Talk about a change of plans!

E.R. nurse Charlotte Ellison has her life mapped out, including a happily-ever-after with the perfect man. Sure, that disastrous night with sexy badass Kane Bartasavich wasn’t in the plan. He’s the opposite of perfect, and forever isn’t in his vocabulary. What was she thinking? Still, she simply has to stay away from him and everything will be on track.

But avoidance is impossible when Kane lands in her E.R. All of Charlotte’s protective instincts come out when she sees him in pain. She knows firsthand getting involved with him is a bad deal. But this attraction might be too deep to ignore.

Couldn’t he see she was flirting with him?

When Kane lowered his arm, Charlotte touched the tip of the sword tattooed on his biceps. “What does this one mean?”

“In some cultures,” he said, his tone gruff, “it symbolizes judgment.”

Judgment. She hadn’t expected that. Had thought someone like him would’ve chosen a different emblem, something that meant power or perhaps antiestablishment. Power to the people and all that. A hand with the middle finger sticking up.

Maybe there was more to him than she’d thought.

“What are you doing here, Red?” He looked pointedly at her hand still on his arm, her fingers caressing the smoothness of his skin as if of their own will.

Good question. What was she doing here? Her first instinct was to leap back, to put as much distance between them as possible. But that would defeat her purpose, wouldn’t it? She could do this. She would do this. Kane would be hers for one night.

She’d come too far to back down now.

Dear Reader,

One of the things I love most about writing is discovering my characters. It never fails: I start a book thinking I know each character’s complete backstory, personality and the traits that will make them fully developed and realistic. I often have page upon page of notes outlining their strengths and flaws, how they’ll react to others and what it will take to push them out of their comfortable—if not completely fulfilling—existence, and into the lives they were meant to live.

And then, as I’m writing, something always, always takes me by surprise. A previously cynical hero turns out to be shy and romantic. A heroine who was supposed to be a sweet-natured pushover fights her way through a story. It’s these surprising insights that, I think, make my characters become people we want to root for and stick with throughout an entire book.

That’s exactly what happened with Kane Bartasavich, the sexy bartender first introduced in What Happens Between Friends (Mills & Boon Superromance, August 2013). I thought Kane was your typical bad boy. He had the looks and the attitude, after all. He was, in my mind, a loner with a chip on his shoulder, someone no one could get close to.

Until his teenage daughter showed up at his apartment.

Yes, I was surprised by that development. But the more I wrote, the more I realized I’d initially shortchanged Kane by labeling him as just another bad boy. He’s so much more—which Charlotte Ellison quickly realizes!

I loved writing Kane and Charlotte’s story and revisiting the town of Shady Grove. Later this year my fifth book in the In Shady Grove series will be out, where charming playboy Leo Montesano meets his match. I hope you’ll look for it!

Please visit my website, www.bethandrews.net, or drop me a line at beth@bethandrews.net. I’d love to hear from you.

Happy reading!

Beth Andrews

Small-Town Redemption

Beth Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Romance Writers of America RITA® Award winning author Beth Andrews writes contemporary romance for Harlequin’s Superromance line, checks for her kids’ college tuition bills and text messages that somehow end up on her kids’ Twitter feeds. She loves coffee, hockey and happy endings. Learn more about Beth and her books by visiting her website, www.BethAndrews.net.

To my wonderful editor, Wanda Ottewell.

Thank you so much for your insight, encouragement and patience!

Acknowledgment

Special thanks to Taryn Maley, RN, for her invaluable help.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTTE ELLISON HAD a life plan.

She’d had a life plan, she amended as she stomped up the wooden stairs. She’d had it all figured out, had carefully planned how to achieve her goals and gone after them, no holds barred. And she’d achieved so much, had always done what she’d set out to do. Had always, always gotten what she’d wanted.

Until two weeks ago when she’d made a complete and utter fool of herself. When she’d kissed the man she loved, the man she was so sure was going to be the father of her future children, and he’d responded with a pat on the head and a kind I’m just not into you.

Bastard.

Her ankle twisted. Pain shot up her leg and she almost did a face-plant on the stairs before catching her balance. She glared at her shoes. Stupid four-inch hooker heels. And to think, they’d actually seemed like a good idea when she’d bought them. She continued on, resolute and limping, the sound of her footsteps bouncing off the walls, the echoes mocking her.

But worse than that humiliation? The next day she’d discovered the real reason James Montesano didn’t want her.

He loved her sister.

Tears stung Charlotte’s eyes, tickled her nose. She sniffed them back. She was through crying. Done. It was time to move on. Back in the saddle and all that. But it grated—oh, how it grated—that she’d done everything right, every last damn thing, and still she’d failed in a stunning and spectacular fashion.

It wasn’t fair.

Not when she’d worked so hard, planned so well and considered each and every possible outcome.

She pressed her lips together, bumped her fist against her thigh with each step. Okay, so she’d considered every possible outcome except the one that had actually happened. She could hardly believe she’d been so naive. So stupid.

Never again.

No more lists. No more worrying about the future. No more plans. She’d learned her lesson. From now on, she was following her instincts. Being spontaneous. Taking the road not taken.

That road led here where, in a matter of minutes, she’d prove she was a desirable woman worthy of a man’s attention. Not just any man, either. A gorgeous, sexy man with a cool, hooded gaze, a hard body covered in tattoos and a perpetual smirk. A dangerous man. The kind who would induce panic in her mother, give her father nightmares and make all of her friends weep with envy.

The kind of man she’d sworn never to get involved with, had never before been interested in. The kind of man Sadie—her pretty, flighty, reckless sister—usually went for.

Biting her lower lip, Char stared at the warped wooden door. Behind it lay the key to her vindication.

Or her complete ruin.

She was putting her self-worth on the line here. Was tossing aside her morals and pride. He’d better be worth it.

She knocked, the sharp raps brisk and authoritative, as if her knees weren’t shaking. As if she weren’t terrified out of her mind.

When the door remained shut for the longest three minutes of her life, no sound of movement coming from behind it, she used the side of her fist to pound on the wood. Repeatedly.

His motorcycle was in the parking lot. He had to be home.

She wouldn’t have the courage to come back if he wasn’t, if she had time to think about this for too long.

The door was yanked opened, and there he stood. Not the man of her dreams—that title belonged to her as-of-yet-unknown future husband. No, the man before her was more like the star of her deepest, darkest, sexiest fantasies.

Well, look at him, she thought in exasperation. With a sharply planed face way too pretty for his—or anyone else’s—good, Kane Bartasavich was tall, broad-shouldered and, at the moment, barefoot and shirtless. His wild mane of golden hair tousled around his face, the ends brushing his shoulders. His chest was smooth and leanly muscled, his arms well defined.

He had the word savage—in flowing script—tattooed above his heart. A swirling tribal tat covered his left arm from shoulder to just above his elbow. His right biceps sported a flaming sword, his right side the word pride. Below his navel, three Chinese symbols formed a triangle, the bottom two disappearing under the waist of his low-slung jeans.

Jeans, she noted, her eyes widening, he’d zipped but not buttoned.

Oh. My.

Warmth swept through her, fast and furious, stealing her breath, her thoughts.

She wished it would take her inhibitions, too. Her doubts.

Averting her gaze to somewhere less...dangerous...she worked moisture back into her mouth. Then checked out the symbols once more. Honestly, they were like a magnet, drawing her attention again and again.

Heat still stinging her cheeks, she opened her mouth to say something clever and charming, only to cringe when all that came out was a croak more often associated with Kermit the Frog than a highly intelligent, confident woman.

She tried again, this time managing a breathless, “Hi.”

So much for dazzling Kane with her wit and tantalizing conversation. Good thing she wasn’t here to talk.

He looked beyond her as if searching for the reason she was there. Finally, his gaze settled on her, his green eyes giving nothing away. “You lost, Red?”

Red. That was the tired and unoriginal name he’d christened her with upon their first meeting a few weeks ago. She supposed it was better than Freckles. “No.”

“Then the building had better be on fire and you woke me to save my life.” The implicit threat in his low words wasn’t the least bit softened by the huskiness of his sleep-laden tone.

“It’s after noon,” she said. “Time to wakey-wakey.”

“I work nights. I don’t wakey-wakey until at least 2:00 p.m.”

“I worked last night, too. But I’m up and dressed. And pleasant.”

“This is you being pleasant?”

“I’m extremely pleasant,” she snapped before getting herself under control. She inhaled, counted to five, then exhaled slowly. “I realize we haven’t seen the best side of each other.” Only because he brought out the worst in her. The man was infuriating. How Sadie could even tend bar for him was beyond Charlotte. “But suffice it to say, I’m an incredibly nice woman.”

He stared at her, obviously not believing it. And he kept right on staring, as if he had all the livelong day to stand there.

She crossed her arms. Tapped her foot. Felt the minutes tick-ticking away.

Dropping her arms, she huffed out a breath. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Hadn’t planned on it.”

Un-freaking-believable. Taking matters into her own hands—the best way to get things done—she shoved open the door and brushed past him. “Anyone ever tell you you’re rude?”

One side of his mouth kicked up in a condescending smirk. “You’re the one who barged into my apartment without being invited, little girl.”

Little girl.

She stayed rooted to her spot, her scalp prickling, a lump forming in her throat. Sadie had called her little girl when they’d had their fight two weeks ago. It’d been a huge, ugly blowup. One Charlotte was afraid they might not be able to get past.

Then again, she was still mad enough she wasn’t certain she wanted to get past it.

And she wasn’t a little girl. She was a fully grown, competent, independent woman. Wasn’t she here to prove that?

She couldn’t let Kane get to her. Yes, he was an ass. An ill-mannered, overgrown rebel without a cause. He was everything she didn’t want in a man. Cocky. Arrogant. Snide.

She didn’t like him.

She didn’t have to. Not for this.

Kane walked into the tiny kitchen, granting her a view of the Aztec tattoo on his broad back—a large bird, its wings outspread across his shoulder blades. Black flames dripped from the wings, licked along Kane’s spine, which served as part of the narrowing tail. It ended in a sharp point between two fingerprint-sized indentations above the waist of his jeans.

She rubbed the pads of her thumbs against her forefingers. Wondered what it would be like to press them there. To have all of that skin, those lean muscles under her hands.

Wondered if she had the courage to find out.

She rolled her head like a boxer preparing for round one. Guess she’d soon know.

Charlotte set her purse on the table by the door, then joined him in the kitchen where he poured distilled water into a large, and expensive, coffeemaker.

“Need any help?” she asked, trying for cheerful but falling somewhere in the vicinity of aggrieved.

He didn’t even glance her way. “Don’t make me call the cops to come and haul you out of here.”

She puffed out her cheeks. The least he could do is look at her. She hadn’t wiggled into these jeans for her health. Was probably damaging a few internal organs by wearing the tight denim. Not to mention how bad her feet hurt. But the overall effect was worth it. The stupid heels added to her considerable height and the dark jeans made her legs look endless, cupped her butt and gave the illusion she had hips—no easy feat. Her shirt was silky and cut low enough to give a glimpse of her black lace bra. She’d straightened her hair, taken time with her makeup.

She’d been cursed with too many cute genes to ever pass for beautiful, but right now, she looked hot. Sexy.

Kane was obviously too blind to notice.

Leaning back against the counter, she subtly arched her back, held on to the edge with her hands, pushing her chest out. “Your apartment is...” She glanced around. “Uh...nice.”

Lovely. If you liked worn, beige carpet, walls that needed a fresh coat of paint—preferably something other than the current dingy yellow—and a kitchen straight from the 1970s, complete with orange Formica counters. At least it was clean. Then again, he kept O’Riley’s, the bar downstairs, his bar, spotless.

A point in his favor.

“You’re very neat,” she blurted.

Biting the inside of her lower lip, she winced. Neat? Was that the best she could come up with? Next thing she knew she’d be complimenting him on his straight teeth and bringing up the weather.

Oh, sure, now he looked at her, when she was blushing and mentally kicking herself. Not just looked, either, he studied her, rather intently. “Are you off your meds or something?”

She giggled—giggled, for God’s sake—the sound forced, high-pitched and way too loud. Why did flirting have to be so hard? It was as natural as breathing to Sadie. You’d think that was the kind of genetic trait that could be passed from sister to sister.

