by London Casey
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Ry sighed. “At least I know I have some friends that won’t disappear because of my love life. Anyway, you need shoes.”
Lacking words to comfort him, Eden ducked her head and pushed diamond studs through her earlobes. The least she could do for him was be ready on time for their engagement, the Firefighter’s Association Ball. Ryan, a six-year veteran of the Alexandria Fire Department, had invited her every year that he’d attended since joining the department. This year’s event was being held at a posh hotel in Crystal City. It gave the firefighters a chance to socialize and express appreciation to their significant others and donors to the various funds. It also gave Ryan an opportunity to be seen with a woman.
Ry handed her a pair of strappy, narrow-heeled black sandals. She would have felt like a giant, at six feet tall in the heels, but Ry was still three inches taller than she. Eden smiled at him. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“What?” Eden asked, still smiling.
“Hmm. Just a moment.” Ry grabbed a container of shimmering powder off her dressing table and, shielding her dress with a towel, dusted it across the inner curve of her breasts, emphasizing her cleavage and completing her image as a foil.
“There,” he declared. “You’ll knock their socks off.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was a trophy,” Eden teased him, inspecting the effect of the powder.
Ry snorted ungraciously. “As if. Shall we?”
She snagged her evening bag and took his arm. “Absolutely.”
They took a taxi in order to avoid parking and because walking from the metro in formalwear, even through the underground network in Crystal City, was not an appealing prospect.
Ry patted her thigh when she checked her makeup again. “You look sensational.”
Eden grimaced. “Thanks. I hate that first moment when you are on display.”
“I know. I try not to notice the scrutiny.”
“Exactly.”
Ry handed tickets to the woman at the door. An usher led them to the single table set aside for Ryan’s station and as they wove between tables, Eden took the opportunity to appreciate the opulence of the formal event. The ballroom was lavishly decorated, with round tables for twelve set up throughout. A dance floor waited at the far end, just in front of the podium and head table. Eden squeezed Ry’s arm as they neared his station’s table. Several familiar faces already waited for them. The men stood as Ryan and Eden approached. Eden’s eyebrows rose when she spotted an unfamiliar pair of broad shoulders.
The stranger stood a couple of inches taller than Ry, which put him around six and a half feet. A classic single-breasted tuxedo stretched smoothly across his wide chest, which narrowed through his waist to lean hips and long, straight legs. He had the build of an endurance athlete, all ropey muscle and hard planes. The other men at the table fidgeted and tugged at their seams, but this man seemed relaxed in his tux. She raised her gaze past his black tie and over his tan throat to his face.
He was gorgeous. Drop dead, fall to your knees gorgeous. Black hair, cut into an almost military style, reflected the light of the chandeliers. He had slightly prominent cheekbones, and his tan skin stretched from those cheekbones to his square jaw, creating shadowed hollows. His nose reminded her of Renaissance statues, at once refined and strong. And his mouth. Oh, boy. Eden swallowed. She couldn’t even see the color of his eyes yet, and she was in trouble. Very big trouble. All she could see was his mouth—white teeth flashing between full lips. He had Michelangelo’s David’s mouth. Her breath caught and she had to force it out past her lips. What woman could resist that mouth?
Ry leaned over to whisper in her ear as they neared the table. “I know. He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
Eden nodded mutely.
They reached the table and exchanged greetings. Eden managed to maintain her smile until Ry introduced her to him.
“Eden, this is Seth Ripley. Seth transferred down from Philadelphia. Seth, this is Eden Thomas, one of my dearest friends.”
Seth. His name sighed in her mind, her internal voice repeating it, a whisper loaded with want. Goosebumps skimmed her bare back. She’d never spoken a man’s name in desire before. The brief daydream hit hard, caught her off-guard. Inhaling deeply, she extended her hand and managed, “Welcome to the team, Mr. Ripley.”
Storm clouds. His eyes were the turbulent blue-gray of storm clouds.
