Just Surrender...

“I’m not going to pay extra because you got lost.”

Lost? Edie? Ha. “Flat rate from the airport to the city. It’s the rules.”

“Now you’re law-abiding?”

“You’re just fun to joke with, and you look like you needed cheering up.”

“It’s late. I’m tired. I want to get to the hotel.”

“Are you always this crabby when you’re tired?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to see Underground New York, the part that tourists always overlook?”

“No.”

“At some point, you’ll have to get out and see the sights. You can’t let rejection get you down. She’s not worth it.”

“She’s not getting me down.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Believe what you want. Tonight, when you’re alone in bed staring at that mirror on the ceiling, you’ll see those empty eyes. And before I know it, you’ll be the front page, having jumped naked from the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“A mirror on the ceiling?” he repeated, picking out the least inflammatory bit of her sentence. It said so much about his sexual psyche.

“Of course. You should check out the theater.”

“What theater?”

“At the hotel. It’s live. The guests can reserve a time slot, and ahem…perform for whoever wants to watch. I heard the seats fill up fast.”

“Please, no.”

Edie grinned at him in the mirror. “I’m kidding.”

“I thought so,” he told her, so obviously a lie.

“I’m kidding about the reservations. It’s first-come, first-serve.”

“I don’t believe you,” he answered stiffly, but she noticed him pulling at the knot at his throat.

Certainly, some of the Belvedere tales were urban legends, and then some were nothing but Page Six gossip, although Edie firmly believed that where there was smoke, there was usually an arsonist with a can of kerosene and a match that didn’t want to light. Frankly, a viewing room sounded fun—as long as the man was sexy, and the woman didn’t have leg hair. Edie always shaved. A woman needed some standards.

“Suit yourself.”

“Can you just take me to the hotel?” he asked, impatience finally starting to show. Sadly Edie realized that her joyride, such as it was, was over. She’d have to go back to the apartment. Have to listen to her upstairs neighbor and his girlfriend getting hot and sweaty between the sheets. She’d have to stare at bad TV, and listen to the clock ticking in the dark. All of which she hated with a passion.

So okay, perhaps when she took the U-turn in the middle of Nostrand Avenue, it was a little reckless. The car rocked over the curb and Edie jerked at the wheel, pulling tight to the left. At last all four tires were firmly back on the ground. Perhaps a little too firmly because that was when she heard the noise.

For a split second, panic struck her, until she met his gaze in the mirror. Unmoved, and completely in control. Jerk. Quickly, she cleared the anxiety away, and when she spoke, her words sounded almost calming. “What was that?”

His lips curled at the corners, and the cool, emotionless eyes gleamed like the devil. “A flat.”

Oh, hell.

2

IT WAS THE NIGHT FROM HELL. If it hadn’t been for the raw nerves in the cabbie’s expression, he would have been furious, but he’d seen that panic before. In his line of work, he saw the fear of death everyday, and the instinct to take control was second nature to Dr. Tyler Hart M.D.

“Does Barnaby have a spare?” he asked patiently, using his clinical voice.

At his question, she turned to face him, and he could see the shakes receding. Her color was better and the quiver in her eyes was gone. “I don’t know.”

His mind ran through the steps, making a mental checklist of tools and procedure, and he was happy for the diversion. Changing flats, performing a quadruple bypass—these were the things that he was prepared for. A kiss-off from Cynthia? Not in this lifetime. And Tyler hated being unprepared. “We’ll check the trunk.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, already falling into blind obedience, which peopled tended to do at the sound of his clinical voice. Was it uncertainty, or a sheeplike personality that suddenly made her so agreeable? Considering the magenta streaks in the short blond hair, he was betting on the uncertainty.

The rain pounded on the roof, but regrettably his trench coat would have to go. Tyler wasn’t about to sacrifice it to axle grease and New York grime. He took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeves and headed for the great outdoors.

The great outdoors showered his head, and he bit back a curse. Tyler didn’t believe in using disrespectful words. It indicated a lack of control, as well as a juvenile vocabulary. Neither of which were necessary because he thrived on bad circumstances. He had pulled off aortal coarctations that were nothing short of miraculous. In the big scheme of things, rain was nothing.

Except a damned inconvenience.

