LITMIR.BIZ

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ideal bedroom would look like, maybe, if you have some time over the weekend, we could go shopping and you could come back to my place and help me put it all together.”

      “Right,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. And to add to her overall ‘don’t for one minute think I’m going to fall for your scheme’ body language, she crossed her arms over her chest, cocked her head and gave him ‘the look’. “Like I’m going to go over to your condo when Jessie isn’t there.” Not. Especially after that kiss. Only an insane woman would do that.

      “I’d treat you to lunch.” His eyes met hers. “And a nice dinner.”

      “So I’d feel indebted to you,” she said, shaking her head. “Not gonna work.”

      “I will be the perfect gentleman.” He held up his right hand, again, as if that somehow made his words more believable. “Absolutely no kissing. I promise.”

      “You know I think that holding up your right hand thing only works in court. And only when your left hand is resting on a bible.”

      He smiled.

      “And aren’t you supposed to be working all weekend?” she asked. “Isn’t that the reason you’re sending Jess on vacation without you?”

      He turned away and let out a breath. “Call me a bad person, a bad parent. But I’m smart enough to know when I’ve reached my limit. I need a break from parenting so bad I lied, to my parents and my daughter.” His eyes met hers. “I will not apologize for taking a few much needed days for myself.”

      “All parents deserve a break, Lewis,” Scarlet said, touching his arm to let him know she understood.

      He covered her hand with his. “Please,” he said. “Will you help me?”

      Scarlet was tempted to say she had to work all weekend.

      “Perfect gentleman. I promise,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers. “Let’s go to the chapel. I’m sure I can find a bible in there.”

      Scarlet smiled.

      “Say you’ll help me.” Lewis tilted his head and made an innocent face. “For Jessie, who should not suffer for my transgressions.”

      And Scarlet understood how he’d so successfully charmed so many women out of their panties. But after the year Jessie had endured, she deserved a beautiful bedroom in her father’s house. Scarlet was a grown woman, she could handle him for a few hours. “Fine. Call me after she leaves,” Scarlet said. “And we’ll set up a time to meet.”

      “Thank you,” he said.

      She looked at her watch. “If I don’t get back to my unit soon they’ll send out a search party.” Who would find her alone with a handsome doctor, in a quiet, cozy corridor, with a pair of swollen, red, thoroughly kissed lips.

      She smoothed her hair, stepped back and spread her arms wide. “Presentable?”

      He looked her up and down. “Perfect.” He did the same. “Me?”

      Scarlet scanned his person, making sure to spend a little extra time on the most noticeably aroused part of him to enjoy a moment of satisfaction from her role in that arousal. “Button your lab coat.”

      He did then he bent to pick up his now cold cup of coffee that he must have set down in the corner of their hiding spot at some point.

      “I’ll pump Jessie for decorating ideas,” she said.

      With a nod and a wave Lewis turned toward the ER and Scarlet headed in the opposite direction to see if Jessie was still waiting for her in the cafeteria.

      * * *

      Lewis walked back to the emergency department feeling out of sorts. In forty-eight hours he’d be dropping Jessie off at his parents’ house up in Westchester County, leaving him with four full nights and three full days to himself. To do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted. Yet he hadn’t made one phone call or sent one text message or one e-mail to any of the two dozen or so women he knew for a fact would jump at the chance to spend time with him—in and out of bed.

      Because he wanted to fix up Jessie’s room.

      Because he wanted to spend time with Scarlet, the woman who’d been occupying his mind way too often of late, the woman he’d just promised to be a perfect gentleman with. What the heck had he been thinking?

      That kiss.

      He adjusted his scrub pants. In his present state, one size did not fit all.

      Okay, so Scarlet Miller had the good looks and trim figure he preferred. But he liked his women easy—emotionally and sexually. Did that make him shallow? Yes. But it also made him honest. With his schedule and work responsibilities, he hadn’t been looking for anything long term or challenging. And he had no doubt smart, quick, feisty Scarlet would be a challenge.

      Lewis returned the flirty smile of a cute blonde woman he recognized from Respiratory Therapy as she walked toward him on the opposite side of the hallway. He considered a wink, decided against it, but glanced at her fingers anyway. No wedding ring. No engagement ring. It’d be so easy to ask her out, to do all the right things and to say what needed to be said to get her into bed.

      He was, after all, a master of seduction.

      Yet the idea of slipping into that role, of spouting insincere flattery, and having to tolerate uninspired, unwanted conversation for the sole purpose of getting laid no longer held an appeal. Lord help him, he’d lost his desire to play the game.

      He took out his cell phone and pretended to read a message until he passed her by.

      Scarlet pushed her way back into his thoughts. Her soft, plump lips. Her scent. Her taste. Her barely audible moan of surrender as she’d softened against him. He may have lost his desire to play the game, but he had not lost his desire for the opposite sex, more specifically, his desire for Scarlet Miller.

      He turned the corner, getting closer to the familiar sounds of his busy department, looking forward to immersing himself in his work, of focusing his mind on something other than his daughter’s friend and confidante, a woman he could not have.

      “Dr. Jackson,” one of his more experienced nurses called out when she saw him. “Your timing is excellent. The consult you requested for exam room four is being done as we speak. Dr. Griffin was able to come after all.”

      Though quiet and a bit gruff with the nursing staff, Dr. John Griffin had an excellent rapport with children and was one of the finest orthopedic surgeons Lewis had ever worked with.

      “And two ambulances are on the way,” she continued. “Three-year-old male fell from a subway platform. Numerous scrapes and bruises. A notable laceration above his left eyebrow. Alert and responsive.”

      “What do we have open?” he asked, shifting back into work mode.

      “Exam room two, bed three?”

      “That works.” At the sound of sirens he hastened his pace. “And the second one?”

      “Thirteen-month-old female. Possible drowning in the bathtub. Mom is inconsolable, says she got distracted by an important phone call.”

      More important than her toddler? But Lewis had worked as a pediatrician long enough to know better than to make snap judgments about parents based on limited information. “Do we have a trauma bed available?”

      She looked at the white board—which looked more like a red, green, and black board with all the writing it had on it—and said, “Trauma three, bed one.”

      The electric doors opened. An EMT walked beside a fast-moving stretcher squeezing an ambu bag, manually ventilating his small patient. “Unable to intubate en route,” he reported.

      “Trauma three, bed one,” Lewis told the female EMT pushing the stretcher, and he set his full cup of now cold coffee on the counter at the nurses’ station

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