When he was gone, she put her finger to her tingling jaw. It wasn’t until a moment later she realized his last few words, “even though it’s morning,” had been uttered in that same Irish accent he’d claimed not to have.

* * *

THAT DAY Ty pulled his own long shift. He had three jobs going in downtown Los Angeles, two in Burbank, four in Glendale and, he hoped, the new one right here in South Village.

It was odd, how fond he’d become of the place. Maybe because the city, just outside of Los Angeles, was a genuinely historical stretch of streets from the great old-Western days. Thanks to an innovative—and wealthy—town council, most of the buildings had been rescued, preserved and restored, leaving the streets a popular fun spot filled with restaurants, theaters, unique boutiques and plenty of celebrities to spy on.

Ty had little interest in the swell of young urban singles that crowded the streets on nights and weekends, but he did love the atmosphere.

He especially loved all the work, for there were plenty of buildings still in the pre-renovation stage, needing architects.

Being a relatively new architect in town without the usual partners and office staff meant more work for him. It meant a lot of running around. It also meant lots of time holed up with his drawing table.

He didn’t mind the extra hours or the hard work. In fact, that was how he liked it. If something came easy or was handed to him, he was suspicious of it.

That came from his early years, when nothing had been either easy or handed to him, before or after he’d quite literally crawled, scratched and fought his way out of the gutter.

Old times, he thought, and tossing his pencil down, he leaned back in his chair. He put his feet up on the drawing table and looked out the window at the San Gabriel Mountains. No doubt, California was beautiful. Not beautiful like say…Rio. Or Tokyo. Or any of the many places he’d been through on his quest to get as far away from where he’d started as possible, but beautiful in the way that he felt…at ease.

Not that the feeling would last, it never did. Sooner rather than later the need to move on would over come him…he thought New York might interest him. But for now, California, land of hot blondes, health food and sandy beaches, was good.

It was also a great place for anonymity, and that, really, was the draw. Here, he could be whoever or whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter to anyone.

And here, surrounded by the success he’d so carefully built, he was exactly that.

Someone.

Someone with a full bank account, thank you very much. And an office that spelled success, inside a huge, sprawling house with every luxury at his fingertips.

Never again would he have an empty belly or the bone-gnawing fear of the unknown, both of which he’d lived with during his beyond-humble beginnings in the seediest of areas in Dublin, Ireland.

He rarely thought of it now, there was no need. He’d put it all behind him, years and years ago. He’d moved on.

Now nothing could hurt him as he continued on his merry way to fill the bank account even more, to do the work that so pleased him. And if he managed to get lucky in between those two things with a California babe here and there, so much the better.

He thought of this morning, and one Dr. Nicole Mann. Not the typical California babe, that was certain. But with her fatigues and tough take-it-on-the-chin attitude, she was easily the sexiest little number he’d ever seen. And he did mean little, for she’d barely come to his shoulder. Still her body had been honed to a curvy, mouthwatering perfection by what he suspected was sheer will on her part—it certainly wasn’t a result of her diet if her “breakfast” was anything to go on. Definitely, the one thing the good doctor had in spades was will. She could kill with just her eyes, these long-lashed, huge eyes, the gray of a wicked winter storm. Her hair, shiny, dark and cut short to her stubborn chin, made him think of silk.

He would have laughed at the impression she’d made on him, if there was anything funny about it. She was different, and because of it she’d grabbed him on a level he didn’t want to be grabbed at. So he wouldn’t think about her or her perfect, meant-for hot-wild-sex mouth.

Straightening, he put his feet firmly on the ground. He liked his feet on the ground. To do that, he had to keep a certain distance from others, and that included sexy Dr. Mann. Spinning in his chair, he propelled himself the few feet to his computer and booted it up. To clear his head of stormy gray eyes and that kissable frown, he’d work.

His e-mail account opened, showing twenty-eight unread messages. Skimming through, he deleted each as he took care of various work issues.

And it was all work. Except the last one. He didn’t recognize the sender’s address, but didn’t think anything of it until he opened the mail.

Are you Ty Patrick O’Grady of Dublin?