Charlotte swatted his arm, meant for it to be playful, but ended up hitting him hard enough to make her palm sting. He didn’t so much as blink.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, seemingly unable to bring her tone back to its normal range. “I just meant that, well, you’re so...” Rough. Hard. Dangerous. She gestured to him in all his bare-chested, tattooed glory. Let it go at that. “I thought you’d be—”

“A slob?”

“No,” she breathed, the lie like a stone in her throat, choking her. “I mean, maybe I’d briefly considered you’d be...less tidy. With a motorcycle in the living room, a pet boa constrictor and a closet filled with scarred leather jackets.”

“Stairway’s too narrow for my bike,” he said solemnly. “But who says the other two aren’t true?”

She swallowed. He was probably kidding about the snake. Still, she stepped closer to him, kept an eye out for any sudden, slithering movements. “Anyway, it’s nice. That you’re tidy. Did you learn that in the military?”

In the act of getting a coffee mug from an upper cabinet, he paused. “I never told you I was in the service.”

“Everyone knows. Small town. No secrets.” Though seeing him now, he seemed a far cry from a spit-shined soldier. “Do you miss it? Being a Marine?”

He looked at her as if she’d just slapped his face and called his mother ugly. “I was a Ranger. In the Army.”

“Ranger. That’s Special Forces, right?”

He grunted.

So charming.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I always get them confused. Is it one grunt for yes, and two for no?”

No smile. No glint of humor in those green eyes. Nothing. He simply watched the coffeemaker as if it held the answers to life’s most pressing questions. Since he refused to notice what a fetching image she made, she straightened. She needed a few more sessions at the yoga studio before she could hold the arched pose for any length of time, especially after a twelve-hour shift in the E.R.

Covering her mouth with the back of her hand, she yawned so hard her eyes watered. A shift that was quickly catching up with her.

She wandered into the living room. His apartment was small, maybe half the size of her own, with a view of the empty armory building next door and the Dumpster in the alley.

She continued her exploration, trailing her fingers over the back of a checked high-back chair when he stepped into the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb, the angle causing his stomach muscles to clench, the ridges clearly defined. Steam rose from the mug in his hand as he sipped his coffee, his biceps rounding with the movement.

Now that was somebody who knew how to pose.

She felt his gaze on her, steady and searching, as she crossed the room, so she put a bit of sway into her walk, and wished there was more to see, to pretend to study, but the man put the minimal in minimalist. Other than the ugly chair, the only furnishings in the room were a small, flat-screen TV on top of a scarred wooden end table and a lumpy floral couch. No knickknacks. No decorative pillows or throws. No pictures or personal effects at all.

She glanced down the small hallway. The door to the right was shut—bathroom?—the other, at the end of the hall, open far enough to give her a glimpse of his bed, the covers rumpled, the pillow still indented from his head.

She imagined him getting out of that bed, tugging his jeans on, cursing and muttering about people interrupting his precious sleep.

Was the bed still warm from his body? Were his sheets soft or crisp? Did his scent linger on the pillow?

She crossed to stand in front of him. Funny how now that he looked at her, she felt more vulnerable, exposed, though he was the one only half-dressed. She had no idea what to do, what to say to get him to cooperate with her. That was the problem with not making plans. No road map. She needed one. Her sense of direction sucked.

“Uh...I’m...uh...thinking of getting a tattoo,” she said.

He raked his gaze over her, from the top of her extremely smooth hair to the tips of her ridiculously high heels. “That so?”

Did he have to sound condescending? So disbelieving?

“That’s so.” She edged closer, breathed in the rich scent of coffee, the spiciness of his soap, surprised by how pleasant she found the combination. “Did they hurt?” she continued, her tone husky. Breathless.

He shrugged. Lifted the mug to his mouth again, almost clipping her on the chin.

She wanted to swipe it out of his hand, throw the damn thing against the wall. Couldn’t he see she was flirting with him? The least he could do was reciprocate, especially when she was so out of her element.

Hard not to be when he was the epitome of physical perfection. She should have known he’d look like some freaking underwear model.

While she was too tall. Too thin. With small breasts and more angles than curves.

She’d have to make sure they kept the lights off when it came time to get naked.

When he lowered his arm, she touched the tip of the sword on his biceps. Traced her fingertip up the sharp line to the flame. His skin was warm. Softer than she’d expected.

“What does this one mean?” When he didn’t answer, she tried a teasing smile, one that would bring out her dimple—and hopefully loosen him up a bit. “Or did you just think it was pretty?”

His body went rigid. “In some cultures it symbolizes judgment.”

“Judgment,” she whispered almost to herself. “I would have thought you’d choose a different emblem, something more...antiestablishment. Skull and crossbones or a hand with the middle finger sticking up.”

“What are you doing?”

His question startled her, the low timbre of his voice causing gooseflesh to prick her arms.

She licked her lips. His eyes, following the movement, narrowed to slits. “Wha—what do you mean?”

He looked pointedly at her hand still on his arm, her fingers caressing the smoothness of his skin as if of their own will.

Her first instinct was to leap back, to put as much distance between them as possible. But that would defeat the purpose of her visit, wouldn’t it? She could do this.

She’d come too far to back down now.

Charlotte flattened her palm against his biceps, and he tensed, the muscle flexing momentarily before relaxing. “I’m touching you,” she said softly, smoothing her hand up his arm and settling it on his shoulder.

Oh, please don’t let my palms start sweating. Not now.

“Why are you touching me?”

Seriously? You’d think it was the first time the man had been hit on by a woman. Jeez. “Because I want to.”

Determined, and more than a little terrified, she laid her other hand on his opposite shoulder and held his gaze, annoyed and deflated when his remained steady. She wanted to fluster him, for him feel a fraction of the nerves, of the crazy energy, she felt whenever they were together.

Thanks to her high heels, it was easy, incredibly easy, to link her hands behind his neck and tug his head down. Her heart pounded painfully. Good Lord she hoped she didn’t have a coronary. Not now, not when his mouth was inches from her own, his breath mingling with hers.

She brushed a soft kiss across his mouth. Leaned back, her stomach in knots. But Kane didn’t jerk as if she’d tossed acid in his face, didn’t push her away as if she were some leper come to spread her disease. Didn’t treat her as if she were unattractive. Unwanted.

As James had when she’d kissed him.

Kane simply watched her. Patient, curious and waiting for her next move.

Emboldened, she stepped closer until their thighs touched, her breasts pressing against his chest, his warmth seeping through the silk of her shirt. She wished he would take the initiative, would sweep her up in his arms and carry her to his bed. That he’d take control and show her how this was done.

He didn’t move.

She should kiss him again, a real kiss, one with tongue, but she was frozen, unable to move. Unable to think. There was something about the way he looked at her that made her want to curl into herself, to slink away. But she wasn’t a quitter. The only way to get what you wanted was to go after it.

And what she wanted was Kane.

“Take me to bed,” she told him, albeit a bit shakily. “Now.”

* * *

WHY HIM?

Kane sighed, the movement causing his shoulders to rise and fall, which in turn caused Red’s breasts to brush against his chest. She didn’t have a lot going on in that department, but she had enough for his body to notice.

Hell.

Reaching behind his neck, he tugged her hands apart, then set her away from him. “Sorry, Red. Not interested.”

He went into the kitchen, but not before seeing the hurt, the embarrassment, cross her face.

Not his problem, he told himself, pouring more coffee into his cup. It wasn’t up to him to soothe or coddle her. She’d come here, had come to him. He hadn’t asked for her attention or her clumsy attempts at seduction.

She stomped after him, the embodiment of a woman scorned, complete with narrowed eyes and red splotches coloring her cheeks. She’d come to him and obviously wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

“What do you mean you’re not interested?” she asked, sounding incredulous. Disbelieving. “You’re a man. I’m a woman.”

Sipping his coffee, he looked her up and down. Her hair, red as a clown’s wig and stick-straight, fell past her shoulders. Heavy makeup hid the freckles on her nose and upper cheeks. She’d done something to her eyes, had lined them in thick black, used dark shadow on the lids then coated her pale lashes with what looked to be several layers of mascara. Her lips were a glossy pink.

She looked like a kid who’d gotten into her mother’s makeup.

“Just what I meant,” he said. “Not interested.”

Maybe he’d been a little bit interested a few minutes ago. She was right about one thing; he was a man. And she had been plastered against him. Not that skinny women with bad attitudes did much for him, but her hands had been soft on his arm, her fingers warm. And, he had to admit, she smelled good, really good, her perfume subtle and sweet. A contrast to her do-me heels and the permanent scowl she wore around him.

Practically vibrating with fury, she slapped her hands on her hips, the move tugging her shirt open and giving him a glimpse of smooth, creamy skin and the edge of a lacy black bra.

His body stirred. It was that damn man thing again.

“Oh, no. You are not doing this to me. Do you have any idea how long it took me to straighten my hair?” she asked, jabbing at her head hard enough to drill her finger right into her brain. “I can’t breathe, my feet hurt and I paid one hundred dollars for this stupid push-up bra.”

He let his gaze drop to her chest for one long, lazy moment. When he raised his eyes back to hers, she swallowed visibly. He smirked. “You might want to get your money back.”

She blanched before color rushed into her cheeks. She opened her mouth, no doubt to lay him flat, but then she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, which, admittedly, did some interesting things to those small breasts.

On second thought, maybe that bra had been a good investment.

She opened her eyes, the glint in the light blue depths warning him he may have made a misstep.

Wouldn’t be his first.

She stormed up to him, all painted-on jeans, long legs and bad humor. “We are going to have sex, you hear me?” To punctuate her statement, she undid the top button of her shirt.

Kane paused in the middle of taking another sip of coffee. Raised an eyebrow. It was a bluff, that single button. It had to be. She didn’t have the guts to undo another one.

He hoped.

“Right here,” she continued, proving him wrong by yanking another one free. “Right now.” And another. “So stop pretending to be noble and take what is being offered to you.”

She dragged her shirt off her arms and threw it on the ground like a football player spiking the ball after a touchdown. Held his gaze, her breathing ragged, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her pale skin fairly glowing in his dimly lit kitchen.

His body responded to the sight of the soft curve of her breasts, her flat stomach and the ever-so-slight indentation of her narrow waist, and he considered, seriously considered, doing just that. Whether it was due to her being half-naked, his recent sexual dry spell or simply his resistance being down didn’t matter. In that moment, he wanted her. It pissed him off, this sudden, vicious need to have her.

Again and again and again.

That’s what his father would have done. What Kane had been brought up to do. Take what was so easily offered, so carelessly given. He’d been born into a wealthy family. A powerful one. Raised to believe he was better than others by virtue of his last name and his father’s financial worth.

Throw in his looks, and there had never been a shortage of available females ready and willing to do whatever it took to make Kane happy. To get his attention, to be on his arm—or in his bed.

There was a time when he wouldn’t have cared that Red was his employee’s sister, that they barely knew each other. That she didn’t want him so much as she wanted to use him. He would have used her, too, then set her aside without another thought or care.

He liked to think he wasn’t that big of a prick anymore.

“Seriously?” Red asked through gritted teeth, her arms splayed as if to point out she was, indeed, partially naked and offering herself to him. “This is something you have to think about?”

“No,” he told her in all honesty as he set his mug down. “I don’t have to think about it at all.”

He closed the distance between them, noted how she started to step back before catching herself. She lifted her chin as if facing the grim reaper head-on.

Kane moved closer, stopping shy of actually touching her. “You want me, Red?”

Her eyes widened. She licked her lips. “Yes,” she said, holding his gaze, all stoic and brave, her pale skin beckoning him to touch, the pulse beating rapidly at the base of her throat enticing him to taste. Her scent wrapped around him, making him want something he had no business wanting, something he never would have even considered before she barged into his apartment and stripped off her shirt.

“You want me to touch you?” he asked, his voice rough, his caress whisper-soft as he slowly trailed his fingertips up her arms.

A blush started at the base of her throat, bloomed in her cheeks. He wanted to press his lips to the side of her neck, to feel the warmth of that color washing over her skin. She swallowed hard, then nodded once, a quick jerk of her head.

He’d known she was irritable, temperamental and overbearing. He never would have guessed she was also a liar.

