CHAPTER ONE
DR. KASEY CARMICHAEL typed clinical data into the medical record on the hypertensive patient she’d just seen. When finished, she sent his prescriptions electronically to the in-house pharmacy of the Rivendell Medical Center.
Knocking on the open door, Dr. Jonathan Douglas stuck his blond head into the exam room. The pretty-boy doctor flashed baby blues and a row of pearly white teeth that had women swooning all over northern Kentucky. “You got a minute?”
Kasey shot a coolly professional smile at the physician she’d worked with for two years.
“I’ll be right there.” She hit “Save” and closed her patient’s file. Standing, she smoothed the crisp lines of the unbuttoned white lab coat she wore over her navy slacks and linen blouse.
She loved her job in the ambulatory clinic of the large multispecialty Rivendell Medical Center. Loved that it provided the opportunity to give back to the community, to help others the way she’d once been helped.
Rivendell’s sheer size gave her the opportunity to achieve the professional and personal success she craved. Success that dangled within her reach.
When Dr. Herbert stepped down from the board, Kasey was a shoo-in to replace him. Everyone said so.
Smiling, she stepped into the clinic’s hallway to see what Dr. Douglas was up to this time. Although an excellent doctor, he’d never held any appeal. Probably due to his tomcat ways reminding her of the men who’d constantly come in and out of her childhood in the form of her mother’s latest loser.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Doug—?” Her voice stalled, stuck in her rapidly tightening throat. Her gaze froze on the man standing with her colleague.
The room spun.
Please let her be hallucinating.
“Eric?” Her one-and-only-ever one-night stand stared at her with similar shock. Her pulse hit a rapid, brain-frying boil. “What—? How—? Why are you here?” she sputtered.
“Hello, Kasey.” Quickly recovering from his surprise at seeing her, his dark eyes glistened as if he’d stumbled upon the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A huge smile split his handsome face.
A smile that stole Kasey’s ability to breathe just as it had on the night they’d met.
She took a step back, placed her hand on the door frame to steady her wobbly, turned-to-water legs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, feeling hazy.
“Funny, I was just going to ask you the same thing,” Eric answered in that smooth-as-silk voice that had whispered sweet praise to her two months ago. Recalling what else they’d done, Kasey struggled to remain on her feet. Her body threatened to slide to the floor in a gooey, deoxygenated pile of shocked, blue mush.
“You two know each other?” Dr. Douglas took a step back, his gaze flicking from Kasey to Eric.
“We’ve met.” Eric’s eyes narrowed as he regarded her, a mixture of suspicion and pleasure in his eyes.
“I’ve never heard either of you mention the other,” Dr. Douglas mused. For all his playboy ways, no one could accuse him of being slow on the uptake. No doubt her colleague had already worked out just how well she and Eric had known each other.
Probably because even though her brain was in embarrassed denial of Eric being here, her libido was dancing a happy jig of remembered pleasure.
Kasey wished the tiled floor would open up and swallow her. Anything to escape Eric’s predatory male look. Anything to escape Dr. Douglas’s knowing curiosity.
If word got out she’d had a one-night stand, the news would hurt her chances of being asked to join the clinic’s medical board. The older board members would look unfavorably on a potential member behaving in such a feckless manner. Even if her lapse of judgment had been on the night of her mother’s funeral.
Hadn’t she learned how quickly one could lose everything they held dear following the gigantic mistake she’d made with Randall Covington III? Oh, yeah, she’d paid dearly for that error in judgment.
Now her only one-night stand stood in her workplace.
Panic clutched at her throat, rendering her speechless.
This wasn’t really happening. History would not repeat itself. Not that she’d had a one-night stand with Randall. No, she’d given the bastard an entire year of her life. A whole wasted year where she’d dreamed of them being the perfect couple, having the perfect life together. Boy, had she been wrong.
About them being a perfect couple at any rate. With or without a man in her life, she was going to have the perfect life. She’d set goals and worked long hours to make sure they came true.
“When did you meet?” Delight sparkled in Dr. Douglas’s blue eyes.
“A few months ago.” Eric’s gaze bored into Kasey. Was he waiting for her to acknowledge the night they’d spent together? Did he really think she’d do that? Lord, she just wanted to forget that night had ever happened. Had spent two months trying to forget.
