The Hotshot

by Lori Wilde

  Her eyes met his. It was a dangerous game he was proposing. But if it helped mend years of tension with her father, wasn’t it worth the risk?

  “Yes,” she said, her voice shaky. “I want to be your fiancée.”

  “Why is there a man on your roof with a camera?” CeeCee asked. She and Lacy had trooped inside Janet’s condo carrying a bag of bagels and three tall coffees. “And why are a gaggle of reporters hanging around your front door?”

  “What?” Janet, who still wore her pajamas, stared at her friends. It was just after nine o’clock on Sunday morning, not even twenty-four hours since she had become “engaged” to Gage Gregory. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look out the window.” CeeCee pushed aside the kitchen curtains, and Janet peered below. Sure enough, a bevy of people with notebooks and microphones and cameras milled around the courtyard.

  “Why would reporters camp out in front of my apartment?”

  “Personally,” Lacy said, tapping into her phone. “I think it might have something to do with this.”

  “What?” Janet ran a hand through her mussed hair and stifled a yawn.

  Lacy passed her cell phone over.

  In the online society section of the Houston Chronicle there was a huge beefcake photograph of Gage with the headline: Local Physician to Wed Ex-Child Actor Turned Doctor Gage Gregory.

  The lead paragraph read:

  Famous not only for his work in television commercials as a child but for developing a revolutionary medical technique, skilled Hollywood plastic surgeon turned pediatrician, Gage Gregory is engaged to the daughter of Houston’s own illustrious Dr. Niles Hunter.

  “Oh no.” Janet groaned and sank into a kitchen chair. Who all had seen the article? She could just imagine Dr. Jackson having his Sunday brunch and finding out hat his two newest doctors had gone off and gotten engaged to each other.

  “You’ve been holding out on us,” CeeCee said. “You naughty girl! When did you and Gage get engaged?”

  “Oh, Janet,” Lacy said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we three got married at the same time? We could have a triple wedding. Wouldn’t that be romantic and fun?”

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, Lace, but Gage and I are not getting married.”

  CeeCee and Lacy plunked down in chairs on either side of Janet.

  “Wait,” Lacy said. “Are you engaged or not?”

  “Kinda, sorta, not really. We have no intention of going through with it. We were just pretending to be engaged to make my father happy. But why did Gage leak the story to the media? I could kill him with my bare hands.”

  “According to the article, it wasn’t Gage who broke the story, but your father.” Lacy tapped the screen with an index finger.

  Father.

  Oh, well, it all made sense now. He was big buddies with the Chronicle’s managing editor. She should have known. It also did not escape her notice that it was Gage’s name and photograph that appeared in the headline, and not hers.

  “Did you know Gage once saved Senator McConelly’s son from drowning?” Lacy asked as she took her phone back.

  “So I’d heard.”

  “And he used to date A-list actresses,” Lacy read aloud from the article and then murmured under her breath, “Oh my goodness, he went out with her?”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” What surprised her was why Gage was interested in Janet at all when he could have his pick of the world’s most beautiful women.

  He’s not interested in you, rational voice scoffed. He just loves rescuing people. Don’t go off on an ego trip.

  Janet groaned. “Please. Enough already. The whole thing is turning into the media snowball from hell.”

  Her own cell phone rang.

  Wearily, she tugged it from her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number but worried it might be from a patient. “Hello?”

  “Is this Dr. Janet Hunter?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Hi, I’m Amanda Jacobs with TMZ, and I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions about your relationship with Dr. Gage Gregory.”

  “No comment,” Janet said and hung up.

  The cell phone rang again a few seconds later.

  “I’ll just let it go to voice mail,” she told her friends coolly as if unruffled. But deep down inside, she wondered what in the heck she’d gotten herself into.

  They sat sipping coffee, eating bagels, and listening as she got one call after another and let them all go to voice mail. When she checked the messages, they were all from reporters wanting an interview.