As he waded toward the trunk, he felt her presence behind him. Tyler smiled with relief when he spotted the jack, the lug wrench and the treadless doughnut. Not great, but it’d do.

“Thank God,” she whispered in an awed voice. For the first time she didn’t sound quite so cavalier. None too soon, either.

It was no surprise when she started to unwedge the tire from the trunk. In fact, he had expected it, but he stopped her with a polite tap on the arm. “I can do this.”

“I should do it,” she insisted, tugging uselessly on the tire. “I flew over that curb like a rabid bat. And it’s my personal dogma that when you do bad, you need to immediately make right, or something worse will come down the pipe.”

Something worse? What was she expecting? Famine, pestilence?

Patiently, he met her eyes, watching the rain stream down her face, waiting for wisdom to dawn. Tyler believed that at some point, a person needed to abandon principles and simply do what needed to be done. Her stubborn jaw-line didn’t bode well for foregoing principles, but her irises were getting a little smarter. Eventually, she nodded.

“At least let me help,” she suggested—almost sensibly. “If you’re going to get soaked and be miserable, I should, too.”

Her T-shirt was transparent. Yes, Cynthia had blown off their relationship in a text message—in a text message—a fact that really grated, because it seemed rude. Not that he was hurt or disappointed, and he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t hurt or disappointed, but a text message? Perhaps that was why his macular muscles kept straying to her chest because Tyler wasn’t a big fan of carnal philandering. He never had the time nor the inclination, however, the sight of jutting nipples was torpedoing his normal restraint. “Not necessary. Wait in the cab,” he instructed.

“Please,” she asked, and it was a testament to the power of the sexual dynamic that he stood there, foolishly dripping wet, his gaze locked on her face, which was—unfortunately—nearly as tasty as the twin nipples that he didn’t want to want.

Her blond hair was cut short, which he wasn’t normally a big fan of, but it worked for her in that “I’m too sexy for a boy” look. His eyes tracked down her chest, then tracked back to the trunk. The flat. “Do you have a flashlight? Maybe Barnaby has one in the glove box?”

He didn’t need the light, but he didn’t want her breasts near him while he worked. The rain, the text message, the punctured tire—everything was starting to flat-line his common sense.

“I don’t think Barnaby’s that well stocked,” she argued, shoving her hands in her jean pockets, which only drew the shirt tighter.

“Can you check? Please?” he pleaded, needing to have her and her tightly packed body out of his sights.

Happily she disappeared, but then returned in a too-short two seconds with a flashlight. Of course. Trying to help, she directed the light beam in the direction of the rear wheel. “I remembered I had one in my bag. It was a giveaway at this Hudson River wildlife and fisheries symposium. It was a few months back, so I’d forgotten.”

“Lucky me,” he murmured, setting the jack under the axle, and starting to twist off the lug nuts. Twisting tight. Painfully hard. Until he felt something give. Principles. Dogma. Ironlike restraint.

“I’m Edie,” she told him, because apparently now was the perfect time for introductions.

Edie. A cute, perky name. With cute, perky breasts. And gamine brown eyes that sparkled in the rain. Sparkled. Tyler gave the nut another vicious twist.

“What’s your name?” she asked. Her conversation wasn’t what he was used to. Tyler liked coldly impersonal, eight-syllable words that didn’t involve sex, emotion, or—god-forbid—nipples.

Instead of replying, he pulled even tighter.

“Don’t be mad. You know rain is very good for the planet. It’s cleansing and nourishing, feeding the parched earth.”

“Not in New York,” he said, wiping at his face, feeling the moisture cling to his skin. Dirt was unsanitary, a breeding ground for flesh-eating bacteria and flesh-licking sex. Quietly, he groaned.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. Obviously she was finally feeling the guilt that she should have felt several thousand hours ago.

Fully intending to give her a well-deserved lecture, Tyler glanced up, but she looked so…so needy. “I’m Tyler.”

“Tyler. Pleased to meet you. You got that?” she asked, just after he finished with the nuts, and was prying off the hubcap.

“Yeah. Doing great,” he answered, flinching when a city bus cruised by to splash him from head to toe.

He tried wiping the muddy residue away, not happy when he saw her expression. If she were a nice person, she wouldn’t be laughing at him. She would be grateful. Deeply grateful.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, polite, thoughtful, trying to set an example. Although on the plus side, the situation did keep him from staring at her nipples.

