Читать книгу Indecent - Tori Carrington, Tori Carrington - Страница 9

IT WAS raining.

Figured. Lucky kept her chin high and her shoulders back. It was raining in her professional life, so why shouldn’t it be in reality?

She squelched a groan. She’d really needed that job. Aside from the good tips, the flexibility had allowed her to work around her morning job at the pancake house within walking distance of the bar. And considering that the pancake house didn’t have an item on the menu that cost more than five dollars and ninety cents, her tips were minimal, by no means enough to live on.

And she’d thrown the job away for a man….

She tripped over her own feet, missing a puddle by millimeters. Had she ever done something so spontaneously irresponsible before? Not when it came to the opposite sex. Sure, she might like to shake things up a bit wherever she was, and she didn’t take well to leering bosses, but a few unwanted stares at her breasts had never been enough for her to walk away from a well-paying job. And in this case, she had not only walked away from it, she’d gone to Colin’s table knowing full well she’d be fired.

Of course, at the time it had seemed more than worth the unguarded expression on his face when he’d looked up to see her.

Now? Well, now she wondered which errant hormones had made her act so impulsively and how she might go about getting them back under control.

Sure, the shrink was thigh-quiveringly sexy. But no man was sexier than a good night’s worth of tips. Not when she had bills to pay.

She opened the door of her twenty-five-year-old Chevy and slid onto the well-maintained leather driver’s seat, breathing in the scent of old car and raspberry air freshener as she fished her keys from her purse. The ping of rain against the roof was the only sound…even after she turned the ignition key.

Not even a sputter, a whine or a crank from the old vehicle. Nothing.

Lucky tried starting the car again with the same results.

She rested her forehead against the cracked leather steering wheel and closed her eyes. Great. Just what she needed considering she’d just lost her main source of income.

There was a light tap on her window. She leaned back to stare at the blurry image through the rain-spattered glass. Was that…

Colin.

“Are you all right?” she read his lips rather than heard the muffled words.

Lucky blinked at him. Was the doc really standing out in the rain with no protection, his hands tucked into his slacks pockets as he bent to look inside her car? Yes, he was. And in that one moment everything that had transpired in the past ten minutes had been worth it.

She yanked open the door and climbed out of the car to stand in front of him. He straightened, seeming to squint at her in the gloomy light.

“What was that you said?” she asked.

“I asked if you were all right.”

Lucky twisted her lips, giving his tall, lean body a full once-over before returning her gaze to his eyes. “Considering I just got fired five minutes ago, my car won’t start, and the lack of an umbrella has made my tank top transparent? I’m just peachy.”

His gaze dropped down to her breasts. Lucky didn’t have to look. It didn’t take a physics professor to know that white cotton and steady rain made her look like a wet T-shirt contestant.

Only she was unprepared for the warm shiver that slaked through her at Colin’s slow perusal.

She rounded him to stand at the front of her car. After sliding her fingers in between the grill slats, she tugged on the release then braced herself as she hauled open the old car’s hood.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about cars, would you, Dr. McKenna?” she asked.

He came to stand next to her, staring at the grease-covered engine. “I know enough.”

“And would any of that knowledge help me out with what’s happening now?”

He looked at her, his mind appearing to be on everything but the status of her car. “It’s my guess your battery’s dead.”

He walked to the driver’s door, opened it, then pushed in the button that turned off the headlights. When she’d gotten into her car, Lucky hadn’t even been aware they were on. Then again, why would she? If the headlights had drained her sorry excuse for a battery, then there wouldn’t be any juice left to illuminate them now, would there?

Great.

Colin closed the door then reached to close the hood.

Lucky turned to face him. The fact that they stood without a raincoat or an umbrella in the pouring rain didn’t matter to her. Nor did it appear to matter to him as they stood just staring at each other.

“Well,” she said slowly, feeling oddly turned on by the attention. Attention she had wanted only a few hours earlier in his office but that now seemed somehow…very intimate to her. “I guess you won’t have to worry about running into me again here.”

He nodded. “Fired?”

“Very.”

His mouth turned up into a small smile. “How do you feel about that?”

Lucky narrowed her eyes. “Dr. McKenna, are you trying to psychoanalyze me in a parking lot in the middle of a thunderstorm?”

He looked up. “It would have to be thundering in order for it to be a thunderstorm.”

Lucky could have sworn she’d heard a few cracks and felt the ground shake, but she wasn’t going to say anything in case the sensations had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with Colin McKenna.

“And you’re avoiding my question,” she said just as he had in his office earlier.

The very handsome Colin McKenna looked even more delectable mussed up and wet. “Sorry. Hazard of the trade, I guess.”

“What is? That you always end up sounding like a doctor?”

He nodded. “Especially when talking to a patient.”

That’s right. They still were doctor and patient, weren’t they? Despite all that had happened in her own life in the past half hour, their connection remained the same. A connection that prevented the more sexual one she wanted more in that minute than she had at any other point during the day.

“Mmm.”

His smile widened. “Can I give you a lift?”

“What would your lunch companion have to say about your disappearance?”

He glanced back toward the sports bar.

Lucky reached into her car, took her keys from the ignition, and grabbed her purse. “That’s all right, Dr. McKenna. I wouldn’t want to ask you to do something that might appear inappropriate.”

Actually, she wanted to ask him to do something very inappropriate. She wanted to ask him to kiss her. To brand her skin with his hands. To show her what she’d only felt earlier in the office when she’d provocatively brushed up against him.