He settled his hands on her shoulders, kept his touch light. Impersonal. “You want to have sex with me? You want me to make you come? Because that’s what I’d do if you were in my bed. I’d strip you bare,” he murmured, for some reason envisioning doing just that. In intimate detail. Scowling, he forced the image from his head. “I’d touch you everywhere with my hands, my lips.” He leaned in, put his mouth close to her ear. “My tongue.”

Gasping, she reared back, her spine hitting the counter with a sharp thud. She pressed herself against it as if that alone could stop his words, could stop him from coming closer.

It couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Not yet. Not until he’d made his point and made it well.

“Or maybe you don’t want something as ordinary as sex in a bed,” he continued quietly. Relentlessly. “Something as mundane as soft touches and reverent kisses.”

He nudged one thigh between her legs, ignored how she stiffened, her hands going to his chest. She didn’t push him away, stubborn thing that she was. But her fingers trembled against him.

“I...” Her nails dug into his skin. She cleared her throat. “A bed is...fine.”

“You didn’t come here for a tame experience. We could do it here, on the floor or the table. Or maybe you’d like it against this counter, hard and fast. Your legs wrapped around my waist.” His voice dropped, grew husky. “Me buried deep inside of you.”

She flinched, but it wasn’t enough, not when she hadn’t pushed him away yet, hadn’t tried to cover herself. Hadn’t slapped him, called him a few choice names and stormed off. Not when, for a moment, she’d reduced him to the man he used to be.

“I’d make you feel good,” he promised, tracing lazy circles just below her collarbone. She shivered. “You wouldn’t care that it was me on top of you. I could make you forget your name.” He paused, laid his palm flat above her breast, felt her heart beating, too hard, too fast. “I could make you forget him. At least for a little while.”

She opened her mouth, but he shook his head before she could deny what they both knew was true.

“I could do all of that,” he continued. “If I wanted to.” He stepped back, the move not as easy to do as he would have liked. One more thing he blamed on her. “I don’t.”

Her fingers curled, scraping his skin before she slowly lowered her arms. “You...what?”

“I don’t want to.” He kept his voice flat. Cool. Honest. “I don’t want you.”

Her throat working, she hunched her shoulders, curling into herself and staring at him like a puppy he’d drop-kicked. Guilt and regret nudged him. Told him he could have been more sympathetic. Kinder. Except he’d learned to reserve his sympathy for those who truly deserved it.

And that kindness would only be used against him.

Besides, this wasn’t his fault. It was hers.

All hers.

She yanked on her shirt. “You don’t want me? Fine. Great.” Her head bent, her hair hiding her face, she buttoned it. “But let me tell you something, buddy, you’re the one missing out here. Not me.”

That was better, so much better than the disappointment that had been in her eyes a moment ago. The hurt.

“Someday,” he promised, “you’ll thank me for this.”

Her head whipped up, her eyes narrowing. “And someday you’ll kick your own ass for passing up the opportunity to be with me.”

Lifting her pointy chin and haughty nose, she swept past him, regal as a queen.

Because he worried she might be right, because she’d come here and stirred up this unwanted hunger for her, he snatched her arm. Whirled her around to face him. “Should I be honored that someone of your high moral standing offered herself to me?” he asked, his voice silky despite the tightness of his jaw. “Grateful to help you prove you’re over some other guy?”

“Yes...I mean...no. I mean...I...” She tugged her arm and he let go. She stepped back, her top teeth worrying her lower lip. But she held his gaze. “This isn’t about anyone but you and me. I’m here because I...I’m attracted to you.”

There it was. The truth. Part of it, anyway, said in a rush. A guilty secret.

An attraction that was purely physical. If she ignored it long enough, the flash of heat between them would eventually flicker and fade. When presented with a bright, burning flame, the best thing, the smart thing, was to keep your hands to yourself.

She wanted to touch it, to feel its burn. A good girl taking a walk on the wild side. Rebelling against the endless repetition of her tidy life and daily routine, the expectations of others and her own boredom.

“You’re here,” he said, “because you thought getting laid would make you feel better.”

Her shoulders snapped back. But then, that seemed to be her natural stance—rigid. Uptight. Condescending. “You don’t know anything about me.”

He knew the last time she was at his bar, she and Sadie had fought about James Montesano, a local carpenter. That their argument had disrupted Kane’s night and upset Sadie enough that she’d ducked out of work three hours before the end of her shift.

“I know you want to piss off your sister. Find some other way than throwing yourself at a guy.”

Charlotte’s hands balled into fists. “This has nothing to do with Sadie.”

“Bullshit. You think sleeping with me will prove you’re over him? That you don’t care he chose Sadie over you? All you’re doing is embarrassing yourself.”

Her eyes welled. Her lower lip trembled.

Panic squeezed his spine. Had his palms sweating. He had no use for tears or the women who used them to get what they wanted. Women like his mother.

“Swallow those back,” he growled. “Or I swear to God I’ll toss your skinny ass out the window.”

“I wouldn’t cry over you,” she said with a deep sniff. “I wouldn’t waste one single tear. You’re not worth it.”

She had that right. “Good to hear.”

“You...you’re...”

“Could you spit out whatever you’re choking on so I can get back to my bed?”

“You’re an ass. A bastard. A—”

Someone knocked on the door.

Red, her mouth open, her eyes wide, leaped behind the chair, half crouching behind it. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

“Sorry but my X-ray vision is on the fritz.” He stepped toward the door.

“No,” she gasped, grabbing his hand. “For God’s sake, don’t answer it.”

More knocking, rapid in succession and annoying as hell.

“If I don’t,” he ground out, pulling free, “I can’t get rid of them.”

For the second time that morning, he opened the door.

And for the second time that morning, found an unwelcome visitor.

“I’m sorry,” Sadie Nixon blurted, her blond hair a wild mass around her face, dark circles under her eyes. “Did I wake you?”

“I run a bar that doesn’t shut down until 2:00 a.m. What do you think?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, sounding as if she was about to burst into tears any second. Christ, but this was not his morning. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

He raised his eyebrows at the suitcase she held. “I hear the Holiday Inn off the highway has affordable rates.”

He started to shut the door, but she blocked it with her foot. “Please,” Sadie said, much nicer than Red ever spoke to him. “Just for a night or two.”

Have her bunk with him for a few nights? No way. He didn’t get involved in personal problems, didn’t get personally involved with the people he worked with.

Or, in this case, the people who worked for him.

“You don’t want to come in here,” he said.

“I do. I really do.”

Maybe the only way to get rid of her—of both of them—was to let Sadie in.

Scratching his stomach, he stepped aside. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Thanks,” she said, brushing past him. “I promise not to—”

“You have got to be kidding.”

Sadie slowly turned, her eyes about popping out of her head when she saw her sister. “What are you doing here? Where did you get those clothes? I didn’t realize Nordstrom had a tart department.” She whirled on Kane. “And you. You should be ashamed of yourself. She’s just a child!”

“I probably should be,” he agreed. Would be if he’d gone through with some of the more lewd thoughts he’d had concerning Red. “But I’m not.”

He had more than his fair share of sins, but this wasn’t one of them.

Red stalked over to her sister, towering over the curvy blonde. “How dare you? I’m a grown woman, damn it.”

Sadie sniffed. “Then I suggest you act like one.”

“I don’t need to stand here and listen to this.” With a toss of her hair, Red snatched up her purse. “You’re in my way,” she told Sadie, who blocked her exit.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what, exactly, you’re doing here.”

“I’m not telling you anything. Now move. Or I swear, I will move you.”

Sadie narrowed her eyes. “I’d like to see you try.”

“And I’d like to see the backs of both of you as you leave me in peace so I can get some more sleep,” Kane said.

“Blame her—” Red jabbed a finger at Sadie.

He yawned. Rolled his shoulders back, then took them each by the upper arm and tugged them out into the hallway. He stepped inside his apartment and faced them. “Let’s not cast blame.”

He shut and locked the door, the soft click echoing in the stunned silence.

Stunned, blessed silence.

He walked to his room. He might not have been as gentle as he could have been with Red, but he’d done the right thing. Which wasn’t something that came often or, to be honest, easily. Mostly because he couldn’t care less about what other people thought was right. But, yeah, for once he’d made the morally acceptable choice.

Give him a freaking medal.

He kicked off his jeans and padded naked to the bed. Lying down, he linked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He blew out a heavy breath. Shut his eyes, but could still feel the warmth of Red’s fingers on his skin. Could still smell her. She’d invaded his apartment and now her ghost was sticking around.

Women. They never knew when to leave a man alone.

He rolled off the bed, yanked the window open, then flopped onto his stomach. All the cool breeze did was blow around her phantom scent so he pulled the pillow over his head. He tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, the memory of Charlotte standing before him in nothing but jeans and a bra imprinting itself in his mind. When he finally, gratefully, fell asleep, he dreamed of her. Of her long legs, bright hair and wary eyes.

And when he woke, hard and aching for her, he could have sworn he still tasted the whisper of her kiss on his lips.

CHAPTER TWO

Seven months later

BEHIND THE BAR, Kane wiped his hands on the towel he kept in his back pocket. Julie Moffat, law student by day and kick-ass waitress by night, wove her way through the crowd at O’Riley’s, a tray of cosmos in her raised hand. She delivered the drinks to a table of coeds celebrating a twenty-first birthday, said something to the girls then nodded toward the corner where two dudes raised their beers in a toast. By the time the girls smiled their thanks to the guys, Julie was back at the bar.

“I need four margaritas,” she told Sadie, “two regular, one of those no salt. One strawberry, the other pomegranate, both blended. And four shots of Cuervo.”

Sadie, already pouring tequila into the blender, raised her eyebrows. “Sympathizing, celebrating or just loosening inhibitions?”

“They’re celebrating,” Julie said with a nod toward the four middle-aged women at a booth by the dartboard. “The blonde in the mom jeans got some big promotion, finally getting out from under the ass-hat supervisor she’s had to deal with for the past five years.”

“Good triumphs over evil.” Sadie raised the bottle in a toast before setting it on the counter. “I love when that happens.”

Kane handed a customer two bottles of Corona, a lime quarter wedged in each one. “Give the ladies that round on the house,” he told Julie.

“Will do.” And with that, she and her asymmetrical dark hair and neck tattoo were off again.

Sadie poured herself a glass of ginger ale. “While I have your attention—”

“You don’t have my attention.” He pointedly took in her cheetah-print dress, the snug material hugging her curves. “But PETA called. They’d like to talk to you about that outfit.”

“Oh, ha-ha. Such wit. Ease your mind, my little animal advocate. No cheetahs were injured during the making of this dress.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve blinded half the people in here with those tights.”

She glanced down at the neon pink covering her legs. Grinned. “Just trying to bring a little bit of brightness to this dreary place. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do so next weekend as I need it off. That’s the whole weekend—two days. Two. Don’t try to schedule me for Saturday night and then claim you thought I meant only Friday.”

“You don’t seem to get how this works,” he said. “I’m the boss. I write the paychecks. I make the rules.”

And holy shit, but he had sounded just like his father.

“Yes, yes,” Sadie agreed pushing her fluffy blond hair from her shoulder. “You’re the big boss man. You have all the power in this relationship while I am just an employee, et cetera and so forth.”

“Glad you finally see things my way.”

“And as your employee, I’m giving you advance notice that I will be unable to work next weekend.”

“No.”

“You don’t seem to get how this works,” she said, throwing his words back at him with a sunny grin that made his left eye twitch. “I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you I’m not working next weekend. James and I are going out of town.”

Sadie and James had become an official couple not long after Kane kicked Sadie and Charlotte out of his apartment last fall. They lived together. Why did they have to go out of town?

“You have to work.” He kept his tone calm. No sense losing his temper or his control. Though dealing with Sadie Nixon would be enough to make the most patient man lose his cool. “I already gave Mary Susan the weekend off so she could drive down to see her granddaughter in some school play.”

Sadie patted his arm, all faux conciliatory, as if the headache he’d developed wasn’t entirely her fault. “You’ll figure something out.”

“Do I have any other choice?”

Frowning, she pursed her mouth as if she seriously considered his question. “You could always close the bar. Hey, you could take a little vacation yourself. You haven’t had a day off since I started working here.”

