“I’m not living with him,” she argued. “I’m just staying here temporarily.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Has he done this sort of thing before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why do you suppose he picked you?”
Allie frowned. “If I knew that, this would be a whole lot less complicated.”
“Sometimes love is only as complicated as we choose to make it.”
“Whatever that means.”
“It means, my darling girl, that love itself is simple. Resisting it is what makes it tricky. You’re busy finding excuses for not being in love, instead of seizing it as the wonderful gift it is.”
“Don’t two people have to seize it at the same time?”
Jane grinned at the plaintive question. “That does help,” she agreed. “Maybe I’ll explain the concept to Ricky when he drives me home later this afternoon.”
“Don’t you dare. I don’t want him to think we’ve spent the whole day sitting around talking about him.”
“But that is exactly what we have done,” Jane said.
“Then it’s time to change the subject. How are things with you and your sister?” she asked, knowing it was a question that was guaranteed to send Jane off on another tangent. “They can’t be too bad, because you look fabulous. You’ve even got a new haircut. Very flattering. You look ten years younger. You let the hairdresser put a blond rinse on it, too, didn’t you?”
“I know what you’re doing,” Jane responded pointedly, even though she looked pleased by the compliment. “But I’m not going to forget about this business with Ricky.”
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to come along when he takes you home so I can protect my own interests.”
“Suit yourself,” Jane said easily. “As for my sister, the woman is flat-out crazy. Do you know what she’s done now?”
Allie settled back for the tirade, relieved not to have to defend her feelings for Ricky for the moment. Maybe things would be better after tomorrow. She intended to go back to work. They wouldn’t be spending nearly as much time together. And soon she would move out.
That would be the real test, she concluded. If something were meant to happen between her and Ricky, then her moving to her own place wouldn’t be the end of things. She resolved to start looking for a short-term rental the minute she finished up her first day back at the clinic on Monday.
Unfortunately, events conspired against her.
Her last patient was four-year-old Kimi Foley and she could see why Gina had expressed concern about the little girl. She wasn’t keeping up with her sign language lessons nearly as well as Allie had hoped she would.
“Are you mad at me?” the child signed at the end of the session, her expression worried.
“Never,” Allie reassured her, giving her a hug.
“But I keep forgetting.”
“That’s okay. You just need a little more practice at home.”
Kimi’s sweet little face fell. “How? Nobody at home will learn.”
Allie bit back a curse. Jessica Foley was a good mother, but she was overwhelmed by the responsibility of four other children besides Kimi. Coping with Kimi’s hearing loss was more of a burden than she’d been able to manage so far. Getting her daughter to the clinic for the twice-a-week sessions was about all she’d been willing to do. Staying for her own classes had been out of the question. She had flatly refused.
“I’ll pick it up from Kimi,” she had assured Allie, but the futility of that promise was increasingly evident.
As for Derrick Foley, he worked two jobs to try to provide for his family. He’d picked Kimi up on a few occasions and, though the love he had for his little girl was obvious, he still seemed to be in a state of denial that her disability was permanent and required any sort of adjustments on his part to help her deal with it. When he spoke to her, he raised his voice as if somehow that would help her to hear him.
The Foleys weren’t the first family Allie had seen struggle to adapt to the needs of a hearing-impaired child, but it never failed to sadden her. As in her own case and Kimi’s, it seemed to be worse when the hearing loss was sudden and unexpected.
“You and I will work harder,” she told Kimi. “And I’ll speak to your mom again about lessons. If she can’t do it, what about your older sister. She’s ten, right?”
The child’s expression brightened at the suggestion. “Marty would do it. I know she would.”
“Then I’ll see if I can arrange it,” Allie promised.
“I love you,” Kimi signed.
“I love you, too,” Allie told her. “Now let’s go outside and see if your mom’s here.”
Mrs. Foley was sitting in her car, waiting at the curb. Allie walked Kimi to the car, but when she tried to speak to her mother, Mrs. Foley waved her off with the announcement that she was running late. She pulled away from the curb before Allie could say a word.
Allie sighed heavily and dragged back inside. Apparently, she wasn’t nearly as recovered as she’d thought she was. She was exhausted, but she was determined to stick around for the weekly staff meeting.
Gina took one look at her and vetoed her plan. “You’re pale. You need to go home.”
“I’m back full-time,” Allie insisted to her boss. “Give me five minutes to grab a cup of coffee, and I’ll join you in the conference room.”
She had assumed that Gina accepted her word as final, but apparently she was wrong. The meeting had barely started when it was interrupted by Ricky’s arrival. Gina beamed at him.
“You made good time,” she said.
“You called him?” Allie asked, stunned by the betrayal.
“We had a deal,” Gina said. “I was to call if you resisted my common sense advice. Now go home. Get some rest. We’ll see you in the morning.”
Sorely tempted to plant herself right where she was and refuse to budge, she changed her mind when she met Ricky’s determined gaze. She could always quit just to express her displeasure, but she managed to leave the room without taking such a drastic step. She loved her job. And tomorrow she would tell Gina that she was perfectly capable of deciding whether she felt well enough to spend an hour at a stupid staff meeting.
