by Diana Palmer
Then he came to supper the following Saturday, and she found herself dropping pots and pans and getting tongue-tied at the table while the three of them ate the meal she’d painstakingly prepared.
“You’re a very good cook,” Bentley told her, smiling.
“Thanks,” she replied, flushing even more.
Kell, watching her, was amused and indulgent. “She could cook even when she was in her early teens,” he told Bentley. “Of course, that was desperation,” he added with a sigh.
She laughed. “He can burn water,” she pointed out. “I had so much carbon in my diet that I felt like a fire drill. I borrowed a cookbook from the wife of one of his buddies and started practicing. She felt sorry for me and gave me lessons.”
“They were delicious lessons,” Kell recalled with a smile. “The woman was a cordon bleu cook and she could make French pastries. I gained ten pounds. Then her husband was reassigned and the lessons stopped.”
“Hey, a new family moved in,” she argued. “It was a company commander, and she could make these terrific vegan dishes.”
Kell glared at her. “I hate vegetables.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” she shot back. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a good squash casserole.”
Kell and Bentley exchanged horrified looks.
“What is it with men and squash?” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I have never met a man who would eat squash in any form. It’s a perfectly respectable vegetable. You can make all sorts of things with it.”
Bentley pursed his lips. “Door props, paperweights…”
“Food things!” she returned.
“Hey, I don’t eat paperweights,” Bentley pointed out.
She shook her head.
“Why don’t you bring in that terrific dessert you made?” Kell prompted.
“I guess I could do that,” she told him. She got up and started gathering plates. Bentley got up and helped, as naturally as if he’d done it all his life.
She gave him an odd look.
“I live alone.” He shrugged. “I’m used to clearing the table.” He frowned. “Well, throwing away plastic plates, anyway. I eat a lot of TV dinners.”
She made a face.
“There is nothing wrong with a TV dinner,” Kell added. “I’ve eaten my share of them.”
“Only when I was working late and it was all you could get,” Cappie laughed. “And mostly, I left you things that you could just microwave.”
“Point conceded.” Kell grinned.
“What sort of dessert did you make?” Bentley asked.
She laughed. “A pound cake.”
He whistled. “I haven’t tasted one of those in years. My mother used to make them.” His pleasant expression drained away for a few seconds.
Cappie knew he was remembering his mother’s death. “It’s a chocolate pound cake,” she said, smiling, as she tried to draw him out of the past.
“A lot of people can’t eat chocolate, on account of allergies,” she said.
“I don’t have allergies,” Bentley assured her. “And I do hope it’s a large pound cake. If you offered to send a slice home with me, I might let you come in an hour late one day next week.”
“Why, Dr. Rydel, that sounds suspiciously like a bribe,” she exclaimed.
He grinned. “It is.”
“In that case, you can take home two slices,” she said.
He chuckled.
Watching them head into the kitchen, Kell smiled to himself. Cappie had been afraid of men just after her bad experience with the date from hell. It was good to see her comfortable in a man’s company. Bentley might be just the man to heal her emotional scars.
“Where do you want these?” Bentley asked when he’d scraped the plates.
“Just put them in the sink. I’ll clean up in here later.”
He looked around quietly. The kitchen was bare bones. There was an older microwave oven, an old stove and refrigerator, a table and chairs that looked as if they’d come from a yard sale. The coffeepot and Crock-Pot on the counter had seen better days.
She noticed his interest and smiled sadly. “We didn’t bring a lot of stuff with us when we moved back to San Antonio. We sold a lot of things to other servicemen so we wouldn’t have to pay the moving costs. Then, after Kell got wounded, we sold more stuff so we could afford to pay the rent.”
“Didn’t he have any medical insurance?”
She shook her head. “He said there was some sort of mix-up with the magazine’s insurer, and he got left out in the cold.” She removed the cover from the cake pan and got out cake plates to serve it on. Her mother’s small china service had been one thing she’d managed to salvage. She loved the pretty rose pattern.
“That’s too bad,” Bentley murmured. But he was frowning behind her, his keen mind on some things he recalled about her mysterious brother. If Kell was friendly with the local mercs, it was unlikely he’d gotten to know them in the military. They were too old to have served anytime recently. But he did know that they’d been in Africa in recent years. So had Kell. That was more than a coincidence, he was almost sure.
His silence made her curious. She turned around, her soft eyes wide and searching.
His own pale blue eyes narrowed on her pretty face in its frame of long blond hair. She had a pert little figure, enhanced by the white sweater and blue jeans she was wearing. Her breasts were firm and small, just right for her build. He felt his whole body clench at the way she was looking at him.
He wasn’t handsome, she was thinking, but he had a killer physique, from his powerful long legs in blue jeans to his broad chest outlined under the knit shirt. Beige suited his coloring, made his tan look bronzed, the turtleneck enhancing his strong throat.
“You’re staring,” he pointed out huskily.
She searched for the right words. Her mouth was dry. “Your ears have very nice lobes.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
She flushed to her hairline. “Oh, good heavens!” She fumbled with the cake knife and it started to fall. He stepped forward and caught it halfway to the floor, just as she dived for it. They collided.
