Tempted by the Heart Surgeon
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Lucy Ryder
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13
CHAPTER ONE
SAMANTHA JEFFERIES GLANCED over her shoulder and ducked into the hotel bar, relieved to discover the place packed and the lights dim. Hopefully, she could hide from a very handsy and persistent groomsman, and take a break from the Wedding from Hell where she was one of eleven bridesmaids from an adolescent fantasy.
Eleven! Who the heck had eleven bridesmaids?
But then again, at least Stacey had her life together, while Sam’s was falling apart. Taking a break from her Life from Hell sounded like an ideal plan. Maybe she could even pretend to be someone else for an hour or two. Pretend she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, that she wasn’t dressed like a prom escapee or that her own wedding wasn’t a thing of the past. Or would be as soon as she informed her grandmother, she thought with a grimace.
And wasn’t that going to be a thrill a minute. Considering her grandmother had—for once—completely approved of Sam’s fiancé, the old battle-ax would blow a gasket.
She didn’t want to think about what her brother would say since he’d never ever had a life crisis.
Truthfully, it wasn’t that her cousin’s wedding was that bad, she admitted, heading for the bar counter farthest from the door—although if she had to endure one more girlish shriek and emotional outburst, she was likely to start screaming herself, and never stop.
It was just that she’d very recently—as in two days ago—walked into her fiancé’s large and very tastefully decorated office, and caught him in flagrante with his PA.
His male PA.
And if that wasn’t deserving of a long-overdue freak-out, it was the fact that she was now wearing an off-the-shoulder pink confection—yeah, strawberry pink!—its form-fitting bodice showcasing more curves than she was comfortable showing and drawing more masculine attention than she wanted.
The skirt, a short wide explosion of organza, left most of her long legs free and made her look a bit like a gawky flamingo on the lam from the San Diego Zoo.
Samantha Jefferies, granddaughter of Lilian Gilford, CEO of Gilford Pharmaceuticals and doyenne of Boston high society, would never be seen dead in something that would fit right into the chorus line of the Folies Bergère—sans feathered headdress, of course. Then again, that in itself might have endeared the outfit to her if not for the fact that she wanted to blend in, escape Mr. Hands, take a deep breath without popping the seams—or the strapless décolletage—and process the last three days with the hopes of salvaging her on-the-skids life.
In this dress, there wasn’t a hope in hell of that happening.
Drawing on years of conditioning, Sam ignored the amused smirks and speculative glances and tossed her strappy sandals onto the bar counter. With an irritated tug on the stupid skirt, she slid onto an empty barstool.
As a newly advanced-age single, she might want to get with the program but she wanted to do it without flashing her very new, very scandalous pink thong. First thing on the agenda was to sample everything life had to offer before she was forced to trade her strappy highs for comfortable orthopedic lace-ups.
The bartender appeared before her, eyes smiling, brows arched as he took in her appearance. If not for the fact that he looked about twelve, she might have flirted a little to test her newly liberated wings.
“Lose your way to the prom, princess?”
“Not any more than you look old enough to serve alcohol,” she drawled, smiling sweetly when she wanted to snarl, because if she had to field one more comment on her appearance, she might scream.
He sighed. Clearly it wasn’t the first time someone had commented on his youthful appearance. “So what’ll it be?”
“I’d like to see your shooters menu.” Heck, if she was going to begin a new life as a swinging single, she might as well start with some “swingy” drink. She’d never set foot in a bar, let alone sampled a shooter. The granddaughter of Lilian Gilford and fiancée of Lawrence Winthrop the Third would never imbibe anything stronger than sherry.
Well that, she decided, wriggling on the barstool, was about to change, especially if it shocked the blue rinse right out of her grandmother’s elegant hairdo.
Smirking—and clearly still smarting from the quip about his age—he demanded, “Your mom know you’re in here ordering alcohol?”
“The menu, sonny,” she drawled. “And make it snappy. You’re losing tips here.”
He laughed good-naturedly and slid the menu across the bar. “Sure thing, princess. So what’ll it be?”
“I want you to start at the top and give me one of everything.” Might as well go for broke.
Dr. Adam Knight saw her the moment she walked into the bar in a downtown upmarket San Francisco hotel. Frankly, he would have noticed her anywhere. In a place filled with hockey players and tables of rowdy Saturday-night revelers ready to rumble, she looked as out of place as a giant pink peony in a desert garden.