Since that discussion had to wait, she settled for snapping at Ricky. “Why aren’t you back at work?”
“I was. And I’ll be there again as soon as I get you home. I have my beeper on, in case they need me in the meantime.”
“I don’t appreciate you barging in here like this,” she said as she gathered up the work she intended to do at home that night.
“I didn’t barge in,” he said patiently. “Your boss called me.”
“She had no business doing that.”
“She cares about you.”
“That’s very sweet, I’m sure, but I can look after myself.”
“Then do it. Go home and take a nap.”
“I’m not tired,” she said, perfectly aware that she sounded like a sullen child resisting bedtime.
“So you say,” he retorted mildly.
Naturally, she had to go and prove him right. Five minutes in the car and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She wasn’t even aware of arriving at the house. She woke up as he shifted her into his arms to carry her inside.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, struggling to get down.
It was a wasted effort. He merely chuckled and held on tighter, clearly unimpressed by her grouchiness. “Three guesses what I’m doing.”
She pushed against the solid wall of his chest. “Put me down.”
His gaze locked with hers. “Give me a break, Allie. Two minutes in my arms, maybe three. Is that so much to ask?”
Incredulity replaced indignation. “What are you saying, that you’re enjoying this?”
He settled her a little more tightly against his chest. “What do you think?”
If she were forced to be totally honest, it wasn’t so bad from her perspective, either. She sighed and
relented, then looped an arm around his neck. “Go for it, Wilder. Enjoy yourself.”
She had to admit that snuggling against him wasn’t exactly a sacrifice. The only problem would be that when they got to her bed, he was going to unceremoniously dump her there and leave her all alone.
She pressed her face against his neck. But for two minutes, maybe three, she could pretend that he might not.
Ricky was pretty sure Allie Matthews was going to drive him out of his mind. Now that they were both back at work, they were uneasily struggling to fit into each other’s routines. He’d actually believed that once they were both out of the house, life would be less complicated. He’d anticipated giving her a wide berth so he could keep his hormones in check, but it wasn’t turning out quite that way.
She was on his mind night and day. He told himself it was because he hadn’t slept with her. If they’d gotten that out of the way, he wouldn’t feel this constant aching need. He would be halfway to being over her.
Instead, he was sex deprived and sleep deprived. With every moment that passed, he felt himself more and more drawn to Allie’s amazing serenity, her strength and determination to recover fully and to reclaim her shattered life. Of course, her tendency to want to rush it annoyed him. She was going to have a relapse if she kept it up.
Monday had been a perfect example. When he’d gone to pick her up at school, it was plain that she was dead on her feet, but she’d still been furious because he and Gina had conspired to make her go home. If the woman didn’t have sense enough to know when to call it quits, how was he supposed to believe she had sense enough to know her own mind when it came to him? Fortunately, he’d been smart enough not to ask her that. The memory of the last time he’d made that suggestion still burned in his head.
He sighed heavily, glanced up and suddenly realized he was surrounded by half a dozen grinning firefighters.
“What?” he demanded.
“Definitely a woman,” one of them said with a knowing expression on his face.
“Has to be,” another agreed.
“The beautiful Allie,” Tom informed them. “She has our Enrique dancing at the end of a string.”
He frowned at the teasing. “I am not…”
“Were you or were you not completely unaware that we have been standing here for the past ten minutes?” Tom asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Were you or were you not occupied with thoughts of your lovely houseguest?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
Tom took a mocking bow as the others hooted. “I rest my case.”
“You want to talk about women?” Ricky inquired lazily. “Shall we discuss the ex-wife who is never far from your thoughts? Shall we mention the fact that you have been dropping by her house, interviewing her damn dates?”
“I have not,” Tom began, his face flushed with indignation. “Okay, I have been over there a few times.”
“I rest my case,” Ricky said.
“We’re both a couple of saps,” Tom concluded sorrowfully.
“Speak for yourself,” Ricky retorted. “You’ve been there, done that. You ought to know better. I’m still feeling my way here.”
“An interesting turn of phrase,” one of his co-workers declared. “What do you suppose he means by that, men?”
“Oh, go to blazes,” Ricky muttered.
“Not a suggestion to be made lightly in a fire station,” Tom pointed out, then sighed. “But I understand the sentiment.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Ricky asked.
“Like I would know,” Tom responded woefully.
“Then leave me alone to think,” Ricky pleaded. “I have to figure this out.”
What was it about Allie? She was nothing like the women who usually attracted him. He was used to glib chatter and easy flirting. Allie got charmingly rattled at his teasing.
Moreover, he found that she expected—no, demanded—more, in her quiet, intense way. It was the way she looked at him, disappointment in her eyes, when he evaded a question or offered a less-than-truthful response. She always seemed to know, too, which was as disconcerting as it was flattering.
