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  “Nobody said you couldn’t, but maybe I want to stay,” Brett said, surprising her. “Did you stop to consider that?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was actually serious or just pulling her leg. His expression was entirely unreadable. She still gave him the only answer she could in this case. “No.”

  “Well, consider it. Because I do,” he assured her firmly.

  This was a man who thrived in the organized chaos that throbbed through his establishment, Alisha thought. His wanting to remain here with her like this made no sense.

  “Why would you want to stay here?” she asked, wanting to understand his reasoning—if that was possible. “It’s quiet.”

  His smile was slow and sexy as it slipped across his lips. “Lady Doc, you might have just answered your own question.”

  She eyed Brett uncertainly. “You like the quiet?”

  The smile widened a fraction. “Always have.”

  Okay, he was messing with her, she decided. He had to be. “But you run Murphy’s. During work hours, that place is as noisy as the middle of Grand Central station.”

  “Which is why the quiet is appealing to me,” Brett countered.

  She was too tired to continue with this and just shook her head, surrendering. “You are a complicated man, Brett Murphy.”

  The sexy smile softened around the edges as he told her, “Right back at you, Lady Doc.”

  Exhausted, with her thoughts colliding into one another in her head, she blinked. “You think I’m a complicated man?”

  Brett laughed. “No, just complicated. I’m not that simple. I do know the difference between a man and a woman,” he assured her with a wink that went straight to her stomach and bored a hole there, making itself right at home.

  Alisha laughed then, or maybe it was the exhaustion, stretched to another level and making her giddy. “I’m sure you do.”

  Brett studied her for a moment, his eyes moving along her so slowly, she could have sworn she felt them touching her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he finally asked good-naturedly.

  A sigh escaped her lips as she searched for the right words, words that kept eluding her right now. “Just that you were probably born flirting. Born making women weak in the knees,” she added.

  His eyes were caressing her, undoing her, she thought nervously, unable to look away.

  “How about you, Lady Doc?” he asked in a quiet voice. “Do I make your knees weak?”

  She tried to brazen it out, although she knew that she was doomed to failure. “I’m sitting down. My knees are fine.”

  Brett pretended to give her a long once-over, going from her head to her toes. She had discarded the scrubs and was back to wearing only her shorts and T-shirt. He couldn’t help wondering if she knew just how enticing she was in that simple little outfit.

  She was a woman who wasn’t even aware of her sexuality—which made her all the more sexy to the casual observer.

  “Yes, they are, just like the rest of you,” he told her.

  She laughed softly to herself as she shook her head. “There you go again, flirting.”

  Instead of denying it, or saying something flippant in his defense, Brett smiled into her eyes. “How’m I doing?” he asked her, his voice low, stirring, as it seemed to slowly, seductively undulate beneath and along her skin.

  Alisha was finding that she was definitely having difficulty breathing. The very way this man was looking at her with his deep green eyes seemed to completely paralyze her.

  It took effort for her to finally whisper an answer to his question. “Like someone should pass a law against you.”

  His eyes still holding hers prisoner, he cocked his head in amusement and asked, “I’m that bad?”

  Damn but she wished he’d stop whispering like that and speak up. His whispering was making her blood rush through her veins like a stock car crossing the finish line in the Indy 500.

  “No,” Alisha finally replied with some effort. “You’re that good.”

  Brett was skimming his fingertips along her face, as if he was attempting to memorize every single feature through them.

  “Can’t have that,” he told her.

  The next moment, as his eyes continued to hold hers captive, Brett began to lower his mouth to hers in what felt like slow motion.

  It felt as if hours had passed before he finally kissed her.

  And made time stop completely.

  There was surprise on her part.

  Surprise and then pleasure.

  Surprise that it had happened at all after her silent promises about never allowing herself to be in a compromising situation again. Pleasure because, well, that was really self-explanatory. His kiss was sheer pleasure. And she couldn’t resist it—not even a little.

  Alisha gave herself permission, just for this single moment in time, to enjoy what was happening and to kiss this man back. Five minutes from now—if not sooner—she would return to being herself, to being vigilantly on her guard.

  But for now, for the next three hundred seconds, she wanted just to feel desirable again. Or at least pretend that she was. And most of all, she wanted to celebrate because she had saved a life. Not assisted in saving a life, but had actually been the instrumental person in saving that life. And that felt absolutely wonderful.

  As did being kissed by Brett Murphy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  You’re taking advantage of her.

  Brett could almost hear the voice in his head taking him to task for what he was doing. For what he was so obviously enjoying.

  The voice—his conscience, he supposed—was coming in loud and clear.

  He’d also realized at that exact moment that he’d wanted to do this, wanted to kiss this rare woman who had come into their midst, from the very first time he had laid eyes on her.