“Nope. No problem,” she answered, stifling another laugh. Then, of course, she had to cross her arms over her chest. The nipples were back.

“Good,” Tyler agreed. However, he had a painful problem in his pants, and he wondered if this two-month interventional cardiology fellowship in New York was really a great idea. Of course it was a great idea. Working with Dr. Abe Keating, competing for the ACT/Keating Endowment Award. The cardiology fellowship was a chance to showcase his talents, and most of all, give him a shot at Keating’s endowment, a chance to work side by side with the surgeon for another three years, doing the research that would change the way cardio-vascular surgery was done forever.

Spurred on by the drenching rain, the occasional honking car and his barely restrained sexual frustration, Tyler changed the tire in record time. He twisted hard on the wrench, tightening the nuts on the doughnut, feeling his nuts tighten with each miserable twist.

Just as he was putting the flat in the trunk, a cop car slid to a halt beside them. The officer rolled down the window.

“Need any help?” asked the officer, his eyes straying to Edie’s chest.

“All done, Officer,” Edie replied agreeably, possibly with a newfound respect for the law. Probably because she was driving without a proper taxi license.

“You need any help, miss?” the cop asked the criminal cabbie, because apparently the dripping, greasy-handed cardiothoracic surgeon now looked the part of the perp.

Tyler scowled and then stepped in front of her chest. “She doesn’t need anything,” he told the officer, because the last thing he needed was for her to get thrown in jail. If that happened, then he’d never get to the hotel. He’d never get sex…. Sleep. Sleep was what he desperately needed.

The cop, sensing there was no criminal activity afoot, drove away, and Tyler and Edie climbed back in the cab. This time when she drove, Edie took the corners as slow as a grandmother, humming happily.

Tyler examined his ruined shirt, pulling it free from his pants, ready to burn the filthy thing. He looked up into the rearview mirror and met her eyes. “Why are you smiling?”

“You look good in dirt,” she told him, and he noticed the dimple on the right cheek, which was completely free of both dirt and guilt.

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m trying to cheer you up.” She sounded sincere and completely comfortable. Not painfully aroused. Not wondering what he would be like naked.

“Get me to my hotel,” he growled, too tired to use his clinical voice. “That’ll cheer me up.”

“Why don’t you like me?”

“Because you feed on people’s pain.”

“I do not,” she insisted.

“Then why are you so intrigued by the fact that I got dumped?” It stung. Yes. Stung. Tyler wasn’t used to pain. He cured pain. He prescribed meds for pain. He analyzed pain, and monitored pain, but damn it, he did not feel it. It wasn’t even Cynthia so much as the idea that he wasn’t good enough. It was a pain he’d stopped feeling a long time ago. Or so he thought.

“Aha, I knew I was right,” Edie chirped, rubbing salt into the wound. “Not that I’m happy you got dumped. Satisfied, yes? I mean, I do like to be right, especially about reading people. Don’t you like adventures?”

Adventures were the nation’s number one cause of death.

He blamed Cynthia for his foul mood. She had forced him into this embarrassing juvenile behavior. Edie had merely pummeled him until he had no choice but to regress even further.

“Sorry,” he apologized politely.

“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?” she asked, apparently not sensing his still painful sexual arousal.

“Why?” he asked, stalling for time, because the first answer that leaped to mind was yes.

“I owe you. You’re doing a nice thing, and you didn’t say a word when I tooled all over the five boroughs. Tonight you’ve changed a flat and your girlfriend of some indeterminate amount of time dumped you, all of which happened when you should be getting well laid at the hotel. If there’s anybody in the world that needs a drink, it’s you. Maybe a shot of tequila, or ouzo. I know this Greek bar….”

“I don’t want to go to a Greek bar,” he told her, shifting uncomfortably, finding an exposed spring in the seat, feeling it cut into his thigh. Probably severing the femoral artery, thereby letting him bleed out a quick and painless death. In which case, Cynthia would have to feel bad since she had dumped him in a text message.

“How about an American bar?” Edie suggested, as if all his immediate pains could be solved with alcohol.

A bar was a recipe for disaster, but since Tyler had apparently not severed his femoral artery and was going to live, alcohol now seemed like a good idea.

