Hotblooded

Dedication

To eight of the reasons I love my writing life: PG Forte, Kelly Jamieson, Meg Benjamin, Juniper Bell, Kinsey Holley, Skylar Kade, Kate Davies and Sydney Somers. I couldn’t do it without you!

Chapter One

The denim-covered female butt that greeted Jack Silver as he entered the Honey Creek Family Medical clinic made him sure his day wouldn’t get any better than this.

The woman—and there was no doubt this was all woman—was on her hands and knees with her upper half hidden beneath the front desk. The frayed edges where the blue jeans had been cut off into shorts brushed against the backs of firm, smooth thighs and Jack found his mood vastly improved as she reached for something, adding an appreciated wiggle to her hips.

“Hello?” he asked just before he spotted the iPod clipped to the waistband of the shorts and realized she had on headphones.

So he decided to wait. He crossed his arms across his chest, leaned a hip against the edge of the front counter and enjoyed the view.

A moment later, she backed up, her hips swaying enticingly. She wore a butter-yellow cotton tank top with her short shorts and he took inventory of the narrow waist, toned arms and shoulders and the blonde hair that hung to mid-shoulder blade from under a red bandana.

The woman pushed back onto her heels, then got to her feet with a dustpan and small broom in hand. She dumped some dirt into a short wastebasket without turning more than a few degrees in his direction.

She exchanged the hand broom for a rag and started singing something about her life sucking, as she started to climb up on the desk. The movement pulled the shorts higher and tighter across her right cheek and he had to shift slightly as things got tighter in his shorts as well.

Once she was up on the desk, he realized that the shorts hadn’t really ridden up all that high—they didn’t extend very far down her thighs to start with. She stretched up, running the dust rag along the top of the cabinets. The position pulled the tank top away from the waistband of her shorts, exposing a strip of skin that his hands itched to stroke.

Finally she turned to climb down. And saw him.

“Oh. My. God,” she breathed, a hand flattening against her chest over her heart.

She wasn’t a screamer, he noted. He gave her a smile that he hoped said
Don’t worry I’m not a serial killer
. He straightened and she backed up on the desk, pulling the earphones out of her ears.

She was beautiful. The thought seemed to be all that he could really concentrate on for the moment. Her deep green eyes were wide with apprehension, she wore no makeup and she certainly wasn’t smiling, but Jack couldn’t ignore his basic male awareness of her.

He added
has a gorgeous cleaning lady
to the very short list of things he knew about Brooke Donovan. The fact joined
physician’s assistant in Honey Creek, Texas
and
widowed seven months ago
.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, stepping forward.

The woman stepped back again. “I didn’t hear you.”

“The music drowned me out.” He couldn’t hide the small grin as his eyes dropped to the earphones dangling from her fingers.

She blushed, cringed slightly and said, “Oh, right,” softly.

“I was just—” He stepped forward again.

She moved back in response and her left foot slipped off the edge of the desk. She caught herself on the way down, hands splayed on the desk top, left foot on the floor, right still on the desk.

He was beside her, his hand under her elbow in a second. “Whoa, take it easy.”

If Brooke thought that she was embarrassed about him overhearing her singing, it was nothing compared to this. And on top of it,
this
hurt.

She wasn’t sure which was more painful—the elbows she’d hyper-extended, the left knee she’d jammed, or the right leg she’d stretched far beyond her ligaments’ limits. Or, of course, her pride.

She’d stepped back to keep some distance between them and now he was basically plastered against her, his body heat soaking through what little clothing she wore. He wrapped his arms around her as if they were old acquaintances, lifted and turned her slightly to get her right leg on the floor, then set her down again with almost no effort. He released her, but didn’t move back much.

“You okay?” he asked.

His chest was only centimeters from hers and she felt his deep voice rumble through her. The fact that he was big had not escaped her notice and having him basically pick her up and put her where he wanted her just emphasized it. It also made it very difficult for her to ignore how much she liked big men. Not big in the sense of having eaten too many Big Macs in his time, but big in the tall, broad-chest, lots-of-muscle sense. Next to her five-foot-five-and-a-quarter inches, he was very tall—at least six-three. And he lifted her as if she was nothing. Which she loved. It went along with the fantasy of the big, strong, alpha man totally taking care of her, protecting her—not to mention taking over and having his wicked way with her whenever he wanted to…

Clearly overcome by the fumes from the cleaning supplies she’d been using, Brooke stepped away from him, needing space. But her knee protested immediately and she inadvertently squawked as she tried to put weight on it. And just like that, he was plastered against her again.

She yelped this time, which wasn’t much more sophisticated than the squawk, as he stooped to swing her up into his arms. He took two long strides toward the chair behind the desk and deposited her onto the seat, then knelt in front of her, his big hands sandwiching her knee.

“Where’s it hurt?” he asked gruffly.

She thanked heaven for the new razor blades she’d bought that gave an incredibly close shave—and the fact that she’d used one that very morning—as his hands slid over the front and back of her knee. She concentrated on keeping her breathing even. Panting would be hard to explain.

“Um,” she answered, staring down at the top of his head. He had brown hair, brown eyes and was extremely good-looking. Some of her favorite qualities in a man. “My knee.”

He chuckled. He had a nice chuckle too.

“I figured that. Can you be more specific?” He rubbed his hands over her knee more slowly this time, his eyes coming up to meet hers as he waited for her answer.

She lifted a shoulder, because it was about the only thing she could do with him touching her. The only thing that made any sense anyway.