  “This is insanity,” Janet muttered.

  The doorbell chimed.

  “Fabulous, now they’ve muscled past building security.” Janet got up and stomped to the foyer, ready to give someone a piece of her mind. The last thing she wanted was to talk to tabloid tattletales about her impending nuptials to the sainted Dr. Hero.

  She peered through the peephole. It wasn’t a reporter, but rather the sainted Dr. Hero in question.

  Big as life and twice as handsome. A lock of sandy-brown hair had fallen rakishly over his forehead. He wore navy shorts and a Rice University T-shirt. He looked more like a college student than a doctor with two specialties.

  At the sight of him, her heart gave such a strange hop. Janet wondered if she should have an electrocardiogram to make sure all four valves were firing properly. It wasn’t normal to experience erratic palpitations simply from looking at a guy. Nothing in the medical textbooks described that phenomenon.

  He rang the bell a second time, and Janet realized she must look like the rough end of an industrial mop.

  Yikes! She couldn’t let him get an eyeful of her dressed like this. Her hair lay mussed, and she knew she had sheet creases on her cheek. Not to mention she had yet to brush her teeth this morning.

  “CeeCee,” she said and darted back through the kitchen. “It’s Gage. Let him in while I get dressed.”

  “Hmm,” Lacy mused out loud. “She’s worried about how she looks in front of him. Methinks she’s got it bad.”

  “I heard that!” Janet shouted, stripping her pajama top over her head as she ran for the bedroom. “And I do not have it bad.”

  “Yeah, honey,” CeeCee teased. “You’ve got it good.”

  “Just hush and let him in, will you.” Janet was in the bedroom kicking off her pajama bottoms and wriggling into jeans.

  She slipped on a form-fitting V-neck crimson silk shell, jammed her feet into loafers, and dashed into the bathroom. She heard a deep, masculine voice from the living room and CeeCee’s bouncy laughter in response to something he’d said. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her teeth, then gargled with mint-flavored mouthwash. She ran a brush thorough her hair, spritzed herself with anise cologne, and rolled on Native Sunset—her favorite shade of lipstick. Stunned, Janet stared into the mirror and realized Lacy was right. She wanted to look good for Gage.

  What did that mean?

  “Janet,” CeeCee called from the living room. “Gage is here.”

  “Be right there,” she called back, but not before dragging blush over her cheeks. Then to her reflection she muttered, “You only want to look good for him because he’s being so nice. It means nothing. Really.”

  Good one, Janet, rational voice said. Tell us another fairy tale.

  Ignore her, impish voice interjected. You go, girl!

  Leaving the bathroom, she squelched her divergent impulses and hurried to the living room to find Lacy and CeeCee perched on the couch beside Gage, telling embarrassing personal anecdotes about her.

  “And there was the time she got up to give a lecture and she had a dryer sheet stuck to her wool skirt. Lacy and I tried to signal her, but when Janet is in professional mode, she lets nothing break her concentration.” CeeCee chuckled.

  “The audience kept laughing,” Lacy said. “The harder they laughed, the more professional Janet became. She never let them throw her.”

  “You guys! Don’t tell him all that s
tuff,” Janet protested from the doorway, her face heating at the memory.

  To the outside observer she might have appeared controlled and professional at that lecture, but inside her confidence hovered below zero. She had been relieved to discover a dryer sheet had been the butt of the joke and not her performance, but the truly awful part had been that her father had put in one of his rare appearances.

  Afterward he had harped on her “shameful display,” declaring she had so thoroughly disgraced him that he wouldn’t be able to hold his head up at the next American Medical Association meeting.

  As if anybody but her father cared about a dryer sheet and static electricity malfunction.

  Gage’s eyes met hers. She saw nothing but sympathy. “It must have been very embarrassing for you.”

  She shrugged, not wanting him to know how deeply the silly incident had affected her. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

  CeeCee looked from Janet to Gage, then bounced off the couch. “We were just leaving, weren’t we, Lacy?”

