Doctor Seduction

She kept her face covered, afraid to breathe. Then she recognized the tread of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. Hospital shoes. She pulled her hands away and opened her eyes. What she saw was very nearly worse than her imaginings.

Sam.

He didn’t notice her in the shadows. He made a guttural sound of anger in his throat and walked over to the air-conditioning vent, punching his fist into it hard. The metal rang. Cait let out a yelp. He jerked around and spotted her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She’d die before she admitted she’d seen Jared Cross and he’d recommended it. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I asked you first.”

They both seemed to realize how juvenile that sounded. Sam looked away, and for a moment she thought he looked almost embarrassed. Then he went to the pile of boxes and began moving the ones on top. “I was looking for something.”

Cait astounded herself by snorting. “And then the vent did something to offend you?”

He stopped moving and looked at her as though she had changed color. “Damn it, would you stop doing that?”

“What?”

“Being sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I don’t know about that. I never really tried it on before.”

“Well, you have now, and I don’t like it. So knock it off.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I only report to you between the hours of eight and four. And that’s on a bad day. If I want to be sarcastic on my own time, that’s my choice.”

His eyes—they were the color of chocolate in the dim light, she thought—almost bugged. “You just did it again!”

Suddenly the fight went out of her. Cait slumped back against the wall and looked away. “Please. Just leave me alone.”

He was silent for a long time. “You’re not doing okay with any of this, are you?” he asked finally.

His voice was kind. She brought her chin up quickly and looked at him once more. “I’m doing great. You?”

“Terrific. Good. No problem.”

“Which explains perfectly why we’re both here.”

“I was looking for something,” he said again.

“Then get it and go. Don’t let me keep you.”

He sat on the floor across from her, instead. “You know what part I liked the most?”

She knew, somehow, that he was talking about the ideas for escape they’d bounced back and forth during their first few hours in their underground prison. What did it mean, that she was suddenly able to read his mind? “Which?”

“When you were going to hide in the ceiling pipes and drop down on him after I called him into the basement.”

Cait sniffed. That one had been her idea. “You wouldn’t have fit up there.”

“You’re too small to have done any damage to him. He would have thought a flea had landed on his back.”

She felt anger kick in her again. “So you said at the time. But I believe you called me a sparrow.”

“Flea, sparrow, same thing.”

“Tell that to the itchy sparrow.”

He stared at her again, then he laughed and shook his head. “You really have gone off your rocker.”

Cait stiffened. “I’m not the one going around beating up ducts.”

He ignored that. “I would liked to have seen it, though—you falling through the air like Wonder Woman.”

Suddenly she felt hot again. Her skin felt excruciatingly warm, all her senses heightened. “I believe she was a bit more substantial than I am.”

“‘I believe,”’ he mimicked. “That’s good. You’re sounding like you again.”

“I was an English major before I decided to go into nursing,” she said tightly.

“Why’d you change?”

“Nursing pays moderately better than teaching. Then again, teaching doesn’t demand interaction with arrogant God’s-gift-to-women doctors.”

He looked genuinely affronted. “I’m not arrogant.”

“You’re arrogant.”

“How am I arrogant?”

Cait pushed to her feet. She crossed to the door, but she wasn’t leaving. She stopped there and rested one shoulder against the frame, a wide, cocky grin on her face. “‘Looking for someone?”’ she mimicked him.

He watched her, mystified.

She left the door and turned around to face it. She put a simpering look on her face and tossed back an imaginary mane of hair. “‘As a matter of fact, I am. You,”’ she said in a falsetto.

When she turned around this time, she saw the light dawn in his eyes.

“Kimberlie Leon?” he asked. “You were too far away to hear what I said to her.”

“Obviously, not far enough.” Cait leaned back against the wall.

“Regardless. That wasn’t arrogance.”

“Okay. Cockiness, then.”

“I was flirting.”

“Well, if the way you slammed your office door was any indication, your technique needs work.” She came back at him quickly, because she hated the hot shaft of something unseen and inexplicable that hit her in the gut, something bizarrely like jealousy. “She was all over Kenny Estrada the moment you were gone,” she added.

“The intern?” Sam scowled. “She was?”

“She was.”

“I guess that took you down a peg.” He shot at her.

It had, actually. “Why would it?”

“You were flirting with him.”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t flirt.”

“Maybe not two weeks ago, but you were sure as hell doing it today.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

He got to his feet and proceeded to pick his steps across the room. He looked coyly out of the corner of his eye and gave a high-pitched little giggle as he tucked invisible hair behind his ear. “That’s flirting.”

Cait opened her mouth in outrage. Then a laugh came up from her belly. She clapped a hand over her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stifle it, and then a sobering thought hit her. This was just the way he had been in that underground room. Whenever she’d started to come undone, he’d made her laugh until her panic had subsided.

Cait dropped her hand and turned around again to reach for the door handle. “I’m leaving.”

“By the way, you’re not less substantial than Wonder Woman,” he said suddenly, stopping her. “Not in all areas.”

She whirled back to him. Her heart kicked her chest and vaulted into her throat. “What?”

“I guess I would know.” His gaze fell to her breasts.

Heat poured through her, almost making her knees buckle. Why was he talking about that? “Don’t talk about that. It was a one-time thing.”

“Yeah, it was. But I was just making an observation.”