He finished his water, tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. “You take enough days off for both of us.”

“So fire me.”

It was one of her favorite rejoinders, one she used mostly because she knew damn well he had no intention of doing it. He hated having anyone read him so clearly. If people knew you too well, they had the power to use that knowledge against you.

“Don’t think I’m not considering it.”

She laughed loudly, the sound somehow rising above the bar’s din. Several people—mostly men because, hey, pretty blonde in a tight, low-cut dress—glanced their way. “Oh, you slay me. You really do.”

“What’s so funny?” Bryce Gow, a heavyset elderly man with red cheeks and a bulbous nose, asked as he hefted himself onto a stool.

Sadie fixed his usual—rum and Coke—and set it on the bar, then leaned forward to tip her head conspiratorially toward Bryce. “Kane said he’s going to fire me,” she told the retired electrician.

Bryce’s expression brightened, but that could’ve been due to the fact that Sadie’s pose gave him an excellent view of her cleavage. “Fired shmired.” He sipped his drink, then patted Sadie’s hand. “Quit this dump—”

“Funny how this being a dump hasn’t stopped you from parking yourself on that stool every Saturday night for the past one hundred years,” Kane said.

Bryce, eighty if he was a day, and a regular long before Kane had ever set foot inside O’Riley’s—hell, before Kane, or even his father, had been born—glared, then turned back to Sadie. “You can work for my grandson,” he told her. “He’s a good boy. Respectful of his elders and his paying customers.”

Kane pulled yet another beer. “Last week you said he was lazy, ungrateful and running the company you’d built into the ground. You called him an idiot who’d touched one live wire too many and fried his brain.”

Bryce lowered his eyebrows. “At least he’s smart enough to appreciate good employees.”

“I am undervalued and underappreciated,” Sadie agreed with a sigh that was pure heartfelt drama. “I would quit in a heartbeat, but if I wasn’t around, poor Kane would miss me—”

“Poor Kane?” he mumbled, seriously considering sticking her head under the beer tap and giving her a good dousing. “Jesus Christ.”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “And I’d hate to see a grown man as pretty as him cry.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“So I’ve been told,” she said cheerfully. She blew him a kiss. “You know you adore me.”

The worst part? It was true.

“I’m heading to the back of the bar,” he said. “Give you and that big head of yours more room.”

He really should fire her, he thought, as he made his way to the other end of the bar. She was flighty and unreliable, showed up for most of her shifts late, and took too many breaks when she was working.

She was also a great bartender, cheerful and chatty, always ready with a joke, a compliment or a sympathetic ear.

As much as he hated to admit it, he liked her. Hell, if he believed men and women could be friends without sex getting in the way, he might just say she was the closest thing he’d had to a friend in years.

If she ever suspected, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

“Slow night,” Sadie commented, joining him.

“Not too bad,” he said. “The birthday ladies alone are making us a lot of money.”

“Only because every guy under the age of fifty keeps buying them drinks. Men. Always so hopeful they’ll get lucky.”

“It’s what gets us through each day. Any of them getting pushy?”

“If they do, Julie will let you know.”

He expected that. Was glad his employees knew to come to him if there was a problem. He kept an eye out for everyone in his place. Took care of them.

He’d been in Shady Grove less than a year and already he was turning into a damned Boy Scout.

For another thirty minutes, Kane filled drink orders, yakking with those who wanted to chat, leaving the ones who didn’t alone with their thoughts and alcohol. The song on the jukebox ended and the familiar opening riff of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—a Saturday night mainstay at O’Riley’s, along with Guns n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”—started.

It was a good song. A classic. At one time it had been one of Kane’s favorites.

Until he’d seen people dance to it.

It wasn’t a tune made for smooth moves, but that didn’t stop a small portion of his customers. All that twitching and hopping and head-banging—most of the time simultaneously—could put off even the most die-hard Nirvana fan.

Averting his gaze from the dance floor, he opened a bottle of water and took a long drink. Scanned his domain from his position behind the bar. The booths along the back wall were filled, as were a few of the tables, late diners finishing their meals or enjoying a nightcap before heading home. The in-between stage of the evening meant those who’d come in for good food at reasonable prices mixed and mingled with the drinking crowd.

Shady Grove was a long way from Houston, but if there was one thing Kane had learned it was that people—whether at a honky-tonk stomping their cowboy boots to classic Hank Williams or in an exclusive club shaking their designer-clad asses to the latest techno hit—were the same everywhere. When Saturday night rolled around, they wanted a good time. To forget their problems, lose their inhibitions and seek out the mystical happy place where their pain magically disappeared, their checkbook wasn’t overdrawn and their boss/spouse/parent/kid wasn’t such a douche bag.

Only to wake up Sunday morning hungover and right back where they’d started.

Nothing sucked the life out of a good time like the real world. But, for a few hours he gave them a reprieve from their lives. That the reprieve came with copious amounts of alcohol caused him some guilt. Not so much he seriously considered turning O’Riley’s into a coffee shop or bookstore, but enough that he wanted it to be more than a bar where the locals got hammered every weekend.

He’d come up with the idea of serving meals. Full dinners instead of bar fare—though they offered burgers, wings and a variety of vegetables coated in thick batter and deep-fried.

Turning O’Riley’s into as much restaurant as bar had been a good idea, a smart one. An idea that had increased his business’s revenue over 30 percent since the fall. He wasn’t about the bottom line—that was his old man’s thing—but he couldn’t deny the sense of pride that came with being successful.

O’Riley’s was in the black, and it was all because of him.

Not that it had been a struggling business to begin with. When Kane had first stepped into O’Riley’s, it had a solid customer base, a good reputation and income enough for Gordon, the previous owner, and his one employee.

Now Kane did enough business for him to be more than generous with his six employees and still have money left over.

He should use it to buy some new chairs, maybe have the floors redone or renovate the kitchen. After all, this was his place. Every shot glass, every bottle of whiskey, every damn thing, from the beer taps to the utility bills to dealing with pain-in-the-ass customers who couldn’t hold their drinks or their tempers, was his problem. He knew these people, the men and women—young, old and in between—who came here night after night, weekend after weekend. He was a business owner, a member of the Shady Grove Chamber of Commerce for Christ’s sake.

In a short time, he’d somehow become enmeshed in this small town, a part of it.

He could see himself here next year. And the year after that. His roots digging deeper and deeper into the Pennsylvania ground, his ties to this community, to these people, growing tighter and tighter.

Cold touched the back of his neck. His stomach got queasy.

He’d tried ignoring the signs, had pushed aside the sense of unease, which had dogged him for weeks, riding his back like a deranged monkey, screeching, tugging his hair and slapping him upside the head. A man could only escape the truth for so long.

It was time to move on.

He’d given it a good run, he told himself, twisting the lid onto his water bottle and setting it aside to take an order from a fortysomething-year-old guy in khakis and a button-down shirt. He drew a beer for Button-Down, exchanged it for money and added the small tip to the wide-mouth jar under the counter.

Buying this place had been an impulsive move, born of instinct and perhaps heredity. He’d seen an opportunity to take a business and build it up, make it bigger, better and more profitable.

And if that opportunity just happened to be in some small town where no one knew him or his family, far away from Houston and his past? All the better.

O’Riley’s was doing well, better than he’d expected. Despite his best intentions, he’d taken after his father after all. At least in one area: making money.

But staying in one place too long was never a good idea. It made a man comfortable. Complacent. Careless.

Better to stay one step ahead. Always.

First thing Monday morning, he’d call a real estate agent, see about getting the building appraised. Start thinking about where he wanted to go next. Maybe he’d head north this time. It didn’t matter where he ended up, Maine or Greenland or somewhere in between. As long as he kept moving.

* * *

IT’D TAKEN A WHILE, but Charlotte was back on the horse.

Her sneakers squeaked on the gray floor as she walked down the main hallway of Shady Grove Memorial’s E.R. The baby with a high fever in room 3 cried, his scream heartbreaking and eardrum-piercing. Two middle-aged men—brothers by the resemblance between them—spoke quietly outside room 5, their faces drawn in worry.

Char approached the nurses’ station. Okay, so technically there was no horse to speak of, but figuratively she was there, sitting tall in the saddle, ready to gallop after her dreams.

And to think, she’d almost talked herself into believing she’d made a mistake, a big one, in going after what she’d wanted. In planning, scheduling and goal-setting. That she could float along, living the rest of her life taking each moment as it came all willy-nilly without a thought or care about her future.

Oh, she’d tried to do exactly that. Hard not to want to try something different after you’ve been rejected by the man you’d planned on marrying. Throw in a second rejection, this time by a man the complete opposite of what you were looking for, and any woman would question herself, her choices. So she’d gone in the opposite direction of anything and everything she’d ever done.

She’d stuck with it for as long as she could, shoving aside her dreams and goals and letting life happen. She’d gone to the grocery store without a list, didn’t note appointments in her phone’s calendar and spent her weekends zoned out in front of the TV, ignoring the work needing done around her new house. For six long months she’d been laid-back, spontaneous and impractical.

It had been torture. Pure, unadulterated torture.

Until one gloomy Wednesday morning last month when, on her way to the store to buy milk after discovering the empty carton in her fridge, her car had run out of gas. Waiting for her mother to come get her, good sense returned. Once back at home, she’d immediately listed her one-month, six-month and yearlong goals, cleaned and organized her refrigerator, and balanced her checkbook and, just like that, all was right in the world again.

Sitting back and waiting didn’t make things happen. It took planning. Control. Discipline. With those three things—traits she had in spades, thank you very much—anything was possible. Any goal achievable.

She walked around the high counter of the nurses’ station, plugged in her laptop and printed out her patient’s discharge papers. She’d been foolish, idiotic even, to try to be something she wasn’t. Someone she wasn’t.

Someone like her sister.

It’d taken time, but luckily she had come to her senses, Char thought as she gathered the papers and scanned them to make sure the information was correct. There was no way she could blithely toss aside all her dreams and the future she wanted.

Her mistake wasn’t in believing in that future, in working toward it. No, her mistake was choosing the wrong man to share it with. Yes, technically James fit the bill when it came to the type of man she wanted to marry. He was successful and smart, handsome and kind.

It was his kindness that had done it. He’d been so sweet to her when she’d been a gawky teenager, too tall, too thin and way too awkward around the boys her own age. James had assured her those boys were blind and stupid not to notice the wonder and awesomeness that was Charlotte Ellison, and they would, one day, line up for the chance to be with her.

Alas, no lines had ever formed, but she had eventually blossomed—her mother’s word for Char’s miraculous transformation from a skinny, flat-chested, geeky teenager to a fashionably thin, small-chested, personable college coed.

Ah, the miracle of those latent hormones finally kicking in. She’d developed curves—slight as they were—and, more importantly, confidence. James had been right that hot, sunny Memorial Day, the day she fell and fell hard for him. The day she got it into her head he was the only man for her.

How ridiculous.

She’d developed a crush. Well, honestly, what teenage girl wouldn’t when an older, darkly handsome guy smiled at her? Laughed at her jokes? Paid attention to her?

So, mistake number one? Confusing a childhood crush with true love.

Mistake number two? Not realizing the object of her affection was already in love with her sister.

Of course, it was incredibly clear in hindsight. James had always been head-over-heels for Sadie, even when they’d been just friends.

Stupid hindsight. It could have shown up a bit earlier and saved Charlotte a ton of humiliation.

Taking the papers, she went into room 1. After going over the discharge instructions for five-year-old Dallas Morrow with his mother, Char led them through the maze of hallways to the exit. Heading to the break room where she could hopefully—oh, please, please, please—have time for a quick bite to eat, or at least another cup of coffee, she turned the corner and ran into a solid body.

Strong hands gripped her upper arms, steadying her. “Hey there, gorgeous. Fancy bumping into you here.”

At the husky, somewhat familiar male tone, prickles of anticipation, of excitement, tightened her skin. Breathless, her heart racing, she lifted her head. “Oh. Leo. Hi.”

Leo Montesano, all six-plus feet of tall, dark and dazzling, raised his eyebrows as he stepped back. “Ouch. No need to sound so disappointed.”