“How will you get home?”

She took a card out of her purse and waved it at him. “It’s called the bus.”

Lucky began to round Colin to start toward Secor Road and the bus stop across the street, then stopped parallel to him. Despite the weather, she made out the warm scent of his cologne. Or was it aftershave? Whichever it was, the smell made her want to press her tongue to his skin to see if he tasted as good as he smelled.

And before she knew it, she turned to do exactly that.

COLIN HAD KNOWN a moment of disappointed relief when Lucky turned down his offer of a ride. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking when he’d made the offer, but he knew it was linked to what ever had compelled him to come outside to see if she was all right.

And he needed to get a handle on it before he and the sexy waitress…patient crossed paths again.

He was pretty sure he exhaled when she began walking toward the road.

After a few steps, she stopped and turned. “Actually, there’s one thing you can do for me real quick, Doc,” Lucky said lightly grasping his arm. “You can kiss me.”

Colin opened his mouth to protest. The problem was the movement allowed her better access as she took his bottom lip between her teeth, then kissed him like a woman who could teach classes on the subject.

He felt a groan grumble up from his chest. It had been a long, long time since he’d so thoroughly enjoyed a kiss. More than three months, though he’d gone without sex that long.

He stood still, reveling in the soft, uneven texture of her lips. The rasp of her tongue as she took full advantage and slid it past his teeth.

“Mmm.”

Lucky made that sound again that tugged on something within him. Something deep and elemental and undeniable.

He reached out to pull her closer when she pulled away.

Raindrops clung to her lashes, making them look longer and thicker and giving her cat-green eyes an even more vivid appearance. Whatever makeup she may have had on had long since been washed away by the rain, revealing a light smattering of freckles over her pale skin. And her red hair shone almost black with wetness.

“That was even better than I imagined,” she said softly. “And I have quite an imagination.”

Then she was walking away from him, her hips swaying, seeming completely oblivious to the rain and to him as she made her way toward the road some hundred yards away.

Colin absently rubbed his chin, then held out his hand, absently watching the rain pelt his skin then run off to accumulate in a puddle at his feet. He was soaked and somehow couldn’t remember how he’d gotten that way. He glanced up toward the battle-gray sky then back to the street, only Lucky was long gone.

FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK Colin both dreaded and anticipated the moment when Lucky would walk through the door to his office and either prove or disprove his attraction toward her. A case of raging hormones, he’d tried telling himself over and over again. An instance of temporary insanity. But no matter how many times he tried to apply reason to the erotic kiss he’d shared with Lucky in that parking lot seven days ago, he fell well short of the mark.

Then the moment he’d been waiting seven long days for never came.

Colin sat back in his chair, tapping his pencil against the incoming mail and files the practice secretary had placed on his desk after the group he’d finished with had vacated the room. The group that should have included Lucky.

He leaned forward, browsing through the files, looking for hers. Normal procedure dictated he contact the court, let them know the terms of their orders were being violated. But he was reluctant to do that. Maybe she’d got caught up at work. Perhaps she hadn’t repaired her car.

He couldn’t find her file.

Grimacing, he went through the pile again with the same results. A pink envelope fluttered from the files in his hands and landed squarely in the middle of his lap.

That’s odd. It looked like expensive personal stationary. Definitely not the type of thing he would think of Lucky possessing. He slit open the side with his opener and took out the single sheet of pink paper.

She’s pretty. I could have been pretty for you.

Colin’s blood ran cold.

While the handwriting wasn’t familiar, the words—or rather the taunt in them—was.

Jamie Polson.

He pushed from his chair and didn’t stop moving until he stood in front of his secretary’s desk.

Having been out with the flu the week before, Annette looked the worse for wear.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, flashing her the envelope that simply said Colin across it.

Annette blinked at him. “I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it when I sorted through your things a little while ago.” She took the envelope and turned it over. “This I definitely would have remembered.” She smiled as she handed it back. “Love letter?”

Far from it, he wanted to say.

“Hi,” the breathless greeting sounded behind him.

Colin turned to find Lucky Clayborn smiling at him sexily. He nearly crumpled the letter and envelope in his grip. Someone had gained access to his office to put Jamie’s card there. And the card itself bore an unspoken threat of sorts that upped the level of tension. He’d hoped time would allow Jamie the space to move on. To drop the case.

Instead Jamie appeared even more determined to keep him on the run, both in court and out. And he couldn’t help wondering at the coincidence of Lucky’s presence at the same time he’d discovered the card.

Colin discovered he was staring at Lucky’s full mouth and allowed his gaze to linger there before lifting it to her eyes. “You’re late,” he told her. “The session’s over.” He stared at his secretary. “Where’s Miss Clayborn’s file?”

Annette appeared puzzled as she answered the phone then put someone on hold. “In with Dr. Szymanski’s files, of course. Miss Clayborn called and asked to be transferred last week.”

Lucky had moved to Morgan Szymanski, one of his partners?

Colin’s pulse rate leapt at the knowledge that Lucky was no longer his patient.

“Do you have a few minutes?”

Lucky had asked the question from behind him, but Colin didn’t trust himself to look at her. Without the doctor-patient wall standing between them, there was no longer any reason to resist her. He stared at the note in his hands then glanced at her.

“Why don’t we talk in my office?” he suggested.