“But telling him that only gives him an unfair advantage over Nicole!” Suzanne protested.

Taylor kept her amused gaze on Ty. “I have a feeling he’s the one who needs the handicap. Hurt her though,” she said casually. “And we’ll hurt you.”

“Oh, definitely,” Suzanne agreed.

They weren’t serious, Ty thought. They couldn’t be serious. He laughed to prove it.

They didn’t laugh back.

“Actually,” Taylor said seriously, “if you hurt her, we’ll hunt you down and cut off your balls. So…” She clapped her hands and smiled. “Ready to get to work?”

American women were insane, he thought. Completely insane.


TWENTY MINUTES later, Nicole ran back out of her loft. She needed to lose herself in something, and the first thing to come to mind had been the hospital. Her mind was now firmly on work.

Okay, not true. Her mind was still wrapped around the way Ty had looked at her in that dress. Oh, man, how he’d looked at her in that dress. Her knees still were a little weak. Who’d have thought a man could have such heat in his eyes? She’d nearly imploded on the spot from the intensity.

But she was absolutely not going to waste time thinking about that, or analyzing her reaction to it. She was going to concentrate on work-

She came to an abrupt halt in front of her car. The streets were filled with shoppers and diners, with people who had nothing to do all day other than wander.

But Nicole had plenty to do. And she’d get to it, if sitting on the hood of her car hadn’t been Taylor and…and the man she’d just promised herself she wouldn’t think about.

Heads together, they were poring over an opened manila file and laughing. Until they saw her.

Well, Taylor kept laughing. But Ty’s smile slowly faded. “You changed,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s hard to operate in a cocktail dress.”

Taylor, who had her feet propped up on the bumper of Ty’s car, which was parked right in front of Nicole’s, waved her closer. “Ty is trying to help me decide on a contractor. These two right here?” She held up two different bids. “They’re young and cute. And expensive. But very good at what they do, apparently.” She looked at Ty for approval, who nodded. “And these two…” She switched papers around and held up two more bids. “They’re a tad bit older, more experienced, slightly cheaper…but I guaran-ass-tee you, they’ll have beer bellies and plumber cracks hanging out the backs of their low-riding jeans, and it won’t be pretty.”

Ty rolled his eyes. “Tell me you’re not hiring a contractor based on his ass.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Grinning, she popped up, hugged Nicole, and started toward the building.

“Well, gee, I guess we’re done,” Ty said to her back, standing up himself.

Turning around, Taylor smiled. “I just figured, since Nicole didn’t really have to be at work, and since I’d bet the bank she hasn’t eaten, that the two of you could go out.”

“No,” Nicole said quickly. Too quickly, but damn it, she couldn’t help it. Eat with Ty? No. No way.

But Taylor danced her bossy butt into the building and vanished.

Ty reached for Nicole’s hand, tugging her close enough that he could look into her face. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

“Sorry about upstairs.”

“You mean about staring at me in that dress?”

His mouth quirked. “Not for staring, no. Sorry you were so uncomfortable in it. You looked…amazing.”

“Yeah. Funny what a low-cut, tight number like that does for a man. Did you lose a lot of brain cells?”

He let out one of those slow, dangerous smiles. Dangerous, because she couldn’t take her eyes off it. That, combined with his warm hand in hers, and suddenly she stood there on the sidewalk, completely forgetting she didn’t want to stand there with him. Staring at him.

“Darlin’,” he said, “I lose brain cells every time I look at you.”

His voice melted her all the more. Unfair, very unfair. “Well, if this does it for you…” She gestured down to her military-green cargo pants and plain white T-shirt. “Then you have even bigger problems than I thought.”

His see-all blue eyes never left hers. “It has nothing to do with what you’re wearing. Or how you look.”

Oh, God. Why did he say such things? No one had ever said such things to her, and she had no idea how to handle it. If she’d been hands deep in an emergency surgery, or up to her eyeballs in X rays…those she could handle.

But this wasn’t work, this was far more personal than work had ever been, and she was at an utter loss. She inhaled a breath and held it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Scary shit, huh? Let’s go eat, Nicole.”

“Because Taylor said to?”

“Because I can’t get you out of my head. We might as well spend some time together and see where it goes.”

“It’s going nowhere.”