Maybe she had sounded less than enthusiastic about running into him. Poor guy probably didn’t know what to do with a female who didn’t fall at his feet.

She smiled, both to ease her initial reaction and because, well, it wouldn’t hurt to try her flirting skills on him. God knew she needed the practice. “Don’t be ridiculous. What woman could be disappointed to see you?”

It went against human nature. Shaggy dark hair with just the right amount of wave fell in artful disarray around a face designed to make women thank the Lord for one of His greatest works. Brown, soulful eyes, a sharp jaw, full lips and a Roman nose completed what was, all in all, a mighty pretty package. Throw in an abundance of charm, good humor and the fact that as a firefighter he saved lives for a living, and he was the very definition of Fantasy Man.

Then again, with his perfect, muscular body—honestly, he had to spend a good portion of his day in the gym—he could be dog-ugly and dumb as dirt, and women would still write poetic odes about his broad shoulders, bulging biceps and top-notch rear.

He made a humming sound of disbelief. “Nice recovery attempt, but I saw your face. It’s like you were expecting Brad Pitt and instead, you got stuck with me.”

“Yes, that would be quite the letdown.”

His lips quirked. Clearly the man knew what he looked like. “Who is it?”

“Who is what?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked into the empty break room.

Leo followed, leaned against the door frame. “The guy you’re tossing me over for. It hurts. Really. If you’re not careful, you’re going to break my heart.”

Pouring coffee into her favorite mug, she snorted. Oh, yeah, he was full of charm. And bull. “I highly doubt it.”

He grinned, and she could’ve sworn she heard every female within a mile radius—along with a few angels up in heaven—sigh in pleasure. “Don’t underestimate yourself.”

She didn’t.

But she was smart enough to know her limits. She’d learned her lesson with Kane. She’d tried out for the big leagues when she would have been better off staying on the bench. Kane and Leo were cut from the same cloth: too sexy, too enigmatic and way too experienced for the likes of little ol’ her.

“Did you come in just to boost my ego?” she asked, adding cream to her coffee and pulling out a protein bar from her lunch in the fridge. “Or have your Saturday nights become so boring you’ve resorted to hanging out at the E.R. instead of bars?”

“Hey, now, I don’t just wear this because the ladies love it,” he said, gesturing to his dark firefighter uniform. “I’m on the clock. We brought in an elderly man with chest pains. The new doc is looking at him.”

“Dr. Louk?” she asked, proud she sounded casual and barely curious.

Leo lifted a shoulder, not giving her any info about the new physician, such as which room he’d taken the patient to so she could oh-so-casually walk past. After she’d checked her hair and makeup, of course.

“You hear about James and Sadie taking off next weekend?” Leo asked.

Nodding, Char unwrapped the bar, bit into it and wanted to spit the chalky, faux-chocolate thing right back out. “Sadie’s really looking forward to it,” she said around her mouthful.

She swallowed. Considered taking another bite, but no one should ever be that hungry.

“You think it’s a good idea?”

Char tucked the bar into the pocket of her scrubs. “They’re going to a bed-and-breakfast outside of DC. Not traveling to some politically unstable hot spot overseas.”

“No, I mean...” He stepped farther into the room and looked around. She looked, too, but the room was still empty. “Them getting married.”

Charlotte went absolutely still. She laid a hand over her chest to make sure her heart still beat. “Sadie and James are eloping? Oh, she is so dead. The only question is, who’ll kill her first? Your mom or mine?”

“They’re not eloping. James would never do something that spontaneous.”

“Then what—”

“He’s going to propose to her.”

“Did he tell you?” Char asked, for some reason matching Leo’s scandalized whisper with one of her own.

He nodded. “Last night.”

Well, what do you know? James was going to ask Sadie to marry him.

It stung. Just a little. Enough to remind Char that not long ago, she’d dreamed of James getting down on bended knee in front of her. But mostly she was happy for her sister. Really, truly happy.

She and Sadie had made up. It hadn’t been easy or quick, but they were once again as close as they had been before their horrible fight. Closer—both figuratively and literally—now that Sadie lived in Shady Grove instead of traipsing around the country. It was impossible to stay mad at Sadie and, as much as it pained Char to admit it, she had, perhaps, gone a bit overboard with her crush on James.

“That’s so great,” Charlotte said, her smile widening as she imagined her sister’s surprise. Her happiness.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You don’t think they should get married?”

“I just don’t see why they want to rush into anything.”

“They’re both thirty-three and have known each other since they were kids. I’d hardly call that rushing.”

Leo’s radio went off and he checked it as he said, “You ask me, it’s always too soon to commit to being with one person the rest of your life.”

“That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” Charlotte faux-gushed. “I hadn’t realized you had such a deep, emotional side. You’re just a big romantic, aren’t you?”

He sent her another grin, this one more devastating than the last. Seriously, if she was made of weaker stuff, she might be swooning about now. “I have plenty of emotions,” he assured her. “And I’m all for commitment—for other people. Me? I like to have options. Lots and lots of options.” He sent her a sharp salute. “See ya later, gorgeous.”

Thank God she hadn’t fallen for him, Char thought as Leo left. It’d been bad enough making that mistake with someone like James, a good guy who’d let her down as gently as possible. Sure, Leo would’ve been kind. He wasn’t a jerk. Just careless with the hearts he held in the palm of his hand.

But women who fell for men like him—men who kept their options open, their bed partners varied and a tight grip on their single status—were only asking for heartbreak.

And she liked her heart in one piece, thanks all the same.

After rinsing out her coffee cup, she went out to triage, picked up a folder and opened it.

“Hello, Charlotte.”

The papers fell from her suddenly clumsy fingers. She picked them up, swallowed, then turned. “Hello, Doctor.”

She winced. Shoot. What was supposed to be a friendly, casual greeting had been more of a squeak.

“Please,” he said with an easy grin. “Call me Justin.”

Some doctors—mostly of the younger generation—preferred to be addressed by their given names, though she’d never do so in front of a patient.

“All right. Justin.” And that was just a bit too dreamy. If she wasn’t careful, he’d think she was one of the many, many nurses—along with a few female doctors and one gay anesthesiologist—who were infatuated with him.

Okay, so she was infatuated. She was living and breathing, wasn’t she? And he looked like a young Nathan Fillion, had a runner’s long, lean body and spoke with the New England accent of a Kennedy. He was also an excellent doctor, passionate about helping people and dedicated to his profession. His patients loved him. His coworkers liked and respected him.

He’d moved to Shady Grove after his residency in Philly so he could be closer to his older sister and her family in Pittsburgh. He’d quickly become a part of the community, volunteering his time at the local free clinic, sitting on the boards of several charitable organizations.

He was everything, absolutely everything, she’d ever wanted in a husband. They were going to make such a perfect couple.

She hoped it didn’t take him too long before he figured that out as well.

“Dr. Louk,” Regina, the triage nurse, said from behind the counter—not sounding the least bit mouse-ish, damn her, “I made some of those oatmeal cookies you like so much.” She leaned forward, grinned conspiratorially. “I hid a dozen just for you in the cabinet above the microwave.”

Char had to cough to hide a snort. Cookies. Rookie mistake. She’d made cookies for James and it hadn’t done her any good.

“Thank you,” Justin said, as polite as always. “I’d love one, but I’ll have to leave the rest in the break room.” He glanced at Char. “I’m training for a half marathon and I’ve never been good at resisting temptation.”

Ducking her head to scan the chart of the ten-year-old girl who’d come in with stomach pains—and to possibly hide a small, satisfied smile—Char walked away. If she were a better person, she’d feel bad for her coworker. And while she liked Regina, and didn’t wish her any ill will, she couldn’t deny how happy she was the good doctor was going to stay far away from the pretty brunette’s cookies.

Even better, she’d learned something new about Justin. He, too, was a runner.

Could they be any more perfect for each other?

“Charlotte,” Justin called as he caught up with her. “I wanted to thank you again for recommending a real estate agent.”

“You’re welcome. How’s the house hunting going?”

He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Not well. I’m looking for something smaller than what she’s shown me so far.”

“When she looks at you, she probably sees little dollar signs floating around your head.” He stared at her blankly. “Because you’re a doctor,” Char explained. “She might be hoping you have money to burn and want something huge and obnoxious with a big enough commission for her to retire on.”

He nodded sagely. “I wondered why she was so insistent on showing me that six-bedroom mansion on the outskirts of town. I guess I’m going to have to break it to her that until I’ve paid off my college—and med school—loans, I won’t be able to afford anything bigger than a one-story, two-bedroom house.”

He’d put himself through both college and med school, another point in his favor. No, she hadn’t done the same, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a man who was financially prudent.

Besides, if her parents hadn’t paid her tuition, she wouldn’t have been able to afford the down payment on her house.

Charlotte stopped outside exam room 8. “It’s tough,” she said, nodding in what she hoped was a commiserative way and not in a way that made her look as if she was having a seizure. “I recently went through it when I bought my house. Luckily, I found a great place over on River Road.”

“River Road...by the big steel bridge?”

Shady Grove, nestled along the winding Monongahela River, had two main bridges separating the west and east sides of town; a steel one north of the highway, and an ornate wooden structure near Washington Square park. “It’s about a mile from it, yes.”

He nodded at Dr. Saleh as she walked by. “That seems like a nice area.”

“It is. I love it. It’s not too far from the hospital, but the houses are spread out so there’s plenty of room for nice-sized yards.” Even if buying her house had eaten into her savings. But oh, well. Some things, such as sticking to her five-year plan, were worth a little sacrifice.

She was still on track. Even if some of the players in her game had changed.

And this player didn’t seem as clueless as James had been. Yay for her. While having a simple conversation at work didn’t quite compare to Justin actively pursuing her, he had initiated said conversation. He was also smiling at her. Interested in what she had to say.

Possibly even interested in her.

“If I see any houses in my neighborhood,” she said, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

His smile widened. “I’d appreciate it.”

Appreciated it, but not enough for him to give her his cell phone number so she could get a hold of him easily.

For once, why couldn’t a man she found attractive take the lead instead of leaving it up to her to do everything? If she was better at flirting, this wouldn’t be so difficult. She’d drop a few hints and let Justin take it from there. But she’d never developed the art of the come-on, had always felt fake and foolish trying to be coquettish and seductive.

Proof of which was when she’d tried using her feminine wiles—as they were—on sexy Kane Bartasavich.

“Good luck with the house hunting,” she said, keeping her friendly, but not too friendly, smile in place, and her tone light. She knocked on the patient’s door, then went in, proud of herself for a job well done.

She hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t made the same mistakes she had with James, trying to rush a relationship. The old Charlotte would have tried to set up a date and time for her to show him the neighborhood, offering to cook him a homemade meal afterward.

But the new and improved Charlotte knew better. This time she was going to rein in her impatience and take things slow. Let things grow organically between her and the man she wanted.

Though she wasn’t above using a bit of fertilizer if need be.

She still had her plan: to be married by the time she was twenty-seven, start having kids when she turned thirty and raise those adorable children in her house by the river.

No, the plan hadn’t changed, but she’d had to adjust certain areas of it. James wasn’t the man for her. They hadn’t had enough in common, not nearly enough for a lifetime of marital bliss. She’d wondered about it all those months ago, had worried over it, but had brushed aside her concerns about their stilted conversations, the long, drawn-out pauses where neither seemed to know what to say. The dreaded discussions about the weather.

Whereas she and Justin were well-suited. He understood the demands of the medical profession, the long hours, difficult cases and how stressful it was caring for the ill. How hard it was to lose a patient.

She and Justin were meant to be together. Of that she was certain.

CHAPTER THREE

KANE LOCKED THE back door to O’Riley’s, pulled on the handle to be sure it was secure. A light spring rain dotted his hair and shoulders, the sky an inky black. He breathed in the cool, damp air, but it did nothing to soothe the edginess inside him.

A couple blocks away, a car revved its engine before the sound faded and all turned silent again. When he’d lived in Houston, his night would be in full swing at 3:00 a.m. He’d take whatever party he’d started in the clubs back to the apartment his old man kept in the city, but rarely used. Outside, sirens would blare, alarms would sound. Inside, he’d do whatever it took to forget how much he hated his life.

How much he hated himself.