His arm slid around her to prevent her from going headlong into the counter and pulled her up short, right against him. Her intake of breath was audible as she clung to him to keep her footing.
She felt his chin against her temple, heard his breath coming out raggedly. His arm contracted.
“Th…thanks,” she managed to say against his throat. “I’m just so clumsy sometimes!”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
She laughed nervously. “Certainly not me. Thanks for saving the cake knife.”
“My pleasure.”
His voice was almost a purr, deep and soft and slow. He lifted his head very slowly, so that his eyes were suddenly looking right into hers. She felt his chest rise and fall against her breasts in an intimacy that grew more smoldering by the second. She looked up, but her eyes stopped at his chiseled mouth. It was very sensuous. She’d never really paid it much attention, until now. And she couldn’t quite stop looking at it.
She felt his fingers curling into her long hair, as if he loved the feel of it.
“I love long hair,” he said softly. “Yours is beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“Soft hair. Pretty mouth.” He bent and his nose slid against hers as his mouth poised over her parted lips. “Very pretty mouth.”
She stood very still, waiting, hoping that he wasn’t going to draw back. She loved the way his body felt, so close to hers. She loved his strength, his height, the spicy scent of his cologne. She hung there, at his lips, her eyes half closed, waiting, waiting…
“Where’s that cake?” came a plaintive cry from the living room. “I’m starving!”
They jumped apart so quickly that Cappie almost fell. “Coming right up!” Heavens, was that her voice? It sounded almost artificial!
“I’ll take the co
ffeepot into the living room for you,” Bentley said. His own voice was oddly hoarse and deep, and he didn’t look at her as he went out of the room.
Cappie cut the cake, forcing her mind to ignore what had almost happened. She had so many complications in her life right now that she didn’t really need another one. But she did wonder if it was possible to put this particular genie back in its bottle.
And, in fact, it wasn’t. When they finished the cake and a few more minutes of conversation, Bentley got a call from his answering service and hung up with a grimace.
“One of Cy Parks’s purebred heifers is calving for the first time. I’ll have to go. Sorry. I really enjoyed the meal, and the cake.”
“So did we,” Cappie said.
“We’ll have to do this again,” Kell added, grinning.
“Next time, I’ll take the two of you out to a nice restaurant,” Bentley said.
“Well…” Cappie hesitated.
“Walk me out,” Bentley told her, and he didn’t smile.
Cappie looked toward Kell to save her, but he only grinned. She turned and followed Bentley out the door.
He paused at the steps, looking down at her with a long, unblinking stare in the faint light that shone out from the windows.
She bit her lower lip and searched for something to say. Her mind wouldn’t cooperate.
He couldn’t seem to find anything to say, either. They just stared at each other.
“I hate women,” he bit off.
She faltered. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Oh, what the hell. Come here.”
He scooped her up against him, bent his head and kissed her with such immediate passion that she couldn’t even think. Her arms went around his neck as she warmed to the hard, insistent pressure of his mouth as it parted her lips and invaded the soft, secret warmth of her mouth. It was too much, too soon, but she couldn’t say that. He didn’t leave her enough breath to say anything, and the pleasure throbbing through her body robbed her mind of the words, anyway.
Seconds later, he put her back on her feet and moved away. “Well!” he said huskily.
She stared up at him with her mouth open.
His eyebrows arched.
She tried to speak, but she couldn’t manage a single word.
He let out a rough breath. “I really wish you wouldn’t look at me in that tone of voice,” he said.
“Wh…what?” she stammered.
He chuckled softly. “Well, I could say I’m flattered that I leave you speechless, but I won’t embarrass you. See you Monday.”
She nodded. “Monday.”
“At the office.”
She nodded again. “The office.”
“Cappie?”
She was still staring at him. She nodded once more. “Cappie.”
He burst out laughing. He bent and kissed her again. “And they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” he mused. “This is much quicker than food. See you.”
He turned and went to his car. Cappie stood and watched him until he was all the way to the main highway. It wasn’t until Kell called to her that she realized it was cold and she didn’t even have on a coat.
After that, it was hard to work in the same office with Bentley without staring at him, starstruck, when she saw him in between patients. He noticed. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling. But when Cappie started running into door facings looking at him, everybody else in the office started grinning, and that did inhibit her.
She forced herself to keep her mind on the animal patients, and not the tall man who was treating them.
Just before quitting time, a little boy came careening into the practice just ahead of a man. He was carrying a big dog, wrapped in a blanket, shivering and bleeding.
“Please, it’s my dog, you have to help him!” the boy sobbed.
A worried man joined him. “He was hit by a car,” the man said. “The so-and-so didn’t even stop! He just kept going!”
Dr. Rydel came out of the back and took a quick look at the dog. “Bring him right back,” he told the boy. He managed a smile. “We’ll do everything we can. I promise.”
“His name’s Ben,” the boy sobbed. “I’ve had him since I was little. He’s my best friend.”
Dr. Bentley helped the boy lift Ben onto the metal operating table. He didn’t ask the boy to leave while he did the examination. He had Keely help him clean the wound and help restrain the dog while he assessed the damage. “We’re going to need an X-ray. Get Billy to help you carry him,” he told her with a smile.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he going to die?” the boy wailed.
