Luke

If they could fix his habit of speaking his mind, that is.

Because while he was astonishingly compassionate and giving and tender with his patients, he did not generally extend those people skills to anyone else, such as the people he worked with. Faith had heard the stories and figured he didn’t mean to be so gruff and hurried and impatient, he just didn’t suffer fools well.

But now, she had to wonder if maybe he was just missing the be-nice-to-people gene. “I realize this isn’t important to you, working at the clinic, but you promised.”

He let out a rough sound that managed to perfectly convey his annoyance, and for Faith, it was the last straw.

“And really, this is your own fault anyway,” she pointed out. “If you hadn’t made that statement that got out to the press saying you thought our clinic was worthless, you wouldn’t be stuck paying penance for three months’ worth of Saturdays. You could be out golfing—”

“Golfing?” His eyes widened incredulously. “Golfing—”

“Or whatever it is you rich doctors do with all the money you make off your patients.”

“My God, you have a mouth on you.”

Yes. Yes, she did. It had gotten her into trouble plenty of times, but damn it, this was important to her.

Still, what was it her mother had said…You could catch more flies with honey? With a sigh, she swallowed her pride. “I’m…sorry.” Not words she used often. “It’s just that we really need you.”

With his arms crossed over that bare chest, and a frown still masking his chiseled-in-stone face, he looked far more like a thug than a doctor. A beautiful thug, but still a dangerous, edgy one. He let out a disparaging noise, shoved his fingers through his dark hair, making it stick up all the more. “I’d like to get one thing straight here. I never said the clinic was worthless. What I said was I didn’t understand why the hospital gave your clinic money when—” He took in her humor-the-jerk expression and broke off. “Okay, forget it. I’ll be there soon.”

“I’ll just wait and drive you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“I think it is.”

“Why? Is there an emergency waiting for me right now?”

“Uh…”

“Are you in need of medical attention of any kind?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then I’ll be there. On my own. Soon.” He actually turned to go inside the house, dismissing her.

Without stopping to think—a personality disorder she’d been saddled with since childhood—Faith slapped a hand on his front door and held it open. “I’d really rather wait for you.”

Still turned away, Dr. Walker let out a long-suffering sigh, which brought her attention upward past the sleek, powerful flesh and sinew of his back to the widest, most tension-filled shoulders she’d ever seen.

Unfortunately, he turned then, and caught her in the act of ogling him. Not a word came out of his mouth, but no words were necessary, not when his highly vexed expression did all his talking for him.

She cleared her throat and tried to ignore the blush that crept over her face. Another redheaded curse. “You do understand the clinic’s already full—”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, then lifted his hands to his temples. The untied sweatpants shifted down an inch or so on his hips, revealing more flat belly.

A hot flash raced through her body. That pesky tropical virus again. It had to be.

“I don’t get it.” He sounded baffled. “Why do you even want me there? You know I’m into conventional, modern medicine. The good, old-fashioned, scientific stuff. So—”

“Actually, the alternative means of medicine that we use is the good, old-fashioned way, thousands of years old in some cases. So really, your ‘conventional’ medicine, at only a couple hundred years old, is the baby.”

His jaw ticked again. “I still don’t see what massage therapy, aromatherapy, acupressure, yoga and herbs have to do with me.”

“The alternative practices can be blended in with the more conventional ones, and with that, we can offer people something more. Something better.”

“But I don’t know how to treat people that way.”

“It’s just a way of life,” she said. “You’ll have plenty to offer. Mostly credibility at first, but…” She broke off when he put his hands on his hips.

Her gaze glued itself to his loose sweat bottoms, her breath blocking in her throat. If they slipped just another fraction of an inch or so—

“Look, I had a really long night.” His weary tone drew her eyes back up to his exhausted ones. “And I thought I had an extra few hours. I’ll hurry, but I don’t need an audience, so if you don’t mind—”

“Well actually, I—”

The door shut in her face.

2

CARMEN SHOWED UP IN LUKE’S inside hallway, having clearly just let herself in the back door. She blocked his path to the stairs with that look on her face that told him he was getting no peace until she spoke her mind.

