She liked things that way.

Exhausted, she staggered up the stairs to her loft. It was still light outside, which confused her. She squinted at her living room. How different it looked with sunlight streaming through the big window. On the street below throngs of people were heading toward chic restaurants and cafés. A glance at her watch told her why. It was five in the afternoon. People were meeting for after-work drinks or early dinners. The thought of socializing like that startled her somewhat. When she wasn’t pouring herself into work, she truly preferred to spend her time alone.

She wolfed down the fast food first, while reading one of three medical journals on the table in front of her. The hamburger and super-size fries were the perfect accompaniment to the article on a new and innovative artery replacement. Then, with the sun still shining in all the windows, she headed into her bathroom, still reading, nibbling on a croissant as she stripped for a mind-numbingly hot shower.

No one could ever say she couldn’t multi-task.

After her steaming shower, she padded naked back into her bedroom, heading directly for the bed, until she glanced at her answering machine, which was blinking.

Damn it, why did she have one of those things again?

Because the hospital administration, tired of not being able to get her when they needed, had insisted. With a sigh, she hit the message button. If it was work, she’d just roll over and die right now.

“Nicole, baby, it’s me. Mom,” her mother clarified in her cheerful, laughing voice, as if Nicole wouldn’t recognize the woman who’d been nagging her all her life. “Are you working too hard? Are you getting any rest? Are you eating right? Are you ever going to call me and put my mind to rest that my baby isn’t working herself into an early grave?”

Nicole sank to her bed and ran the towel over her short mop of hair-her idea of styling. Since she’d just called her mother last week, in fact, called every week, she refused to feel guilty.

“Once a week just isn’t enough, Nicole,” her mother said with her perfectly startling ability to read her daughter’s mind. “I want to hear you.”

Nicole rolled her eyes but a smile escaped anyway.

“Honey, listen. I’m making pot roast on Sunday. Your father called your sisters and everyone is coming-the husbands, the kids, everyone.”

Oh, good God. Nicole had three sisters, each of whom had a husband, the requisite minivan, the house in the burbs and at least two kids. The thought of that entire noisy, happy bunch all in one place made Nicole suddenly need another hamburger.

“So, honey, you have to come. We’ll expect you by four, and let me warn you, if you don’t show, I’ll…well, I’ll call you every single day for a week.”

As Nicole’s mother was quite possibly the bossiest, nosiest, most meddling, warm, loving person on the planet, Nicole believed her.

But everyone under one roof? Laughing, talking, happily arguing sisters, sticky toddlers, drooling babies, stinky diapers… She felt a headache coming on already. She loved her family, she did, but sometimes she felt as if she was an alien, plopped down in the middle of a planet where she didn’t belong. They were all so…normal. Something she’d never been. Despite her genius IQ, she couldn’t deal with people outside of medicine. It was so difficult for her to get out of her own head, she rarely knew what to say to people and some of the basic niceties escaped her. That her family loved her anyway, even though she was intensely introverted, was a strange and odd miracle she tried not to think about too often.

“So, we’ll see you Sunday,” her mom said as if it’d been decided. “It’ll be fun to be all together.”

Fun wasn’t quite the word Nicole would have come up with. Maybe she’d have work. Yeah, that was it, she could add a shift and-

“Love you, baby.”

Ah, hell. Sunday it was.

Still naked, she plopped on the bed. It only took two pillows over her head and approximately twenty seconds for sleep to conquer her the same way she’d conquered her world.

She dreamed. She would have thought she’d be haunted by the blood of her second surgery that day. A patient had burst an artery and by the time she’d gotten everything under control she’d been standing in a sea of red.

But blessedly she’d left that behind at the hospital. Instead, in dreamland, she was two years old again, and memorizing the book of presidents her parents had kept on the coffee table. For fun, she’d recite them backwards to her hotshot, know-it-all sisters Annie and Emma.

It had been their first inkling that Nicole was going to be different.

The dream shifted and she was six, helping Emma with her seventh-grade algebra.

At twelve, she’d helped Annie with her PSAT testing. A genius, were the whispers around her. Off-the-scale IQ, they said. A prodigy.

At twelve, Nicole should have been into lip gloss, pop bands and boys. Instead she’d been fascinated by science. She operated on frogs. She dissected bugs.