Nope, he thought, as she moved toward the long mahogany bar. She was all woman—from the top of her upswept, flower-sprinkled dark chestnut hair to smooth naked shoulders, a long elegant and straight-as-a-ruler back and down the mile-long legs to her bare feet. A pair of pink strappy four-inch sandals dangled from one slender finger.
“So,” Adam heard his friend and colleague, Wes Kirkland, say behind him as he gestured with his beer to the vision in pink. “Ten bucks says she’s from the mansion.”
The other occupant of the table, a short slender brunette, took her eyes off her phone to demand, “Mansion? What mansion?” Her eyes narrowed on the object of their interest and after a short pause she snorted rudely. “You guys have a one-track mind. If you ask me, it looks like she’s wandered in from a costume party.”
Wes scoffed. “Dressed as what? A flamingo?”
Ignoring them, Adam watched as she leaned forward to exchange words with the bartender. Within minutes, he had a line of shot glasses in front of her. From this distance, Adam couldn’t identify them but by the second shot, her Vegas showgirl legs were propped onto a nearby barstool. By the third, she was surrounded by hockey players all ordering shots and joining in what seemed to have become a shot party.
He saw the Peony laugh and shake her head, then grab the bar counter to keep from falling off her stool when one guy snaked an arm around her waist and tried to pull her toward him.
Another burly guy stepped in and for a moment Adam thought there would be a violent tussle with her in the middle. She said something that made the guys stop, patted them both on their big arms and slid off the stool to join a nearby group of women on the dance floor. The first guy followed and tried to tug her back, but she laughed and spun away, her long legs flashing as she attempted to lose herself among the dancers.
She wouldn’t be lost for long, Adam thought with a grin. Not in that pink dress.
“Bet I could get her to dance,” Wes announced confidently. “All I have to do is tell her I’m a doctor. Chicks love that.”
“I think they love hockey players more,” Janice snorted, gesturing to the women crowding around the players at the bar.
Listening to their banter with half an ear, Adam watched as a big hockey player cornered her and wrapped an arm around her waist. She shook her head at something he said and rolled her eyes good-naturedly when he tugged her into a dance, finessing her around the floor like he was weaving a puck through a line of defensemen toward the posts. He must have reached his imaginary goal because he suddenly spun her around and dramatically bent her low over his arm like a cheesy Lothario in a classic movie.
She laughed, the sound low and husky as she tried to shove his face away from her cleavage. Then her gaze locked with Adam’s and he felt it like a one-two punch to his solar plexus. The moment caught and held, stretching between them with invisible bands. Bands that abruptly snapped when the guy whipped her upright and around, his hands sliding aggressively over her curves.
Before Adam could object on her behalf, or recover from that odd moment of connection, she shoved the hockey player away and stumbled backward, tripping over the couple who’d moved in behind her. With a startled squeak, she toppled.
Right into Adam’s lap.
Instinctively wrapping an arm around her to keep her from landing on the floor, he murmured, “Gotcha.”
One minute Sam was wrestling with the clumsy hockey stud, the next she’d tumbled right into someone sitting at a dance-floor table. She gave a startled yelp as one hard arm snaked around her midriff and hauled her back against an even harder, warmer chest, cutting off her air.
In some dark, purely feminine corner of her mind, she enjoyed the sensation of having a man’s arms around her again—of a hard masculine chest and muscular thighs cradling her—while she twisted to right herself and find her feet.
Her elbow connected with something hard and the guy behind her exhaled in a softly groaned oomph. She froze, the automatic apology dying on her lips. Oh, God, could this evening get any worse? First, the groomsman from hell, then the clumsy hockey stud with one thing on his mind. And now this.
Beneath her organza tulle bottom, hard thighs flexed, leaving her weak, shaky and shocked that she was reacting physically to a stranger she couldn’t even see. Twisting around, she came face-to-face with the guy she’d locked eyes with for that one startling instant.
And boy, he was even better looking up close and the right way up. High forehead, straight as an arrow nose, slashing cheekbones and a strong jaw beneath warm coppery gold skin gave his face a strength and nobility that more than hinted at his Native American ancestry.
Something within her stilled. And then, as though drawn by a will not her own, her gaze dropped to his mouth where a smile tugged at the sculpted lips a couple of inches from her own. Probably with amusement at suddenly finding a woman in pink giving him a spontaneous and inept lap dance, she decided dazedly.