“Gee,” she said. “Hard to imagine how a man with all your charm could still be single.”

Ignoring her, he headed wearily up the stairs. He’d been up all night, shifting through nightmares that forced him to relive losing six-year-old Johnny Garcia to the war zone that had become Los Angeles. “Just wake me in ten minutes, okay?” If he could catch a few more minutes, he’d be okay. He’d be human. He’d be able to remember that on most days he loved this life, loved what he did for a living.

“She was a sweet girl,” Carmen said, disgusted. “Coming to pick you up. And you chased her off.”

“She was a woman, not a girl.”

“So you did notice.”

Yeah, he’d noticed. Faith McDowell’s sexy softness contrasted with her cool voice and clear green eyes, and any red-blooded male would have noticed. She had long, curly hair the color of a fiery sunset and had worn a pair of scrubs decorated with smiley faces covered by a lightweight, open sweater that hugged her body, showing off creamy skin and lush curves. Disgusted with himself, Luke put a hand on the wood banister and started climbing.

He’d definitely been too long without sex if scrubs with smiley faces had turned him on.

But now, if he was very lucky, he could close his eyes for a few more minutes. Sleep was far more important than sex these days. Then he’d shower, grab some steaming, black coffee, and maybe, just maybe, feel sane again.

“How are you supposed to start a family someday if you chase off all the women?” Carmen called up the stairs. “Answer me that.”

He answered that with one concise muttered word.

Carmen tsked. “You were rude, and isn’t she your boss at the clinic?”

Yeah, and just what he needed, yet another politically correct bureaucrat telling him what to do. And yet…Maybe Carmen had a point. If he tried harder, added a smile, even turned on the charm he used to relax his patients…he might actually get his sentence reduced.

Luke pictured the woman’s wild, gloriously red hair bouncing in the morning sea breeze. The sparks in her eyes. He thought of the way she’d drawn in a huge deep breath just before she’d blasted him, as if she was so amazingly angry she could hardly think.

Nope. He doubted he could get her to reduce his “volunteer” time. She wanted his head on a platter—her platter. He’d written his own death sentence, damn it.

The doorbell rang.

“Ah, hell, what now?” He looked down at Carmen. “I’ve had five hours sleep in two days.”

Carmen’s entire face softened. “Yes, baby. You work too hard.”

“I just need a few more minutes of shut-eye. You can chase her off, okay?”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“It’s not. It’s just Red, looking to take a piece out of my hide for being late.”

Carmen grinned. “She did seem to be a natural, temperamental redhead, didn’t she? You know, rumor has it you used to be able to soothe a woman. They say you even used to like women.”

He still did. In bed. But right now he was too tired to think of sharing his mattress, plus he doubted Faith McDowell would be interested anyway. She seemed to expect more out of a person than what he had in mind.

He didn’t have more. He gave it all to work and his patients, gave everything he had so that at the end of the day, there wasn’t anything left.

Maybe it was the way he’d been raised, with parents who’d rarely taken the time for him or his brother, Matt, pawning them off like unwanted luggage on everyone and anyone who’d take them. Maybe it was because it’d been so long since he’d taken a breather, he could hardly remember who he really was. He didn’t care.

He wanted sleep.

The doorbell rang again.

“Tell her I’ll be there soon.”

“Clearly, she needs you now.”

With a groan, he padded back down the stairs, glaring at Carmen, who unlike everyone else in his life, didn’t back down from him. “This is why I hired you, you know. You’re supposed to scare people away.”

“Stop being so curmudgeonly.”

Stopping in midstride, he stared at her. “Curmudgeonly?”

“It’s someone who’s grumpy, and—”

“I know what it means, and I’m not—Oh, forget it.” He settled his hand on the knob and hauled it open, finding himself looking down into the intelligent, and still fuming, eyes of the woman who was to be his boss at the clinic for the next three months’ worth of Saturdays.

You used to like women.

Oh, but he definitely still did. He just wasn’t used to being looked at as if he was pond scum, especially by a wildly attractive woman with steam coming out of her ears.

Absolutely too long without sex.

“You’re still not ready,” she said exasperated.