Three in the morning in Afghanistan meant being hyperalert to every sound, every slight movement, as adrenaline rushed through his body. The occasional shout or, on more than a few occasions, the pop, pop, pop of automatic gunfire, shattering the night. Or else it meant spending the night in the barracks, stuck in the halfway point between sleep and wakefulness. Always fitful. Always on edge.

It’d taken him months after leaving the service before he could sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Longer before he’d become accustomed to 3:00 a.m. in Shady Grove. The quiet. The absolute stillness.

The peace.

It was that sense of calm that was getting to him, threatening to drive him crazy. There was something inside him, a restlessness he’d never outgrown, pushing him to keep moving. Job to job. Town to town. Woman to woman.

Afraid to stop.

Palming his keys, he turned the corner of the building and stepped into the alley. Slowing, he frowned. Apprehension tightened his spine. His scalp prickled with unease. The instincts he’d developed as a wet-behind-the-ears recruit in boot camp, the ones he’d honed during his eight years of active duty, kicked in. Call it a premonition, intuition or good old paranoia, but he knew he was being followed. Watched.

So much for the whole peace thing.

His muscles tensed. His grip tightened and the sharp edges of the keys dug into his palm as he glanced around. The light above the door leading to his apartment didn’t do more than illuminate the entrance and throw shadows on the pavement. Kane did a slow turn.

Nothing.

Blowing out a breath, he forced his fingers open. He was getting paranoid. Small-town living. It got the best of people. Wherever he ended up next would have to have cars and bright lights and tall buildings. And people. Plenty of them.

It was easier to lose yourself in a crowd.

Mreeow.

A yellow cat darted out from behind the garbage cans. Kane didn’t jump—but it was close. The cat took off across the parking lot, its tail down, ass swinging side to side as if its back legs were unable to keep up with its front ones.

As if it was trying to outrun itself.

Kane knew the feeling.

He tipped his head back and shut his eyes as the rain cooled his face. Inhaled to the count of five, then exhaled until his lungs were empty and his head light.

But the hunger inside him remained. The need, not quite as desperate as it had once been, a constant presence, a reminder of what he’d almost lost. It was nights like these where he was most vulnerable. Times when he was alone with his thoughts. His memories. When the monster inside him reared its head, demanding to be fed no matter the cost. No matter who got hurt.

Kane ground his back teeth together until his jaw ached. It was the middle of the night and he’d just spent nine straight hours on his feet followed by another hour of setting chairs onto the tables and scrubbing the bar’s floor and bathrooms. Exhaustion tugged at the outer edges of his consciousness, reminding him it’d been over twenty-four hours since he slept. He should go inside, drag his sorry ass and weary body up the stairs to his apartment, then into bed.

But he’d been here before, too many times to count. The setting might change—different town, different apartment and bed—but the plot remained the same. He’d spend hours tossing and turning while the sneaky, hypnotic voice of his past whispered in his head, testing his willpower. Tempting him into giving up. Into giving in to his body’s demands, just this once.

He whirled around, and with long, determined strides crossed to the small garage in the corner of the parking lot. He unlocked the side door. Inside, he pressed the automatic opener, then swung his leg over the seat of his bike while the garage door lifted. No, sleep wouldn’t come tonight. Rest never came. Not for him.

He started the motor, revving the engine a few times before shooting out into the street, not bothering to lock up behind him. The wind blew his hair back. Rain stung his cheeks and eyes. At the corner, he barely slowed, then took a hard right, his rear wheel swerving for a moment on the wet pavement, much as the cat’s back end had done.

Unlike the stray, Kane had learned he couldn’t outrun himself or his past. But for a few hours, he could outrun his demons.

* * *

“HELLO?” ESTELLE MONROE called as she poked her head into the doorway. “Anyone here?” She waited a beat. Then two. “Hello?”

Silence.

She frowned. She didn’t even want to think about why he wasn’t home, safe and snug in his bed in the middle of the night. A man who looked like Kane, with his rough edges and bad-boy attitude, never lacked for female companionship.

Her mother had warned her years ago that if Estelle was going to love Kane, she couldn’t be jealous of his flings, the time and attention he gave other women. She had to learn to share him.

And console herself with the fact that he always, always came back to Estelle.

With an inner shrug, she walked into the dark apartment, slipping her key into the front pocket of her jeans.

She felt a little bit like Goldilocks.

She even had the blond hair. Well, Goldilocks minus the breaking and entering, running into angry bears and eating porridge, of course.

She’d never had porridge but it did not sound very tasty.

Hefting her backpack onto her arm, she took a cautious step only to hear Kane’s stern voice in her head.

Lock the damn door.

Even in her imagination, he was a grouch. That man needed more laughter in his life. For Christmas this year, she was so getting him the entire set of Friends DVDs.

She flipped the lock, then pulled out her phone and used its light to guide her around a tall-backed chair to the squat lamp on a table next to it. She turned it on.

And wished she hadn’t.

Por dios...

Because it couldn’t hurt, she crossed herself, too, since it seemed to go with the prayer and all. Or, at least, she gave a close approximation of the way she’d seen her best friend—ex-best friend—Pilar do it. If ever there was a good time for genuflecting, this was it.

Bare walls, ratty carpet and god-awful furniture he’d probably bought secondhand, though she’d explained to him time and time again it wasn’t sanitary. The apartment itself was tiny, a living room that opened into a kitchen and a short hallway. The man lived like a hermit or something. There were no decorations anywhere, no pictures on the wall of her or the rest of his family. Lord knew he didn’t have any friends to take snapshots of. Nothing even matched, for Pete’s sake.

Well, she decided, lifting her pack—and her chin—higher as she headed toward the hall, she’d just have to stick it out. The alternative was simply unacceptable. She skirted a particularly disgusting-looking stain on the floor. Honestly, though, she should get hazard pay.

It took her only a moment to find his bedroom. She probably should take a shower. But his bed looked so inviting with its heavy blanket and soft pillows. More importantly, it looked clean. Something she could achieve herself tomorrow.

She quickly changed into her oversize Texans jersey and slid beneath the covers. Her phone buzzed. Mouth tight, she checked the message.

I’m so sorry!!! Please call me!!!

Message number thirty-six. And those were just the ones Pilar had sent since Estelle landed in Pittsburgh’s airport a few hours ago. Pitiful.

With a flourish, and a great deal of glee, Estelle deleted the message and tossed the phone onto the other pillow. Pilar obviously didn’t understand that Estelle was not going to forgive her. Ever. There weren’t enough exclamation points, sad-faced emojis and sobbing voice-mail messages in the world to make up for what she’d done.

A betrayal like that was unforgivable.

She inhaled sharply, the sound loud and mournful in the silence. What if...what if her mom thought the same thing about her?

Queasiness turned her stomach. A nasty, sick taste rose up in her throat. Coated her mouth.

Breathing through her nose, she shook her head. No. They were two totally different things. Pilar had gone behind Estelle’s back with her secret texts and phone calls to Chandler, making sure she was there to keep him company when Estelle was busy.

All Estelle had done was be nice to Adam, her mom’s fiancé. Yes, she’d flirted, but it hadn’t meant anything. Surely her mom would understand that. She and Estelle were best friends, Mama always said so. There was nothing, nothing Estelle could do that would make Meryl stop wanting her. Stop loving her.

Estelle snuggled down until the blanket was up to her chin and said a prayer.

Just in case.

* * *

CHAR LOOKED UP from the computer at the nurses’ station to see Leo—back for the third time tonight, lucky her—push a gurney into room 4, his hair and clothes wet. She caught sight of the patient’s muddy, damp jeans and worn biker boots, the length of the legs, the size of the boots telling her their latest guest was a man.

She turned her attention back to the screen. Frowned when a cool breeze caressed the back of her neck. She rubbed at the spot but the tingling sensation remained. Looking up again, she tipped her head to the side, narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. There was something familiar about those legs, those boots. She knew him, she realized, walking around the high counter.

Then again, she knew most of her patients. All part of living in the same small town she’d grown up in. It was a blessing, being able to help those she cared for.

It was a curse when they were beyond help. When all she could do was offer comfort, try to ease their pain. Hold their hand while they slipped away. Then comfort the loved ones they’d left behind.

This guy didn’t seem to be in that situation. No codes had been called. Thank God.

“What do we have?” she asked Leo as he stepped out of the room. She’d been with a patient and had missed the EMT report given while they’d been en route to the hospital.

Jocelyn Deems, a fellow RN, brushed past them with a wave. She would take the patient’s information, get him registered into the computer system and determine the priority of the patient’s treatment based on the severity of his injuries.

“Male, age thirty-four,” Leo said, flipping through his book of notes. “Single vehicular accident on Songbird Lane. Patient took a corner too fast and lost control of his motorcycle. A passerby called it in, said the patient was on the side of the road, unresponsive. When we got there, he was conscious and had managed to sit up on his own. Suffered contusions and abrasions, possible concussion, rib injuries, as well as a likely fracture of right arm.”

Char winced. “Ouch.” She tried to look over his shoulder at his notes. “Intoxicated?”

“No, thanks,” Leo said with a grin. “I’m on the clock.”

“Ha-ha. I meant the patient.”

“My best guess based on years of experience and, of course, my infinite wisdom would be no.” Though a blood test would tell them for sure. Leo flipped his book shut. He had a thing about people reading his notes before he’d transcribed them into an official report. “So you won’t have to deal with a drunk puking all over your clean exam room.”

She blanched. “It was reflex, okay?”

His grin turned absolutely wicked. “Sure. Some people just can’t handle certain smells. Or sounds. Or stomach contents being—”

“I get it,” she said. “Jeez, you lose your cool one time and you never hear the end of it.”

Most cases she handled without a problem. Blood, even copious amounts squirting from one of the main arteries? Keep pressure on it. Broken bone sticking through the skin? Make the patient as comfortable as possible and send them up to X-Ray. Mangled flesh, infected cuts, snotty noses, puss-oozing polyps? No problem.

But no matter how hard she tried, her stomach rebelled each and every time a patient puked. Oh, she did her job. Made sure the patient was taken care of, called janitorial to clean up the mess.

Then she’d head to the nearest bathroom and promptly lose whatever she had in her stomach.

It was annoying. Interfered with her doing her job. But mostly, it was humiliating.

“Nurse!”

At the sharp bark, Char jumped and whirled around. She saw Dr. Stockdale—with her linebacker’s build and coarse gray hair pulled back in a severe bun—bearing down on her and Leo. The physician’s high-stepping, arm-pumping walk clearly said, I move at this incredible speed because I am superior to you in every way.

A belief she never let the people who worked with her forget.

“You need to give her your best De Niro,” Leo whispered out of the side of his mouth.

Char didn’t take her eyes off the older lady. Kept her own voice low. “I think by this time in her life she has plenty of money of her own.”

He laughed. “Not dinero. De. Niro. As in Robert. You know. You talkin’ to me?”

Char snorted out a laugh, then quickly schooled her features into a calm, expectant expression. “I bet she’d just love that.”

Dr. Stockdale got closer and closer, making it pretty darn obvious she was, indeed, talking to Charlotte. Char leaned back, realized what she was doing and that it could be construed as intimidation, and straightened. “Yes, Doctor?” she asked, all pleasant and professional.

Ha. Take that, you old biddy.

Dr. Stockdale, clearly not grasping the concept of personal space, didn’t stop until the toes of her ugly brown pumps bumped Char’s sneakers. “Why hasn’t my patient been taken up for a CT scan?”

“And which patient would that be?” Char asked, sounding quite reasonable. Easy enough to do when compared with the doctor’s strident tone.

Dr. Stockdale waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the west hallway. “My patient in room 9.”

“I’m not actually the nurse for that patient,” Char said. “But I’d be happy to find out who is and they can check on the delay for you.”

“Oh, never mind,” Dr. Stockdale snapped, already whirling around, the hem of her mid-calf-length skirt hitting Char’s legs. “I’ll do it myself.” She searched the empty hallway and, despite there being no other people around, bellowed, “Nurse!” as she stormed off.

“I’m not sure which one is worse,” Leo said. “Her or Hamilton.”

Dr. Nathan Hamilton’s resignation from the hospital—due to an icky and completely perverted incident involving a consenting twenty-two-year-old certified nursing assistant, three silk ties and a few chairs from the X-ray wing’s waiting room—had led to Dr. Stockdale being hired.

