The Greatest Risk (7 page)

Before she really even knew it, she had eaten every bite of food off her plate, including a monstrous mound of French fries and every last dollop of gravy.

Luke looked at her empty plate approvingly. “You eat like a man,” he said. “None of this dainty whining about getting fat.”

Maggie was not at all sure that was a compliment! Didn't he remember the popcorn? She did worry about getting fat! She looked at her empty plate in horror. Oh no! Her hips had been giving her a message earlier today, and she had ignored it. Her shirt had been too tight, and she had ignored that, too!

Plus, in her frenzy over having asked Luke to go out with her, and the ensuing chaos where she had tried on everything she owned to go and tell him she
wasn't
going out with him, Maggie had completely forgotten to apply her daily dose of NoWait oil.

She shuffled through her handbag, and her hand closed over the precious little vial.

Emergency!

She excused herself and went to the washroom. She couldn't help but notice how many women were sneaking looks at Luke. Some weren't even sneaking, eyeing him up as boldly as if he were a side of prime beef and they were the supermarket meat buyer.

Despite what had seemed like very genuine interest as they had exchanged information about their jobs, he wasn't going to see anything in her. Maggie just knew it. The washroom, unfortunately, had a series of wall-to-floor mirrors and she studied herself.

Plain, she decided. And despite what Dr. Richie had said, she was not perfect. Her hips were way too wide. Her curves were just too curvy.

Reaching into her bag, she took out the NoWait. Half the recommended dose?

“Forget that, Dr. Richie,” she muttered to herself.

Maggie rubbed the full dose behind her ears, and then just for good measure added another little dab.

“Goodbye, burger,” she said.

She reentered the pool room, stood in the archway, and watched Luke for a moment. He was so sure of himself. The fact that he was still alone surprised her—and didn't seem to bother him one little bit. Looking at him, she felt as if he was taking her breath away.

Maggie was not sure she had ever had such a physical awareness of a man as she had of Luke. Was it because of their first encounter? Because she had felt the solidness of him against her, felt his warmth and his fire on much too intimate terms?

Was it because he had, however unintentionally, introduced her to her own yearning? For a moment, she thought of bolting for the door. Dealing with this unfamiliar territory felt the same as navigating a minefield.

But then Luke noticed her and, grinning as though he was thrilled to see her, waved her back over to him.

“So, are you ready for some pool? I got us one of the tables.”

“Sure,” she said doubtfully.

But half an hour later Maggie was giggling helplessly as she leaned over the table trying to hit the white ball into one of the solid ones.

“No, no, no,” he said sternly. “You have to get down farther. You have to be looking right down the shaft of the cue.”

He came up behind her and fitted his body around hers, adjusting her over the cue. He took her arm.

“Relax. Your elbow has to be loose. Loose! You feel like you have your arm in a splint from elbow to wrist. Geez, you smell good.”

That was the contradiction. Relax? With the most gorgeous, sexy man in the universe draped around her? All the places where his body touched hers were tingling. She wanted to drop the pool cue and flip over, so that he had her bent over the pool table and she could feel the hard length of him, just the way she had on the foyer floor this morning.

She reminded herself she had condemned that man and woman on the hospital's front steps for their public display of affection….

“I'm losing my mind,” she muttered.

“Concentrate!”

Sure. The question was on what? He had said she smelled good. That was the NoWait with its pleasant citrus fragrance, underlaid ever so subtly with a hint of musk.

But his smell was intoxicating, and she was pretty sure he wasn't wearing any scent except the one that came off his skin, clean, faintly tangy and perturbingly masculine.

“Okay,” he said, his breath stirring the hair on the nape of her neck. “Bring your arm back.” Lightly he guided her arm back, his fingers on her elbow.

“You're tickling me!”

“For God's sake, woman, concentrate. Loose elbow. Tap the cue ball. Ticklish, hmm? I'm filing that away for future reference.”

There he was mentioning the future again!

Maggie hit the cue ball with all the pent-up frustration that had built within her breast, and it responded by promptly jumping over the ball she was aiming at. It flew off the table and rolled across the floor underneath the neighboring table.

Luke undraped his body from around hers, folded his arms over his chest and gave her a stern look. “What does the word
tap
mean to you?”

She straightened from where she had been bent over the table, and turned to face him.

Gazing up into the unblinking green of his sparkling eyes, she noticed how thick his lashes were, as if they had been dipped in India ink. Her mind went completely blank. “Tap? Water faucet?”

He groaned.

“I've never been athletic, Luke. It's hopeless.” That was exactly how she felt. Hopeless. Hopelessly, helplessly, impossibly attracted to him.

“Athletic? You have to be an athlete to play baseball. To ski. To run foot races. Playing pool does not require athleticism.”

“If it requires hand-to-eye coordination, it's hopeless,” she told him. Gosh, he looked cute, bristling with that kind of mock irritation, his eyes narrowed on her. His beard had darkened with the late hour. It looked as if it would scratch in the most delightful way.

It occurred to her she wanted to kiss him. Madly. Wildly. And that she didn't care who was watching.

The thought was so uncharacteristic that she glanced at her drink. It was just cola, wasn't it?

“It's math, pure and simple,” he informed her. “You figure the angle. You apply the correct amount of pressure. You have to know the difference between a tap and a slam. It's that easy.”

The surge of passion that was affecting her was apparently having no effect on him at all. If it was, he wouldn't be talking so casually about taps and slams.

Not that either of those words had ever had an erotic meaning to her before. She looked at his lips, the gorgeous green of his eyes, the pulse that beat steady and strong in the hollow of his throat and felt almost dizzy.

My God,
she thought,
I'm swooning
.

Maggie knew it was impossible. She was not the type of girl who swooned, of all things. She was reliable. She was pragmatic. She was responsible. Passion, and all the recklessness it implied, was for other people.

