LITMIR.BIZ

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he said before she could open her mouth, and turned that good-ol’-boy grin on Nathan. “Evans. Ryan Evans.” He extended his hand across the booth top. “Nelson Beldon, right?”

      “Nathan. Dr. Nathan Beldon,” Nathan corrected him stiffly, and because he’d been left with no choice, he met Ry’s hand across the gray Formica.

      “Doc,” Ry said with a nodding smile while he exerted, in Carrie’s opinion, just a little too much enthusiasm in an extended handshake that finally ended with a small grimace of pain on Nathan’s face.

      God, she thought on a long sigh. Did that really just happen? Did Ry just try to outmuscle Nathan? If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was pulling a junkyard-dog stunt and marking his territory. Which, of course, was as ridiculous a notion as the one she’d bought into for the past fourteen years.

      “What are you doing here, Ryan?” she asked through a clenched jaw and totally false smile as she fought with everything in her to ignore the way his muscled thigh felt pressed against hers. It was solid and hard and hot.

      “Same thing you are, Carrie-bear. Refueling. So—” he turned his attention away from her and back to Nathan as she quietly slid out of physical contact range “—how are you finding Royal, Nolan?”

      “Nathan,” Carrie corrected him with a hard stare. “His name is Nathan.”

      Another country boy grin. “Nolan. Nathan. Sorry, pal. So…you’re a vet, right?”

      Carrie closed her eyes and counted to ten as fire flooded her cheeks. She was about to clarify, yet again, when Nathan handled it.

      “Physician. OB/GYN, actually. And you? It would appear by your outfit that you’d be a cowboy, correct?”

      Her eyes flew open. She grinned. Whoa. Score one for the doc.

      Okay. Maybe score half a point, she decided, when she saw a vein bulge out on Nathan’s forehead.

      Beside her, though, Ry’s grin just got broader, making it apparent who was still getting the best of whom.

      The evening quickly went downhill from there.

      “Just what, in the name of everything sane, did you think you were doing?” Carrie demanded as she watched Nathan walk out of the diner, his shoulders stiff.

      Beside her, polishing off the last of his dinner, Ryan paused with his fork midair. “What are you talking about, darlin’?”

      It was the last straw. She slugged him.

      “Ouch.” He rubbed his biceps, grimaced. “That hurt.”

      “It couldn’t possibly have hurt enough,” she groused and, crossing her arms over her breasts, slumped back in the booth seat.

      He pretended to study her with a concerned frown. “Oh. Oh,” he repeated, as if the bricks she’d have dearly loved to drop on his thick head had finally landed dead center. “I interrupted something, didn’t I?”

      She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “Gosh…ya think?”

      He had the good sense to finally look guilty. So guilty that she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

      “I think I hate you.”

      He became quiet before setting down his fork and drawing a deep breath. “So…umm…you think this guy might be special?”

      She gave a weary snort and made herself ignore the feel of his warm callused fingers as he lifted a hand to her face to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Well, I’ll probably never know now, will I? Not after that dog-and-pony show you put on tonight.”

      She could feel his warm-brown eyes on her but refused to look at him. Finally he dropped his hand.

      “Hate to break it to you, sunshine,” he said, “but if he scares off that easily, he’s not only not special, he hasn’t got what it takes to breathe the same air you do.”

      Carrie crossed her arms on the booth tabletop, dropped her forehead to rest there and expelled an exasperated sigh. “All I wanted was dinner and a chance to get to know him. Was that too much to ask?”

      Ry looked down at her riot of shiny red hair, at the weary slump of her shoulders and felt a curl of real guilt coil in his belly. He lifted a hand, let it hover over her slim back before finally giving in to the urge and letting it settle there. When she didn’t object, he gently rubbed. She was so slight. The flesh and bone and delicate muscle beneath her kelly-green sweater was warm and resilient.

      He only meant to soothe her and assuage a little of his guilt. Instead, as his palm skated over what was obviously the clasp of her bra, he got lost in a fantasy that filled his mind way too often lately.

      Would her bra be black, he wondered. Would it match her panties? The thought of seeing her in nothing but black silk and fragile lace warmed by her skin and peeled away by his hands had him swallowing hard. And yet he couldn’t make himself stop.

      He could see himself tunneling his hands up and under that sweater, unfastening her bra, drawing her back against him and filling his palms with her breasts. He could imagine the heat of her, the weight, the giving softness surrounding the hard spears of her nipples pressing against his palm while his other hand slipped down across her ribs, and lower, lingering on her slim hip before his fingers skimmed past her belly, under her panties and found the silky heat of her.

      The length of his erection pressed against his fly.

      Again. Because of her. Trav’s little sister.

      He let out a heavy breath. Withdrew his hand. Gave himself a mental head slap.

      “How about some pie?” he asked in a voice that barely sounded like his own.

      She lifted her head, looked at him.

      Her hair was slightly mussed. Her cheek had a little crease from the pressure of her face pressed against her sweater sleeve. It’s what she would look like in the morning, he realized. After he’d made love to her all night. Sleepy and sated and…Whoops, the heat in her eyes was anger not passion, and burst him out of his little sensual haze like a pin pricking a balloon.

      “Pie? That’s how you fix what you did just now?”

      In spite of himself and his guilt and his arousal, he grinned. “Used to do the trick,” he said hopefully.

      “Yeah. When I was twelve.”

      “Takes a little more than pie to make you feel good now, is that it, bear?”

      The moment he said it, he regretted it. Because it conjured a dozen thoughts about ways he’d like to make her feel good. Starting with her mouth, working slowly down from there. Oh, yeah. He’d make her feel good. He’d make them both feel good.

      “What it takes,” she said, dragging her hair back from her face, “is a little…just a little…respect for my feelings.”

      “I respect you, sweetie. I’m just not sure Nelson does.”

      “Nathan,” she said with fire in her eyes. “His name is Nathan, and I don’t really care what you think of him, do you understand?

      “Now, move,” she ordered in a mercurial shift from down-and-out to down-and-dirty mad. “And for future reference,” she added when he let her out of the booth, deciding he’d better make way or confront the wrath of a royally ticked-off redhead, “I don’t want to see your face in my face the next time I’m faced with Nathan’s face…is that clear?”

      “I…um…”

      “Good!”

      Not good, Ry thought as he watched her storm out of the diner.

      “When you gonna do something about that?” Sheila asked, sidling over to the booth and slapping his dinner check

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