“S’cuse me,” she gasped. Unable to stop staring at his mouth, she hoped he’d interpret her breathlessness as a result of being spun and tossed around, and not because, even in a room seething with testosterone, his pheromones pinged off her radar like a nuclear blast.
The next thing she noticed was his hair, thick and straight and jet-black as it fell almost to his shoulders. Her fingers twitched with an almost agonizing urge to slide through all that black silk. She curled them instead into the hard muscles and bones of his shoulders, and she wasn’t the least bit disappointed.
Hmmm, she thought, flexing her fingers experimentally. Big and solid and—
Almost as though he could read her thoughts, his smile grew and strong white teeth flashed in the semi-darkness. “No harm done,” he drawled with a chuckle, his deep baritone sending a delicious shiver sliding up the length of her spine. A large warm hand tightened on her hip and her belly bottomed out, leaving her relieved she was sitting because even her knees wobbled in response to that heated look.
Oh, boy. He was easily the hottest guy she’d ever met, effortlessly oozing sex appeal from every pore that might have had her as tongue-tied as a thirteen-year-old if not for the very lovely buzz she had going.
Whatever it was, the shooters or the champagne she’d tossed back earlier, she found herself incomprehensibly glad for her clumsiness. If she was kick-starting her new life as a single, she couldn’t have asked for a better way to test her nonexistent flirting skills.
She slid her gaze over his strong jawline and skimmed up the length of his straight nose to heavily lashed eyes the color of her grandfather’s favorite whiskey. And just as it had rushed straight to her head the first time she’d tasted the expensive drink, she lost her breath now as the world tilted.
“S-sorry,” she murmured, falling into their potent depths. “I—”
“Hey!” someone complained behind her, jolting her out of the sensual trance she’d been slipping into without a whimper. “Get your mitts off my girl.” It was the lumbering hockey stud, closing a hand roughly over her shoulder as he tried to yank her off her perch.
With a shrug of her shoulder, Sam dislodged his hand and wrapped her arms around the gorgeous hot guy’s neck. Leaning forward, she begged, “Save me,” against his lips and did something she’d never done before. She slid her fingers into thick cool hair and kissed a stranger.
She might have been shocked by her uncharacteristic behavior if not for the two—or was that three?—shooters and two glasses of champagne and the past forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours since she’d discovered the reason her fiancé had insisted on waiting for the wedding night before he saw her naked. Forty-eight hours of wondering why she hadn’t seen what everyone else knew. That her handsome, buff, blond fiancé was interested in sex—just not with her, because he was having an affair with his assistant. A guy named Ronnie.
If not for that image stuck in her head, Sam was sure she wouldn’t be snuggled in some hot guy’s lap, contemplating throwing a lifetime of caution to the wind. Or then again, it could easily be the amused expression in his amber eyes that dared her to plunge right in. She was single after all, and hadn’t she just decided to take life by the horns instead of meekly allowing her grandmother to direct her path?
Whatever it was, it was suddenly so hugely liberating that she experienced a moment’s dizziness. Besides, she was heading back to Boston in the morning and would never see any of these people ever again.
But staring into his bourbon-colored eyes, the “something” that had stilled within her sparked abruptly to life and for just an instant it was as though—as though she knew him. Before she could tell herself how ridiculous that sounded, her heart leaped and thundered as elation rose within her along with a need that was as frightening as it was wildly thrilling.
The guy stilled. His big hands closed over her shoulders and for one mortifying moment, Sam thought he’d push her away. Then he cupped the back of her head with one hand, the other dropping to nudge her hips closer to his.
And the next instant, he was kissing her back.
The instant that generously sculpted mouth opened beneath hers and applied a slight suction, it took only a half a dozen frantic heartbeats for her to lose her mind.
And for him to completely own her.
Or the kiss, she corrected dazedly. Own the kiss. Because owning her a minute after they’d met was about as farfetched as looking into a stranger’s eyes and imagining that soul-click.
In some dim corner of her mind, she heard someone say, “Forget her big boy, I’m a much better dancer,” then the heat of his body seeped into hers and the rest of the bar faded away, leaving her in a world she’d only ever dreamed about. It was as though she’d finally discovered fire after wandering through a frozen wasteland for nearly twenty-eight years. Finally experiencing for herself what everyone else knew.
His lips were softer than she’d expected, warmer. A sigh escaped her when his tongue slid along the length of hers, setting off a chain reaction that had her squirming with instant heat. Shifting closer, she reveled in the taste of him—slightly bitter from the beer he’d been drinking and something else. Something dark and delicious and uniquely male.
