think we’re heading to the resort together.”

  At least she was speaking to him in full sentences now, but he could tell this wasn’t the setup she preferred. “You’ve got the transportation details?”

  She reached into the back pocket of her blessedly short shorts and came out with a set of keys dangling from her delicate fingers. “We have an SUV.”

  Lane’s stomach clenched. “You’re driving? Everything’s opposite here, you know. Driver on the right side of the car, car on the left side of the road.”

  “Awesome, right? I’ve never driven like that before.”

  He winced. “Good to know.”

  She shrugged one of her shoulders. “I figured we’d go to the drive-in volcano on the way.”

  “Drive-in volcano?”

  “Yep.” She reached into her tote bag, pulled out a brochure with a smoky gray pit shown on the front, and handed it to him. “Simmering, steamy, and sulfur-smelling.”

  Lane scrunched his nose, then gazed straight into Paige’s eyes. “You had me at simmering and steamy.”

  She held his gaze for a beat, then blinked, a sultry smile at the corners of her mouth. “Good to know.”

  Was she actually flirting with him? The other day he could barely get an entire sentence out of her. Maybe being in the tropics, two thousand miles away from Maple Creek, had them seeing things from a different perspective. Or she just felt stuck with him until they got to the resort, and she didn’t want an argument about who was going to drive.

  They headed out to the SUV and Lane loaded their luggage. Paige settled in the driver’s seat, with him riding shotgun. As much as he’d rather be driving, he’d have a hard time concentrating on the road with Paige sitting next to him, her smooth, toned, and distractingly bare legs stretched out in front of her. He’d been trained to look at bodies clinically, but legs like hers really challenged his discipline.

  “Since you’re stuck with me until we get to the resort…,” Paige said. Had she read his mind? The magic thing was making him a little paranoid. “I was thinking we could call a truce.”

  So she’d been setting him up with her flirting. Whatever her reasons, he had to admit he’d enjoyed it. “A truce?”

  She nodded. “I kind of apologize for what I wrote in the letter to Mrs. Hawthorne.”

  “You kind of apologize?” Of course she couldn’t say she was sorry like a normal person.

  “Take it or leave it, Doc.”

  Lane tapped his fingers on the console, deliberately making her wait. “Guess I’ll take it, if that’s the best you can do.” He winked. “And I sort of regret how things have gone, too.”

  One corner of her mouth turned up as she put the key in the ignition.

  “Sure you don’t want me to drive?” he asked.

  She raised one of her perfectly arched eyebrows. “That would be against the law, Doctor. You haven’t filled out the proper forms and, as I recall, you’re quite a tight-ass about the rules.”

  She was right. He had come across as a tight-ass, and for good reason. But she had no idea what his reasons were, and he wasn’t going to explain them to her now. “Did you just call me a tight-ass?”

  Paige surprised him by blushing a little, then nodding defiantly and setting her chin.

  “Were you talking figuratively or literally?” He surprised himself with the question. Was he actually flirting with her? A rush of excitement buzzed through him like a couple of energy drinks’ worth of caffeine.

  “Yes.”

  He laughed for the first time in who knew when.

  She smiled, seeming pleased with herself, and started the engine. “Buckle up, Doc. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.”

  …

  Lane had caught Paige’s eye from all the way across the airport—all tall and sexy, with his usual messy hair, dressed in worn-out jeans and a sort-of-snug T-shirt the same shade of green as his eyes. Thanks to the tee, she’d gotten her first glimpse of his ropy arm muscles, and a tease of six-pack abs when he’d lifted their luggage into the SUV. Sylvia and Liza couldn’t have hooked her up with a hotter travel companion, but they could’ve picked one she could actually get along with. Even so, she wasn’t going to let that stop her from seeing the sights she’d picked on the way to Caldera.

  Driving was a little trickier than Paige had thought. She’d managed to handle the opposite-side-of-the-car, opposite-side-of-the-road thing pretty well, but the real freak-out was the crazy local drivers whipping their pickups around the hairpin turns on the mountain roads with a bunch of St. Lucians chilling in the back as if they weren’t in danger of getting tossed out on their heads.

