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He held up his hand to stop the flow of words, choked down the laughter that was trying to get out and gazed down at her, trying to discern if she was attempting to amuse him or if it just came naturally to her.
It occurred to him that it had been a very long time since he’d been anything but bored with any woman, with the notable exception of Amber.
Having tamed the twitching of his lips, he finally said, “Has anybody ever suggested you might take life a tad too seriously?”
She nodded, sadly.
“I mean that is just way too much effort put into thinking about popcorn.”
“I know. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I have more self-doubt than I had as a teenager. It’s pathetic.”
Uh-oh. If he was not mistaken, he heard a past heartbreak in there. What else took a beautiful woman’s confidence from her so thoroughly? Geez. Somebody should teach this girl how to have a little fun. Not him, of course, but someone.
His voice of reason told him to wish her a polite good night and a nice life and get the hell back to his room. It told him heartbreak made women fragile. It told him he was the man least likely to be entrusted with anything fragile even for a few hours.
His voice of reason pointed out to him that she was worried about whether they were going to hold hands, for heaven’s sake, and his mind was already conquering her lips and beyond.
Of course, if he was any damned good at listening to his voice of reason, he wouldn’t be in the hospital for the seventh time in five years.
“What do you say we downgrade?” he suggested after a moment’s thought.
“Downgrade?”
“You know, from a date. We’ll just grab a cup of coffee somewhere.”
She wanted to say yes. He could tell. But she didn’t.
“I don’t think it’s a very good idea,” she said uncertainly.
It was really beginning to bug him that she found him so infinitely irresistible that she was resisting with all her might.
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s just the popcorn question with a different backdrop. Maybe worse. We’d have to talk. I mean just stare across the table and look at each other and think of clever things to say.”
Clever? Was she kidding? You told a few blond jokes, you talked about your job and your motorcycle, you found out she’d been a cheerleader in high school and owned a poodle. Maggie expected clever? It was his turn to worry.
His voice of reason told him to bid her adieu, go back to his room and start a gratitude journal.
Entry number one could be how grateful he was to have avoided any kind of involvement with a woman who didn’t know anything about flirting, dating or making small talk with the opposite sex. And also one who was so obviously a fresh survivor of a heartbreak.
“So, how do you usually get to know people?” his other voice asked. “Meaning men people?”
“Oh, you know. Shared interests. Work. Church.”
Shared interests? Would that be the poodle or the motorbike? Work? He couldn’t even picture Amber on a construction site! And the worst one of all—church?
Whoo boy, church girls were not on his list of potential dates. In his limited experience they lived by rules that all began with Thou Shalt Not. Church girls loved commitment. Made vows. Mooned over babies. Babies!
Run! His voice of reason screamed. But he wasn’t running. So, he’d show little Miss Maggie Mouse, church girl, an evening of fun. Maybe he’d get himself a few points in the heaven department if he didn’t encourage her to curse any more. Everybody could use a few points in the heaven department, right?
Wrong, his voice of reason said stubbornly.
It was dumb to ignore that reason-voice. Luke knew from experience you almost always ended up going off a ramp on a dirt bike at eighty miles an hour, filled with the sudden knowledge that you would have had to be going ninety to make the ramp on the far side of the ravine.
He ignored the voice of reason. This was a challenge after all. He had a weakness. He had never been able to say no to a challenge.
And he had all the scars to prove it.
“Okay, the movie is out. Coffee is out. How about if we just go down to Morgan’s Pub, play a game of pool and call it a night?”
There. He’d risen to the challenge and gotten himself off the hook in one smooth move. No girl who got to know people from the church was going to say yes to going to a pub and playing pool with a virtual stranger, a renegade dressed in a custodian’s outfit.
She hesitated for only a moment, filled herself up with air as if she was building up the nerve to step off a cliff into a pool of ice-cold water, and then said, “Okay. I guess that would be all right.”
Maggie could not believe she had just said that. It would most definitely not be all right to go play a game of pool with Luke August. She didn’t even know how to play pool, though that would be the least of her problems.
It was his eyes, she decided. They were green and smoky and they danced with amusement and mischief and seduction.
Seduction, she repeated to herself with a gulp.
She had come here to Portland General to tell him politely she had come to her senses and that she was not going to a movie with a stranger, with a man she knew nothing about except that he raced wheelchairs. Badly. She could just have not come at all, but it had seemed as if it would be too rude to leave him standing there in the foyer, waiting for her.
Of course, if she was going to be honest with herself, the truth was she could have used the phone and left a message for him at the nursing station.
But then she wouldn’t have known if he had come. Somehow she had thought maybe he wouldn’t. What had she felt when she had first walked in and the hospital foyer had appeared empty?
Much too much.
Her resolve to break the date had intensified when Luke had touched her hair. What had she felt then? Again, much too much. As if she wanted to lean toward him, place her fingertips on his chest, feel the hard wall of muscle and man beneath her hands, as she had felt it this afternoon.
Everything in her mind was screaming at her to run. Every sinew of her body was keeping her rooted to the spot.
In the end his eyes had proved irresistible, the laughter in them beckoning to her, promising her something outside the predictability and the monotony of her own narrow world.
Look at it as homework, she persuaded herself when she heard her voice saying with deceptive calm that she would go play pool with him.
Homework assignment: Be bold. Do something totally out of character this week. So, she’d asked a man out. It hardly counted if she then refused to go out with him!
“My lady,” Luke said, picking up the bucket and resting the dripping mop over his shoulder, “follow me.”
By then she was helpless to do anything but obey. Following him allowed her to study the broadness of his back, the narrowness of his hips, the firm line of his rear end, the length of his leg.
She realized, even in those custodian’s overalls, too short for his six-foot-something frame, that he walked like a man who owned the earth, his stride long and loose, powerful and confident.
