Nothing But Trouble (39 page)

He'd spent the last fifteen years being a
condescending asshole and trying to drive her away. How could she
expect any different from him? He'd programmed her to feel this
way, and here he was trying to cry wolf.

With frustration burning in his gut, R.J.
pulled away from the baseball fields and drove Rebecca back to
work. The heavy silence that stretched between them was as
oppressive and thick as a dense fog. Rebecca was coiled so close to
the car door, her arms and legs crossed tightly, that she
practically melted in the thing.

Okay, he got it. Once again he'd stuck his
foot in his mouth. Only this time, he didn't want to leave things
like this between them. Rebecca, at the very least, deserved him to
be honest with her. The time for being a lying bastard was
over.

Humility was a bitch of a pill to
swallow.

She had the door open before he even came to
a stop. The endings to dozens of lame chick movies came to mind, as
he made a half-hearted attempt at stopping her.

"Rebecca, just wait a minute―" The door
slammed in his face.

Yeah, she was good and pissed. He didn't
blame her.

"You know where to find me when you know what
you want, R.J."

The parting words were simply spoken in a
calm voice, but were no less cutting.

He caught a glimpse of his future
disappearing as she walked into the building.

****

The only thing that brought a smile to
Rebecca's face that afternoon was Carly Foster's giggle when she
tickled the two-year-old's bare foot. The girl's mother had brought
her in because of a lingering cough and fever.

"Corinne will be right in with your
prescription," Rebecca told her patient. "And before you leave,
check in with Janet to make an appointment in ten days."

"Thanks, Dr. Underwood," the young woman said
with a grateful smile.

She opened the door and faced her patients.
"My pleasure. Have a great evening."

As the last patient filed out, Rebecca
retreated to her office to finish her paperwork. Normally
paper-pushing, a necessary evil in medicine, gave her solitude
after a hectic day of fussy kids and screaming newborns. Her
customary headache was in full swing and showed no signs of slowing
down. Even after the three pain relievers she'd washed down with a
bottle of water. And also thinking about what to cook for dinner.
She hadn't realized how much she missed her mother's cooking until
her parents moved back into their house last week.

But the sharp pain in her head wouldn't
cease, and she knew why. It wasn't because she'd been on her feet
all day. And her head had already been throbbing before her first
after-lunch patient.

The source had sandy-blond, wind-blown hair
and soul-searching green eyes. He had broad shoulders, a
lean-against-me chest and a way of ripping a woman's heart right
out of her chest.

The damn thing was still beating, despite the
fact that R.J. had repeatedly stomped it into the ground.
Especially after she'd given him ample opportunity that afternoon
to finally come out with it. And told him she loved him.

Like the love-sick, foolish, glutton for
punishment she was. Had she really expected anything less? R.J.
Devlin didn't commit. He didn't fall in love and wine and dine
women.

He had notches on his bedpost. He gave
curl-your-toes orgasms, made you feel like the only woman in the
world, then moved on. And made some other wide-eyed optimistic
woman feel like that.

She glanced over the same form for a third
time and had no clue what she was supposed to write. The words
didn't make any sense. The left-over turkey wrap didn't look
appetizing, and the sunset outside held no appeal. Normally, she'd
get through with work so she'd get to see the last remnants of day;
to catch the last rays of sunshine before they retreated behind the
foothills.

Now she didn't care. Let the sun go. The
night-time would come and only mirror what was inside her; nothing
but darkness because the only thing that had ever mattered to her
had never really cared.

Despite the bottomless despair and
debilitating heartache, regret wasn't in the mix. How could she
regret being honest? What if she'd spent the rest of her life not
knowing? In her muddled mind, that was far worse than putting
oneself out there and being rejected.

Even with the proverbial door slammed on her
love life, the world would still turn. The sun would still rise
tomorrow, and her paperwork wasn't going to do itself. She set her
mind to finishing work and barely paid attention to the office door
opening, then closing. Barely heard Janet's laughter and the sound
the hard-soled shoes coming down the hall toward her office.

The dark figure that appeared in her doorway
stirred the air around her with a crackling sexual awareness that
always came when R.J. Devlin was near. Rebecca knew him by feeling
alone, but didn't take her attention off her paperwork. He'd surely
see the heartache in her eyes and pity her like the pathetic
creature she was.

Rebecca could handle anything but that.

"You're not getting rid of me that easily."
His deep voice cut through the silence of her office like a warm
caress on the sensitive spot beneath her ear. How could a near
whisper sound that close?

Had she been trying to get rid of him? Funny,
she thought he'd been doing the same with her.

Although, she hadn't given him a chance to
respond after her confession. Her pride had gotten the better of
her on that one.

She leaned back in her chair and placed the
cap on her pen. "I've never tried to get rid of you, R.J." At least
not recently.

He stepped forward into her office with a
brown paper bag grasped in one hand. "Oh, yes you have. I'm not
saying I'm innocent, but you've played the game as well as I
have."

"It was never a game to me," she whispered.
Who was she trying to convince? Why couldn't she admit she was just
as much to blame as him?

His green eyes narrowed. "It may not be
anymore, but in the beginning it was. You know that as well as I
do."

She stood from her chair and walked around
the desk in order to show him out of her office. "If you came here
to mess with my head again, I'm not interested." She held the door
open, and stared at the ground. If she made contact with those deep
eyes of his, she'd give into her urge to melt into him. And she
couldn't allow herself to go there again. "If you can't be honest
about your feelings for me, then you need to keep your
distance."

"See, that's why I'm here. To be honest." He
took a step closer and held out the brown bag. "And to give you
this."