Unfortunately, forgetting the best sex she’d ever had wasn’t proving an easy task.
Images of that best sex flashed into her head like candid shots portraying the man standing before her in living color.
Hot, lurid, take-her-to-another-world best sex images.
Fire engulfed her face. She lifted her hand to fan the burn, realized what she was doing, and stopped.
“You met Eric and didn’t tell me?” Jonathan’s dark blond brow arched.
This wasn’t happening.
Kasey roped her uncooperative vocal cords into submission. “Why would I mention we’d met? He was just someone I met—” mere hours after laying my estranged mother in the ground “—and I didn’t know the two of you knew each other.” Because he and I really didn’t do a lot of in-depth talking.
Eric’s smile slipped. “Why indeed?”
She tried not to look at him, but an inner force compelled her. His chocolate eyes appeared thoughtful, as if he was trying to read her, to gauge how to take her response.
What would her sexy lover have said, done, had she still been in his bed when he’d awakened?
Hello, she’d been a one-night stand. No doubt he was grateful she hadn’t made a scene, that she had slipped out in abject humiliation prior to him waking that morning.
She was humiliated. She’d been the one thing she’d always sworn never to be. Easy. Like her mother.
She’d had one night of passion.
With a stranger.
A stranger she’d met in a bar and later accompanied to his hotel. A stranger who now stood in her clinic making a sham of her memories by looking so much better than she’d recalled.
Much to her abhorrence, she recalled way too much all too often.
God, he was gorgeous.
The strong, handsome planes of his face had surely been sculpted by a goddess intent on tempting mortal women with a glimpse of heaven. The sun had kissed his dark wavy hair with gold and his skin with a bronze hue.
At six-two or -three, he towered over her five-eight. Beneath his tailored suit, his shoulders stretched broadly, tapering into a trim waist and powerful, narrow hips. As he’d been the night they met, he was so well dressed that if testosterone didn’t ooze from every pore of his fine body she’d think he must be gay. But in vivid and exquisite detail, she knew testosterone oozed.
An image of his naked body over hers, melted into hers, popped into her mind, short-circuiting her nerve endings.
Kasey swallowed. Just as she’d done many times over the past two months, she forced memories of him from her mind.
Only how was she supposed to force him from her mind when he stood a few feet away, eyeing her as if he’d like to push her into the exam room she’d just stepped out of and pick up where they’d left off? Naked and tangled together with frantic desire. When her body was all too willing.
No. She didn’t want him at her workplace.
Didn’t want him anywhere near her.
She had a great life.
One that didn’t need a complication of his magnitude. No pun intended.
“This is interesting.” As the silence continued, a grin lifted the corner of Dr. Douglas’s mouth. “I call out my esteemed coworker to introduce her to my old university roomie, and they’ve already met.”
“Dr. Douglas is who you were supposed to meet that night?” Kasey asked, winced and slapped her hand over her mouth in the most giveaway oops motion a person could make.
Eric nodded, then turned to his old university roomie. “I met Kasey on the night you got hung up here at the clinic. We shared a few drinks, a few dances.”
A zillion amazing orgasms.
Heat slammed into Kasey’s body.
“Right,” she agreed on a breathless note, averting her gaze to stare at a body mass index chart stuck on the wall. “A few drinks and dances. No big deal.”
Eric had been a big deal.
A very big deal.
She winced. What was wrong with her? She was at work. She wasn’t supposed to be having a hot flush of sexual awareness.
That wasn’t who she was. She was calm, cool, collected Dr. Kasey Carmichael.
Dr. Douglas’s bushy brows rose so high they brushed the stylishly tousled hair atop his head. “You were in a bar? Had drinks? As in alcohol rather than a wheat-germ shake?” A new light shone in his eyes as he looked at Kasey. Possibly for the first time ever he was seeing her as a woman rather than the uptight doctor he worked with. “And you danced? Did I miss something?” He drew his brows into a V. “Like hell freezing over?”
Squelching the urge to growl at him, Kasey took a deep, exasperated breath. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose to give her hands something to do.