  “Ever thought about starting a practice here?” she asked Lane. “Looks like you’d have a lot of patients. Who knows how many people get thrown out of those trucks every day. And people drive like nuts.” She swerved to avoid an oncoming car that had veered onto their side of the road.

  Lane jerked his head toward the passenger window, no doubt checking out the steep drop-off they’d be tumbling down if Paige had overcorrected. “You’re a regular Danica Patrick.”

  She wished she could see his expression, but she could be risking their lives with just a glance.

  He reached over, pinched a lock of her ponytail between his fingers, smoothed it down to the end, and tugged gently. Shocked by his bold move, Paige’s insides fluttered as she struggled to concentrate on the road.

  “What happened to the pink stripe?” he asked.

  “I had to ditch it for the wedding. It would’ve totally clashed with my Orioles orange bridesmaid dress.”

  “Orange?” He sounded as if he liked the idea about as much as Paige did—even less than not at all.

  “You know the Sutherlands and their ties to the Orioles. Most of Liza’s and Sylvia’s clothes are black or orange…or both. Since the Nats won the World Series, Cole told Liza she could have the Orioles colors for their wedding.”

  “Pretty generous of him, considering.” Lane shook his head. “Black and orange. They should’ve just waited for Halloween.”

  “For real.”

  Had they just agreed on something? Surely this couldn’t last.

  “I’m all for making my BFF’s wedding day perfect,” she said, “but orange is definitely not my color.”

  “But the pink stripe in your hair was really working for you.”

  Her stomach fluttered. “It was?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  Paige debated—for once—whether to say what she was thinking. But then she figured there was no reason to change who she was for him. “I didn’t get the idea you thought anything about me was working.”

  They were on a short straightaway, so she risked a glance at him, catching him with his eyebrows raised and his kissable lips slightly parted. “Then maybe I gave you the wrong idea.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I thought this was a drive-in volcano,” Lane said as soon as they pulled into the parking lot at Sulphur Springs.

  Paige whipped the SUV into the first available spot and cut the engine. “Not exactly, but that’s what they call it. From what I could tell when I researched it, we have to walk up to an overlook to behold the geological wonder of it all.”

  Lane scrunched his nose at the first whiff of sulfur. “But we don’t have to go far to smell it.”

  Paige crinkled her nose, too. “We’ll get used to it, won’t we? People always come into Sweet Bee’s and say how awesome it smells, but I don’t even notice anymore.”

  “It’s called sensory adaptation.”

  She lowered her eyebrows, a shallow crease forming between them. “I shoulda figured there was some doctor lingo for it.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Well, let’s go so w
e can hurry up and adapt.”

  Lane got out of the SUV, jogged around, and opened the door for Paige. He’d been raised to be a gentleman—and, whether they got along with each other or not, he didn’t want to miss seeing her getting out of the SUV in those short shorts. Okay, not very gentlemanly, but beneath his doctor persona, he was a normal red-blooded guy. And any normal, red-blooded guy would be crazy to miss that show.

  He watched Paige as she stepped down, hoping his sunglasses would keep her from catching his gaze lingering where it shouldn’t.

  “Let’s go see this volcano that you’re all worked up about.”

  “Who’s all worked up?” she asked as they headed to buy their tickets.

  “You are. You said you researched the place—you even have the brochure. Where do you get brochures anymore?”

  “In the airport while you’re waiting for an uptight doctor’s plane to land.” She bunched her lips.

  Lane gently grabbed her elbow and stopped her. “Uptight doctor?” She’d struck a raw nerve, calling him that again after she’d kind of apologized for doing it before. But did she have a point?

  He’d had structure in his life since the moment he was conceived. His parents had planned everything out for him even before that. It had paid off, getting him through med school and residency, and the opening and operation of a successful practice—for a while. He’d found a fiancée who’d fit the mold, too…until she’d broken it and crushed it to bits. His parents still had no idea about the extent of what she’d done. Her professional misconduct had been widely reported, but her personal betrayal of him was too painful—and embarrassing—to share with anyone. Better for people to think it was the fallout from the pill-prescribing scandal that had come between them.

  So much for what he’d gotten from structure. Maybe it was time for him to do something totally spontaneous for a change. Something unplanned and temporary—maybe even risky.

  He leaned in close to Paige and said with a low drawl, “By the time we leave this island, you’ll know better than that.”