by Lori Wilde
But she had trouble imaging him being a regular person. Leading a regular life. He seemed so different than most of the men she’d known.
She wanted to know more about him, but curiosity was a dangerous thing. Last night had been great. Stupendous in fact, but there was no reason to go back to that well. She’d gotten what she needed—fabulous sex. Why not just accept the gift and let it go? It wasn’t as if he had been panting to see her again.
Elle remembered the way Dante had looked at her afterward. As if he couldn’t distance himself fast enough from what they’d done together. Okay, fine. She was a big girl. She could handle that.
While she was trying to convince herself, her phone rang. She propped herself up on the pillow, checked the caller ID and then reached for the receiver. “Hello, Char.”
“Where are you?” Char asked.
“What do you mean where am I? It’s Saturday morning and I had a late night of it. I’m in bed.”
“You’re supposed to be here. Everyone’s asking where you are.”
“Here?”
“You forgot about the family reunion? We’re short an outfielder for the softball team and your mother wants to know if you’re bringing the potato salad like you promised.”
Elle groaned and immediately threw back the covers. Her feet hit the hardwood floor with a splat and she hurried to the bathroom with the cordless phone tucked against her chin. After her incredible sexual encounter with Dante, she had completely forgotten about the family reunion. “Char, tell everyone I’m so sorry and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You forgot about the family reunion? How could you forget about the family reunion? I swear someone in your family calls me twice a day to remind me about it,” Charlotte said.
“Look, some of us aren’t as new to the family as you. We’re not so enthused about the mandatory family reunion and the highly competitive softball tournament,” Elle said, trying to brush her hair and talk on the phone at the same time.
“What happened last night?”
“Excuse me?” she asked as she dabbed on foundation.
“You said you had a late night of it. It must have been some night to make you forget about the family reunion and get so snippy.”
Elle sighed. “I’m not being snippy—”
“Were you with Dante?” Char interrupted. “That would make me forget about a family reunion. Are you bringing him with you?”
“I’m not bringing Dante.” Elle’s voice rose.
“You don’t have to get testy. I was only asking.”
“Dante and I are not a couple.” She smoothed blush on her cheeks. “Why would I bring him to a family reunion?”
“For fun?”
“He’s not family.” Using her index finger she blended eye shadow over her lids.
“Sorry I asked. So I’ll tell your mother you’re coming and you’re bringing two gallons of mustard potato salad.”
“Two gallons?” Her makeup finished, she hurried back to the bedroom, twisting out of her sleep shirt as she went.
“That’s what she said. She thinks you’re making it yourself so you better put it in your own container.”
Elle groaned, pulled a pair of denim Capri pants from her drawer and shimmied into them.
At that moment the doorbell rang.
“Look, Char, someone’s at the door.” Fighting to hang on to the phone while she finished dressing, Elle put on a bra and then pulled a white baby-doll T-shirt over her head. “I gotta go, thanks for the heads-up and I’m sorry if I was snippy. I’ll see you guys in about two hours.”
“Two hours? Your dad’s going to have a conniption. The first game will be over by then. Why two hours?”
“My car isn’t here. I have to find someone to give me a ride to pick it up where I left it.”
“You did have a wild night last night.”
You have no idea, Elle thought.
“Hurry up,” Charlotte admonished. “It’s not the same without you.”
Elle hung up, figuring it was probably Vanessa dropping by to give her a ride to Pete Russell’s place to pick up her car. Quickly slipping on a pair of sneakers, she answered the door on the fourth chime of the bell.
But it wasn’t Vanessa standing on her stoop. Rather it was the very man she’d been telling herself she needed to forget.
Dante was dressed much as she was. In jeans that perfectly encased his long legs and a snug-fitting T-shirt that showed off his biceps, running sneakers and a Texas Rangers baseball cap.
He cocked a loaded grin at her. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said, unable to stop herself from smiling back.
“You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Your family reunion.”
Elle narrowed her eyes. “Did Char call you?”
Dante shook his head. “No, but she invited me. You don’t remember?”
What was going on here? Last night he had seemed cool and unaffected by what had transpired on the pool table, and now he was acting as if they were dating. Talk about mixed messages and mind games.
“I brought my bike,” he said. “It’s a nice day for a motorcycle ride, if you don’t mind riding double.”
“You have a bike?” She was a sucker for motorcycles and the men who rode them, while at the same time, as a nurse, she was well aware of the risks involved. Maybe that’s what excited her.
The danger.
He jerked his head in the direction of the street and she peered over his shoulder to see a sleek, shiny red-and-black Ducati motorcycle parked at the curb.
“You’re asking me out to my own family reunion?”
“You sound surprised.” He leaned in closer.
“After last night—”
“This is to make up for last night.”
