“Surgeries. Meetings. More surgeries.”

“Are you good?”

“The best.”

He smiled. “I bet you are. Did you always know this is what you wanted?”

“From day one.” She wondered the same about him. “Were you always going to be an architect?”

Some of his good humor faded, just a little. So little, in fact, she thought maybe she’d imagined it. “Not always,” he said lightly.

When she just looked at him, he sighed. “Let’s just say I didn’t have the most auspicious of beginnings.”

She felt a smile tugging at her lips. “A troublemaker, were you?”

“Of the highest ranking.”

“I’m shocked. Were you-”

“Oh, no. This is about you.” He lifted a brow. “Your mom is something.”

Nicole stared at him. “You met her, too?”

“Darlin’, the way she stormed the building, everyone met her. What a dynamo.” He smiled. “You’re like her.”

“I am not.”

His smile went to a full-fledged grin. “Are too.”

She set down her fork. “She has a bazillion kids, a husband, two bazillion grandchildren and runs her world like Attila the Hun.”

“Yeah, you share that last part. So what was it like, growing up with such a large family?”

He wasn’t just idly asking, he’d leaned forward, his entire attention on her face. He really wanted to know. “Well…” She thought about it. “I never had my own bed. And I had to wait hours for the bathroom. Oh, and I wore a lot of hand-me-downs.” She hesitated, then admitted, “But there was always someone around when I needed them.” Always. And, she also had to admit, she hadn’t thanked any of them enough for it. “What about you?”

He suddenly didn’t look so open. “I already told you, I don’t have a family.”

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

“Well, I never knew my father, and let’s just say my mother is better off forgotten.” Expression closed, he reached for his iced tea. “Need a refill?”

“No, thank you.” Behind his nonchalance, she saw his regret, and a sadness she couldn’t reach. But more than that, pain. “Ty-”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “Please, don’t.”

Before she could respond, he tossed some money on the table and stood. “Let’s get you to work.”

“And after that?”

His light-blue eyes gave nothing of himself away now. “What do you want to happen after that?”

“If I said nothing?”

“I’m not sure I’d believe it.”

“Ty-”

“Look, Nicole…do we have to figure it out right now?” He touched her cheek, let out a smile that was short of his usual levity. “Do we really have to decide right this very minute?”

With a shake of her head, she took his offered hand, and shocking herself, tipped her face up when he leaned in for a sweet kiss. Or what should have been a sweet kiss, but was instead only an appetizer.

He pulled back, and she opened her eyes. There was a question in his, but she shook her head. “Work,” she said.

“Work, then.” And he took her outside.

Work would be good. At work she could bury her thoughts and concentrate on what mattered. Her job.

Not the man who had unexpected depths and a touch she couldn’t seem to forget.


AND SHE DID MANAGE to bury herself in work. The emergency department was overloaded due to a strange and violent outbreak of a flu, which had severely dehydrated an older woman to the point that her kidneys failed. After that, they’d taken out an appendix from a hockey player, and then sewn a finger back on a carpenter who’d managed to cut it off with his table saw.

By the end of the shift she’d nearly managed to for get all about Ty. As she stood in front of a vending machine in the reception area of the hospital on her way out the door, her cell phone rang.

“Honey, I dropped off some food for you. Your nice landlady let me in, so I stuck it in your fridge.”

“Mom.” Nicole had to laugh. “I have food.”

“No, you had a rotting head of lettuce and two sodas. Now you have food. Taylor is very beautiful, isn’t she? Is she married? I didn’t see a ring, but-”

“Mom-”

“Just say thank you, Nicole.”

“Thank you, Nicole.”

“Funny. Don’t forget to come to dinner this Sunday.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try harder than last Sunday. I’ll even shamelessly bribe you. I’ll make you brownies. Your favorite.”

“Mom-”

“Double fudge brownies.”

Nicole had to laugh. No matter how long and bloody her day had been, her mother never failed to bully a smile out of her. With her mom, she always felt warm and loved, even when she wasn’t warm and lovable at all.

And some people never had this in their life. Some people, like Ty. “I love you, Mom.”

“Well.” Her mother’s voice got thick, and she sniffed. “I love you, too, baby. See you soon.”