Dr. Rydel put a kindly hand on his shoulder. “I don’t see any evidence of internal damage or concussion. It looks like a fracture, but before I can reduce it, I’m going to need to do X-rays to see the extent of the damage. Then we’ll do blood work to make sure it’s safe to anesthetize him. I will have to operate. He has some skin and muscle damage in addition to the fracture.”
The man with the boy looked worried. “Is this going to be expensive?” he asked worriedly.
The boy wailed.
“I lost my job last week,” the man said heavily. “We’ve got a new baby.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dr. Rydel said in a reassuring tone. “We do some pro bono work here, and I’m overdue. We’ll take care of it.”
The man bit his lower lip, hard, and averted his eyes. “Thanks,” he gritted.
“We all have rough patches,” Dr. Rydel told him. “We get through them. It will get better.”
“Thanks, Doc!” the boy burst out, reaching over to rub a worried hand over the old dog’s head. “Thanks!”
“I like dogs, myself,” the doctor chuckled. “Now this is going to take a while. Why don’t you leave your phone number at the desk and I’ll call you as soon as your dog’s through surgery?”
“You’d do that?” the man asked, surprised.
“Of course. We always do that.”
“His name’s Ben,” the boy said, sniffing. “He’s had all his shots and stuff. We take him every year to the clinic at the animal shelter.”
Which meant money was always tight, but they took care of the animal. Dr. Rydel was impressed.
“We’ll give her our phone number. You’re a good man,” the boy’s father said quietly.
“I like dogs,” Dr. Rydel said again with a smile. “Go on home. We’ll call you.”
“You be good, Ben,” the boy told his dog, petting him one last time. The dog wasn’t even trying to bite anybody. He whined a little. “We’ll come and get you just as soon as we can. Honest.”
The man tugged the boy along with him, giving the vet one last grateful smile.
“I can take care of his bill,” Keely volunteered.
Dr. Rydel shook his head. “I do it in extreme cases like this. It’s no hardship.”
“Yes, but…”
He leaned closer. “I drive a Land Rover. Want to price one?”
Keely burst out laughing. “Okay. I give up.”
Billy, the vet tech, came to help Keely get Ben in to X-ray. Cappie came back after a minute. “I promised I’d make sure you knew that Ben likes peanut butter,” she said. “Who’s Ben?”
“Fractured leg, HBC,” he abbreviated.
She smiled. “Hit by car,” she translated. “The most frequent injury suffered by dogs. They know who hit him?”
“I wish,” Dr. Rydel said fervently. “I’d call Cash Grier myself.”
“They didn’t stop?”
“No,” he said shortly.
“I’d stop, if I hit somebody’s pet,” Cappie said gently. “I had a cat, when we lived in San Antonio, after Kell got out of the army. I had to give him away when we moved down here.” She was remembering that Frank had kicked him, so hard that Cappie took him to work with her the next day, just to have him checked out. He had bruising, but, fortunately, no broken bones. Then the cat had run away, and returned after Frank was gone. S
he’d given the cat away before she and Kell left town, to make sure that Frank wouldn’t send somebody to get even with her by hurting her cat. He was that sort of man.
“You’re very pensive,” he commented.
“I was missing my cat,” she lied, smiling.
“We have lots of cats around here,” he told her. “I think Keely has a whole family of them out in her barn and there are new kittens. She’d give you one, if you asked.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure if I could keep a cat,” she replied. “Kell wouldn’t be able to look out for him, you know. He has all he can do to take care of himself.”
He didn’t push. He just smiled. “One day, he’ll meet some nice girl who’ll want to take him home with her and spoil him rotten.”
She blinked. “Kell?”
“Why not? He’s only paralyzed, you know, not demented.”
She laughed. “I guess not. He’s pretty tough.”
“And he’s not a bad gamer, either,” he pointed out.
“I noticed.”
“Cappie, have you got the charges for Miss Dill’s cat in here yet?” came a call from the front counter.
She grimaced. “No, sorry, Dr. King. I’ll be right there.”
She rushed back out, flustered. Dr. Rydel certainly had a way of looking at her that increased her heart rate. She liked it, too.
CHAPTER SIX
CAPPIE STAYED late to help with the overflow of patients, held up by the emergency surgery on the dog. The practice generally did its scheduled surgeries on Thursdays, but emergencies were always accommodated. In fact, there was a twenty-four-hour-a-day emergency service up in San Antonio, but the veterinarians at Dr. Rydel’s practice would always come in if they were needed. In certain instances, the long drive to the big city would have meant the death of a furry patient. They were considering the addition of a fourth veterinarian to the practice, so that they could more easily accommodate those emergencies.
The dog, Ben, came out of surgery with a mended foreleg and was placed in a recovery cage to wait until the anesthetic wore off. The next day, if he presented no complications, he would be sent home with antibiotics, painkillers and detailed instructions on post-surgical care. Cappie was glad, for the boy’s sake. She felt sorriest for the children whose pets were injured. Not that grown-up people took those situations any easier. Pets were like part of the family. It was hard to see one hurt, or to lose one.