He smiled again. “Let’s go see.”

“No.” She fumbled for her car door, slid in. “I’ve really got to go.” She turned the key.

And the engine simply coughed.

She turned it again, with more force, but she got that ridiculous wheezing noise that told her the battery was dead. Again. “Damn it.”

“Sounds like battery trouble.” Easy as he pleased, he opened her door, tugged her out. “Lucky for you, my car runs like a sweetie. I’ll drop you off at the hospital, then charge your battery while you’re at work.”

“I don’t want-”

“It’s no trouble.”

Naturally he didn’t take her right to work, but stopped at a cute little sidewalk café a few blocks away. “For sustenance,” he explained as he got out and came around for her.

Came around for her. Nicole stared at him as he led them to a table, while she tried to remember the last guy who’d opened a door for her.

Or put his hand lightly on the base of her spine, touching her as they walked.

Her skin still tickled. That it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience had her head spinning. “Who are you?” she said over the table, bewildered, which wasn’t a common problem for her.

He lowered his menu and smiled. “What you see is what you get.”

“Why do I sincerely doubt that?”

“I don’t know. What about you? Is what you see what you get?”

She glanced down at her plain clothes, ran a finger over the silver hoops in her ear and lifted a shoulder. “I think so.”

“Tell me about the earrings. What do they mean?”

“How do you know they mean something?”

“A hunch,” he said, which she didn’t like, because it was true.

How did he seem to know her so well? “There’s one small hoop for every year of medical school,” she admitted. Her own personal badges of honor, during a difficult time when she’d been struggling to survive in a fast-paced, adult world while still in her late teens.

With a slow smile that bound her to him in a way she didn’t understand any more than the ease with which he seemed to know her, he lifted the sleeve on his own shirt, revealing the tattoo she’d seen before. It was a narrow band around his tanned, sinewy bicep in a design that was incredibly sexy. Just like the rest of him.

“I got a part of it for every year I made it through college,” he said. “Finished it when I graduated and started my internship in Sydney.”

“Badge of honor,” she whispered, and at this unexpected common ground of a deep, soul-felt connection, she felt herself warm to him in a new, different way.

The waitress came, and when Nicole tried to order just coffee, Ty took over and ordered enough food for an entire third-world country.

“I’m a growing boy,” he said with a shrug and a big, unrepentant grin. “And besides, I promised Taylor I’d feed you.”

“Is that why we’re here? Because you promised Taylor?”

His smiled faded, but before he could speak, the waitress came back with bread and butter. When she was gone, he grabbed a piece of bread and said, “We’re here because I wanted to spend time with you.” He slathered butter on the hot bread. “And I think, behind all that cool-as-ice stubborn orneriness, you want to spend time with me as well.” He handed her the bread.

“This is not headed to the bedroom.” She took his offering because the butter was melting all over, making her stomach growl. “Not yours or mine.”

“Of course not.” He sank his teeth into his own piece of bread. “You have to go to work.”

She took in his innocent gaze. “I mean ever. This isn’t going to the bedroom, yours or mine, ever.”

“Well, now, that’s just a crying shame, given how combustive we are just sitting here, much less kissing.”

Hearing him say it, in the Irish accent he didn’t acknowledge, made her pulse quicken. “We need to forget that kiss.”

Now he laughed, the sound rich and easy.

“We do,” she protested.

“Much as I’d like to oblige you, darlin’, I’m going to be around. A lot. We’re going to run into each other. Nobody’s going to be forgetting anything.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“Hell yeah, I’ve thought about this.” His eyes were crystal-clear, and very intent on hers. “Last night I decided never to so much as look at you again.”

“What happened?”

“What happened?” He shook his head, and as the waitress come back with their order he dug in with a gusto that forced her to do the same. “You happened.”

Since she didn’t intend to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole, they ate in silence. Nicole had to admit, it felt good to fill her belly. How she managed to forget to eat so often was beyond her, but she liked this feeling of…satisfaction. Since she intended to deny herself any other kind of satisfaction-say sex with Ty, with which she was quite certain he would have no trouble satisfying her-food would have to do.

“So.” After inhaling enough food for an army-where did he put it all in that long, hard body?-he leaned back in his chair. “What’s up for today, doc?”