Tangling With Ty

5

THE LAST TIME Ty had seen Nicole she’d been walking away from him, and the taste of her had still been on his lips. He’d watched her go and decided not to do that to himself again.

No more watching.

Well, he was looking plenty now, wasn’t he? Looking so hard he could see her every little breath, which seemed too quick and shallow for her to be half as calm as she was pretending, standing over there in that killer dress.

But hot as that bod was, it hadn’t been the dress that nearly brought him to his knees. No, the look in her eyes had done that. The look that said “back off” and “want me,” all in the same flash of those gray, gray eyes.

Suzanne and Taylor were grinning at him proudly, as if they’d personally created the vision standing before him.

“She does look good enough to eat, doesn’t she?” Taylor said, clapping her hands. “Just wait until we get on the thigh-high stockings and do-me heels.”

“Okay, I’m done.” Nicole pointed a finger at Ty. “You. Stop staring. And you.” She whirled on Taylor. “No stockings. No high heels that say do me or otherwise.”

Ty did his best to stop staring as she turned her back on him to chew out Taylor, but as he caught a good sight of the rear view, he nearly swallowed his tongue. Now he could see why the stockings would have to be thigh high, the dress dipped so low he caught a peek-a-boo glimpse of her peach, silky-looking panties.

Nicole, rough-and-tumble ready, tomboy, warrior of her world…and she wore peach silky panties. If that didn’t completely destroy him, he didn’t know what did.

“I have got to get to work,” she grumbled, bending for her discarded clothes and showing more peach silk.

Not that he was looking. Nope. Not looking-

She caught him looking. With a furious glance that singed the hair right off his arms, she stalked by, giving him a quick scent of shampoo and clean, very angry woman.

“Hey, I thought you decided to cut back your hours,” Taylor called out to her. “So you don’t kill yourself before you hit the big three-oh.”

“No, you decided I should cut back my hours. I decided to stop trying to convince you I’m just fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Taylor stood beside a nodding Suzanne for unity. “You live and breathe that job, without time for anything or anyone else. It’s not right, Nicole. You’re hiding out from life. Tell her, Ty.”

Nicole dared him to say a word with stormy eyes.

He lifted his hands. “I don’t-”

“Oh, please.” Taylor pointed to Nicole’s face. “See those dark circles under her eyes? Lack of sleep.”

Ty hadn’t slept well either, mostly from the memories of Nicole’s mouth on his, from the feel of her body beneath his hands, from the little needy sounds that had escaped her throat before they’d broken apart for air.

Under the circumstances, with his own dark circles beneath his eyes, he didn’t really feel he had the right to say anything.

“If I want a mother, I’ll call mine,” Nicole said.

“Which reminds me, yours came by.” Taylor lifted a brow. “Checked me out. I must have passed muster, as she told me to make sure you get your sleep, eat your veggies and don’t take extra shifts at the hospital.”

Ty lifted his own brow at Nicole’s impressive and colorful opinion of that. Then watched her very fine ass sashay to the door.

“Don’t ruin that dress yanking it off,” Taylor told her. “And use a hanger!”

The door slammed, and Taylor snickered.

Suzanne sighed. “You shouldn’t have baited her that way.”

“Are you kidding? If I didn’t, she’d never have put the dress on, much less agreed to wear it. And she really does need to eat more veggies, you said so yourself.”

“She didn’t agree to wear the dress,” Suzanne said.

“Oh, she’ll wear it.” Taylor tossed them both a positive smile. “She’ll wear it with bells on.”

Ty was just thankful he wouldn’t have to see it. In fact, he was still thanking his lucky stars when Suzanne turned to him and said, “You’ll be invited to the engagement party, of course.”

“Me?” Panic was a taste he hadn’t eaten in a good long time.

“Yeah. I think you’re going to be around a while.” Suzanne gave him a little smile.

Oh, boy. There were matchmaking plans in those eyes. Unintentionally, he backed up, making both women laugh.

“Don’t tell me a man who wears clothes as well as you do has an aversion to dressing up like Nicole’s?” Taylor said.

“No, but I do have an aversion to being set up.”

“Set up?” Taylor cocked her head to the side. “Most men would be drooling to go out with a woman who looked the way Nicole just did.”

“Not me. I get my own women, thank you. Didn’t you want to show me your contractor bids? You wanted my opinion, right?” He could hear the desperation in his voice. “Can we get back to that?”

“We’re not talking marriage here, Ty.” When he didn’t relax, Taylor just sighed. “Fine. I’ll let you in on a little secret I think will help the situation here, all right? Nicole and I? We plan on remaining single. Forever. No white dress, no white cake and no diamonds on our ring fingers. If there’s any hooking-up going on, it’s of the one-night variety only. Follow?”

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

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

“Oh, definitely,” Suzanne agreed.

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

They didn’t laugh back.

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

American women were insane, he thought. Completely insane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey.”

“Sorry about upstairs.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Because Taylor said to?”

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

“It’s going nowhere.”

He smiled again. “Let’s go see.”

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

And the engine simply coughed.

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

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

“I don’t want-”

“It’s no trouble.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Why do I sincerely doubt that?”

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

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

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

“How do you know they mean something?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now he laughed, the sound rich and easy.

“We do,” she protested.

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

“You’ve thought about this.”

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

“What happened?”

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

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

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

“Surgeries. Meetings. More surgeries.”

“Are you good?”

“The best.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Of the highest ranking.”

“I’m shocked. Were you-”

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

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

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

“I am not.”

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

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

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

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

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

“And after that?”

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

“If I said nothing?”

“I’m not sure I’d believe it.”

“Ty-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mom-”

“Just say thank you, Nicole.”

“Thank you, Nicole.”

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

“I’ll try.”

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

“Mom-”

“Double fudge brownies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The candy bar dropped.

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

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

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

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

“Go out with me tonight.”

“Dr. Watts-”

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

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

“I’m not ‘people.’ I’m a doctor.”

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

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

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

“That’s a bad plan, Nicole.”

“Dr. Mann.”

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

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

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

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