“There’s nothing to make up for,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Last night happened, it was great, and I have no expectations from you. You don’t have to take me to my family reunion.” It was true. She didn’t have any expectations from him. Desires, yes, expectations, no.
“I was…” He hesitated. She could tell this was difficult for him by the way he self-consciously stuck his hands in his pockets and avoided her eyes. “Abrupt with you.”
His awkward apology was touching and she couldn’t resist the urge to rescue him. “Excuse me? Are you aware that we…um…made love for two hours? In my book that’s not exactly abrupt.”
“I meant afterward. I was abrupt with you afterward and that was wrong. I thought I might have made you feel…” His apology stalled again. Clearly he wasn’t used to this. But then what doctor was accustomed to confessing a mistake? None that she had ever met.
“The only thing you made me feel was great, Dante. There’s nothing to apologize for. We’re good. You have my blessing to go on about your life.”
For the first time since she’d known the man, he looked uncertain. “I was hoping,” he said, “that we could be better than good.”
Her heart scaled her throat. She wasn’t ready for this. Didn’t really want it. But the look in his eyes was doing very strange things to her stomach. “Meaning?”
“You’re potato chips, Elle.”
“Potato chips? Oh now that’s what every girl wants to hear.” If he didn’t look so earnest, she would have laughed.
“What I mean is, with you, a guy has a hard time stopping with just one moment. Like you can’t eat one potato chip.”
“Potato chips are bad for you.”
“True enough, but they taste so good.”
She did laugh then. “I suppose I should be flattered.”
“Okay, that sounded totally stupid,” he agreed. “I’m out of practice with this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing? Asking out nurses?”
“Asking out anyone.”
She sized him up. “I don’t believe it. Guys like you have to swat women off like flies.”
“Guys like me?”
/> “You know. Tall, dark, handsome and brooding.”
“That’s how you see me?”
“That’s how you are,” she said. “And the girls go ga-ga over that tortured-loner shtick.”
“Do you?” He stepped across the threshold and into her living room.
It was all she could do to keep from taking a step back. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her. “Do I what?”
He lowered his voice. “Go ga-ga over tortured loners?”
She laughed. “I’m a nurse. I see enough torture in my job. I prefer sunny and well-adjusted.”
“Is that why you married Mark?”
“Low blow.”
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I never said women didn’t ask me out. I said I was out of practice doing the asking.” His cocky grin was back. “Now I’m doing the asking.”
The sight of that smile caught Elle deep in the gut. He smiled so infrequently that when he did she treasured it like gold. Involuntarily, she licked her lips. “How come you’re out of practice asking women out?”
“Medicine is a demanding mistress.”
“So you’re a workaholic.”
“Aren’t most physicians?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m supposed to find workaholism appealing?”
“You’re not making this easy for me.”
“Why should I?”
“You’re going to make me work for this second date.” He took another step toward her. If he came any closer, the tips of their sneakers would be touching.
“Second date?” She raised her eyebrows and rubbed one foot against the back of her opposite heel. Stay still. Don’t let him know how much you want to cut and run. “We never had a first date.”
“What did we have?”
“A one-night stand.”
“I prefer to call it a romantic liaison.”
“What we had was much more elemental than any liaison,” she said.
“True,” he admitted. “But you stirred me in a way I haven’t been stirred in a very long time. I want more.”
“Potato chips again.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not ready for any kind of a relationship. I’ve been divorced for only fourteen months.”
He leaned in closer. She wanted to back up, get away from his distracting body heat, but she held her ground and met his gaze. “Did I say the word relationship?”
He had not.
“Come on,” he said with a casual shrug and another disarming grin that didn’t seem to come naturally to such a complicated man, but she could see he was trying. “What’s it going to hurt to spend one day playing softball with your family?”
“Obviously you don’t know my family.”
At that fortuitous moment her telephone rang again. It was probably her mother this time.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get that.” She inclined her head toward the door, a hint, using the phone call as her excuse to get rid of him before she did something totally stupid like take him by the hand, drag him into her bedroom and beg for a repeat performance of last night.
But Dante was having none of it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t mind waiting on you.”
Crap, he wasn’t leaving.
She turned and went to the phone, and she heard Dante click her front door shut behind him. It was official. He was in her house now. Encroaching upon her territory. She didn’t like it.
Elle picked up the phone, but she was so distracted by Dante’s presence behind her, she didn’t speak into the receiver. Her eyes kept running up and down the length of his long, masculine body. Without provocation, her mouth watered. She watched as he clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to study the figurines in her curio cabinet.
“Hello? Hello? Elle, you there?” Vanessa asked.
“Yes.”
“Listen, I’m at Confidential Rejuvenations.”
“What’s up?”
“I got called in for a minor emergency surgery and it’s turned into something of a three-ring circus.”
Elle heard the tension in her friend’s voice. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Something knocked out the transformer near the hospital and then the backup generator didn’t come on, so we’re a bit in the dark here.”