Deciding there should be a law against facing a furious woman before having a cup of coffee, no matter how lovely she was, he shook his head. The question was, would he ever be ready for a day full of aromatherapy and yoga? God save him. Despite his to-the-bone-fatigue, his lips quirked. “I need more than sixty seconds.”

Her gaze appeared to be riveted on his chest. “We don’t have more than sixty seconds,” she murmured.

He’d stumbled half-naked out of bed to get the door earlier, and now, given the way she looked at him, he glanced down to make sure his sweats covered all the essentials. Yes, he was covered, but if she kept staring at him like that, as if he was a long, tall glass of water and she was dying of thirst, those essentials were going to make themselves known regardless of his irritation.

“Here.” Carmen materialized from behind him and wisely shoved a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. He nearly cried in gratitude, and might have actually hugged her, but then she said to Faith McDowell in apology, “Give him until the coffee’s gone. Two minutes tops, he’ll be human again. I promise.”

“Oh.” Faith smiled sweetly. At Carmen, not Luke. “Yes, I understand. Thank you.” Kindness and genuine caring poured from her. Her voice, light now that it was directed at someone other than him, was the most amazingly sweet, musical voice Luke had ever heard.

It reminded him of…sex. Unbelievable, what sleep deprivation could do to a man.

Carmen and Red—her hair was whipping around her shoulders, long and wild—watched him with twin expressions of expectation, waiting for his coffee to work the miracle that wasn’t going to happen, not to day. “I’m going upstairs now,” he said carefully. “To get showered and dressed.”

“Is that going to take more than five minutes?” His new boss glanced at her watch, quivering with impatience.

“Ten,” he said, then paused as if he really cared what she thought. “Is that okay?”

She considered this. Considered him. “Just remember, the patients are counting on you.” Her voice was cool again. The wind picked up, and with a sound of annoyance, she tossed back her wild hair. Her sweater, thin and ineffective against the chill, slipped off one shoulder, revealing the fact she was…chilly.

In an odd reaction, considering he didn’t like her, Luke felt a physical stirring at the sight.

Sleep deprived, he reminded himself. A dangerous thing.

Shrugging back into the sweater, Faith crossed her arms over her chest. “This is really a two-way street, you know. I’ll be helping you, too.”

“How, exactly, is that possible?”

“You’ll be practicing—and hopefully improving—your people skills.”

It was one thing to be so tired as to be lusting after a woman who thought him an insensitive idiot, but it was another thing entirely to let her think he needed her in any way. He needed no one, and he certainly didn’t need help with his people skills.

“You might not realize this, but one of the basic people skills is charm. I can help you there.”

Carmen laughed at that, but when he whipped around with a murderous expression, she vanished into the kitchen.

“In order to charm,” Faith said. “You need to stimulate the people around you. Can you do that?”

He thought of the inexplicable way his body had reacted to her. “Stimulation isn’t a problem,” he managed with a straight face.

“Good, because this is very important. The clinic is very important, and we have so much to do. Today alone we have babies to deliver, allergies and sinus infections, healing bones and…”

Luke’s mind drifted back to her body. How was it she looked so good in those scrubs? But she did, she looked soft and curvy, and—

“Dr. Walker?” Hands on her hips, she cocked her head. “Are you still listening to me?”

Oh yeah. “Stimulate.”

Looking suddenly a bit wary, she backed out of his house.

Yeah, Red, I advise you to run like hell.

“Well, I’ll let you get on with getting ready….” She bit her lip as once more she ran her gaze down his body.

And this time, his body definitely reacted.

She took another few steps, backing down his porch now. “I’ll…uh…be waiting.”

It should have really ticked him off, but suddenly, that threat seemed far more like a promise. “Okay then,” he said, and wondered why maybe, just maybe, he’d be looking forward to it.

FAITH DROVE AROUND THE back of Healing Waters Clinic and parked, then glanced in her rearview mirror.

Yep, Dr. Luke Walker was still following her in his fancy car that screamed success. She’d heard so much about him before this morning, but no one, not a single soul, not a single article, had ever mentioned his see-through light blue eyes, his fiery expression, the incredible, drool-inducing body that brought to mind far too many things that had nothing, nothing at all, to do with doctoring.