Uniquely him.
Then the kiss turned hot and carnal, and it was all she could do to keep up because her blood caught fire. The heat of the hard thighs against her bottom burned through her awful pink dress to her fluttering core and set all her senses aflame.
In all her secret fantasies, she’d never been kissed like this—with lips and tongue and scraping teeth. Like he wanted to consume her right there in public, in front of all these strangers.
And she was tempted to let him.
It was that last thought that had her jerking away to stare at him in shock. “I...uh... I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, rudely returned to reality like she’d been doused with icy water. What the heck was she doing kissing a guy like they were alone and had known each other longer than a couple of minutes?
He stared back at her through heavy-lidded eyes almost black with arousal and murmured, “I’m not,” in a voice so rough and tight with lust that she shivered. One of those delicious shivers that started at the base of her spine and rolled over her body in deep luscious waves, leaving her senses heightened and her body humming.
Heat swept up from her jittery belly, filling her chest with the champagne she’d consumed before racing up her throat into her face in a hot wave she wasn’t altogether certain was embarrassment. Or maybe not just embarrassment.
Then out the corner of her eye, she caught movement and turned to see Mr. Hands, the groomsman, bearing down on her like the IRS intent on an audit.
Dammit, she cursed silently. Trust him to find her here of all places, just when she was finally beginning to enjoy the anonymity of the dimly lit bar.
The condemnation in Jared’s eyes had her own eyes narrowing in an uncharacteristic display of temper. Decked out in his vintage wedding tuxedo, he looked ridiculously pretentious in comparison to soft faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt stretched across broad shoulders that needed no padding to look wide and solid and safe.
“Amanda,” he clipped out, probably annoyed that she was fondling another man when she’d been evading his hot sweaty hands all weekend. “What are you doing here? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Hoping to maneuver her into a tight corner, no doubt.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him for the thousandth time that her name was Samantha not Amanda when she was gripped by an almost savage need to shock that supercilious look right off his face. She suddenly wanted to rebel against everything in her life that kept her from being the woman she wanted to be. She wanted to be bold and face life head-on instead of timidly letting it control her.
It was tempting to dispel once and for all the prim-and-proper image that had been drummed into her since childhood and behave like a normal person for once. A woman with needs and emotions; someone light-years away from the mousey, emotionless and perpetually elegant and dignified woman her grandmother expected her to be.
Well, she thought, wiggling suggestively in the hot guy’s lap and giving herself a hot flash in the process. Damn elegant and to hell with dignified. She’d left that behind in Boston the moment she’d turned away from the sight of her fiancé and his boy toy to walk calmly from the room, shutting the door quietly behind her, leaving them in no doubt that the wedding was off.
Ignoring Jared, she cupped the hot guy’s handsome angular jaw between her palms and smiled into his intoxicating eyes before closing the gap between their lips to place a soft lingering kiss on his mouth. Her blood heated anew when he responded with flattering enthusiasm and smoothed his big hands up the length of her spine.
Shivering deliciously, she gave in to the wild, wanton creature inside of her. After drowning in the taste of him, she reluctantly broke the kiss, her tingling lips remaining on his for a moment longer before she eased back an inch. Staring into his eyes, she memorized the hot potent expression there and the way it made her feel. Like a hot-blooded woman a red-blooded man might desire. Just like a woman bent on experiencing everything life had to offer.
“Duty calls,” she murmured, lightly tracing his bottom lip with one finger. Then with real regret, she slid off his lap, grateful for his supporting hands when her knees wobbled and her head spun.
Whoa. No more shooters for you.
Or maybe that should be no more intoxicating kisses from hot strangers. But damn. She really wanted more of that.
“Sure you won’t stay?” he asked quietly, his eyes locked on hers. She was tempted—boy was she tempted. Then Jared called, “Amanda,” in that peremptory tone she suddenly decided she hated, because it was exactly the tone her grandmother used when she felt Sam wasn’t living up to Gilford standards. Just as Jared was exactly the kind of man the old battle-ax would approve of: good family, great pedigree, oodles of old money.
And boring as hell.
She shook her head regretfully. “I...can’t.”
His gaze, dark and seductive, held hers and myriad messages passed between them that she struggled to interpret. “My loss,” he murmured, his big hand warm and comforting on hers until her fingers slid free.