  Granted, Alisha hadn’t exactly looked friendly when Dan had initially brought her around, but that didn’t matter. The connection he had felt when their eyes first met was on a whole different level than what he figured even she was aware of. For him, it was a little like flipping through a magazine and having his attention suddenly seized by a photograph of a top model. Being so captivated by the woman that he promised himself that, someday, he was going to meet that woman and have a relationship with her, no matter how far-fetched that might have seemed.

  For Brett, someday had arrived.

  The woman who had returned his kiss was not the doctor who ministered to the patients who came to the clinic seeking help. That woman was professional, skilled and dedicated. This woman, the one he was kissing, was a barely bridled wildcat. He could literally taste it in her kiss.

  * * *

  WHAT IS GOING ON with me? Alisha’s brain all but screamed at her.

  Have you lost your mind? she upbraided herself.

  What in heaven’s name was she doing, kissing Brett? He was her landlord, for heaven’s sake, and granted, the man was sexy as all hell, but she’d promised herself never to let something like that, something so shallow as looks, sway her.

  Okay, he seemed kinder and deeper than Pierce had been, but the bottom line remained: Brett was an extremely good-looking man, and good-looking men were true only to themselves and their needs. Hadn’t she already experienced that firsthand? How many times did it take for the lesson to be driven home for her? Did she really need to go through the anguish of a refresher course where all her plans instantly turned to burned dust?

  C’mon, Alisha. You’ve got more self-control than that, don’t you?

  Trying to keep her arguments for why this couldn’t be happening uppermost in her mind, Alisha drew her head back, breaking the delicious contact. Just as she did, she felt Brett drawing away, as well, as if her pulling away could be construed as a time-out.


  Or maybe the man had satisfied whatever urge had prompted him to kiss her in the first place.

  Whichever way it went down, she was going to find a way to use this to her advantage, Alisha silently promised herself. Popping up to her feet while ignoring the hand that he offered her, she quickly strode to the back of the clinic to look in on her patient.

  Recovering from the operation, Nathan was still asleep. Even though she wasn’t expecting any surprises at this point, someone, Alisha felt, should remain with the man, and since she’d told Dan to go home, she figured that she was the logical choice.

  But when she walked into the room where she had performed the operation, she was surprised to find Dan sitting in a chair by the hospital bed. He looked up when she walked in.

  Stunned, she stared at the other doctor. “I thought you went home.”

  “I changed my mind,” he informed her in his quiet, authoritative voice.

  “But—” She got no further than that.

  “You did a great job, Alisha,” he told her. “Now I want you to do me a favor and go home and get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

  Didn’t anyone in this town listen to reason? she wondered. “You can’t stay here with Nathan,” she insisted. “You’re injured.”

  From his countenance, Alisha could tell she wasn’t going to win this debate. Dan had obviously dug in—and he was the senior doctor here. “My shoulder is injured. The rest of me is doing just fine. Now go,” he urged.

  “But—”

  “That part’s fine, too,” Dan assured her with as straight a face as he could maintain, under the circumstances.

  Just then, Brett came in, drawn by the voices and wondering if Nathan had woken up. In which case, he thought Alisha might need a helping hand with the man.

  “You’re back,” Brett said to Dan in surprise.

  “Never actually left,” Dan corrected his friend. He turned toward Brett to enlist his assistance. “Do me a favor, Brett. Get our heroic doctor here back to her place. It seems that she won’t leave without an armed escort.”

  Brett was more than willing to comply. “I’m not armed, but I will escort.”

  Well, she couldn’t make the other doctor leave, but by the same token, he couldn’t force her to go, either. Of the three of them, she decided, Brett had the least reason to stay.

  “You can go home,” she urged Brett.

  “And so can you,” both Brett and Dan chorused together as if they had been practicing delivering that one line for a long time instead of saying it spontaneously.

  Alisha opened her mouth, then shut it again. She couldn’t fight both of them, and she knew it. Besides, she really was tired. Thinking the matter over, she decided that she was going to need both her sleep and her strength tomorrow since Dan was going to Pine Ridge to get that shoulder of his x-rayed. That meant that she would be the only doctor on call at the clinic the whole day.

  The very thought of that was exhausting right now.

  “Okay,” she said, reluctantly giving in. “I’ll go,” she told Dan, but added a condition to her capitulation. “But only if you promise to call me the second you’re feeling weak or tired.”

  Dan nodded. “Already have you on speed dial,” he told her, holding up the cell phone Tina had gotten him for his last birthday.

  Sure he did, Alisha thought, looking at the phone skeptically. Still, she didn’t feel up to challenging him and, instead, reminded him that “I can be here in five minutes flat.”

  Now, there was something she couldn’t have ever said in New York, Alisha thought. Not with the way that traffic clogged the streets even in the dead of night. Here she could boast being able to make that sort of time in the middle of the day—as well as all the hours in between.

  Dan nodded, not that he had the least inclination to summon her—unless the clinic caught on fire. “Good to know,” he said mildly, then turned toward Brett. “Get this woman out of here before she falls asleep on her feet, Brett,” he ordered.