  “But I thought since Jack and Bennett were working at the hospital that we’d planned a girls’ day out. A trip to the art museum, lunch at Carshon’s deli, the latest Jennifer Lawrence movie.” Lacy shook her head and looked bewildered.

  CeeCee took Lacy by the arm and tugged her to her feet. “Say goodbye, Lacy.”

  “Bye-bye.” Lacy wriggled her fingers and let CeeCee drag her to the door. “Catch ya later.”

  When her friends had departed, Janet expelled a deep sigh. “So we’ve got paparazzi camped outside our building.”

  Gage smiled apologetically. “’Fraid so. The penalty of getting engaged to Dr. Hero. Instant celebrity.”

  “Did you know all this would happen?”

  “I’d hoped it wouldn’t here in Houston.”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “You could have told me your father would call every news outlet in the tri-state area.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “But I should have. My father loves being the center of attention.”

  “Then he’ll flip over this.”

  “So what are we going to do?” She waved a hand at her cell phone on the table. It was buzzing again with another call.

  “We have four choices. One, break down and give them an interview.” He held up an index finger.

  “Oh, please, no. I can’t tell a bald-faced lie to reporters.”

  “Fair enough.” Gage nodded. “I understand that. Or two.” Up went another finger. “We could simply tell the truth.”

  Janet winced. She wasn’t ready to do that, either. “I’d have to break the news to my father first.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are the other two options?”

  “We could hole up here and cower indoors on a beautiful spring morning.”

  “Not my style.”

  “Mine, either.”

  “Or?”

  “We could put on disguises and give them the slip.” He grinned. “We could make a day of it. You and me out on the town. What do you say? Are you game?

  11

  They strolled incognito through the park. Gage wore a felt fedora pulled low over his forehead, sunshades, and a lightweight jacket with the collar turned up. He looked like a third-rate P.I. from some hard-boiled detective novel. She simply had to laugh.

  Janet wore a Houston Astros baseball cap and cheap drugstore sunglasses. She felt a little foolish and a lot excited. Impish voice thrilled with the adventure, but rational voice got miffed that her sensible advice to call off the whole fake engagement had gone unheeded.

  They had left their building separately, each departing through a back entrance, leaving their cars in the lot and meeting up twenty minutes later on the river walk. The park filled with joggers and picnicking families. People walked their dogs or tossed them Frisbees. Children threw breadcrumbs to the pond ducks. Dappled sunlight sifted through the newly leafed oak trees lining the main walkway.

  Slowly, Janet relaxed in the peaceful environment.

  That is until Gage reached over and took her hand. He held on loosely, giving her the option to pull away if she chose.

  But she didn’t choose. It felt good to hold hands, and he didn’t seem to think she was the least bit clingy. So there, Father.

  “You look really beautiful today,” he said. “I like seeing you like this. Casual. Mellow. Happy even.”

  It was true; she thought. She felt happy.

  She glanced over at him. He had taken off his sunglasses and was studying her with gentle thoughtfulness. She smiled and ducked her head, feeling strangely shy at his scrutiny. She worried that if he searched long enough, he would find something to displease him.

  His hand was warm in hers—warm and firm and comforting. No judgment there. No condemnation. Just simple acceptance.

  Gage squeezed her hand.

  Her pulse throbbed. She raised her head and met his gaze.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She nodded. She was way more than okay, and that’s what made her nervous. She liked being with him. Liked holding his hand. Enjoyed seeing that sexy smile.

  “Was it always so invasive growing up?” she asked. “Reporters hanging around? Paparazzi snapping your picture?”

  Gage shrugged. “Only during my heyday as the Grabble Cereal kid. Then again, later when I invented the Gregory method and when I saved Senator McConelly’s son from drowning.”

  “I just heard about that today,” Janet said, her sexy eyes latched onto his face. “Here I just thought you were a regular hero who heals sick kids and now I find out you’re super charged.’