It still ticked Charlotte off. Not that Hamilton had quit—she thanked God for that. But that, despite the numerous complaints filed against him, he hadn’t been fired.

“You only say that because Dr. Hamilton—” also known as Hands-On Hamilton, as in he-got-his-hands-on-everyone “—didn’t try to grope you on a regular basis,” Charlotte told Leo.

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, really? Do tell.”

“Sorry,” he said as his partner, Forrest Young, stepped up to them. “I don’t spill sordid details with a woman unless she buys me dinner first.”

“You want to know something about this joker?” Forrest asked her, wrapping his arm around Leo’s neck. Forrest, as homely as Leo was handsome, was a favorite among the E.R. staff due to his laid-back disposition and sense of humor. “You just ask me.” He grinned and squeezed Leo’s neck, causing Leo’s head to bob. “I know all his secrets.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him as Jocelyn came out of the room. Leo untangled himself from Forrest’s grip and they left with a wave. Char turned to her coworker.

“He’s all yours,” Jocelyn said. “Though I wish I didn’t have to pick up Michael from the sitter’s.” She nodded toward the room. “That is one seriously yummy man.”

As if to make her words more believable, Jocelyn gave an exaggerated shiver of delight that had everything, breasts and ample hips especially, shimmying. Four inches shorter than Char, her friend was curvy with dark hair, red lips and nails, and a penchant for bad boys and one-night stands.

She also had a three-year-old son she adored who wasn’t feeling well, forcing Jocelyn to leave work early.

“You said that about the appendectomy two weeks ago, remember? The one with the porno mustache?”

“I’m telling you, under that furry thing was a handsome man. And did you see his six-pack?”

It would have been unprofessional to point out she’d seen pretty much every inch of him. “I think I’ll stick with clean-shaven men just the same.”

“He—” Jocelyn jerked her thumb at the door behind Char “—has that stubbly thing going on. Plus I saw ink. You know how much I love tattoos on a man. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to see his body art up close and personal.”

“There’s not much personal about helping a patient get undressed or examining them.”

“Please,” Jocelyn said, handing Char the patient’s chart, “it’s the only reason I busted my very cute butt at nursing school.”

Smiling, Char shook her head and knocked on the door as Jocelyn flipped her hair and sauntered off, the very cute butt she was so proud of wiggling.

Char was still smiling as she opened the door, scanning the patient’s chart. Her smile slid away when she read the name at the top of the form, written in Jocelyn’s neat handwriting.

No. It couldn’t be.

“If it isn’t Little Red,” a husky, male voice said. Her head snapped up as Kane’s gaze drifted lazily over her, from the top of her hair to her sensible shoes. She had a feeling if he could have, he would have raised one eyebrow in scorn. As it was, both brows were lowered, probably due to pain. “Cute PJs.”

She strangled the doorknob. Pretended it was his neck. Kept her lips pressed tightly together. It was better than informing him of the difference between sleepwear and her favorite scrubs—purple pants, lighter purple long-sleeved tee under a floral top.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but when she opened them, Kane remained. No figment of her imagination, no hallucination brought on by a strong resemblance and bad lighting. He was here.

He was also her patient. Hers to take care of.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

Damn it. She should have known it was him from the way she’d reacted to the sight of his legs. It was as if every time she was around him, her body went haywire. Hot. Then cold. Then hot again.

And that was just from getting a glance at his legs and feet. His feet, for God’s sake.

He shifted. Winced and blew out a breath from between his teeth. “Speechless?”

Maybe it was the pain she saw in his eyes, the way he went white with it. Or maybe it was the decidedly missing mocking tone from his voice. Or, she thought as she took in his appearance, it could be his torn clothes and the many bloody gashes on his person. Whatever it was, she snapped out of her reverie. She had a job to do and she’d lick the bottom of his stupid, scarred boots before she’d let him get to her. Even for a moment.

Besides, it wasn’t as if she could load him off onto another nurse. Well, she could, but she never shirked her duty. And if she asked someone else to take him on, they’d want to know why. She wasn’t prepared to give that answer. Ever.

She crossed to stand next to his bed. “Actually, I was just lamenting about how, of all the ERs in all this great land of ours, you had to walk into mine.” She pursed her lips, somehow knowing he’d hate it if she showed him too much compassion. That he’d mistake any sympathy for pity. “Then again, you didn’t technically walk in.” Because she figured it would annoy him, she added air quotes to the last two words.

Opening her laptop, she cleared her throat. Set the computer on the stand and plugged it in.

“Let’s get some information,” she said, bringing up the file Jocelyn had started. “What happened?”

“Didn’t you talk with those EMT guys?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you know what happened.”

Couldn’t he cooperate at all? She pushed aside her irritation and glanced up at him. His face was a sickly color now—the pain must be getting to him. She softened a bit. She hated seeing anyone suffer. She’d get him something as soon as possible.

The EMTs had taped a piece of gauze to a cut on the side of his right eye, the flesh around it already turning interesting shades of yellow and green. His hair was disheveled, his shirt wet and torn, his jeans ripped, his right arm bent at an interesting and far-from-natural angle.

“Motorcycle accident,” she said, typing the words into the computer.

He shut his eyes and gingerly laid his head back. “A deer ran out in front of me. It was either lay the bike down or fly over the handlebars.”

“Guess you made the right decision.”

The police department would do whatever it was they did to ascertain if he’d been speeding or driving recklessly.

“Right before the accident,” she said, “were you light-headed or dizzy?”

“No.”

“Sick to your stomach?”

He snorted and she had no idea whether that was an affirmation or not.

“Were you drinking tonight?”

“Just water.”

“What about recreational drugs?”

Now he opened his eyes, pinned her with an unreadable look. “What about them?”

Something told her to tread carefully here. It was always a sensitive subject, but one she needed to address. Too bad most people were less than forthright about their bad habits, especially the ones that were illegal. She kept her voice matter-of-fact, her expression clear and nonjudgmental. “Were you impaired in any way?”

The fingers of his left hand clenched. “I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs.” His mouth thinned, but she wasn’t sure if it was due to physical discomfort or the topic of conversation. “I went for a ride after work. The roads were wet. A deer ran out into the road and I lost control. End of story.”

She picked up the electronic ear thermometer. “The EMTs’ notes said you weren’t wearing a helmet.” Yes, her tone made it clear she was judging him. Bad enough he drove a powerful vehicle that could reach great speeds. The least he could do was protect his head. “You’re lucky you weren’t more seriously injured.”

Or killed.

“Worried about me, Red?”

Taking his temperature, she rolled her eyes, caught herself mid-roll and pretended to be checking out a very interesting speck on the ceiling. “It’s part of my job to be concerned about any and all of my patients.”

“And here I thought I held a special place in your heart. With what happened between us and all.”

His voice was low. Husky. It seemed to vibrate right into her chest.

Neat trick, that.

Straightening slowly, as if her inner voice wasn’t screaming at her to leap back and run like mad, she gave him her haughtiest look, the one she reserved for unruly, rude or pain-in-the-rear patients.

He definitely qualified for the latter.

“Did you injure your left arm?” she asked, her cool tone daring him to make another comment about the night she’d gone to his apartment.

In answer, he held it out. She gently wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm, unwound the stethoscope from her neck and inserted the ear tips. After taking his blood pressure, she removed the cuff and checked his pulse. Typed all three figures into his file.

“Any allergies to medications?” she asked. He shook his head. “What about tape? Latex? Iodine?”

“No.”

“Are you currently taking any medications?”

He shook his head then winced.

She opened a drawer and pulled out tubing. “I’m going to get your IV started, get you something for the pain. Could you straighten your left arm for me?” she asked, pulling on sterile gloves.

She tightly tied a thick rubber band around his forearm just under his elbow, found the vein she wanted to use on the back of his hand, then disinfected the area. While it dried, she peeled open the catheter.

“You ever do this before?” Kane asked, his tone wary enough to make her glance at him.

He was staring at the catheter in her hand with what could only be described as trepidation. What was that about? She’d had plenty of people—young, old and in between—who were terrified of needles, more that weren’t thrilled about them, but could handle a shot or IV being inserted as long as they didn’t watch it piercing their skin. But Kane had tattoos. Several intricate, rather large ones, which would have taken hours upon hours to complete.

That’s when it hit her, the realization swift and producing a giddy sort of triumph. He wasn’t afraid of needles.

He was afraid of her.

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU LOOK HAPPY,” Kane grumbled, not liking the small smile playing on Red’s mouth.

She made a humming sound, pure contentment and satisfaction. “Do I? Must be because I’m loving my job at the moment.”

“Loving that you get to poke at me a few dozen times. Literally. With a very sharp object.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”

But her grin, just this side of mean, said otherwise.

He shouldn’t think it looked good on her.

He shifted. Pain stabbed his ribs, shot up his side. He held his breath, kept his face expressionless, but that didn’t seem to stop eagle eye from noticing. She didn’t frown—her usual expression around him—but there was no ignoring the concern in her eyes.

“You okay?” she asked.

She was doing her job, and that was all he wanted from her.

He exhaled carefully. Slowly. Inhaled the same way. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Just as he didn’t answer hers.

She noticed but didn’t call him on it.

“What question?” she asked, poking and prodding the back of his hand again with her finger, the sharp point of the needle closer to his skin than he would have liked.

He didn’t mind needles, could handle pain just fine. Though he’d rather avoid it if possible. Mostly he didn’t like the idea of her using him as a pincushion. Not when he was having a hard enough time keeping himself together. Acting calm and collected when all he wanted was to jump off the bed and get as far from this place, with its institutionalized smells and windowless walls, as possible. Before he completely lost it.

“Have you done this before?”

She raised her head, blinked at him as innocently as a newborn babe. “Once or twice. I’m getting really good at it, too.” Leaning forward, she lowered her voice, her blue eyes wide. “With my last patient, it took me only six or seven tries to get it right.”

She was messing with him. She had to be.

He hoped.

Before he could find out, someone knocked at the door, and Charlotte excused herself—like the polite little nurse she probably was with every other patient—to see who was there.

A reprieve. He was smart enough to be thankful.

Then again, the more she stabbed at him, the longer his mind was occupied and he didn’t have to think about anything else. Such as how much it hurt just to breathe. Hell, he’d gladly forgo the process altogether if it wasn’t an instinctual, and necessary, act to remain alive. How pain swamped him with every movement, no matter how slight or how slowly done, making his stomach turn. How the mother of all headaches pounded at the base of his skull, blurring his eyesight and making him want nothing more than to go home, down a few shots of whiskey and slip into a dreamless, painless sleep.

Too bad he’d given up drinking.

But the physical discomfort was nothing compared to the memories.

The familiar sights and sounds of the hospital threatened to drag him back to the past. Reminding him of the accident that had almost cost him his life.

That had almost taken away the most precious thing in his world.

And it had been all his fault.

“Sorry about that,” Red said as she returned to his side. “Okay, here we go.” She bent over his hand and that’s when he realized her hair was different. Short, like a pixie, the red strands loose and waving slightly. “Slight pinch,” she murmured, inserting the needle into his vein.

He barely felt it.

And he’d let her rip off his good arm and beat him over the head with it before he admitted it.

She taped the port to his hand then gave it a gentle pat. “You were very brave,” she told him soberly. But her eyes gleamed. “Want a lollipop?”

She smiled. A real smile, one that reached her eyes and made a dimple in her left cheek form. A sudden, vicious craving swept through him, a hunger for something sweet.

Something like skinny, small-chested Charlotte Ellison.

He must have hit his head harder than he thought.

In answer to her smart-ass question, he scowled. But that only made his head hurt more, so he stopped.

As if sensing she’d won the point, she tossed the packaging from the IV into the trash. “I’m going to let you rest. If you need anything before I get back, just press your call button.”

She was leaving. He should be glad. Was glad. He could use some quiet. Some peace.

But the quiet gave him too much time to think. To remember. And peace had always been beyond his reach.

“You cut your hair.”

He winced at how accusing he sounded. As if he gave a shit about it. She could shave it all off and it wouldn’t matter to him.