Grabbing her purse, she took a quick moment to inhale a long, calming breath. She was an expert in long, calming breaths, and yet the technique utterly and completely failed her now.

Hell of a time to give up chocolate, as she could use it now. A vicious craving for the secret stash of almond Hershey Kisses in her glove box overcame her. Just one, she thought, and nearly reached for them….

But she heard his door shut and hastily straightened, getting out of her car to greet him with a cool, distant smile on her face that absolutely had better hide her thoughts—her desperate need for that chocolate, her unthinkable, ridiculous attraction to him—because the bottom line was, beneath that amazing flesh and sinew, beneath his remarkable talent, beat the cold heart of a man who’d blindly put down her clinic to untold hundreds.

Her success was important to her. After all, everyone in her family succeeded. It was sort of a McDowell requirement. But more than that, she wanted this for all the people out there she was convinced she could help in a way conventional medicine couldn’t.

And she wanted Luke to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the only one who could make a difference in others’ lives. She could too. And she’d prove it by showing him how invaluable the clinic could be.

Luke’s own face was unsmiling as he moved toward her, but it wasn’t even close to distant. He was still hot under the collar, and she had to say, the look was a good one on him. If one were to go for the dark, smoldering, attitude-ridden type of man.

Luckily, she didn’t. She didn’t go for any men—she didn’t have time.

Together they turned to face her building. As with all the buildings in South Village, this one dated back to the early 1900s but had been well preserved. The two-story brick structure had once been a brewery, fully restored in the fifties. Thanks to her green thumb, it was surrounded by greenery, wildflowers and herbs she grew herself to use in her clinic. The sign hanging in front proudly read Healing Waters.

It was her baby, brainstormed during all those long, long nights of working insane hours as a nurse practitioner. The days when science and conventional medicine had been the only way. The right way. The days when her ideas of going deeper, healing more than just the body, but also the heart and soul had been mocked and grossly misunderstood in the hustling, bustling world of the E.R. she’d worked at in San Diego.

She’d prepared for this, she’d studied, gotten accredited in a variety of naturopathic areas. Now she could run diagnostic procedures, give vaccinations, assist in natural childbirth and even write limited prescriptions.

Yes, she still worked long, long hours, but these days the crazy hours actually left her satisfied and fulfilled because she was following her dream, healing people in ways conventional medicine had failed them.

But all Luke knew was that she was interrupting his weekends. “Ready?” she asked, and when he nodded, she led the way inside. The staff room was filled with organized clutter; everyone’s personal belongings, files to be discussed, a small potted herbal garden she was babying along. As they walked through, she introduced him to any staff members they passed, while her mind raced ahead, trying to see the place as he would.

The waterfall in the reception area was on, the sound of the water cascading gently over a riverbed of rocks soothed the waiting patients, along with soft music she’d handpicked, the gentle lighting, and comfy ergonomic chairs. All in calming colors from the natural palette.

Definitely, deliberately, a world away from the E.R. Any E.R. “What do you think?”

“Well, no one is screaming in the waiting room,” Luke said. “Always a good sign. Hmm, I suppose I can forgive the beaded curtains behind the receptionist. Who do you have on staff?”

He was a man used to being in charge of everything and everyone around him, she reminded herself. She couldn’t fault that about him. He did have incredible skill, the reason she’d agreed to have him here in the first place. “Today we have two naturopathic practitioners, myself and Shelby Dodd, and also a massage therapist.” But adding an M.D. on staff, one with Luke’s prestige and incredible reputation, would surely boost her clientele.

And her checkbook. She hated to be so bottom-line about anything, but at the moment, hovering in the red, she had to be.

“Before we start,” he said in a low voice, turning from his inspection of the place to look at her. “I just want you to know, I never said the clinic was worthless.”

She stared up at his solemn features and nearly got lost in those light blue eyes. “The newspaper said—”

“They exaggerated.” When she raised a brow, he sighed. “The hospital let twenty-five housekeeping employees go, employees who were forced to work four hours a week less than the full-time hours required for full benefits. The hospital insisted on that to save money, and then they let them go anyway, stating budget issues. The next day they sent your clinic a tidy sum.”