  He had to admit; he liked the admiration in her eyes, but he had mixed feelings about being a celebrity. On the one hand, it had afforded him opportunities he wouldn’t otherwise have possessed. But it was often a shallow life. He preferred medicine to acting, Houston to Hollywood, Janet to the sexiest starlet.

  The last thought, and the potent feelings behind it, startled him.

  She stopped walking and pulled him gently back to where she stood rooted on the sidewalk beside a tall hedge of red tipped photinias. She reached out and touched his brow between his eyes.

  “When you concentrate hard, you get this little furrow right here.” Her fingers sent a river of fire surging through him.

  His eyes gobbled her up. From her sandals to the faded blue jeans molding to her lithe body to the soft red blouse skimming her breasts to the cute little baseball cap cocked on her head, the bill turned backward. Would he ever get used to looking at her? If he stared at her for a thousand hours, he imagined he would still find something fascinating to see. Reaching over, he slipped off her sunglasses, folded them, and stuck them in her shirt pocket.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I wanted to see your eyes.”

  “Why?” Alarmed, she raised a hand to her face. “Is something wrong? Is my makeup smeared?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Damn Niles Hunter for making her doubt herself as a woman. “I just needed to see those beautiful eyes the color of velvet twilight.”

  She gifted him with an ear-to-ear grin that heated Gage’s belly straight to his center. God, he loved to make her light up like Christmas.

  Whoa! Wait a minute, buddy. Slow this pony down. This is not a proper engagement. She doesn’t want to be your wife. She doesn’t love you and you don’t love her. She’s not your soul mate or your other half. You’re just helping a friend. Get your head out of those clouds and your libido back on its leash. Pronto. In fact, may I suggest using the Ultratron titanium double-locking system that even Harry Houdini—at least according to the commercials—couldn’t have opened.

  Okay. So this would not be a forever thing, but what was wrong with enjoying the moment?

  Hmm, what was wrong with that? Oh, about a hundred million things. Least of which was getting hurt again.

  He opened his mouth to put down the ground rules, to tell her they were walking a dange
rous tightrope. One wrong move and they were both going to tumble. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

  Inches separated them. Her breasts were almost level with his chest. Her chin was just below his.

  And her eyes. Oh man, those eyes. Drilling right into him. Sharp and intelligent, independent and strong, unflinching and principled. Something odd inside his chest pinged.

  He couldn’t be falling for her. No, not him. He was just thrown a little off-balance, his perspective knocked askew by those indigo eyes. He just needed something temporary to hold on to until he regained his composure.

  Gage reached out and touched her hand.

  She made a small startled noise at the contact.

  His blood surged. The sudden tenderness in her face, shining through all those defenses, floored him.

  So what if they weren’t soul mates? So what if they didn’t get married? So what if this was all a sham for the benefit of her parents?

  It felt right to run his hands up her arms, over her shoulders, and past her throat to cup that sweet-but-disconcerted chin in his palms.

  What felt even more right was to push his fedora back, dip his head, and capture those lips. To glide his mouth lightly over hers again and again with just enough pressure to make her sigh for more.

  When he finally let go and stepped back, her eyelashes fluttered open. He found himself lost once more in those beguiling depths.

  “You don’t have to kiss me,” she whispered. “When there’s no one around to see. I don’t want us to pretend with each other. It’ll make things too confusing. You know. For later. When we break up.”

  As if he wasn’t confused enough. As if he wasn’t already regretting the breakup of their fictional engagement.

  He had come to Texas to start a new life and instead he repeated the same old patterns, running from the same old paparazzi, helping some beautiful damsel in distress.

  Same old Dr. Hero.

  But despite all rational arguments to the contrary, he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her again. And she didn’t put up one protest. Her arms went around his neck, and her lips sought his just as eagerly as he sought hers. He could feel her heart thrumming against his chest, they were so close.