Surging to his feet, he stared at the e-mail. The words were still there. Stuffing his fingers in his hair he turned a slow circle. No one knew where he was from. No one.

But when he bent to look at the screen again, the words hadn’t changed.

Are you Ty Patrick O’Grady of Dublin?

Hell, yes, he was. But who wanted to know? And why? There was nothing good about his past. In fact, there was so much bad, his stomach cramped just thinking about it.

He reached toward the keyboard to delete the message, but his finger hovered just over the key.

Who was asking?

No. It didn’t matter. None of his past mattered, and with another low oath and yet another slow spin around the room he came back to his computer. Stared at the message some more.

Then slowly reached out and punched Delete.

CHAPTER 2

AFTER TWO straight days of hell at work, Nicole drove home. She could tell it wasn’t her usual time to be doing so—the usual time being very, very late or very, very early—because there wasn’t a single parking space to be found in all of South Village, much less on the busy street where she lived.

Shops, galleries and restaurants were all hopping with activity, reminding her that everyone else but herself had a life outside of work. But then, she’d decided long ago that medicine was her life. All she needed now was a place to park her car. Finally, after circling the block—twice—swearing in a very satisfying manner and even getting flipped off in the process, she got a spot down the street. The walk to the apartment felt good. So did the bag of fresh croissants she purchased at a corner deli. They’d go splendidly with the take-out hamburgers in a bag in her other hand.

Finally, she came to her building. It really was the wince spot of the area, though the turrets, mock balconies and many windows gave the hundred-year-old place its own charm and personality. Albeit a neglected, falling-down kind of charm.

The two storefronts on the ground floor were empty, though Suzanne planned to open a catering shop in one of them. Taylor was doing her best, working on the renovation day and night, gathering bids and selling off some of her antique collection to do it.

There were plants hanging from window boxes in front of the two apartments on the second floor. Taylor’s boxes were effortlessly green and flowery, Suzanne’s looked a little wilted since she spent most of her time at Ryan’s now.

Nicole could have bought her own place. Her mother often hounded her about it. After all, doctors made tons of dough, right?

Ha! She was twenty-seven. Maybe by the time she was forty she’d have half her college loans paid off. Then again, given that she tended to spend her extra time working at clinics for free to ensure that the less fortunate got medical care, maybe not. Didn’t matter. Work was who she was, what she did and there wasn’t time left over to tend to so much as a single little plant, much less a house of her own.

She liked things that way.

Exhausted, she staggered up the stairs to her loft. It was still light outside, which confused her. She squinted at her living room. How different it looked with sunlight streaming through the big window. On the street below throngs of people were heading toward chic restaurants and cafés. A glance at her watch told her why. It was five in the afternoon. People were meeting for after-work drinks or early dinners. The thought of socializing like that startled her somewhat. When she wasn’t pouring herself into work, she truly preferred to spend her time alone.

She wolfed down the fast food first, while reading one of three medical journals on the table in front of her. The hamburger and super-size fries were the perfect accompaniment to the article on a new and innovative artery replacement. Then, with the sun still shining in all the windows, she headed into her bathroom, still reading, nibbling on a croissant as she stripped for a mind-numbingly hot shower.

No one could ever say she couldn’t multi-task.

After her steaming shower, she padded naked back into her bedroom, heading directly for the bed, until she glanced at her answering machine, which was blinking.

Damn it, why did she have one of those things again?

Because the hospital administration, tired of not being able to get her when they needed, had insisted. With a sigh, she hit the message button. If it was work, she’d just roll over and die right now.

“Nicole, baby, it’s me. Mom,” her mother clarified in her cheerful, laughing voice, as if Nicole wouldn’t recognize the woman who’d been nagging her all her life. “Are you working too hard? Are you getting any rest? Are you eating right? Are you ever going to call me and put my mind to rest that my baby isn’t working herself into an early grave?”

Nicole sank to her bed and ran the towel over her short mop of hair—her idea of styling. Since she’d just called her mother last week, in fact, called every week, she refused to feel guilty.