“See you soon,” she promised, then sighed. She would have to make sure she did before her mother showed up at her place with more food she wouldn’t eat.

Her eye on the chocolate caramel bar in the vending machine, she put a dollar in.

It ate the money and didn’t spit out the candy.

“Why you-” She kicked it. This had always worked in the past, but now the machine mocked her with silence.

“You have to have the right touch.” Dr. Lincoln Watts glided his body directly up behind hers, so close that she nearly choked on his expensive aftershave. His arms surrounded her as he reached past her to punch in the buttons on the machine.

The candy bar dropped.

Nicole stepped forward until she was practically kissing the machine before she turned in his arms. “Thank you.” He had until the count of three before she used her fists.

“Now you owe me.” There was a little smile on his lips that she was certain he considered sexy, but it creeped her out. No wonder all the nurses hated him.

She’d already changed back into her own clothes, and his eyes were eating her up. “Do you have any interesting tattoos to go with all those earrings of yours?” he asked a little huskily.

She stared at him. “Is that an official question?”

“Go out with me tonight.”

“Dr. Watts-”

“Linc,” he corrected gently, with a not-so-gentle look in his eye as he stroked her cheek.

She pushed his hand away, met his gaze to make sure he saw her anger, and spoke carefully so as to not confuse the idiot. “I don’t go out with people from work. I don’t mix work and my personal life. Ever.”

“I’m not ‘people.’ I’m a doctor.”

“I don’t care if you clean bedpans, my answer is the same.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes became distinctly not so friendly. “You’re turning me down again?”

What was it with too-smart, too-good-looking men? “Yes. I’m turning you down. Again.”

“That’s a bad plan, Nicole.”

“Dr. Mann.”

He looked her over for a long moment, then stepped back, his eyes ice. “I can make your life hell here. You know that.”

“No, I can make your life hell.” God, she hoped that was true.

She was the youngest doctor on board, the newest, and she wasn’t naive enough to forget there were hidden politics in force, or that Dr. Lincoln Watts had all the strings to pull and she had none.

Still, she kept her head up high as she walked past him and out the doors of the hospital. That she had just now remembered she didn’t have her car made a perfectly bad ending to a perfectly bad day. Spoiling for a fight, with no one to go nose-to-nose with, she stalked over to a pay phone to look for the number of a cab company.

6

DRAWING AND DESIGNING were what Ty had been born to do. Envision and create, and then move on.

He was good at it, especially the moving on part. He could do it right now, just pack up and go. Hell, he didn’t have anything he couldn’t buy again. In fact, he had moving down to a science. He could pack up and get out of anywhere within a half hour if he had to.

But Taylor’s building, while appearing to be a dump, had huge potential, and the job stirred his creative juices enough that he didn’t feel like thinking about moving on, not yet.

At the moment he stood on the roof, staring down at the third-floor living-room window-Nicole’s window to be exact-trying to figure out a way to pop it out a little to fit the early-1900s traditional facade of the place. The challenge excited him, and he retrieved his notepad from his pocket and hunkered down, yanking the cap off his pen with his teeth so that he could write. He was a page into it when he heard the screech of tires.

Nicole slammed out of a cab, which reminded him he’d fixed her car for her. He took one look at the strut in her walk, at the fury pouring off her in waves, and wondered what had happened to make her look as though she was spoiling for a fight.

Though he still had measurements to take in the rafters, he told himself he could come back later, and shimmied down from the roof to the mock balcony in front of her living-room window. He’d just landed on his feet when he saw her clearly through the glass, stalking in her front door. Slamming it. She saw him immediately, he could tell by the slight narrowing of her eyes-ah, how lovely to be so welcomed.

With a kick-ass attitude he couldn’t miss, she headed toward him, opening the window so fast he thought for a moment she meant to push him down three stories to his death.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Just thought I’d drop in.”

“Funny,” she said without a smile. “You hang outside windows often?”

“Just yours.” He cocked his head at the unmistakable unhappiness in her gaze. “You going to invite me in?”

“Nope.”

“What if I say please real nice?”

“Oh, fine.” She turned away. “Suit yourself, you’re going to anyway.”

Yes, he was. And her stress drew him like a magnet. He threw a leg over the sill, climbed through and straightened, studying her stiff spine. Coming up behind her, he put his hands on her shoulders.