“If I let you buy me a drink, one drink—will you drive me directly to the hotel?” There was a roughness in his voice that worried him. This wasn’t about a drink. He should’ve been fantasizing about a shower, a bed. No, there were darker forces at work. Darker forces that were visualizing her. Naked in his shower. In his bed. Even naked proudly offering him one drink.

“I’ll drive you straight back to the hotel. I swear,” she promised, but Tyler knew when disaster lurked around the corner. He didn’t like to think it was a premonition because that implied his subconscious was guiding his decision—or worse, his penis.

Tonight Cynthia had dumped him. Texas’s number-four-ranked cardiothoracic surgeon with a net worth of over four million, who had saved her father’s life, not once, but three times, not that anyone was counting. If there was a woman in the world who owed him the simple courtesy of a proper goodbye, it was Cynthia.

So what if he wanted to be a jackass? If he wanted to have a drink or wild sex with a woman who felt some deep-seated desire to make him feel better, then by God, he should. If he wanted to do something spontaneous and hair-raising, then he had a premeditated right to go for it.

It was because of such elaborate rationalizations that his father called him Shit-For-Brains Sophocles, but Tyler always shrugged it off. Although now he did wonder if Sophocles ever created meaningless justifications in pursuit of wild sex. Probably not. Probably Sophocles never had shit for brains. Only Tyler.

“One drink. An American bar,” he agreed, resigned to his decision.

“A friend of mine works in a strip club.”

He smiled at her, mud-splattered and grimy with an agenda that was just as black.

THE CLUB WAS LIKE AN underground cavern with rotating lights, an abundance of surgically enhanced body parts and a low heavy rhythm that could have aroused a dead eunuch. Identifying all the cheap marketing tactics designed to titillate him did not erase the fact that the place was getting to him.

Or maybe it was her.

Edie Higgins.

A woman with a four-hour repertoire of dirty jokes, and a body that had never been under a scalpel. The body in question had sultry curves and a rosebud tattoo that rode high on her left breast—regrettably a little too high. Yes, he was feeling shallow and a bit debauched, but in his own defense, he also acknowledged her curiously appealing joie de vivre.

The club’s whiskey was overpriced and probably watered down, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t touched his glass, and already he could feel himself loosening up. Her smile was infectious—in the manner of avian flu or staphylococcus, he added as an afterthought. Dr. Tyler Hart was ready to take this woman every way, any way, she’d let him.

Edie slipped an orange slice into her mouth, the juice dribbling down one side of her lip. She had luscious lips. Not collagen-full, not schoolmarm-thin. Juicy, he thought with a stupid grin, his mind wondering what her mouth tasted like. He was allergic to citrus, but was anaphylactic shock so bad? He hadn’t been tested for allergies in years, and people outgrew them all the time, so theoretically, he had probably outgrown his. Tyler leaned closer, taking a deep whiff of orange and Edie, which promptly sent him into the first throes of sexual dysphoria.

“What was her name?” she asked, and he had to blink twice in order to focus on the words. Words.

Slowly his mind formed a suitable answer. “Cynthia.” At the name, some of the sexual dysphoria evaporated.

“Cynthia,” she repeated in a snotty voice and then giggled.

It made him want to smile, or maybe it was the way her eyes tracked his face, as if he were the most fascinating man ever. His med school roommate, Ryan, had called him an alcoholic lightweight. Because of that, Tyler was usually careful when it came to drinking. Tyler lifted his full glass and took a hesitant sip.

“Was Cynthia blonde?”

“You’re blonde,” he pointed out, but then worried that he had a type. What if he was fatally attracted to toxic blondes? Quickly he slammed the last of his whiskey.

“I’m not a natural blonde.”

“Neither was Cynthia,” he volunteered in unchilvarious fashion.

Edie giggled again. This time, Tyler smiled back.

“I could buy you a lap dance,” she offered, sounding so sympathetic it should have touched his heart.

You could give me a lap dance, he thought, and decided he wouldn’t drink anymore. Someone needed to stay in charge. God forbid that it was her.

“Do you know why she dumped you?”

“She didn’t dump me,” he protested, although why he was lying he didn’t know. Cynthia had dumped him. Rejected him. Humiliated him. And if he were smarter, he’d be milking this for all the sympathy points that he could get. As a specialist in coronary bypass, Tyler understood how easily the heart could be manipulated.

