Copyright © 2007 Babe King
Jac’s fingertips tingled from deep breathing. She switched to cracking her knuckles. “This is the latest fashion statement for those trying to saving miserable lives.” Crack. “Let me save yours by asking you to leave. Unless there’s something you want, Mr. ...who the heck are you?” Crack, crack.
“Well, lucky for you I’m not hospital administration, or is this your usual standard of bedside manner?”
“You’re not in bed.”
“Is that a proposition?” His eyebrows waggled.
“When turkeys lay Frisbees.”
“And here I thought only cows laid Frisbees.”
Crack, crack, crack. Argh! She’d get arthritis before the knuckle popping helped. “Well, we don’t allow cows or this type of bull in our waiting room, so let me direct you to triage. I’m sure they’ll code you ‘T’ for trouble and call in the relevant authorities to cart you off.”
“Or ‘T’ for thinking of you, painful as that may seem.”
Arguing with this man was like bending a sapling. The tree remained unhurt, but the backlash copped her in the face as it unsprung.
He offered his hand. “I’m Sam Allen. Pleased to meet you.”
She gave him the searing look of the unimpressed. After a long moment, that large, tempting hand dropped. His top lip quivered with poorly restrained mirth. “I’ve brought you a gift.”
“A headache or a disease?”
“Nasty. I thought after that moment we had this morning, you’d like to play nice.”
They’d had a moment? Hah! “This is as nice as I get.”She gritted her teeth, but it wasn’t helping. Any minute, her fillings would pop out and ricochet off the walls. She curled her fingers around the desk edge and clawed the heavy wood. Play, he said? She didn’t get time to play. He’d picked the wrong time and the wrong girl if he wanted a playmate.
“Aren’t you curious to know what I brought you?”
“No,” she lied.
He took a half-step nearer, towering over her and way too close. She tilted her head to look at him. His gaze swept down to her runners and made a slow, deliberate return journey. Her gut clenched at his close consideration. With great pomp, he removed a white linen handkerchief, crisply folded and ironed, from the pocket of his suit coat. He pressed it into her hand. His body heat remained, warming her fingers. She fought the impulse to hold it to her nose to see what he smelled like.
“Most people use Kleenex,” she snapped.
“I’m not most people.”
“It’s healthier.” She straightened, determined not to cringe at the inanity of her replies. She struggled to match his granite composure, growing more aware of the people around them. The department wasn’t known for discretion. Arrival of this hunk asking for her would set off all kinds of lights and whistles, even without a public barney in the corridor. Add some feather costumes, and this could be Mardi Gras.
“Coffee’s not healthy, yet it seems you imbibe.”
“How do you know?”
His hand rose to the neck of her scrubs. She jerked away. He pointed to splash marks, the last drops of her scrunched coffee cup. She shouldn’t have thrown the thing. Ma always warned temper would be her undoing. She stared at his accusing finger, tempted to bite it.
He curled his hand away and dropped his arm as if he knew. “Sometimes we all do things to please our senses.”
Are we still talking about coffee?
“Believe me, any self-respecting taste buds run for cover from the poisonous coffee in our tea room. It’s more likely to assault, than please, your senses.”
The corner of his mouth lifted again at her scuttle to safer ground. Yeah, he knew. She could see that. He was letting her get away with the evasion.
“Maybe this isn’t the best place for us to talk, huh? I’m told the coffee shop across the road isn’t bad.”
Good line, wrong girl. She held out his hankie, a little reluctant to part with the fine, stiff fabric. Who starched their hankies these days? It, like the rest of the package, seemed a bit of an enigma.
“I don’t need this now, thanks. You missed your moment.”
He didn’t budge. “A lifetime has many moments. Take one to have a drink with me? I know where we can get good coffee, real beans, steam extracted, no poison added.”
She scuffed the skirting rail near the desk with her shoe. He was almost as bloody-minded as she was, which was flattering in a way. Still, such smoothness rarely came without practice. She didn’t need a Casanova, especially one so talented.
“Or we could continue talking here if you prefer, for as long as you like.” It sounded like a threat.
She held out his handkerchief and gave her best leave-now glare.
“Keep it.” He wrapped her hand in his much larger one, closing her fingers around the scrap of cloth. “Gentlemen are rare these days. A modern girl really should be prepared.”
Yet nothing prepared her for the adrenaline rush from his touch -- the instant bounding pulse and dry mouth. Holy moley! She’d brushed his hand, nothing she didn’t do to patients a thousand times a day with hardly a thought. Why did he give her such a jolt?
She met his intense eyes, not quite so sure of herself. She needed him out of her department. Now!