“Are you okay?”

He was suddenly right in front of her, looking down, his eyes surveying her face with concern. He took her shoulders firmly between his hands. “Maggie!”

“I'm sorry. I—” She gave up and leaned into him.

“Fresh air,” he said. He bustled her through the crowd, putting people none-too-gently out of his way.

Moments later, they were standing outside the front doors of Morgan's, the laughter and noise now muted in the background. Maggie took in several deep gulps of the cool, night-scented air. His arm stayed around her shoulder, protective, surprisingly tender.

“I'm sorry,” she said, truly embarrassed. “I don't know what came over me.”

“You looked like you were going to faint,” he said, studying her carefully. “The color is starting to come back into your cheeks now.”

“I've never fainted in my whole life,” she protested, but weakly. The night air was just what she needed. She could feel herself coming to her senses. His scent did not seem quite so overpowering. She avoided looking at him and moved away from under the weight of his arm, though it took a great deal of effort to get her feet to obey her command to move away from him.

“I should get back to the hospital, anyway,” he said, consulting his watch. “I'll just go back and settle the bill and grab your jacket. Two seconds. Don't move. And breathe.”

When he returned, he helped her into her jacket. He was going to take her hand, but she quickly inserted both hands into her coat pockets. He noticed the deliberate action with a quizzical raise of his eyebrows, but she pretended she didn't care.

The truth was she was frightened. Maggie Sullivan did not lose control.

She could not subject herself to any more temptation
tonight. Not when she felt so uncertain about how she would react to it.

They walked back to the hospital in silence. He whistled under his breath, a happy little song that only served to remind her that the strength of what she had just experienced at the pool table in Morgan's had been completely one-sided.

“I'll walk you to your car,” he said when they came to the hospital lot, “and then I'll slip in the side door where we came out. I don't want you over there by yourself at this time of night.”

It wasn't until he said that, that Maggie realized she had been anticipating going back to that spot, cloaked in darkness and utter privacy.

“Thank you,” she said, hearing the stiffness in her own voice, and ducked from the query in his eyes. She fished through her bag for her keys when they arrived at her car, a new gold Volkswagen Beetle.

“Cute,” he said. “Just about what I would have figured.”

“Really?”

“I like to do that. Figure out what people drive. It tells me about them.”

“What does my car tell you?”

“Cute,” he repeated.

“I have to go,” she said hastily. “It was fun, Luke, really it was.”

“Hey.”

His hand on her upper arm stopped her from flinging herself into the car and making her escape.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

Oh, Luke. Don't do this. Don't be sensitive, on top of being gorgeous and charming and a man I can't have.

“Nothing.”

“Something changed back there in the pool room. Did I say something? Did I hurt you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because I can do that. Without meaning to. Beak off and not even realize I'm stepping on people's feelings.”

“You didn't step on my feelings.”

And then the self-control she had been trying so hard to exercise snapped. She turned full to him, let go of her grip on the car's door handle. She twined her arms around the strong, beautiful column of his neck, and she stood on tiptoe.

And she kissed him. It wasn't the kiss of Little Miss Mouse, either. No, the tigress was unleashed.

At first, he went very still. And then he pressed himself hard against her, and his hands went to the small of her back and pulled her even closer into him, so close she could feel his heat, and it fueled the fire that was raging within her.

Out of control.

Miss Maggie Mouse was totally out of control. And loving it. His hands moved from the small of her back to tangle in her hair, to bring her lips in fuller contact with his.

Flashpoint. Maggie was on fire. Heat, glorious and sizzling, enveloped her entire being. She could feel her bones melting, her skin, as her body met the hard line of his.

His lips, which had looked so firm, were deliciously soft under hers, and yet no less commanding.

He was hungry for more than a break from hospital food. That became evident very, very quickly. He plun
dered her mouth, his kiss hot and destructive and glorious, like slowly rolling lava. When she felt he would ignite her, as if the fire of his kiss would consume her and leave nothing behind but smoldering ash, he lifted his lips from hers. He spread small kisses from her neck to her earlobes, hot spots of delight so intense it was painful. He tormented her eyelids, and her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. She had been right about his whiskers. The scrape of them across the soft flesh of her cheek was heady. Then his lips returned to her mouth again.

She was totally unaware of anything but him, lost in the passion of the moment, swimming in the fire, headily and completely consumed by it, her senses blocking out everything but him. The way he tasted and smelled and felt.

The way he tasted and smelled and felt affected her, making her feel alive.

She had been unaware that she was dead, but now she was like a sleeping princess brought to life by the touch of his lips.

He yanked away from her.

“Someone's coming,” he said in an undertone.

How had he noticed that? She had noticed nothing. No better than that woman on the steps of the hospital earlier today, or that man at the booth in Morgan's.

She peered past Luke, saw the white jacket of a doctor coming off duty. It was someone she'd worked with occasionally in conjunction with her cases at Children's Connection.

He saw her, recognized her, and his eyebrows shot up.

Furious embarrassment rushed through her body, heated and ugly.

Maggie broke away from Luke. She grasped for her car door again. “I don't know what came over me,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Luke said. “Are you crazy?”

“Apparently.” She slid into her car, using all the discipline she could muster. She couldn't look at him again.

But she did.

He stood there under the dim light of the parking lot streetlamp. He was big and self-assured, all barely contained masculine grace and power. In a nutshell Luke August was way more man than she would ever be able to handle.

Never again did she want to unleash whatever had been unleashed inside her tonight. It was too strong a drug.

She ordered herself to drive away. She even started the engine. But Luke still stood there, his hands in his pockets, looking at her.

What was that expression?

He was stunned, obviously. By her performance. By how out of control she had been. Well, that made two of them.