“Once a week just isn’t enough, Nicole,” her mother said with her perfectly startling ability to read her daughter’s mind. “I want to hear you.”

Nicole rolled her eyes but a smile escaped anyway.

“Honey, listen. I’m making pot roast on Sunday. Your father called your sisters and everyone is coming—the husbands, the kids, everyone.”

Oh, good God. Nicole had three sisters, each of whom had a husband, the requisite minivan, the house in the burbs and at least two kids. The thought of that entire noisy, happy bunch all in one place made Nicole suddenly need another hamburger.

“So, honey, you have to come. We’ll expect you by four, and let me warn you, if you don’t show, I’ll…well, I’ll call you every single day for a week.”

As Nicole’s mother was quite possibly the bossiest, nosiest, most meddling, warm, loving person on the planet, Nicole believed her.

But everyone under one roof? Laughing, talking, happily arguing sisters, sticky toddlers, drooling babies, stinky diapers… She felt a headache coming on already. She loved her family, she did, but sometimes she felt as if she was an alien, plopped down in the middle of a planet where she didn’t belong. They were all so…normal. Something she’d never been. Despite her genius IQ, she couldn’t deal with people outside of medicine. It was so difficult for her to get out of her own head, she rarely knew what to say to people and some of the basic niceties escaped her. That her family loved her anyway, even though she was intensely introverted, was a strange and odd miracle she tried not to think about too often.

“So, we’ll see you Sunday,” her mom said as if it’d been decided. “It’ll be fun to be all together.”

Fun wasn’t quite the word Nicole would have come up with. Maybe she’d have work. Yeah, that was it, she could add a shift and—

“Love you, baby.”

Ah, hell. Sunday it was.

Still naked, she plopped on the bed. It only took two pillows over her head and approximately twenty seconds for sleep to conquer her the same way she’d conquered her world.

She dreamed. She would have thought she’d be haunted by the blood of her second surgery that day. A patient had burst an artery and by the time she’d gotten everything under control she’d been standing in a sea of red.

But blessedly she’d left that behind at the hospital. Instead, in dreamland, she was two years old again, and memorizing the book of presidents her parents had kept on the coffee table. For fun, she’d recite them backwards to her hotshot, know-it-all sisters Annie and Emma.

It had been their first inkling that Nicole was going to be different.

The dream shifted and she was six, helping Emma with her seventh-grade algebra.

At twelve, she’d helped Annie with her PSAT testing. A genius, were the whispers around her. Off-the-scale IQ, they said. A prodigy.

At twelve, Nicole should have been into lip gloss, pop bands and boys. Instead she’d been fascinated by science. She operated on frogs. She dissected bugs.

Yet kids her own age remained a mystery to her, a complete mystery.

And now that she was grown up, she was still different. She should have learned to deal with others by now. Learned to be a social creature, well rounded and defined.

But the reality was that she’d rarely dated and had no idea how to do anything but heal. It was what she was. Who she was. A doctor.

Nothing else.

So why did the next dream involve one tall, dark and sexy Irish architect with a killer smile and eyes that made her yearn for something completely out of her reach?

Turning over, she sank back into an exhausted and dreamless slumber.

* * *

“WAKE UP, Nicole, you’re scaring me.”

Nicole snuggled more deeply beneath her covers. “Go away, Mom, I don’t have school today.”

“I had better not look anything like a woman old enough to be your mother.”

Nicole jerked her eyes open, heart pounding. Okay, good, she was home. The sun was shining again, how annoying.

And Taylor sat on her bed, looking as stunningly beautiful and elegant as ever.

With a groan, Nicole shut her eyes again. “I didn’t help you with the engagement party plans, right?”

“No, but I forgive you because you’re going to reschedule. I brought you breakfast.”

Nicole smelled something delicious. She cracked open an eye and saw a tray filled with mouthwatering food.

“I should tell you—as if you couldn’t guess—I didn’t cook this. Suzanne’s catering a big brunch this morning and made this up for us. You frightened the hell out of me, not answering your door. You never even heard me calling for you like a banshee, and we all know I don’t like to sound like a banshee. Who sleeps like that?”