Yet kids her own age remained a mystery to her, a complete mystery.

And now that she was grown up, she was still different. She should have learned to deal with others by now. Learned to be a social creature, well rounded and defined.

But the reality was that she’d rarely dated and had no idea how to do anything but heal. It was what she was. Who she was. A doctor.

Nothing else.

So why did the next dream involve one tall, dark and sexy Irish architect with a killer smile and eyes that made her yearn for something completely out of her reach?

Turning over, she sank back into an exhausted and dreamless slumber.


“WAKE UP, Nicole, you’re scaring me.”

Nicole snuggled more deeply beneath her covers. “Go away, Mom, I don’t have school today.”

“I had better not look anything like a woman old enough to be your mother.”

Nicole jerked her eyes open, heart pounding. Okay, good, she was home. The sun was shining again, how annoying.

And Taylor sat on her bed, looking as stunningly beautiful and elegant as ever.

With a groan, Nicole shut her eyes again. “I didn’t help you with the engagement party plans, right?”

“No, but I forgive you because you’re going to reschedule. I brought you breakfast.”

Nicole smelled something delicious. She cracked open an eye and saw a tray filled with mouthwatering food.

“I should tell you-as if you couldn’t guess-I didn’t cook this. Suzanne’s catering a big brunch this morning and made this up for us. You frightened the hell out of me, not answering your door. You never even heard me calling for you like a banshee, and we all know I don’t like to sound like a banshee. Who sleeps like that?”

Nicole blinked. “Well…”

“You’ve overworked yourself again, haven’t you? Nicole, honey, that’s just plain bad for you.”

Nicole closed her eyes, rendered stupid by this display of concern. Maybe if she was really still, Taylor would vanish. A figment of her imagination.

“Not much of a morning person,” came an amused male voice from the other side of the room.

If Nicole had thought her heart had raced at the sight of Taylor in her bedroom, it went off the scale now. Even after their very brief encounter, she recognized that slightly Irish voice, she recognized it immediately. And if it brought a series of shivers down her spine that she couldn’t attribute to a morning chill, she could shove the reaction aside in favor of temper. “What the hell-”

“Now before you get all pissy at me…” Taylor put a hand over Nicole’s chest, pushing her back. “Let me explain.”

Nicole could take Taylor down any day of the week. Her workouts, when she could fit them in, guaranteed that.

The only exercise Taylor ever did was lifting and setting down her hairbrush. Oh, and her lipstick.

No, what held Nicole back from wrapping her fingers around Taylor’s neck was one tiny little detail.

She slept in the nude.

Which meant that in order to kick Taylor’s ass, she’d have to get out of bed.

Naked.

“Why is he in here?” she settled for asking between her teeth while clutching the sheet to her chest.

From his perch holding up her wall, Ty’s gaze zoomed in on her-a very blue gaze that was lit with amusement, curiosity and plenty more-and for just a flash in time, she lost her train of thought.

Taylor craned her neck and looked up at the tall, dark, ridiculously gorgeous man. “You’ve met?”

“You could say that,” Nicole said.

“Oh, good, because I’m thinking of hiring him to fix up the building, which apparently is about to fall off its axis. Not,” she added quickly, “that you need to worry about it, I’m getting it all fixed pronto.”

“Taylor.” Nicole rubbed her temples. “The point. Get to the point. Why is he here? Specifically, in my bedroom.”

“Well, I was standing there in the hallway yelling for you, and beginning to freak out when you didn’t answer, when he offered to break in since I didn’t have my keys on me. He’s not only an excellent architect, he’s quite the handyman.”

“Let me guess,” Nicole said dryly, watching Ty smile at her from behind Taylor’s back. “He got in with a credit card?”

“Why, yes. A handy little trick, don’t you think?”

“Hmm.” Nicole narrowed her eyes at the ease he displayed standing there in her bedroom. As if he belonged.

But no one, especially a man, belonged in her bedroom, no matter how good he looked in a light-blue chambray shirt shoved up past his forearms, and a pair of jeans that made her hormones stand up and quiver. “Is the credit card trick something you picked up in Ireland?” she asked.

“Why ever would you think that?” he asked innocently.