“You say that as if you were a part of it.” He quirked a brow at her. His eyes moved over her as he took her hand. A flash of electricity snaked up between her shoulder blades. His voice was shadowy, a little rough, like dark honey and sandpaper. She could barely hear over the roar of her pulse in her ears. This was not a good sign. “And it’s Seth.”
That phantom voice of hers struck again, whispering at the base of her skull. Nodding, mouth dry, she replied, “Seth, then. Please, call me Eden.”
He smiled. It was a dangerous, faintly predatory slash of white across his features. His eyes crinkled a little at the corners and a dimple flashed briefly, surprisingly, in one tan cheek. “Eden.”
He slowly released her hand, curling the slightly rough pad of his index finger around her wrist as he let go. Her pulse leapt alarmingly. Ry’s hand was steadying at her elbow as he pulled out her chair and guided her into her seat. The chair between Ryan and Seth. Eden took a moment to try to shake off her reaction. My, the man was potent.
“In a way, I suppose I am part of the team,” Eden responded to the earlier comment, looking up at him. “In addition to being Ry’s perpetual ornament, I put in some time at the hospital.”
Ryan tugged her hair.
“No offense,” she said, glancing at her friend and smiling wryly. “I like being an ornament, really.”
“What do you do at the hospital, Eden?” Seth asked, reclaiming her attention. The way he said her name, it slid across her skin. The goose bumps returned.
“I try to fix people,” she murmured, smiling, edging away from his heat. Ryan took the seat next to her.
“Don’t let her be modest, Seth. Eden is one fantastic trauma surgeon.” The vote of confidence was volunteered by one of the other firefighters.
Eden felt a blush stain her cheeks at the praise. “Thanks, Allen. For that kind of compliment, maybe I will let you take me to dinner one of these days.”
Allen let out a shout of laughter. “Take that, Ryan,” he stated smugly, wiggling his eyebrows. “You’d better hurry up and marry her, or I’ll steal her for sure.”
Ryan chuckled. “Yeah, well, don’t buy a wedding gift yet, Wright. Besides, what makes you think I’d worry about you?”
They were just getting settled when Cal Proctor arrived, followed closely by Jenna and Ric Rodriguez. Another round of greetings worked around the table. Eden used the opportunity to collect herself, taking a deep breath and smiling at the new arrivals, exchanging pleasantries. She was glad for the distraction. She could feel Seth’s eyes on her, taking stock even as he made conversation. What was thinking behind that assessing gaze? People were usually quick to assume she and Ry were lovers. Did he? She slid a glance toward him, and their gazes locked. His eyes narrowed fractionally, the storm clouds darkening. Her pulse stuttered. She quickly dragged her focus from him to the remainder of their company.
Eventually the official part of the evening began. The district head of the firefighters’ association opened the speeches before introducing the next speaker. The usual dry speech, this time by the Lieutenant Governor, reiterated the annual promise of increased funding for better equipment and more firefighters. Eden applauded in all the right places, laughed at the appropriate jokes, and couldn’t remember a single pertinent point from the entire episode. All of her energy went into keeping up the veneer of interest while she struggled to keep her breathing under control and her eyes from sliding over towards the man next to her.
Finally, the wait staff began the process of delivering salads. In the backgroun
d, the band hired for the event struck up a lilting version of an old jazz melody. Eden knew that after dinner, the floor opened for dancing. Generally, the festivities wound down around midnight, and she and Ryan were usually home shortly thereafter.
She slid her right hand over to brush Ry’s thigh in a years-old signal. He turned, bending his head towards her. She leaned to meet him, her face hidden from the rest of the table. She lowered her voice so that it barely reached his ears, and drifted no further. “How bad is he?”
Ry turned his face away from the table, into her hair. “I haven’t known him long, a few months. His reputation is solid with the team, and the scuttlebutt from the company he left is good. But I don’t know about his personal life.”
Eden closed her eyes, resisting the urge to comfort herself in Ry’s familiar scent. She felt a need to hide from Seth—and expose everything to him. “I think I want him.”
Ry squeezed her hand hard. “You know I’m here.”
“I know.”
