LITMIR.BIZ

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      Love. Hearing the word on her lips, he flicked his gaze down the pale column of her neck again, remembering how she’d gently rubbed noses and scratched between ears until she’d found the special spot where each horse liked to be touched. There was something so genuine about Katie, so caring and unpretentious that she’d stolen his breath. He edged closer. “I can tell you like them.”

      “They’re beautiful, Ford.”

      When she glanced up, he could swear the clear emerald slits of her eyes held invitation. At least, Ford hoped he wasn’t misreading the situation. Risking it, he murmured, “You’re beautiful, Katie.” Very slowly, his eyes fixed intently on hers, he pushed aside his wineglass.

      He could see her fingers tremble as she pushed her glass away, too. When her hand stilled, resting on the base, he knew she wasn’t steadying the glass but herself. Her voice held a tremor. “Maybe I’d better go home now, Dr. Carrington.”

      “Ford,” he corrected huskily, catching her hand. “And I know you don’t want to leave, Katie.” With the words, his chest squeezed out the rest of his breath. “Stay. Let me give you the proper send-off.”

      Seeing her gemstone eyes smolder with want, he threaded their fingers, bringing her hand to his chest. His response was amazing. He shuddered, and as his nipple beaded beneath her fingertips, he could barely process what was happening. Why hadn’t he guessed that, outside the OR, Katie Topper’s touch would shoot through him like wild volts of electricity? Why hadn’t he guessed she’d feel the same?

      Katie sounded shaky. “Proper send-off?”

      “Okay,” he admitted. “Not so proper.” No, what he had in mind wasn’t proper at all. Gently cupping her neck, he tilted back her head and glided his fingers into the flaming red curls he’d longed to touch all night. “Your hair’s soft as silk, Katie,” he murmured, rubbing strands between his fingertips. Bending, he released a shuddering sigh and pressed an unbroken strand of wet kisses from her ear to her collarbone, the sugar-salt flavor of her skin making his pulse fracture.

      She melted. There was no other word for it. He felt the limbs of her petite body loosen and stretch and felt heat rise from her as if she were a burning taper. Groaning, he wrapped an arm tightly around her back, his groin thickening, becoming almost painful. “I’ve been fighting this all night,” he confessed, gasping as her hipbone ground against him. Ever so slowly, he stroked the space behind her ear with his tongue.

      “We work together, Ford,” she whispered. “We’re two completely different people….”

      “Did you hear me asking for a lifetime, Katie?” Ford half coaxed, half chided, his palms traveling down her back, molding the firm backside snuggled beneath tight jeans, while his five o’clock shadow roughened the creamy skin of her neck. “This is good old-fashioned lust,” he assured hoarsely, “nothing more.” Attempting to ignore how her denials prickled his male vanity, demanding he claim her, he kissed her velvet skin, deciding that days from now, when she was in Houston, she’d remember every minute of what he was about to do to her. “I’m too old for you, Katie,” he repeated, desire making the words sound strained. “And I’m someone you work with. I’ve got a whole other lifestyle. But I’m a confirmed bachelor, too. At thirty-six, I know exactly what I want.”

      Breathless, Katie whispered, “You do, Ford?”

      “Yeah.” Releasing a low moan, he kissed his way up her neck, along her jaw, around her chin. “Yeah. I know exactly what I want. You, Katie.” His mouth covered hers, and as he registered the soft pliancy of her wanting lips, an unforgettable aching claimed him. Her taste—all dark wine and mint toothpaste and pent-up longing—sent luscious shivers rippling through him. Harder, his hungry mouth swooped and crushed. No, he wouldn’t rest until Katie Topper was naked and beneath him.

      Already, he was imagining lifting off her T-shirt, pushing back her bra, freeing her breasts. Already, as he deeply, silkily thrust his tongue between her lips, he was admitting this woman could probably make him lose his mind. Beneath her shirt, the tips of her breasts had pebbled. When he became aware of the roughened nubs brushing his chest, a streak of lightning shot to his groin. “One night.” Sharply, he pulled in a breath of her. “I don’t want anything more than that, Katie.”

      “No,” she agreed raggedly. “I don’t, either.”

      Leaning back just a fraction, he swept a ravenous gaze from her well-kissed, wine-red lips to the red mark he’d left on her perfect neck. Further down, seeing the tight buds he intended to taste showing through her top, he thought he’d explode. Tightening his fingers through hers, he hoarsely said, “Come with me.”

      “Where?”

      “To my bed, Katie.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Three months later

      “WE DISCUSSED moving Katie to my team ages ago.” Dr. Cecil Nelson, seated on a bench in the doctors’ shower room, turned away from the lockers, toward Ford and lifted a small, red-and-green gift-wrapped package, weighing it so carefully in his hand that it could have been a gold nugget on the scales of justice. After a lengthy moment’s consideration, he set it aside. “Ford,” he continued, “what’s gotten into you?”

      “Be kind, Cecil. ’Tis the season.”

      Hardly looking ready to spread donated gifts and good cheer throughout the hospital, Cecil offered a grumpy “Humph,” shot Ford a surly look, then pinched a lint speck from the Santa costume he was about to put on. Staring at Cecil’s beefy hand, Ford shook his head, and Cecil suddenly laughed, holding the hand up for inspection. “People swore I’d never make it through med school.”

      “You showed them.”

      “Ay-yeah, young man,” Cecil agreed, his slow drawl elongating vowels and slurring consonants. “These hands might look more suited to manual labor than precision surgery, but I graduated top of the class. Showed them, indeed. Was born poorer than a son of a gun, too.” White-haired and burly, Cecil was just a year from retirement, and being the sort of wily Southern doctor who was far smarter than his manner of speech might indicate, and who always meandered before making his point, he only now added, “I look more like Santa than a cardiac specialist, too, Ford, but when I get a gift as good as Katie Topper, I don’t give her away. That little spitfire’s joining my team when she gets back to town.”

      “Little spitfire,” Ford repeated with a chuckle. “If she heard you call her that, she’d serve you up on a platter.”

      Cecil’s bushy white eyebrows drew together. “What’s wrong with little spitfire?”

      “It’s right up there with little lady, Cecil. You’re an educated man, you ought to know better.”

      Cecil’s lips twitched. “Feel free to sue me. I’m both Texan and male, and if anybody thinks I can still disturb a young nurse as pretty as Katie Topper at the ripe old age of sixty-four, I’d be more than flattered. Anyway, the point is that she’s my favorite nurse.”

      “She’s everybody’s favorite nurse.”

      “Maybe, but she’s mine when she gets back. I need her.”

      “Not like I do.”

      “What do you need her for?”

      Plenty. Ford needed her the way a man needed a woman. Nearly three months had passed, but his mind drifted to her at the strangest times. At night he’d find himself painfully aroused, the sheets damp and twisted on the floor, his head full of Katie’s sweet moans. Before that night, Ford had accustomed himself to cool, distant women with too much eastern education and too little down-home desire. Women who, if the truth be told, had eyes that generally strayed to one place—a man’s wallet—and who viewed sex as an inconvenient requirement that came with marrying the right kind of man. Women like Blane Gilcrest, who had been trying—and failing—to arouse Ford’s interest ever since her daddy, the attorney for the

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