Her eyes swept up to his, and she was
blindsided with her overwhelming love for him. Would she be knocked
to her backside like that every time she looked at him? Or was
around him? She reluctantly accepted the bag and opened it. A
pinkish-yellow mango was inside. A fresh wave of nostalgia slammed
into her almost as hard as the realization that she loved him.

She glanced at him without taking the mango
out of the bag. "You're giving me a mango?" Her attempt at sounding
nonchalant and blasé was pathetic.

"It's not just a mango," he corrected. A hint
of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. He reached inside
and removed the fruit. His hand was huge and masculine compared to
the pink mango. Sort of like the way he'd palmed her breasts…

"Do you know what this represents?" he asked
while testing the weight of the fruit.

"The knot on your hard-headed skull?"

The smarmy comment earned her a grin, one
that shot directly to her midsection and spread fire down to her
toes.

He flicked the end of her nose with his index
finger. "You always know how to bring a guy to his knees."

How could he be so damn comfortable? She was
about to come out of her skin.

"That's going to land on your head if you
keep it up," she warned. Although a smile almost broke across her
face. She'd never forget the look he shot when she'd dropped a
mango, just like the one he held, right on top of his head.

"You may have given me a hell of a bruise
with one of these," he said, ignoring her comment. "But you also
did something else."

Taken her life in her own hands by getting on
his bad side?

"You made me fall in love with you," he
blurted out.

She froze in front of him, thinking if she
even blinked he'd take the words back and her reality would
continue to sink in. The same reality she'd been living in for too
long, the one where R.J. didn't love her.

"Did you hear me?" He took step closer and
gripped her shoulders. "I said I love you, Rebecca."

"I heard you." She swallowed past the
grapefruit-sized lump in her throat, and tried to keep her knees
from buckling. "I don't understand," she said with a shake of her
head. "This whole time… I mean, all these years you've been so
indifferent."

"That's what I wanted you to think. I guess I
did too good of a job," he added with a half-smile.

"But… why?"

His eyes dropped closed, as though still
battling with some internal insecurities. "I told you about my
father and the issues I've always had with relationships. I just…"
His forehead pressed against hers. "I wanted you to find better
than me."

"And
I
told
you
to let me
decide what I do and don't deserve."

"I had a hard time letting go of that
control." His work-rough hands cupped her face. "My pride got the
better of me."

His admission had her grinning, because he
was only telling her what she'd known all along. "I know. For a
long time I thought you'd never come around."

"You're too smart for your own good." The
look on his face sobered. "I'm sorry."

She tilted her head to one side. "For
what?"

His laugh was more of a snort than a sound of
happiness. "For always being a stubborn ass. For torturing you all
those years. For doing my damnedest to push you away." He paused
and took a deep breath. "For making you think I didn't care. I was
trying to do you a favor, but I regret that now."

She took one of his hands in hers and placed
a kiss on his palm. Just the feel of his warm skin on her lips sent
tremors through her. "Don't do that. I don't have any regrets. You
may have been incorrigible at times, but you always made me feel
special in a way no other man has."

"I guarantee you it's not a tenth of the way
you make me feel."

His words melted her heart. She wrapped her
arms around his neck and kissed him, because they'd already spent
too much time talking. Too many wasted years of dancing around each
other and playing games when they should have been sharing their
lives together.

Her lips molded to his with a perfection that
knocked the breath out of her. When he swept his tongue inside her
mouth, she squeezed her eyes tight and shut everything out of her
mind. There was only this; only R.J. who'd always been the one
thing that had mattered to her more than anything else.

The times when he'd been absent from her
life, the long nights of medical school, had been some of the
loneliest and meaningless. The spark in her life had been missing,
and she hadn't even realized. Now that she had him, really had him,
she was never going to let him back away again.

He pulled away from her and picked up the
mango. The devious glint in his eye she'd grown so familiar with
was back. "Now I'd like to take you home and explore some
interesting ways to enjoy this baby."

She eyed the fruit and welcomed the little
flutters of anticipation that danced in her midsection. "Luckily
for you, this paperwork can wait."

"Luckily for me?" He grabbed her hand and led
her from the office, not even giving her a chance to clean up her
desk. The look he shot her over his shoulder was hot enough to
singe the hairs off her head. "You obviously don't know me well
enough."

Keep reading for a preview of the next book in the
Trouble series,
The Trouble with Trouble.

Trouble Series #5

There was a
two-headed
beast out there, bound and determined to suck the
humanity straight out of Courtney's soul, and the son-of-a-bitch's
name was Murphy's Law.

Yeah, she was well-acquainted with Murphy and
the bastard's entire family. Hell, she was practically on a first
name basis with the entire Murphy clan.

Okay, so there technically wasn't such a
thing as The Murphy Clan. This Murphy person, or whatever the hell
it was, flew solo but inflicted as much damage as a flash flood. In
downtown New Orleans.

But never mind any of that, because Courtney
Devlin was an independent, strong woman who could handle anything
tossed her way. And yeah, those babies were usually thrown by a
major league baseball pitcher. And she was the minor leaguer at
home plate who got drilled in the head every time.

Earlier that morning, for example. Her
insurance company had all of a sudden decided that her migraines
were "pre-existing conditions" and could no longer cover her
medication. Never mind the fact that they'd been covering it for
the past two years. A fact of which she'd had to remind them of,
very and unnaturally calm thank you very much.

But did they care? Not one flying rip.

Useless, self-serving corporate jerks.

That had started her day off on such a sour
note, that dealing with the cantankerous air conditioning in her
car suddenly going kaput, seemed like a trivial thing. And anyone
knew that driving around with no air conditioning in the middle of
a Wyoming summer, the hottest summer on record, was anything but
trivial. By the time she pulled into the parking lot of her
brother's restaurant, the cherry blossom body spray she'd used had
faded to
Eau de
sweat.