Otherwise she might curl her fingers into a fist and punch his straight nose. “I happen to like wheat-germ shakes and, of course, I dance.”
Not well, but she could pull off the slow numbers she and Eric had swayed to without any problems. Usually too self-conscious to let herself relax, she’d moved in rhythm to Eric’s lead. On the dance floor and in the bedroom. He’d been perfect. And something she’d desperately tried to stop thinking about because Kasey was not like her mother.
“In case you hadn’t realized—” she kept her voice smooth, calm, professional, like she wasn’t dying inside “—I am over the legal drinking age.”
Dr. Douglas burst into laughter. “You’ve totally shattered my image of you, Kase. I didn’t think you drank. Or hung out in bars. Or talked to men who weren’t paying you for their fifteen-minute appointment slot of your time.” He placed his hands over his heart. “Shattered, I tell you.”
Her nerves grated at how he shortened her name. She glared.
Eric cleared his throat, calling their attention back to him.
Kasey turned to the man who’d held her so tenderly on the night she’d felt so alone. He looked perturbed.
Was he upset that he’d run into his weepy bedmate who’d practically ripped off his clothes? That his friend knew he’d had drinks with the office wallflower who preferred wheat-germ shakes to cosmos?
Lord, she wanted out of here.
A cool blast of realization froze the blood chugging through Kasey’s veins.
Why was Dr. Douglas introducing her to his old university mate here at the medical clinic?
University mate.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” She’d heard some benefactor’s son had been visiting the clinic that morning. A doctor. She held her breath, waiting for Eric’s answer.
The corner of his mouth lifted in an ironic twist. “I did mention my profession on the night we met.”
Had he? She’d been so upset when she’d gone into the bar, upset and unable to face the realization that her mother, her last blood relative, had died.
Eric had been sitting on the bar stool next to the one she’d plopped down on. She hadn’t noticed him or anyone except the flashing neon beer advertisement behind the bar. Apparently he’d noticed her, though. He’d been concerned and kept talking, trying to draw her into conversation. She couldn’t recall much of what he’d said while they’d sat there.
All she’d been able to think about was that she’d buried Betsy Carmichael that afternoon. That the woman who’d given birth to her, made her childhood a living hell, had died. That she was alone in the world now that her only family was gone.
In reality she’d felt alone a long time before her mother had drawn her last breath.
“You’re who the administrator has been with today, aren’t you?” Please say no. Please don’t let him be the bigwig son of the clinic’s benefactor. “You’re applying for a job here, aren’t you?”
“Applying for a job?” Dr. Douglas burst out laughing. “As if. Eric can write his ticket at this place.”
“That’s enough,” Dr. Eric Matthews interrupted his friend. He’d rather not have his family connection to Rivendell Medical Center pointed out to the woman he’d met two months ago. Had she known who he was? Used him in hopes of advancing her career at Rivendell?
He hadn’t thought so but, hell, he’d been wrong about women before.
Still, he’d really believed Kasey was different. Certainly the fact that he’d awakened to an empty bed had been a new twist. Had she known why he’d returned to Kentucky? Like so many from his past, had she seen him as a ticket to easy street?
Her eyes held dark shadows. She’d been startled to see him. No more so than he’d been when he’d looked up to meet his best friend’s “boring, career-driven ice queen” colleague.
Jonathan was a fool. Kasey was no ice queen. She was hot. His psyche had the scorch marks to prove it. His entire body caught fire just at being near her again, at memories of how their bodies had meshed together.
But Kasey wasn’t happy to see him.
He honestly wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing her. At least not at Rivendell Medical Center. Had he run into her in a social setting he’d have been thrilled, but the last thing he needed was an involvement with someone at the clinic.
He’d come home a different man than the one who’d left four years ago. He didn’t engage in one-night stands or living for the moment. He’d changed. For the better. Or so he’d thought.
His first night back in Rivendell, Kasey had reduced him to habits he’d sworn were deeply buried in the past.
He wasn’t a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy anymore. Hadn’t been for years. He sure wasn’t going to be a loved-by-’em-and-left-by-’em kind of guy. Hell, no.
Dr. Kasey Carmichael had loved him and left him.