“Well, don’t.”

“You’re blushing,” he said.

“I don’t blush, either.”

“Right, and you don’t cut men off at the knees.”

“What? I never did that!”

He needed to talk about this, Sam realized. Coming back to this room sure as hell wasn’t doing it for either of them. She was still just as unpredictable as she’d been all day. So he needed to put what had happened between them right out there in the air and toss it around a little, he decided. Then he could forget about it.

“Show me how,” he whispered.

“Show you what?” Sam noticed that her voice went thin. It was almost a squeak.

“That’s what you said to me when I kissed you.” He watched more color fly into her face. “Face it, lady, you were the instigator in all that.”

“That’s preposterous!” Now her eyes were shooting fire. “You kissed me! It was the farthest thing from my mind! We were sitting there sharing that bag of peanuts you found in your pocket, then you started feeding them to me and then you just…you just…kissed me!”

That was exactly how it had happened, Sam thought, so he wouldn’t win any points trying to argue it. He tried another tack. “And you needed me to tell you how to kiss? Was that why you said, ‘show me how’?”

“No!”

“Then the rational deduction is that you were not talking about kissing when you said those words.”

“I don’t even remember saying them!”

“Oh, honey, you said them. Trust me on that one.”

“Well, then, I was…I was…”

Sam waited.

“Go to hell!” she shouted.

He threw back his dark head and laughed. “I was waiting for you to say something like ‘You, sir, are no gentleman.”’

She sniffed. “Except we always knew that.”

Sam found himself closing the distance between them. “Four years, and I never knew you had such a tongue on you, Nurse Matthews.”

She backed up against the door. “You’ve seen the last of my tongue.”

“Have I?”

“What’s gotten into you? It was a one-time thing!”

“So was the burning bush, but people are still talking about it.”

“I don’t want to talk!”

“That’s a change, then. You did it nonstop the whole time we were in that room. The only thing you didn’t tell me was at what age you were potty-trained.”

She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “There was nothing else to do but talk.”

“Oh, we thought of something.”

She moved her hands to clap one against her tummy. “Stop this.”

Okay, he thought, relaxing for the first time all day. He knew a rattled woman when he saw one. She wasn’t as indifferent to that whole business between them as she pretended to be. His ego was assuaged.

Now, he thought, he could put it behind him.

He took another step toward the door and she jumped back again, hitting it so hard the collision hurt him. His first instinct was to ask if she was all right. He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, instead. “Relax.”

She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

He backed up gladly. Her skin was too soft. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to move so I can leave and go home?”

Cait jerked aside so he could get to the door. “Be my guest.”

He opened it and stepped through.

“You said I was rigid, too,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t just call me a sparrow. You said I was rigid.”

He looked back at her. The conversation was supposed to be finished. He’d done what he’d meant to do. He’d gotten her out of his blood. But now something in his gut hitched all over again.

“You were rigid,” he said, “right up until you started taunting Hines like some kind of madwoman.” And that had blown his mind away.

She gave a quick little nod. “Okay, then. I just wanted to get that straight for the record.”

“Consider it straight. You have unplumbed depths, Nurse. Duly noted.” Damn it! She looked bewildered and pleased by the compliment, and he felt something go hinky in him again. He felt himself wanting to kiss her one more time.

“Let’s go,” he said quickly. “Are you done communing with the laundry chute?”

She stepped through the door after him and shut it smartly behind her. “In my own fashion. I might mention that at least I didn’t destroy my knuckles in the process.”

Sam looked down at his right hand. She was right. He was bleeding. He felt marginally like an idiot until they took four or five strides down the hall. Then he was distracted by the nervous shift of her shoulders. She hesitated and looked back the way they’d come.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

He walked with her to the employees’ parking area. He wasn’t surprised when she stopped beside a car that was small, practical and ugly. It was exactly what he would have expected her to drive—a week ago. That comforted him a little until he got to his Maserati and looked back.

Then he watched her through her windshield. She started playing with that damned zipper again, the one on the front of her scrubs top. She tugged it down a little. He got a peek of skin—he knew it was as smooth and pale as alabaster—then she fanned herself from the heat with her hand. She reached to the passenger seat and a second later she pushed dark, wraparound sunglasses onto her face. When she turned out of the lot, the wind tickled her hair through the open windows.

It was over, damn it. Over. A one-time thing. But suddenly Sam had to inhale hard just to breathe.

The woman tailed them as far as the lobby, her anger pushing hot and steady at the inside of her skull.

It had been a bit of luck, finding them together. Otherwise, she would never have known that they were still cozy. Up until now, she’d just been keeping an eye on him. He was her answer, her way out, the clever doctor who collected women like trophies, then tossed them aside.

He was the one who would give her everything she’d ever wanted. Except now…now he’d come out of that storage room with the breathless little blonde. It was a wrinkle and it infuriated the woman. It caught her off guard and was going to force her to adjust her plans.

She waited until they turned out of the corridor, then she hurried after them. She’d had a bad moment when the bitch looked back over her shoulder as though knowing she was being watched, and that made her more cautious. She finally landed in the lobby at the same time they pushed through the outside doors.

She hurried to the glass and watched him standing there, staring after the sweet, wimpy nurse.

She’d have to fix this, she thought. This time she wasn’t going to lose.

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