  “You got it.” Brett slipped his hand through his tenant’s arm and very gently steered her toward the front of the clinic as well as the front door.

  They had almost reached it when there was a commotion on the other side of it. The door had been left unlocked, and the person causing the racket pushed it open and marched right into the clinic, still being loud—and practically breathing fire.

  Alisha stopped walking and stared at the large, heavyset woman with the round, angry face. This was the way trouble would look if trouble could take a human form.

  “Where is he? Where’s that lazy, good-for-nothing faker of a husband of mine?” Henrietta McLane demanded as she took the hallway in less than half the strides that Alisha had made on her initial entrance. Glaring at her, the woman snapped, “Is he back there?”

  Accosting her, the woman pointed toward the rear of the clinic. More than twice as large as Alisha and a good foot taller, Henrietta McLane was a force to be reckoned with, and not in a good way. Years ago, her girth accustomed her to ignoring others and always getting her own way.

  About to intervene, Brett watched in surprise as Alisha got in front of Nathan’s charging wife, physically putting her body in the way to stop the woman from going to the back.

  “I’m afraid you can’t go in there. Mr. McLane is asleep now,” Alisha told the woman.

  Henrietta snorted, dismissing the access denial and the woman who had delivered it. “He always sleeps off a drunk, missy—nothing new there. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but that man has to know that he can’t yank me around like this.” Saying that, Nathan’s wife began to go around Alisha.

  For a second time, Alisha deliberately put herself in the larger woman’s path.

  As she glared at the woman, Henrietta’s complexion began to turn a bright shade of red.

  “He’s not yanking you around,” Alisha told her calmly. Maybe the woman was angry because she was asked to come in so late in the evening. She was quick to direct the focus of Mrs. McLane’s anger toward her, putting the blame on herself. “I was the one who asked Liam to fetch you.” It had actually been Brett, but as far as she was concerned, that was a mere technicality. She was the one who had wanted the man’s wife there.

  A number of emotions washed over the pie-shaped face. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  Alisha was precise in explaining her thinking. “Because your husband just had an appendicitis attack. I managed to take it out just as it ruptured.” Her eyes never wavered from the woman’s face. “I thought maybe you’d want to know that.”

  That her husband had just undergone surgery took some of the wind out of Henrietta’s sails—at least for a moment. The woman looked at her uncertainly. “But he’s going to be all right?”

  Alisha was relieved to be able to give her a positive answer. “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Rather than happiness, the news had indifference registering on Henrietta’s wide, sun-lined face. “Tell him to get his butt home as soon as he can walk.” And with that, the woman turned on her heel, pushed past Liam, retraced her steps to the front door and marched out of the clinic.

  Alisha blew out the breath she hadn’t even realized that she’d been holding.

  “I’m beginning to understand why Nathan drinks,” she commented to the man who had been serving Nathan for the past fourteen years. Anger underlined her words. How could anyone be so callous in regard to a person they were supposed to have loved? “I think if I was married to that impossible woman, I’d spend every evening drinking in order to forget.”

  Surprised that had just come out of her mouth, Alisha slanted a quick glance toward Brett to see if that had put him off. She was surprised—and maybe just the tiniest bit pleased—to see that her words had made him laugh.

  “You’re becoming one of us, Lady D
oc,” he told her, clearly amused by her declaration.

  Several weeks ago, she wouldn’t have been happy with that kind of a response. But hearing it now created a satisfied, happy feeling that caught her completely off guard. Feeling that way should have made her feel wary—but it didn’t.

  * * *

  A FEW OF the regulars had remained at Murphy’s, nursing their beers and waiting for news about their drinking buddy. The moment Alisha walked in, they all swarmed around her and Brett, firing overlapping questions.

  “Is he gonna be all right?”

  “He ain’t dead, is he?”

  “Did you have to cut into him?”

  “Where is he? Did you send him home?”

  “Can we go see him?”

  Brett took over, raising his hand as well as his voice to quiet the men. “Lady Doc here took care of Nathan. She got him to the clinic just in time. If he’d stayed here with you bozos, he would have been dead.”

  Rather than question that, the men turned as if one to stare at Alisha. She wasn’t sure what to make of it—and then one of the men said, “Let’s hear it for Lady Doc!” The next second, a cheer went up. A couple of the men closest to her embraced her, exuding genuine gratitude. Stunned, she looked at Brett.

  “Now you’re really one of us,” he told her with a broad grin, adding, “You did good.”

  The funny thing was, she really felt that way. For possibly the first time since she had decided to become a doctor, she felt as if her vocation and presence in a situation really mattered.

  It was a while before she finally got upstairs to her tiny apartment. Two seconds after she closed the door behind her and opened her closet door, she was facedown on her bed, sound asleep.

  * * *

  THE KNOCK ON her door the following Sunday morning at eight didn’t wake her. She had been up for a good hour. Expecting to spend a peaceful morning doing nothing whatsoever, the knock caught her by surprise.