The waitress slid a salad in front of Eden, effectively ending the conversation. She turned back to the table, feeling Seth’s gaze burning into her.
Conversation at the table had turned to domestic matters. Ryan spoke animatedly with the Rodriguez’ about their new house, a small Cape Cod not far from the station. Eden picked up the water glass in front of her to keep her hands busy. She nearly dropped the glass when Seth’s arm brushed hers. The shock of the contact seared through her body. She glanced over to see him looking down at her.
“Why trauma surgery?” He asked, an octave lower than the voices ebbing around them.
Eden exhaled slowly. How did he make such an innocent question intimate? And why couldn’t her heart and hormones have picked someone a little more reassuring?
Hoping to freeze her nerves, she swallowed a gulp of ice water before saying, “It’s Ryan’s fault. When we were ten, we were up in the tree house in my back yard and Ryan decided to show me how a diver gets momentum on a diving board. He jumped up, and when he came down, he was close enough to the edge that the tree house tipped, pulling out the nails holding it to the tree. Ryan ended up on the ground first, with me falling on top of him and the tree house on top of both of us.
“My mother rushed us to the hospital. I only had a broken arm. Ryan wasn’t so lucky. His left leg and arm were broken, both cleanly, but because of the way I had landed on top of him, he also had internal injuries. They had to operate. I found the whole concept entirely fascinating. I decided then that I needed to be a surgeon, and that the ER was the place for me. When I got to med school, we did rotations through the various specializations. My first day in the ER, I knew I had made the right choice. I got to try some of everything, but ER was it.”
The second she finished speaking, she decided she’d said too much. The man triggered some otherwise-buried instinct to babble. Or some self-consciousness about her relationship with Ryan.
Seth glanced at Ryan and Eden decided on the latter explanation for her lengthy reply. More than ever before, she wanted to communicate to this man that her feelings for Ry were entirely platonic. Watching Seth’s eyebrows draw together, she worried the childhood story didn’t deliver the desired message.
Jaw tight, Seth said, “He means a lot to you?”
She couldn’t lie. “The world.”
His attention returned to her, a considering light in his eyes. She glanced away from his scrutiny. Ryan’s career depended upon her allowing Seth to believe she and Ry were more than friends. She also knew if she didn’t give Seth some measure of the truth, he would call her off-limits and she would never know whether his kiss would scorch her mouth.
Hoping to blur the line of misinformation without outing her true role on Ry’s arm, she moistened her lips and met his eyes. “I adore him, but he is not mine. And I am not his.”
Seth lowered his head to speak in her ear. “Do you know what you’re doing, Eden?”
The low, throbbing question clutched at her stomach. She nodded and swallowed. His breath stirred her hair. Before he could say anything else, a waiter interrupted to replace salad plates with dinner plates. Feeling vulnerable and exposed, Eden stared at her plate and picked up her fork.
No matter how hard she focused on dinner, she could still feel Seth’s examination. The nape of her neck itched, her skin hot and uncomfortable. She needed a break. Much longer beside him and she would do something overt, something the others at the table would notice. Like kiss him, just to find out how he tasted. His intensity was consuming. What would it be like to make love with that kind of intensity? To feel it surging into her? Eden barely suppressed a shudder and fought to control her breathing. She had to clear her mind.
“What do you think, Eden?” Ry asked. Eden blinked. Adrift from the conversation, she had no idea what they were talking about. Ry threw her a rope. “I agree that Dr. Tesh is wonderful. Of course, I wouldn’t know much about her abilities as a doctor…”
Eden grasped the trailing end of his statement and smiled at Sarah Halstead. “Dr. Tesh is an excellent obstetrician. I have a great deal of respect for her. You were lucky to get on her schedule. When are you due?”
Sarah patted her slightly rounded tummy. “Five months to go.”
Eden smiled. “You’re in good hands.”
Beside her, Seth shifted in his seat. She concentrated on smiling and keeping her focus on Sarah, on ignoring the way he lightly brushed against her, threatening to shatter her composure. He had to be doing it on purpose. Obviously, her attempts at covering her reaction to him were not working.