“Evenin’,” he said cheerfully to a nurse coming toward them.
The woman gave him a quick glance, squinted at his chest. “Evening, Fred,” she replied distractedly.
Maggie stifled a giggle.
“Fred” turned and winked at her. He led her through a maze of hallways and up and down elevators until they came to an exit she suspected no one knew existed.
While she watched, he reached for the zipper on the coveralls.
“Want to take bets what I have on underneath?” His eyes were very dark in the murky light of the hall, dark and watchful.
She wished she was one of those girls who knew what to say in moments like this, but Maggie only gulped and shook her head. But she didn’t look away, and he had known she would not look away.
Aware her eyes were riveted on that zipper, he lowered it very slowly, winked at her when she spotted the shirt underneath, and then he shimmied out of the coveralls, as if he undressed in front of women everyday.
Which he probably did, she reminded herself. The man was as close to irresistible as men came, and he knew it.
Underneath the coveralls, Luke had on a white denim shirt, sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, revealing the power of his lower forearms. Faded jeans clung to the large muscles of his thighs.
“How did you know this was here?” she asked a trifle breathlessly, trying to think about anything but the way he was made.
“This exit? I explore.”
“For what reason?”
“You never know when you might have to get ten old people in wheelchairs out because of a fire.”
He could have said anything. That he got bored. That he was restless. And those things probably would have been true. But what he said also had sounded true. It would almost be too much to handle if he looked the way he did—so handsome, powerful, self-assured—and also had heroic qualities.
He opened the door for her and bowed. “The only one in the building that’s not alarmed,” he told her.
“How many alarms did you set off finding that out?” she asked, stepping by him, trying desperately to keep it light, to banter, not to give in to the shivering awareness she felt when she glimpsed the squareness of his wrist, caught the scent of him, noticed how the darkness made his faintly whisker-roughened face look like that of a pirate.
“Lots. Ask Nurse Nightmare.”
“I intend to.” She looked around. There was no light over the door, and it was pitch-black out here. She didn’t have the foggiest notion where they were. Behind one of the hospital wings, she assumed.
He leaned over and stuck a rock in the door, holding it ajar ever so slightly. “So I can get back in.”
“Why do you go to all the trouble?” she asked. “I think we could have just walked out the front door. You’re a patient, not a prisoner.”
“Ha. You don’t know the first thing about Nurse Nightmare, do you?”
“I know her name is not Nurse Nightmare! It’s Hillary Wagner.”
He leaned close to her. She could feel his breath on the soft hollow of her neck. It occurred to her she was in a very dark and deserted place with a man she knew absolutely nothing about.
“I like to live dangerously,” he said softly.
So, now she knew that. And yet she did not feel the least afraid, or at least not for her physical safety. When she looked into Luke August’s eyes she saw a man who planned escape routes for ten people in wheelchairs and who loved to play.
And she saw something else.
Her own need. She leaned toward him, her eyes closing, her lips parting. He was leaning toward her, too, so close she could smell the tangy scent of him, feel the faint heat rising off his body. She gave in to the temptation to touch. Her fingertips grazed his shirt, and she shut her eyes against the pulsating power contained behind the thin and flimsy wall of fabric.
He pulled back, away from her touch, and she straightened and stared at him.
“Ah, Miss Maggie Mouse,” he said softly, “you aren’t that kind of girl.”
She was grateful for the darkness because she could feel the blush leap onto her cheeks. It was true. She was not that kind of girl.
But she sure wanted to be.
“Miss Maggie Mouse?” she asked, faintly chagrined, but slightly charmed, despite herself. Boys in high school had always given the girls they liked teasing nicknames. She had never been one of those girls chosen.
“That’s right,” he said, his eyes warm in the darkness. “Miss Maggie Mouse.”
She held her breath. She could tell he wanted to kiss Miss Maggie Mouse very badly, or at the very least, touch her hair again.
But he did neither.
He held out his hand to her, and there was no mistaking the brotherliness of the offer. She took it. His grip was strong and warm and protective. Unfortunately, he had just protected her from himself, a gesture that was completely unwanted.
“Let’s go play that game of pool,” he said, his voice thick.
She had a sudden, wild yearning to show him she was no mouse, to show him the mouse was only a disguise.
But for what? She wanted to be a tigress, but that was a bit of a stretch. She was a twenty-seven-year-old social worker whose one serious romance had ended like a bad Hollywood comedy.
She decided that trying to tempt Luke August might be a mistake, and yet even the notion of taking his lips captive until he was helpless with yearning filled her with a lovely, drugging warmth that was not typical of her. Even entertaining such an idea made her feel vaguely guilty.
Unaware of the war within her, Luke led them through the darkness with catlike confidence, bringing them out on a side street just to the west of the hospital.
“Morgan’s is just around the corner. Have you ever been there?” he asked.
“On occasion. They have a great lunch special. Have you been there?”
He snorted. “It’s where everybody knows my name.”
Great, Maggie thought. He was restless and reckless. He loved to live dangerously. He was comfortable shedding his clothes in front of a woman. He was totally at home in a bar. What was she doing here?
Having the time of your life, a little voice, one she did not recognize at all, answered back to her, not without glee.
Three
M organ’s Pub was crowded. And loud. The cheerful Irish bar was a popular place in downtown Portland, and Maggie usually enjoyed the atmosphere, noise and decor, but tonight, after walking hand in hand with Luke, and after a near miss in the kissing department, it felt way too public.
Not that anyone noticed! A couple in one of the oak booths by the windows didn’t seem to be even remotely aware of either the noise or the crowd. They were tangled around each other like tree roots.
Were these performances becoming more common? Or was Maggie just noticing them more?
“Sheesh,” Luke muttered. “Get a room.”