Nicole blinked. “Well…”

“You’ve overworked yourself again, haven’t you? Nicole, honey, that’s just plain bad for you.”

Nicole closed her eyes, rendered stupid by this display of concern. Maybe if she was really still, Taylor would vanish. A figment of her imagination.

“Not much of a morning person,” came an amused male voice from the other side of the room.

If Nicole had thought her heart had raced at the sight of Taylor in her bedroom, it went off the scale now. Even after their very brief encounter, she recognized that slightly Irish voice, she recognized it immediately. And if it brought a series of shivers down her spine that she couldn’t attribute to a morning chill, she could shove the reaction aside in favor of temper. “What the hell—”

“Now before you get all pissy at me…” Taylor put a hand over Nicole’s chest, pushing her back. “Let me explain.”

Nicole could take Taylor down any day of the week. Her workouts, when she could fit them in, guaranteed that.

The only exercise Taylor ever did was lifting and setting down her hairbrush. Oh, and her lipstick.

No, what held Nicole back from wrapping her fingers around Taylor’s neck was one tiny little detail.

She slept in the nude.

Which meant that in order to kick Taylor’s ass, she’d have to get out of bed.

Naked.

“Why is he in here?” she settled for asking between her teeth while clutching the sheet to her chest.

From his perch holding up her wall, Ty’s gaze zoomed in on her—a very blue gaze that was lit with amusement, curiosity and plenty more—and for just a flash in time, she lost her train of thought.

Taylor craned her neck and looked up at the tall, dark, ridiculously gorgeous man. “You’ve met?”

“You could say that,” Nicole said.

“Oh, good, because I’m thinking of hiring him to fix up the building, which apparently is about to fall off its axis. Not,” she added quickly, “that you need to worry about it, I’m getting it all fixed pronto.”

“Taylor.” Nicole rubbed her temples. “The point. Get to the point. Why is he here? Specifically, in my bedroom.”

“Well, I was standing there in the hallway yelling for you, and beginning to freak out when you didn’t answer, when he offered to break in since I didn’t have my keys on me. He’s not only an excellent architect, he’s quite the handyman.”

“Let me guess,” Nicole said dryly, watching Ty smile at her from behind Taylor’s back. “He got in with a credit card?”

“Why, yes. A handy little trick, don’t you think?”

“Hmm.” Nicole narrowed her eyes at the ease he displayed standing there in her bedroom. As if he belonged.

But no one, especially a man, belonged in her bedroom, no matter how good he looked in a light-blue chambray shirt shoved up past his forearms, and a pair of jeans that made her hormones stand up and quiver. “Is the credit card trick something you picked up in Ireland?” she asked.

“Why ever would you think that?” he asked innocently.

As if he’d ever been innocent. “Because I hear it in your voice.”

“That’s the English, luv,” he said, pushing lazily away from the wall, coming close enough to peruse the tray from Suzanne. Then, picking up a piece of toast, his gaze tracked over Nicole from head to toe, and back again, making every single atom in her body leap to attention. Sinking his teeth into the bread, he chewed a moment, then licked the butter off his finger with a sucking sound that caused an answering tug in Nicole’s nipples for some annoying reason. “Went there for a while,” he said.

“Thought it was Scotland.”

Leaning in, he put the toast to her lips, pressing until she had no choice but to open and take a bite. “There, too,” he said lightly, making her take yet another bite, his thumb stroking across her bottom lip at a dab of misplaced butter. “And also Australia, if you’re interested in keeping track.”

She felt the touch all the way to her toes and back up, and at all sorts of other interesting spots along the way. It didn’t help that her eyes were level with a most erotic spot on his body—the juncture between his thighs—and the intriguing bulge there.

“I had to make sure you were okay,” Taylor said, picking up a piece of peach from the tray. “I’m sorry for the invasion, but you’ve done nothing but work since you moved in here, and you sleep like the dead.”

Ty let out another innocent smile. “And you talk to yourself while doing it.”

Nicole opened her mouth, but Taylor stuffed the peach into it. At the explosion of sweet nectar in her mouth, she sputtered.