Then there was his family. They had taken to Allie as if she were one of their own. Each one of his sisters had called to express approval. His mother had taken him aside on Sunday to ask a million and one questions about his relationship with the woman living in his house. Even his father had commented at dinner that he considered Allie to be a keeper.
“The woman’s got a good, level head on her shoulders,” his father had told him. “You could do worse.”
Even the kids had chimed in, his nephews declaring Allie to be “a real babe.”
He frowned at each of the boys in turn. “What do you know about babes?”
“Hey, we’re guys, too,” Ray had declared, skinny little chest puffed out.
“And Mama says if we’re not careful, we’re gonna turn out to be flirts like you,” Maria’s oldest chimed in. “She says it as if it’s a bad thing.”
Ricky had glanced across the table at his sister. “A bad thing?”
“If all you do is flirt and never take any woman seriously, you’ll wind up all alone in your old age,” she said.
“Don’t you think it’s a little soon to be worrying about my old age?” he inquired.
“You’re thirty, baby brother,” Elena pointed out.
“By now you should have two or three children,” his mother declared. “It’s your responsibility to see that your father’s name is carried on.”
“Don’t put pressure on him,” his father said, in a rare contradiction of his wife. “Marriage is a big step. He shouldn’t take it before he’s ready.”
“Somebody has to push him,” Maria said. “Otherwise he’ll still be dating when he’s in the old folks’ home.”
“You’re just jealous because I’ve been with more than one woman and you’ve spent your entire life with one man,” Ricky had taunted.
His sister’s cheeks had flushed, and she’d reached for her husband’s hand. “When you find the best right off, there’s no need to waste time sifting through second bests. Which reminds me, baby brother, you owe us a weekend of baby-sitting.”
Ricky envied the love glowing in her eyes as she and Benny exchanged a long look. “I’ll check my calendar, and we’ll work it out,” he promised. “Try to keep your hands off each other until then. There are children in the room.”
“You’re just jealous, niño.”
“Okay, enough,” his father declared. “Leave the man alone. He will do whatever he’s going to do without our interference.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Ricky said.
“Don’t thank me. I’m one of those who think you’re a fool if you let Allie get away. I’m just not going to waste my breath trying to convince you.”
As Ricky recalled the exchange, he felt the same pressure building up inside him. His family had too many expectations. By contrast, it appeared Allie had none. She hadn’t asked for anything except a little honesty, a little less interference. Worse, he had a hunch she was gearing up to move out, and he had no idea how to stop her.
When his shift finally ended, he debated accepting Tom’s invitation to stop off for a few beers but finally declined.
“Going home?” Tom asked. “Do you and Allie have plans?”
“No, no plans.” Now that she was getting a ride home with one of her friends, he couldn’t even be sure she would be there, but he wanted to head over there in case she was.
“What about later?” Tom asked. “Want to get together? Maybe go on a double date?”
Ricky regarded him with curiosity. “You have a date?”
“With Nikki,” he confessed.
“That’s a surprise. How’d you convince your ex to go on a date?”
“Actually, I told her you and Allie would be along to chaperone. She’s anxious to meet the woman who has you tied in knots.”
“What happens if we
don’t show up?”
“My goose is cooked. She’ll probably refuse to leave the house,” he said, looking totally dejected.
Ricky took pity on him. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you at Nikki’s in an hour.”
Tom’s expression brightened. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Yes. You do.”
When he got home, he found Allie in the kitchen staring at the contents of the refrigerator. She was barefoot and dressed in shorts and a tank top. She’d scooped her hair into a careless ponytail. She looked as if she was barely out of her teens and sexy as sin, all at the same time. He had to resist the urge to sneak up behind her and press a kiss to her bare nape.
“I know you’re there,” she said, startling him. She turned slowly, her expression serious.
“How did you know that?”
A grin tugged at her lips. “It’s probably best that I keep that little secret to myself. It comes in handy.”
He decided that was worth further thought at another time. “You can close the refrigerator door,” he said. “We’re going out for dinner.”
He wasn’t sure what reaction he’d expected to his announcement. Even as he uttered the words, he realized he should have phrased it as a question. To his surprise she seemed relieved.
“Good thing. The cupboard is bare. Where are we going?”
For some reason her unexpected agreeability annoyed him. “That’s it? Just okay and where are we going?”
She gave him a perplexed look. “Did you want an argument?”
“Not really, but I usually get one.”
“You mean because you’re usually issuing edicts, rather than inquiring about my preferences?”
He winced at the direct hit. “Pretty much.”
She laughed. “Every once in a while your arrogance coincides with my own desires. Why waste time arguing when that happens? I don’t fight with you just for the thrill of it.”
“Funny. I was beginning to think that was how you got your kicks,” he murmured, forgetting for a moment that just keeping his voice low wouldn’t prevent her from knowing what he’d said.
To emphasize his mistake, she tapped his lips. “I saw that.”
Her touch, as light and teasing as it was, set off all the pent-up hunger he’d been fighting for days. He reached for her and dragged her to him, his mouth closing over hers just as she uttered a little gasp of surprise.
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