LITMIR.BIZ

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or loyalty. Pared down to those two words, there could only be one choice. He headed for the door and hoped he had the strength of character to choose the right one.

      Damn Ryan Evans. And damn this stupid cow town. He’d been trying to figure an angle to get to Carrie Whelan for days and when he finally found the opportunity, Evans had cut him off at the knees.

      Seething with rage and still smelling of that row-rent greasy-spoon diner, he let himself into the apart ment he’d rented last month on the west end of Royal. He stormed straight for his bedroom, angrily tossing his keys on the top of the bureau. With jerky motions that relayed the extent of his rage over Evans’s interference, he unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it out of his trousers.

      “You’re home early.”

      He whipped his head toward the bed where a very blond, very naked woman lay beneath the sheets, smiling at him.

      He closed his eyes, swore. “What are you doing here?”

      “Ooo. Testy tonight, are we? What’s the matter, darling? Didn’t your little tryst with sweet Carrie Whelan go as well as you’d planned?”

      “I told you,” he snapped, ignoring her sarcasm and stepping out of his pants, “we have to be careful. As far as anyone knows, you’re my nurse. Nothing more. And you sure as hell shouldn’t be here.”

      “I was careful,” she said with a pout and a come-hither look that drained some of his anger and stirred his lust. “No one saw me come in. And you’re glad I’m here. Admit it. For heaven’s sake, don’t be such a poop. It’s been days since we’ve spent any…quality time together,” she added with a suggestive smile. “I’ve missed you.”

      He gave her a hard stare, considered throwing her out with an admonishment to stay out until he told her it was safe, but then she peeled back the covers and opened her arms. Her body was as lush as her cheery red lips. With a toss of her head, her long mane of platinum-blond hair fell enticingly over her shoulders.

      “You don’t really want me to go…do you Roman?”

      He let out a deep breath, crossed to the bed. “How many times have I told you not to call me by my real name?”

      “All right. All right.” Now it was her voice that was filled with impatience. Her pale blue eyes that heated to electric flame. “Nathan. I know the drill. You’ve reminded me often enough. As long as we’re stuck in this dust trap, you’re Dr. Nathan Beldon, not Dr. Roman Birkenfeld, and I’m nurse Mary Campbell, not Marci Carson. Now…you don’t really want me to go, do you…Nathan?”

      His gaze raked her body. No. He didn’t want her to go. At least not for another hour or so. He still needed her to play out this scam. And he needed to work off some of his tension with Nurse “Good-body.”

      He hadn’t been thinking straight lately. He needed his wits about him. He needed to regroup and refocus and marshal his thoughts, reassess his plan. Forget about what he’d done to the real Dr. Nathan Beldon whose identity he’d stolen…quit worrying about being found out. Even if the Dallas PD found Beldon’s body—and he’d made sure they wouldn’t—the police wouldn’t be able to pin the murder on him. He wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t gotten where he was by being stupid.

      All he needed to do was keep it together so he could get to Natalie Perez. The bitch. She was the one who’d screwed things up. She’d gotten wise to his black-market baby ring and skipped with both her baby and his money—money he’d been hoarding from baby sales for months so he could pay off the loan sharks who’d covered his Atlantic City gambling debts. He was as good as dead if he didn’t get the baby and the money back. Thanks to Natalie Perez, he’d been roughed up good and his life had been threatened—with the promise that they would not let him die easily if he didn’t make good on his loan. Soon.

      He swiped a damp palm over his jaw. He had to get to that baby. And he had to recover the half million she’d stolen from him so he could get the monkey off his back.

      So, no. He didn’t want the woman warming his bed to leave. He wanted some relief from all this pressure. Keeping up the sham of his false ID, constantly being on guard against the loan sharks catching up with him, figuring out angles to get out from under…it was taking a toll. He wasn’t sleeping. He’d lost weight.

      “Come on, baby,” Marci purred, and lay back on the pillow. “I’ll make you feel better.”

      Yeah, he thought. She was a regular Florence Nightingale…and he was in need of a healing hand.

      He crossed over to the bed and stretched out on top of her. He’d worry about Carrie Whelan in the morning. Stupid little do-gooder. She was an easy mark—ripe for the picking. She was as naive as a baby and already halfway in love with him. She was only a means to an end—totally expendable. Everyone in this little cow town was easy to fool…including the hospital board. They hadn’t even questioned the Texas medical credentials he’d lifted from Beldon’s office. Stupid yokels. It had been so easy to infiltrate the medical community and gain hospital privileges. He’d simply approached the chief of staff and stated he was interested in participating in their physician’s exchange program. The administrator, who just happened to have been looking for a replacement for a doctor who had recently moved out of state, had been happy as a damn clam to take him on.

      Everything was fine. He was in control. All he had to do was stick with the plan and use Carrie Whelan to get to Travis Whelan, who was his most direct route to Natalie Perez.

      And once he got to Natalie…she’d pay. He’d make her pay dearly for what she’d done to him. He’d make them all pay. No one bested Roman Birkenfeld. Not his sanctimonious brother and holier-than-thou sister, not his parents, whom he could never please.

      Well, he was pleasing himself now. And he wasn’t going to let a woman—one woman, Natalie Perez—bring him down.

      Four

      Carrie couldn’t believe it. Nathan had actually called her again—the very next day—and he’d asked her to go out with him that same night. His aggressiveness was exciting and flattering, and she was going for it.

      She picked up the bottle of pricey and very sexy perfume her friend, Stephanie Firth, had given her for Christmas a couple of months ago. With what she felt was an act of daring, she spritzed it across the tops of her breasts. Then she took one final look at herself in the mirror.

      The dress was new. It was also black and short and body hugging and cut low enough to show an incredible amount of cleavage.

      Resisting the urge to tug the hem down a little closer to her knees and the square-cut bodice a little closer to her chin—in both cases many, many, many inches closer—she slipped into four-inch stiletto heels. The sexy shoes, all slim straps and sleek black Italian leather, were another extravagance. It wasn’t often she could even wear heels on a date for fear of towering over the guy.

      “Let’s face it…it isn’t often you get to go on a date, period, thank you very much, Travis,” she muttered, then forced herself to steer away from any negative energy—and away from any thoughts of how Ryan might react to the way she looked. He’d probably tell her to put on a sweater.

      Well, tonight wasn’t about pleasing Ryan. Tonight was her night. Hers and Nathan’s. Stephanie was the only one who even knew about their dinner date. Ry showing up at the Royal Diner the other night was just a little too coincidental. She wasn’t taking any chance of her brother or Ry sabotaging her evening with some misguided notion that she wasn’t capable of making her own choices.

      With a sweep of siren-red lipstick that matched her nails and assurances that she was simply being sophisticated, not obvious, she grabbed her coat and headed for the door. She had no intention of keeping Nathan waiting. He’d had a devil of a time carving out a few hours from his schedule at the hospital—that’s why they were meeting at Claire’s instead of him picking her up. That was fine by her. It would give her a chance to make an entrance.

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