The heavy drumming in her chest was crazy considering she had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. The soft-sided briefcase he’d dropped beside the desk and the expensive suit and tie he wore gave her some indication, however. He was a sales rep of some kind. He probably had some new fancy equipment to show her.

She felt her face heat as she thought about how that would sound out loud. Then she almost laughed. She’d just bet he had some nice equipment.

Brooke did, however, acknowledge the crazy thumping of her heart, rational or not, for what it was—sexual awareness. Her mama had always said that the women in their family were hotblooded. It was an instinctual, physical reaction Brooke could neither control nor explain. It wasn’t, thank the good Lord, like it happened with every man. But it happened more than she liked and each time it hit her—hard.

Of course, the last few times it happened she hadn’t done anything about it—

“Miss?”

Brooke jumped slightly as he addressed her. She also hadn’t been called Miss in years.

“Yes?”

“Do you have some ice somewhere? For your knee.”

Ice—anything cool, in fact—seemed like a really good idea.

“Freezer,” she said, gesturing toward the door leading to the break room. She figured she was going to have to work on saying more than one word at a time. But dammit, she was distracted.

He removed his hands and shrugged out of his suit jacket as he stood.

She watched the muscles bunching under the light fabric of his dress shirt, but with some distance between them, her brain slowly kicked on again. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jack Silver.”

He disappeared through the swinging door to the back room and she concentrated on breathing but he returned before she got any good oxygen to her brain. Or so it seemed.

He had an ice pack—kept in the freezer for patients with just this sort of injury—wrapped in a dishtowel. He pulled the knot in his tie loose as he came toward her.

“What can I do for you, Jack?” she asked as he squatted next to her. She sucked in a quick breath as he applied the cold pack to her knee.

“I’m hoping you can tell me how to get a hold of your boss,” he said, holding the ice in place as he picked up her shoe and stretched her leg out, propping her foot on his thigh. “I need to talk to her about something.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t have a boss, thank you very much, when a brilliant realization struck. He didn’t know who she was. He thought she was— Well, she wasn’t really sure, but it didn’t matter.

She stared at the big hand holding ice against her knee.

He didn’t know who she was. He was a complete stranger. Not from here.

And she wanted to kiss him.

It was a thought completely contrary to what she was used to allowing herself to think. It wasn’t that she never had crazy, it’s-a-really-bad-idea-but-wouldn’t-it-be-great thoughts and impulses. But she was very good at resisting them. She’d had years of practice.

At the moment, however, it was very, very tempting to give in to it and worry about the consequences later.

It had been so long since she’d been spontaneous. So long since she’d had a chance to be. And it would be a long time before she had another chance. That fact reared its ugly head almost daily as she manned the clinic that her late husband had stuck her with in the last place on earth she wanted to be.

The moments were rare when she could crank up the music, put on her comfy clothes and let go. She always did so at the risk of someone finding out and disapproving.

But this guy was a salesman, passing through, on to the next town and the next potential sale by dinnertime. No one would know if she kissed him. Sure, he might talk about it to his buddies at the gym tomorrow or the next day, but no one in Honey Creek would know.

It gave her a little adrenaline rush just thinking about it.

She could French kiss the big, good-looking stranger right here in the clinic, right at the front desk. Just imagining the shocked look on the faces of people in town made her want to do it. She knew the rebellious streak she’d inherited from her mother was some of her trouble here in Honey Creek, but just like telling a dieter they had to avoid cheesecake at all costs, the more forbidden it was, the more tempting she found it.

Just to test the waters, Brooke put her hands behind her on the seat of the chair and leaned back slightly, keeping her elbows straight.

“My boss won’t be back for a while,” she said. And it was true. The level-headed, do-the-right-thing Brooke she’d turned into over the past few years seemed to have stepped out for the time being.

He glanced up, and she was gratified to see that his eyes didn’t immediately make it past her breasts, which were thrust forward against the soft cotton of her tank top. And, in the spirit of really letting go, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She watched him swallow hard and noticed that the hand on her knee seemed to have forgotten its job as the ice pack slipped to one side.

This was exactly the kind of thing she usually worked so hard to avoid. She’d inherited her mama’s looks, body and love of men. She could only assume that her self-control came from her father. She’d never met any of the three men that could have supplied the other half of her DNA, but Brooke sure as hell hadn’t gotten any modesty or sense of appropriateness from Dixie. Still, it did do a woman’s ego some good to have a man—especially one like Jack Silver, who no doubt had women clamoring and strutting for his attention all the time—give her some good old fashioned lookin’-good-honey attention.

“My knee is feeling a lot better. You have the touch,” she said, her voice a little throaty without even trying. Flirting and teasing were natural for her—another Donovan trait. It was resisting it that had always been the challenge.

His eyes found her face and he gave her a half grin. “So I’ve been told.”

Oh, I just bet you have, she thought, as a little tingle in her stomach responded to that cocky grin. “Are you married?” she asked. If he’d been around as many blocks as she was guessing, he’d know where that question came from.

He definitely didn’t react as if the question was odd. “Nope.” His hand remembered her knee then, but he let the ice pack slip to the floor and let his palm begin warming the skin as he kneaded the joint gently.

She didn’t ask about a girlfriend. She wasn’t planning on keeping him, after all, or even compromising him too much. It was just a little kissing. But she most definitely drew the line at married men, no matter how they made her knee feel.

Her skin was quickly regaining its ability to sense heat.

She pulled her foot from where it rested on his thigh, sitting forward on the chair seat.