She didn’t look the same as she had the night they’d met. Her shoulder-length brunette hair was pulled harshly away from her face. She wore trendy black-rimmed glasses. Her light makeup was impeccably dusted over her high cheekbones and wide green eyes, but not in a way to draw men to her. More of a shield against letting anyone see the real her. She looked like a woman downplaying her femininity to appear all business, to appear cold and unreachable.
But Eric had seen behind the mask. If she hadn’t disappeared before he’d awakened, he’d have spent more time with her, gotten to know her. Why had she snuck out before dawn? He’d never had a woman leave him with no strings attached. Even the pickups from his youth had usually hinted at wanting money or jewelry or trips to fancy restaurants.
What did Kasey want?
“Tell me,” she prompted. Desperation shone in her eyes, but her voice sounded coolly professional, as if she was used to hiding her emotions. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I met with Clive and several members of the board on the day after we met. That’s why I was in town that night.”
She winced, causing the glasses to scoot up the bridge of her pert nose. “Because?”
His fingers itched to slip the heavy frames off her face. The glass didn’t appear to be corrective, just distractive.
“They offered me a position at the clinic.” An oversimplification, but the truth.
Kasey closed her eyes, looking like she wanted to disappear. Was she really so horrified that they’d come face-to-face again?
She visibly shuddered, then opened pain-filled eyes. “You knew who I was, didn’t you? You knew I worked here. This was all a big joke to you.”
Fathoms of hurt welled in her eyes. He didn’t understand the depth of pain. Why would she think he’d tricked her? She’d been the one to disappear without even a goodbye or thanks for a fun night. Besides, she was the one with everything to gain from sleeping with the son of the clinic’s primary stockholder.
“Nothing between us was a joke. Not to me,” he assured her, carefully choosing his words. “I didn’t know you worked here, Kasey. How could I? You never told me you were a doctor.”
A couple of nurses stood just out of line of sight, trying to busy themselves but allowing curiosity to get the better of them. Eric sighed. He’d come home to take on his responsibilities, to be near his mother, not to immediately immerse the clinic in gossip about his personal life.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“No.” Kasey shook her head, her eyes narrowed into accusatory slits. “I don’t want to talk to you, in private or otherwise. You aren’t supposed to be here.” She enunciated each word with great emphasis. “I don’t want you here.”
Had she audibly hissed at him, he wouldn’t have been surprised. What did surprise him was her reaction to seeing him. He was the one who should be feeling betrayed. She’d given him the best sex of his life, left without a trace, and then showed up as an employee at his family’s medical center. Why was she so upset?
He racked his brains, trying to recall what he’d last said to her during the night. Kissing the top of her head and whispering that she was amazing didn’t seem like something that would make her so prickly. Saying how beautiful she was, how special, how glad he was that she’d sat beside him at the bar, nope, that shouldn’t have agitated her, either.
Yes, she’d been upset about something on the night they’d met. And, yes, had he been a true gentleman he would have driven her home and gotten her phone number, not carried her to his hotel room and made love to her over and over. But, hell, he’d wanted her with an undeniable desperation and it had been a long time since he’d been with anyone. A long time since he’d wanted to be with anyone. Kissing Kasey, touching her, had felt right.
“What happened that night?” Jonathan asked, gawking at them, his lips twitching with laughter. “Sounds like more than drinks and dancing.”
Kasey shot Jonathan a lethal look. “Don’t you have a patient to see or something?”
“Right. I’ll go see a patient.” Jonathan nodded with a gleam in his eye that said he’d grill Eric for the lowdown later.
“We should talk,” Eric said, still trying to figure out why she was in attack mode. Sure, she’d left his bed without waking him, but she’d enjoyed the night, had been willing, more than willing. She’d been interesting, funny, sweet and sexy when they’d talked in the bar. Besides the phenomenal sex, he’d genuinely liked her. He’d planned to see her again, had been disappointed to wake, find her gone and realize he only knew her first name.
Having a woman use him hadn’t been a new experience, but he’d never been used in that particular way before.
“This isn’t the time or place for this conversation.” Kasey took another step back, looked like she might take off, but didn’t. Visibly, she pulled herself together, transforming before his eyes into a calm vision of cool professionalism. She stood with her shoulders high, regal. Only her expressive eyes betrayed the hint of inner turmoil.