“And you objected to that.”

“Yes.” His jaw went tight. “I objected to that.”

She stared up into his face and felt an unexpected connection. “I would have objected, too,” she said softly.

His eyes reflected surprise, but before he could say something, Shelby came around the corner and waved Faith down. “I just paged you. Woman in labor in room four. Fully dilated, fully effaced, freaking out, won’t push, won’t let us even take a peek anymore.”

Faith set her purse down and started walking fast with Shelby at her side. “First baby?”

“Oh yeah. And she’s a screamer.”

“Get Guy—”

“He’s already in there. If anyone can soothe a terrified pregnant lady…”

“Guy can.” Guy Anders, their therapeutic massage therapist, had a voice that could sedate a gangbanger, and hands from heaven. He was their ace in the hole in situations like this, but still, as they rounded the corner and heard the screams, Faith cringed, both in sympathy for the woman and the people in the waiting room. “Dr. Walker—”

“I’ll assist,” he said from right behind her, and in fact, pushed into the room ahead of her.

Shelby lifted a brow, and Faith sighed. “He’s used to being in charge.”

Shelby let out a low laugh. “Well, since you are, too, this is going to be interesting.”

They stepped into the room, where the screaming had stopped. Their patient, a woman in her midtwenties, lay in the bed, eyes huge on one Dr. Luke Walker, tall and leanly muscular, scrubbing his hands at the sink and talking to her the entire time. Then he hunkered down at her side, holding her hand, murmuring words too softly spoken for Faith to catch.

On the other side of the bed stood Guy, also tall and handsome, though unusually so with a purple stripe in his hair, and interesting tattoos and piercings. He shot Faith a bemused glance at being usurped, but didn’t say a word.

Luke lifted his head and searched out Faith. “Margaret’s ready to push now. I’m going to examine her first. Do you have a spare set of scrubs?”

“No!” Margaret sat straight up, not an easy feat with forty pounds of belly, and grabbed Luke by the collar. “No scrubbing, no changing! I want to push now!”

With her fists embedded in his shirt, Luke simply nodded calmly. “We can do that,” he said in a soft, utterly authoritative yet kind voice, accepting gloves from Faith and snapping them on. To everyone he said, “I’ll deliver in my street clothes.”

Faith had just scrubbed and was already moving around to the foot of the bed. As a nurse practitioner she’d delivered more babies than she could count, simply because the doctors tended not to make it in time. Since she’d opened the clinic, there’d been hundreds more. Delivering babies was her favorite part of the job.

But Luke beat her to it. Leaning in, he murmured for her ears only, “She’s obviously low pain tolerance, let’s get her an epidural—”

“Her chart says she requested no drugs when she arrived.”

He leaned in closer, stooping a little to stand eye-to-eye with her, and since they were eye-to-eye, she had no trouble seeing his carefully reined-in anger. “You don’t believe in epidurals?”

“She requested to do this naturally,” she repeated.

“Ah, the barbaric way then,” he said. “Have you ever had a baby naturally, Faith McDowell?”

“No, and I’m fairly certain you haven’t either. There are plenty of other methods of easing pain—healing touch, herbs, imagery, pressure point therapy—”

“Let the patient decide against conventional pain meds,” he said in a low, harsh whisper. “Let her decide in the moment, as in right now, not before she knows what she’s getting into. And don’t let your beliefs drive the decision, that’s unfair.”

“Fine.” She shoved her chin in the air. “Clearly you have this situation under control. I’ll tend to the other patients.”

Without responding, he turned his attention to Margaret, his big body leaning over hers protectively, talking in that same low, gentle voice he’d never used on Faith.

She should be thankful for small favors, because that voice he didn’t share with her made her tummy quiver and her legs feel funny. Boneless.

She really wished she’d had some chocolate.

MARGARET DELIVERED A beautiful eight-pound girl—without the epidural.

Faith delivered herself a pounding tension headache, the kind she’d had daily once upon a time, when she’d worked at the hospital.

“I need a new set of scrubs,” Luke told her a couple of hours later on a rare two-minute break between patients.