He lowered his head, the very picture of dejection. “You’re right.”

At his words, Edie put a comforting arm around his shoulders, and Tyler shamelessly moved in closer, drawn to her warmth, her generous nature, the feel of her warm and generous breasts brushing against him. Unsurprisingly, some of the sting of rejection disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and once again he heard the tenderness in her voice. He was a virtual stranger, and an unchivalarous stranger at that. Before meeting Edie, he had thought that New Yorkers were hard-hearted and cynical, unmoved by the pathos of human suffering…

Except for this one.

He met her eyes. “Thank you,” he told her, feeling sincere, grateful and yes, still painfully aroused.

“Do you want to meet paradise?”

“I’d love to,” he agreed, his mind already transported to a lurid paradise where there was no dirt, no naked gyrating dancers…unless it was Edie. He’d let her dance. As long as she was naked. Paradise sounded perfect.

However, instead of taking his hand and leading him away from this chaos, she stood and waved her hand, gesturing wildly to one of the dancers.

Enlightenment shouldn’t hurt so much.

“Is that paradise?” he guessed, as the buxom redhead bounced and buoyed her way toward him. Painful enlightenment rolled in his gut.

“What do you think?” asked Edie, looking extraordinarily pleased with herself as she started on the introductions.

“Tyler, meet Paradise, aka Anita.”

Anita held out her hand, and politely Tyler shook it, not wanting to stare at what had to be 42 Double D, but somehow he knew that laws of nature and gravity had both been violated in the altering of her breasts.

“You have to be nice to Ty. I put him through crap tonight. Girlfriend dumped him, then I had a flat, which he changed in the rain by the way, and didn’t even complain. Not once. He let me drive into Brooklyn, and didn’t bitch about it, even though I knew he knew we weren’t in Manhattan. And he’s a visiting Gemini from Houston.”

Her words were tribute to a man who was swimming upstream in a tide of lascivious spawn, and whose very life now depended on getting Edie Higgins out of her clothes. Not wanting to disappoint her, Tyler adopted the humble aspect of a man who could do no wrong.

“You poor man,” Anita cooed, as Edie wandered over to the bar.

The dancer moved in closer, eyelashes aflutter, and began stroking his arm.

Tyler tried to focus on her face, rather than her bare breasts, and happily noted the absence of forehead wrinkles that indicated either skin injections or a curious lack of stress in her life. He scanned the room, noted the glistening skin, the sultry dips and shakes, and knew it had to be BOTOX. If he spent every night in this place, he’d be ready for BOTOX, too.

“How do you know Edie?” he asked, finding a square of ceiling tile to concentrate on.

“We met at NYU.”

“You’re a student?” he asked, proudly not jumping when a dancer gyrated dangerously close to him. “Economics.”

“Of course,” he answered absently, searching out Edie at the bar.

“She’s a peach.”

“I noticed.”

“You like her?” she asked, looking at him with naked curiosity.

Tyler protested quickly. Apparently too quickly because Anita smiled with blatant sympathy. “It’s okay. You don’t have to feel bad. All the guys love Edie.”

“Really?” he asked, noting where Edie was, leaning against the long, silver bar.

Loving Edie was bad. She was too chipper, too needy, had a well-shaped nose for trouble…and a great ass, he thought, leering at her skin-tight jeans.

Hastily he swallowed air.

“See the bartender?” Anita pointed toward the hulking creature with a chain tattooed around his neck, and Tyler dragged his bleary eyes away from Edie.

“I see him.”

“They had a thing a few years ago, but she dumped him.”

“Who’d she fix him up with?”

Anita laughed, chucking him on the arm. “You’re brighter than most.”

“Thanks. So, who was the next victim?” he asked, even though he already knew. Anita was watching the chain-painted bruiser with sappy eyes. After only a few hours in the city, Tyler was now convinced that the stereotype of the hardened New York heart was flat-out wrong.

“The next victim was me.” She sighed, confirming his hypothesis.

Saps. All of them.

A happy patron walked past and curved a hand over Anita’s naked thigh, and she only smiled. The bartender didn’t blink.

Tyler shook his head, surprised. “That’s very uh, open of both of you that he doesn’t get jealous.”