“Do you need me to come in? I could be there in a couple of minutes.”
“No, no, I just need the number of the company that services the generator. I thought you might have the info before I bothered Dr. Covey.”
“Sure.” Elle told her where to find the information. “You’re certain you don’t need me?” Having to go to work would be the perfect excuse for missing the family picnic and softball tournament.
“It’s really not a big thing. Mostly I’m handling patient grumbling. You know how it is when bigwigs don’t get their way.”
“I’m coming over.”
“No, no,” Vanessa said. “Enjoy your day off.”
“Okay, all right. And thanks for letting me know. Don’t hesitate to call if you need me.”
“Gotta go. I’ll give you all the details later. Have fun.”
Elle hung up to find Dante standing too near, crowding her space.
“I’ve got a ride waiting at the curb,” he said. “Ready to take you wherever you need to go.”
“I have to go to Pete Russell’s to pick up my car,” she said. “Then I have to go to the grocery store, pick up two gallons of potato salad, come back here, put it in one of my containers so my mother won’t know I didn’t make it myself and get over to Lady Bird Park in an hour.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“Tell me.”
“How about this,” he said. “We leave your car at Pete Russell’s for now. I make the potato salad and we cruise on over to the park with minutes to spare.”
“You know how to make potato salad?”
“I have talents you know nothing about,” he said slyly.
She narrowed her eyes. “Where did you learn how to make potato salad?”
“Kitchen duty in the army.”
“You were in the army.”
“Two years. That’s how I paid for college.”
“No kidding.”
He shrugged.
“So you weren’t always Dr. Armani with Gucci shoes and a Rolex?”
“Not by a long shot.” He rubbed his palms together. “Now the big question—do you have enough potatoes to make two gallons of potato salad?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I’ve got a next door neighbor who loves to cook. I’ll pop over and see if she’s got some spuds I could borrow. Seriously, you can make potato salad?”
“Seriously,” he said washing his hands at her kitchen sink. “And I can make it in about thirty minutes. Now, go see about those potatoes.”
8
FIVE MINUTES LATER they were standing side by side at Elle’s sink, peeling russet potatoes. On the stove, eggs came to a boil, steaming up her cozy kitchen in a way it hadn’t been steamed up in years. When she was married to Mark, he loved going out to eat, and since Elle was only a passable cook, she hadn’t minded.
But now, watching Dante’s thick, long fingers work the potato peeler with accomplished ease, she was beginning to understand how food could be very erotic.
A man who could cook—was there anything sexier?
From the corner of her eye, she watched him swiftly dice a potato on the cutting board and dump the slices into her big stainless-steel pot. She loved the way the muscles in his forearms bunched and the easy way he handled a knife.
But of course he would know how to use a blade—he was a surgeon. His job required precision, skill, nerves of steel.
Never in her life had she been so acutely aware of anyone. Of his elbow resting so close to hers, of his upper arm almost touching her shoulder, of his body heat, his overt masculinity.
Elle reached for the faucet to rinse off a potato at the very moment Dante did the same.
Their fingers bumped and she felt a wildfire of sensation spread throughout her nerve endings. Elle caught her breath and darted a glance in his direction.
His head was cocked to one side and he was staring at her with sultry, heavy-lidded eyes. Although he pressed his lips tightly together, she could see what he was trying to hide.
Stark, hungry need.
His eyes met hers and the air between them seemed to hold the promise of something so compelling she could not tear her gaze from his face.
There was no denying it. Both of them were breathing more quickly, and when he slowly reached out to brush a loose strand of hair from her forehead, Elle just froze.
Dante canted his head and studied her.
“What?” She reached up to touch the cheek he’d just singed with his fingers.
“I was thinking how beautiful you are,” Dante said.
“What’s going on?” she said, taking a step away from him, searching for some space. “What’s with the full-court press?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night, after we…um…”
“Made love,” he said.
“Had sex,” she replied firmly. “You were all, like, oops, big mistake. And then you show up on my doorstep and now you’re making potato salad for my family. What happened overnight?”
He shrugged. “Change of heart.”
“Well, I didn’t. Last night was better than great, but, Dante, I don’t want a relationship with you.”
“I don’t think I asked you for one.”
“So what do you want?”
He looked at her for so long without speaking she’d about given up on the idea of having her question answered when he said, “I suppose I’m trying to figure you out.”
“Huh?” She hadn’t expected him to say that.
“You’re a bit of an enigma, and that intrigues me,” he said.
I’m the enigma, she thought. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Elle had never been called an enigma before. If anything, she considered herself an open book. Sure, she had developed a talent for keeping her emotions under wraps since it was not only part of her job description as head nurse, but a skill she’d honed growing up in a family of cops.
“I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong girl. I’m not that interesting.” She dropped her gaze and concentrated on peeling the potato.