She was surprised when Ryan asked her to dance. She hadn’t noticed her dinner plate disappearing or the couples streaming out to the dance floor. Reflexively, she put her hand in his with the ease of long habit. As she rose, she felt Seth’s eyes on her bare back, causing the hairs on her nape to rise. She followed Ry to the dance floor, becoming steadier the further she got from Seth Ripley.
Ry swung her into his arms as they reached the dance floor. “Better?”
She smiled weakly and sagged in his embrace. “Much. He is overwhelming.”
He propped her up without complaint and led through the steps. “I’ve never known you to react so strongly to a man. I’m a little worried. I think he could hurt you very badly, Eden.”
Eden hid her face against his throat. Her cheeks felt hot. Discussing sex with Ryan had never before left her in such a state of embarrassment. Part of her didn’t want to discuss her attraction to Seth. The other part, the part that had never hidden anything from her friend and had always turned to him for reassurance, confessed, “I want to know where he could take me.”
Ry’s Adam’s apple bobbed at her temple. He tightened his hold. “I don’t know that I would choose him as a first. I don’t think he’ll be tender or patient.”
“Maybe.” And she was surprised to realize she didn’t care. She snuck a peek past Ryan’s shoulder to find Seth watching them. His posture did not speak of softness and compassion. Eden shivered and closed her eyes. “Ry? How did you know it was right?”
“The first time, or the last time? I knew it was time for my first when I felt like my blood had turned into very hot molasses. As for love…” He laughed. “I felt like I’d been plugged into a light socket. I was sure my hair was standing on end.”
“Yeah. Touching him was exactly like that. A bolt of electricity that set this fire inside.”
“Well.” His hold loosened and he patted her hip. “I guess there isn’t more to say about that. Are you prepared for it?”
A little laugh burst out of her. “Yes and no. But I don’t intend to need to be ready tonight.”
Ry shot her a lopsided smile. “Intention or not, better safe than sorry.”
Seth shifted restlessly in his chair, not hearing his own stiffly murmured response to a comment from Sarah. His eyes kept returning to Eden. He distracted himself from the intimacies of family talk by wondering what game she was playing. Out on the dance fl
oor Eden stuck to Edwards like glue. According to Allen, she had been Edwards’ date to every function as long as anyone could remember. Everyone seemed to agree they were an item.
Edwards couldn’t have done better than the beautiful surgeon. Seth had been surprised at the shock of desire that had whipped through him when he first saw her. It was more than just the honeyed hair and feminine curves. There was something in the way she moved, in the way she held her head, in the depths of those lush green eyes. His desire had only sharpened at that first touch of her hand in his, coiling hotly through him despite the crowd and despite her companion. That was unusual for him, since a date usually cooled his ardor in a hurry. He didn’t cheat and he didn’t like cheaters. If he hadn’t felt that way before, his ex would have changed his mind.
One hand brushed Edwards’ cheek. It had the look of a gesture between long-time intimates. They were in close conversation, Edwards’ lips brushing her temple as they danced. Acid burned in the pit of his stomach as he watched Edwards pull her closer to him. She was definitely involved with him, so why had she implied otherwise? He was angry with her for making him feel his control sliding for the first time in years, and he was furious with himself for letting it happen. His jaw clenched and he deliberately turned his eyes from the dance floor to rejoin the conversation at the table. It meant nothing to him, he told himself. He didn’t have time to deal with games, even if they were played by a sexy little blonde with cat-green eyes. And he wouldn’t make the same mistakes he’d made in the past.
Chapter Two
Eden and Ry returned to the table after a few short dances. The couples from the table were out on the dance floor, and Allen and Seth were in deep debate about the merits of a new fire-suppressing foam. The time she’d spent talking with Ryan had cleared her head and shored up her confidence. Still, as Eden slid into her seat, the heat radiating from Seth’s body struck her anew. Desire snaked through her, surprising and unsettling. This would definitely take some getting used to.