Turning to face him, she lifted a hand toward her head only to curl her fingers into her palm and slowly lower it. “Months ago,” she said as if this was old, old news and he had no reason to be bringing it up.

“Months, huh? Well, I haven’t seen you at O’Riley’s for a while,” he said. “Must be how I missed it.”

She raised both eyebrows. “I hadn’t realized you’d been looking for me.”

He hadn’t. But he had thought of her once or twice. Dreamed of her more often than he’d liked.

And that pissed him off but good.

“Just noticed after your little visit to my apartment you’ve kept your distance,” he said. “No need to be embarrassed, Red. You’re far from the first woman to throw herself at me. You weren’t even the last.”

She flushed, color washing over her cheeks, a pretty pink that made her look flustered and as tasty as the lollipop she’d offered him. “How comforting. Now I can sleep peacefully as I’ve thought of nothing but you and that night since it happened.”

It was as if she didn’t really mean it. “You don’t have to avoid O’Riley’s. No need to hide from me, Red.”

“I’m not hiding,” she said, humor lacing her tone. “I’ve been a tad too busy to hang out at bars.”

“Getting your hair cut.”

She gave him that grin again, the one that had her dimple winking. “Yes. Along with a few other things, such as working, moving into and decorating my new house. And of course, working some more to pay for said house.”

“Aren’t you a little young to buy a house?”

“That seems to be the consensus. But please—” she held a hand out in the universal stop sign “—spare me the wisdom of your advanced years—”

“Advanced years?” he muttered, his eyes narrowing.

“I’ve already heard it all from my parents, Sadie, coworkers and friends. Even the loan manager at the bank acted like she wanted to pat me on the head when I signed the papers for what promised to be a long and healthy mortgage. So you see,” she continued with that same grin, that same amused tone, “as much as it may shock you—and bruise what appears to be your very big ego—I haven’t been avoiding you. I haven’t, actually, given you much thought at all.”

Obviously knowing the strength of getting the last word, she walked out of the room leaving him with his thoughts, his memories and his past sins.

* * *

KANE JERKED AWAKE, his body lurching to a sitting position. His heart raced, his chest throbbed, a cold sweat coated his skin. The remnants of his nightmare clung to his consciousness, blurring the lines between dream and reality. His throat was dry, sore, as if he’d been yelling. Screaming, like in the dream.

He covered his face with his good hand, gulped in air. The IV tugged sharply. His lungs burned, the stabbing pain almost doubling him over. Bringing with it a slow, dawning awareness. Relief.

He wasn’t a terrified twenty-year-old being wheeled into St. Luke’s hospital in Houston, a neck brace holding him immobile, his own injuries forcing him to lie still, leaving him to stare up at the bright lights as they raced him down the hall.

He was a grown man in a dimly lit room at Shady Grove Memorial, his arm in a sling. An hour ago they’d reset and casted his arm. They’d cut off his shirt, stripped him of his pants and checked every square inch of his person for injuries, then put him in a pair of lime-green scrubs. He’d been poked and prodded, had his blood drawn and his chest and arm X-rayed. He’d answered questions about his medical history and given his statement to the cop taking the accident report.

The panic, the fear, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth, the frantic screams, were all part of a dream. A memory.

One he relived, over and over again.

As he should. After all, the memories deserved to be kept alive, nurtured so they didn’t fade. What better way to pay homage to the moment that had, in the weird, circular way karma had of doing things, saved his life?

Made him a better man.

Someone knocked twice on the door. “Good news,” Charlotte said cheerily as she walked into the room like a freaking ray of sunshine. “Dr. Louk is on his way.”

“What?” Kane asked, his voice hoarse.

She glanced at him, her eyebrows raised. “Dr. Louk. The attending physician who did your initial exam? He’s on his way to do your sutures. You’ll be out of here soon.”

Kane lifted his good hand, touched trembling fingers to the bandage on his forehead, then scrubbed his palm over his face. He reached for the cup of water on the table next to his bed, but misjudged the distance, knocking it over.

“Oops,” Charlotte said, pulling several paper towels from the dispenser on the wall above the sink.

She lightly brushed his hand away when he went to straighten the cup. Mopping up the mess with one hand, she poured more water with the other. Tossed the towels into the trash and gave him the cup.

His hand shook. Water sloshed over the edge, splattered his arm and the leg of his jeans.

Without a word, Charlotte covered his hand with hers, helped him lift the cup to his mouth. He drank deeply.

“Thanks.” His voice was gruff, and warmth crawled up the back of his neck.

She shrugged. “The meds leave some people unsteady. No big deal.”

Meds they’d given him through his IV. He didn’t want to take them, didn’t want to need them, but he knew he did.

He hated that she was seeing him so vulnerable. So out of sorts and messed up.

She laid a sterile pad on a rolling metal tray. “I know it’s been a long night. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

Standing close enough so her sweet scent—the same scent that had lingered in his apartment for days after her failed seduction attempt—wrapped around him like a cloud, she studied him. Trying to see inside his head, no doubt. Gauging his mood, his words, to see if they were the truth.

“You don’t look fine.” Her voice gentled, and he hated that almost as much as the sympathy in her eyes. She set her hand on his shoulder, her touch light, her fingers warm. “Are you having pain?”

He wanted, more than he could admit even to himself, for her to keep her hand there. To reach up and link his fingers with hers, to hold on to something real. Something to ground him in the here and now, to yank him out of his past.

In the guise of sitting up, he shifted and her hand dropped back to her side. “I’ve had worse.”

“Oh. Well, good. Not good you’ve had worse pain,” she rushed on, a blush staining her cheeks. “But that it’s not that bad now.”

He’d embarrassed her. Flustered her. He hadn’t meant to. He didn’t care about the pain, he just wanted out of the hospital.

Before he lost what little control he had left.

The medicine they were pumping into him made his head heavy, his thoughts blurry—like when he’d spent most of his time wasted, wanting nothing more than the next high. The room, the sights and smells of the hospital, the sound of doctors being paged, of codes being called, tortured him with memories.

The only time he could breathe, could forget for a few minutes where he was, could pretend his past wasn’t pressing down on him, was when Red came in the room.

She was a distraction, he assured himself. That was all. A way for him to forget the pain. Yes, she was interesting and intelligent and, he supposed, attractive in a unique way. But that wasn’t why she occupied his thoughts. Focusing on her was a way to keep his control.

She looked so naive. Innocent. It was partly the freckles, he thought, taking in her profile as she laid out the instruments needed for his stitches. Hard to come across as mature and tough when it looked as if God himself had sprinkled cuteness across your nose and upper cheeks. Or maybe it was her hair. No adult should have hair that bright.

But, he had to admit, the particular shade of orangey-red suited her, went with the pale creaminess of her skin, the new super-short cut accentuating the sharp angle of her jaw, the shape of her eyes.

She was in her element here, surrounded by the sick and injured, the constant noise and odd smells. Gone was the awkward, slightly gawky girl he’d first met at his bar when he’d pissed her off by asking to see her ID. There was no sign of the angry woman who, a few weeks later, had accused her older sister of stealing her one true love, or the nervous, desperate woman who’d come to his apartment. Here she was confident and in control. In charge.

It suited her.

Someone knocked and the doctor, the one who looked like some actor Kane couldn’t quite put a name to, came in.

“How are we doing, Mr. Bartasavich?” Dr. Movie-Star asked in nasally, flat tones that should be illegal in the good old U.S. of A.

“If I had to guess,” Kane said, tired enough to let out his own accent, “I’d say you’re doing a hell of a lot better than me at the moment.”

Washing his hands, the doctor grinned at Kane over his shoulder. “I’d have to agree with you.”

Charlotte took the bandage off Kane’s cut and cleaned the cut, then the doctor gave him a shot to numb the area. Kane almost asked to forgo that step. The sting would give him something else to focus on, something other than the panic trying to wash over him.

But he wasn’t a masochist. Just completely messed up.

“We’ll give it a few minutes to work,” the doctor said while Char cleaned up once again.

They left. He almost called Char back, almost said something else like his inane comment about her hair to keep her in the room with him. It was easier when she was with him, all bright and capable and whip-smart. But once she left, it was as if she took all the air in the room with her. His heart rate increased. The memories threatened, there, at the edge of his mind, pushing, pushing, pushing to be let loose.

He stared at the TV mounted on the wall, the images of an old movie flashing by, the sound muted. Concentrated on nothing more than his next careful breath. Inhaling, he filled his lungs, his ribs pinching, and counted to five. Exhaled for another five. Again. And again.

Finally, they returned. “All right,” the doctor said, putting on the gloves Red handed him. “Let’s get this done so you can go home.”

He could do this. He could do this. But his stomach turned. His throat tightened.

The doctor put in the first stitch. Other than a slight tugging, Kane didn’t feel anything, but anxiety settled in his chest, growing and growing, pushing even the shallowest breath from his lungs.

Bile rose. He swallowed it down and stared at a spot above the doctor’s head. Tried to forget.

“You okay?”

Red’s voice, calm and concerned. He couldn’t speak, though, and nodding while someone stitched his skin together didn’t seem like the best idea.

She moved to the other side of the bed, brushed her fingers against his forearm. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You’re doing great.”

And she covered his hand with hers.

He jolted. Met her eyes.

The doctor said something in a sharp tone, but Kane didn’t catch it. Couldn’t. The blood was rushing in his ears, a roar of sound drowning out everything else. Until Red spoke, barely above a murmur, but to him her voice was clear, the low, soothing tones easing the ache in his chest.

“Try to stay still.” She sent him a small smile. Gave his fingers a squeeze. “Only a few more.”

Moving was not an option. He was frozen, held immobile by her light touch, the feel of her cool fingers on the back of his hand, the power of her gaze on his. He should pull away. Let her know in no uncertain terms he didn’t want her assurance. Didn’t need her comfort.

He sure as hell didn’t deserve it.

But he was weak. So weak he turned his hand, linked his fingers with hers and held on tight.

* * *

THERE WAS SOMETHING wrong with Kane.

Something other than the injuries he’d sustained, Charlotte amended. Something—dare she say?—deeper. Emotional or psychological or a combination of both. Something that had him clutching her hand as if the link between them, the very basic, instinctive need for human contact—skin-to-skin—was the only real thing in his life. The only thing keeping him grounded.

Keeping him safe.

She would have shaken her head if she hadn’t been afraid to break the eye contact between them. Keeping him safe? Some sort of deep, emotional issue? Please. Her imagination was running wild.

There was nothing deep or emotional about Kane. He was hard, caustic and cynical. Thinking there was more to him was ridiculous. Thinking he needed her to protect him from a few stitches, to save him from whatever had produced the haunted look in his eyes, bordered on delusional.

And she was too smart, too careful and way too afraid of making another grand mistake to let delusions ruin her life again.

But that didn’t stop her from murmuring nonsense to him, careful to keep her voice soft, her tone calm as she repeated how great he was doing, that it’d all be over in a few minutes and he just needed to hang in there. She was there for him.

Time slowed. She had no idea how long they stayed that way, eyes locked, hands clasped. All sound seemed to dissipate so even her own words disappeared, though she kept up the mindless chatter. Her entire world narrowed so the only thing she saw was Kane. Color slowly seeped back into his face. His gaze sharpened, came back into focus. His hand warmed against hers, his palm rough, his fingers twitching with every pull of the thread. He inhaled, quick and shallow.

“You’re okay.” She kept her voice quiet, her own breathing deep and even in the hopes he’d follow suit. “You’re okay.”

“Last two stitches,” Justin said, his low tone mimicking her own.

She stood, but Kane didn’t let go. She patted his hand. “It’s all right now. Dr. Louk is done, but he needs my help.” For a moment, she was afraid Kane didn’t hear or understand what she was saying. But then he slowly, reluctantly, slid his hand from hers.

Wiping her tingling palm down the front of her thigh, she crossed to the hand sanitizer on the wall, cleaned her hands, then walked around the bed, all the while hyperaware of Kane’s intense gaze on her. She held the scissors out for Justin, hating the unsteadiness of her hands, of her heart. The way her mind raced with questions, with concerns. She wanted to get to the bottom of Kane’s behavior, wanted to ask him what had brought it on, what she could do to help him.

She must be a complete idiot.

Because no matter what had come over Kane, the last thing she needed was to try to fix him.

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