“I have patients to see, too.” Expression pinched, Kasey reached up and pulled the stethoscope off her neck, fingering the tubing. “It was unexpected to see you, Dr. Matthews.”
She emphasized the word doctor, making it sound dirty, almost like an insult. Damn it, he had told her he was a doctor. He was more proud of his degree than anything else he’d done in his sorry life.
She turned, took a step away from him.
His breath caught. He didn’t want her to walk away. “Have dinner with me.”
She paused, then shook her head. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why not?” He hadn’t consciously made the decision to ask her to dinner, but now that he had, he wanted her to say yes. Besides, they needed to talk about what had happened two months ago.
She hesitated, momentarily looking uncertain. “You’re coming to work at Rivendell, aren’t you?”
Now that he knew she was here, neither hell nor high water would keep him from Rivendell. A factor that shouldn’t have any influence at all, but suddenly did. “Yes.”
She leveled him with the steely green gaze beneath her glasses. “That’s why having dinner together isn’t a good idea. Fraternizing with colleagues is not conducive to my career goals.”
Battling a myriad of emotions, Eric watched her disappear into an exam room. At least this time he’d been awake when she left.
“Tell me everything.” Jonathan pounced the moment the door closed behind Kasey. Where had he been hiding? Behind a plant?
“I thought you were seeing a patient,” Eric pointed out, leading his friend toward Jonathan’s private office. “Besides, we’re in the hallway of the clinic where we work. Use some tact.”
He closed Jonathan’s office door. “I met Kasey two months ago, liked her and want to go out with her again.”
“And?”
“There’s nothing more to tell.”
Not that he was willing to share. Not even with someone he’d shared secrets with for years and who knew him better than anyone. Jonathan knew his darkest moments and had seen him through them. But some things were private. His night with Kasey fell into that category.
His friend leaned against his desk, arms crossed, expression confused. “You really want to go out with the Ice Queen?”
“Don’t call her that.” Eric glared, feeling oddly defensive of the woman who’d elicited strong emotions from the moment she’d plopped down next to him looking as if her world had crashed. “Why wouldn’t I want to go out with Kasey? She’s a beautiful woman.”
Jonathan looked flummoxed. “Yeah, but—”
“She’s intelligent, witty, has a great sense of humor and is a lot of fun to be around,” Eric interrupted before Jonathan could say anything else. What was wrong with his friend? He’d been working with Kasey for heaven only knew how long and yet he hadn’t noticed what a sexy misnomer she was? That she hid her passion behind too-tight hairstyles, don’t-touch-me designer clothes and I’m-smart-not-pretty glasses?
“Are we talking about the same woman?” Jonathan shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. Kasey’s a great coworker—steady, dependable, thorough—but she’s not your type. Too uptight and career oriented.”
“Those aren’t bad qualities you’re describing,” Eric pointed out.
“She has her sights set on the top, pal. She’s made no secret that she wants a seat on the board and she’s put in the long hours to make sure it happens,” Jonathan warned, pretending to shiver. “Plus, she gives off those subzero vibes. Could give a man permanent frostbite.”
Frostbite? Eric had come closer to suffering heatstroke in Kasey’s company than frostbite. Jonathan and apparently every other man in Kasey’s life were blind fools.
Just so long as she didn’t plan to use him as her stepping stone to the top, Eric had no problem with a career-minded woman. Particularly when that woman attracted him the way Kasey did.
“She’s all business, rarely smiles,” Jonathan continued, listing all the reasons he thought Kasey was wrong for Eric.
She didn’t smile? Why did that make his chest hurt? Why did it make him want to do everything in his power to make her smile, and often? Just as he’d done on the night they’d met.
“Your loss, bud, because I’ve seen her smile.” She hadn’t smiled at first. But before they’d left for his hotel she’d laughed out loud several times. “She has an amazing smile that makes a man automatically smile back.”
He wanted to experience her smile again.
Jonathan’s gaze narrowed, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I think you’re suffering from brain freeze. Either that or you worked in that African desert for so long you can’t handle hot anymore.”
Eric grinned. Oh, he could handle hot all right. And he planned to.
Just as soon as he could convince Kasey.