“That was a piece of fruit,” Taylor said. “I realize you might not recognize it, given that it’s actually one of the important food groups and not purchased from a drive-through.”

“Taylor—”

“You’re going to kill yourself this way,” Taylor said softly, her eyes showing their worry. “It’s not right. Promise me you’ll eat all of this mountain of food. The eggs, the sausage, the toast, the fruit, everything.”

Nicole sighed. “I never had a landlord care what I put inside my body before.”

Taylor went still, then brushed the crumbs off her hands. “Is that all I am?”

Nicole looked into Taylor’s eyes, saw the hurt added to the worry, and flopped back to stare up at the ceiling. “This is why I don’t socialize.”

Taylor stood a little stiffly, when the elegant Taylor was never stiff. “I’m sorry. I’ll go. Just make sure Suzanne gets her tray back—”

Nicole reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Look…I’m the sorry one.”

“No need.”

Nicole sighed at the cool hurt lingering in Taylor’s face and tugged on her wrist until she sat back at her side. “I’m an idiot, all right? An idiot who doesn’t know how to…have friends.”

“So we are friends?”

“You know we are. Unless you shove any more fruit down my throat.”

“In that case…” Taylor spread her silk skirt carefully and made herself comfortable on the bed before reaching for a piece of toast. “There’s enough here to feed an army. Ty, some sausage? Don’t be shy, hon, Suzanne is so nervous about her upcoming nuptials that she’s overcooking to compensate.”

“Taylor,” Nicole said in a warning voice that turned into a squeak when Ty suddenly joined them.

On the bed.

His long denim-covered legs brushed hers. There were the covers between them, but given the electric zap she felt at the brush of his warm, hard body, and given the way the current continued to run through her, there weren’t enough covers in all of South Village to keep between them.

And then there was how her heart gave a little leap when he turned his head and pierced her with those amazing eyes of his.

Instant lust. She’d heard about it but had never experienced the phenomenon firsthand.

She didn’t like it.

Gripping the sheet to her chest for all it was worth, Nicole watched as her two uninvited houseguests helped themselves to the tray of food balancing on her knees.

It was an unreal feeling having Ty’s long fingers hover over the plate only inches from her very naked body as he decided on a slice of apple.

It crunched between his white teeth as he looked at her.

Unreal, she decided, and definitely…arousing, if the way her body tingled was any indication. “I…need to get up.”

Taylor used the fork to bite into the homemade hash browns, then moaned. “Oh, these. These are to die for. Ty?”

Leaning in, he opened his mouth to the forkful Taylor was offering him.

“Fabulous, right?” Taylor said as he chewed.

He licked his lips, and for an instant, as he looked at Nicole, something hot and dangerous flashed in his eyes. “Oh yeah.”

“More?” Taylor asked. “A man your size, who works as hard as you do, needs to keep up his strength.”

Still gripping the sheet, Nicole grated her teeth. “I really need to—Hey!” she said around the bite of warm hash browns Ty shoved into her mouth. And not too gently either. She had to open quickly and use her tongue to keep from spilling them down her front.

His electric-blue eyes never left hers. She would have opened her mouth and blistered him if she hadn’t had it so full of the food. And oh man, the food. Heaven.

Not that she was going to admit it. “I don’t eat breakfast,” she said, trying not to moan in pleasure as the food started to hit her stomach. “Just—”

“Coffee,” Ty finished for her, bending so close his lips almost brushed hers. “We’ve heard. It’s here.” She could feel his body heat, the warm breath that caused goose bumps to skitter down her side. “You’re going to give yourself ulcers the way you eat.” He tsked. “And you claim to be a doctor.”

“Oh, I definitely like you,” Taylor said to Ty, who grinned at her. “We can tag-team her. I know you like to move around a lot, but I don’t suppose after this job you’d stay on and reprogram my friend here?”

“I really have to get up,” Nicole said, jaw clenched. “So if you could…” She gestured to the door.

“Go ahead.” Ty’s eyes were lit with the dare. “Get up.”

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