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Trying to ignore the sexy way his shoulders filled out his lab coat, she said, “Thank you for—”
“You weren’t serious, were you?”
What did he mean? “I’m sure I was. I always am.”
Her husband had always encouraged her to lighten up, but it wasn’t in her nature.
Her husband.
Finally, she could think about him without that tearing pain to her heart. If she could only find absolution for herself in her soul.
“What, in particular, were you referring to, Dr. O’Donnell?”
Maybe she’d had enough of his grandstanding in front of her audience, or maybe she was lashing out at him because of the hurt she still carried for her husband, but either way she lost her temper.
Gesturing off stage, she said, “Maybe you’re talking about the way you came in an hour late and didn’t have time for a pre-show briefing. Or the way you began to ad lib your presentation instead of following the bullet points. That could have ended up disastrously if either of our imaginations had failed us. Or how about that remark about me not being a real doctor?”
She took a breath, feeling her heart pound in her ears as well as in her chest.
“Or maybe you thought I wasn’t serious when you decided to perform an examination on an audience member, while we all sat around and waited for you to listen to her heart beat. I’m sure our television audience enjoyed that stimulating bit of action. Or how about telling that father to go ahead and let his son do whatever he wanted despite the boy’s doctor’s advice. How dare you?”
Mark quirked his lips at her. “How dare I?”
“How dare you?” She was so angry she could feel the heat radiate off her body. “How dare you undermine another doctor?”
“Somehow, I’m sure the boy’s doctor won’t mind.”
“And you know that how?”
This time the man had the audacity to give her a full-on smile. “Because I’m him.”
“What?”
“I’m the boy’s doctor.” Mark shrugged his massive shoulders. “I asked my friend to show up, you know, for moral support. He said if he saw the show faltering he’d ask a question and he did. Now I owe him a beer.”
Eva stared, for once in her life without words. Her rage had burnt them all to cinders.
“It sounds like I owe you a beer, too, Eva. I didn’t realize I was being such a screw-up.”
“You are the last person I would consider sharing a beer with.”
“Ouch.” He gave her a laughing wince. “I guess that means, no, thanks.”
“No, it doesn’t mean, no, thanks. It means not in your lifetime, buddy.”
“Alrighty, then.” He looked at his watch. “Gotta run. It’s been—I had thought this was fun, but it seems I was mistaken.”
Was he expecting her to reassure him? She glared, daring him to blink first.
He didn’t. Again there was that quirky twist of his lips, although this time they were tight instead of laughing. “It’s been an experience.”
As he turned to leave he stopped and raised an eyebrow, oh, so condescendingly. “You do pretty well for a TV doc.”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’VE GOT TO be kidding me.” Eva paced round the conference table, earrings swinging as her agent cringed and her producer looked anywhere but in her eyes.
Stan, the show’s executive producer, glared at her, too used to working with drama queens to be bothered by her display of temper, which made Eva even angrier. “A three-week series on high-school athletics to get the ratings up and get our audience used to field experience, then, if the ratings are high enough, you get your drug-abuse series. You’ve been asking for this and now you’re complaining?”
“I didn’t ask to work with someone I’m so obviously not compatible with, though.”
“That’s not what our audience surveys are saying. They loved Dr. O’Donnell and they loved the two of you together.”
“Together.” Eva stopped pacing to stare into Stan’s eyes, gaining the slightest satisfaction that in her heels she towered over him. “I’ve worked hard for you. I’ve proved myself time and time again. O’Donnell waltzes onto the set, flashes a sexy grin and you beg him to take on a field assignment when I’ve been trying to negotiate one for the last two contracts?”
Phil, her daily producer and usually her ally, gathered up his courage to try to soothe her. “With sponsors pulling out, none of us have a lot of room for negotiation. We have to do something big to make up for cutting back our on-air schedule from five days to three.”
“What? They’re cutting our schedule?”
Phil seemed to shrink in on himself. “You didn’t know?”
Both the producer and the executive producer stared at her agent as if her lack of easy agreement was all his fault.
She couldn’t throw her kind-hearted agent under the bus.
“Henry’s not to blame. I had to cancel our meeting yesterday.” Her grandmother had been having a bad day, confused and agitated with all her caregivers. The sweet little lady who had raised her would never have raised her voice if she had been in her right mind. Dementia was a terrible disease.
And an expensive one to try to manage, too.
She needed this job. She had to remember that.
The money she could make by going back into clinical practice would easily take care of all her grandmother’s needs with plenty left over. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Not even for her abuelita.
“Talk to her,” Stan demanded.
Henry sent them all a firm, noncommittal look. “Give us a moment.”
Once the room was cleared, Eva leaned back in her chair, a feeling of unease building in the back of her neck. “What else haven’t you told me?”
Mark O’Donnell watched his nephew run drills on the same high school field he’d once run them on. The coaches were new, but the discipline was the same.
Without sports and dedicated coaches to instill boundaries, Mark didn’t know where he might have ended up.
Hopefully, he would provide a better father figure for Aaron than his absent dad had been.
“So she agreed?” Mark had been certain Eva Veracruz would turn down the assignment faster than she could say manicure.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d agreed himself. Maybe it had something to do with feeling more alive while on set than he had in a very long time.
Maybe that energy had more to do with Eva than it did with the television cameras. It was a question he didn’t have to answer since the show and Eva went together.
And if she nixed the idea, he wouldn’t have to worry about the why of it all, then, either, would he?
“She agreed,” his newfound talent agent assured him. “She’ll tape the shows live on Mondays and Wednesdays. You two will share a set on Fridays. And the rest of the time, for the next three weeks, she’ll shadow you when you’re doing your volunteer work at the high school, learning how you and the school system works with parents to keep our young athletes healthy both on and off the field. The executive producer wants to start filming on Tuesday.”
Mark thought of how those boys on the field would react to having Eva in their locker room. Wasn’t going to happen under his watch.
Second thoughts swamped him. He could hardly believe he was agreeing to do this. But he needed to break out of the rut he could see himself falling into and here was a sure-fire way to do that.
“I still find it hard to believe she graduated medical school, even though I looked up her bio on the station’s web page.” The bio’s headline had read, “Single, Sexy and Smart.” It had gone on to explain that Dr. Eva Veracruz was a New Orleans native with a degree in medicine from the state university. She’d been on the show for two years, having taken over from Dr. Todd Marsiglia.
Mark remembered Dr. Marsiglia’s show. It had been dry, a filler for the thirty minutes before the noontime news. He’d often turned it on for the monotony to key down after the night shift.
“Did she even spend time practicing medicine before turning to television?”
Henry, who was also Eva’s agent, shrugged. “I can’t discuss that with you. Confidentiality. And I’d advise that you don’t ask her about it either. Eva has some issues there.”
“I’ll just bet she does. She strikes me as the kind of woman that has issues about everything from her toenail polish to her hair color.”
Henry gave him an unyielding frown, so unexpected from a man who made his living from negotiation and compromise. “There’s more to Eva than most men bother to see.”
“I’ve seen beneath the surface of women like her. I was married to a high-maintenance woman like Eva for longer than I care to admit.” Mark realized he’d given his standard knee-jerk response. His statement wasn’t the only thing jerky.
Apparently, not only had his ex destroyed his self-esteem, she’d turned him into a judgmental jerk, too.
Before Mark could retract his glib response, Henry gave one of his characteristic shrugs and turned the conversation. “You asked about the confidentiality of the students. Staff will need signed release waivers from anyone they film. For anyone under age, they’ll need the waivers signed by either a parent or a legal guardian or we can’t use the film. You can use that as a way to keep your interactions confidential if you need to.”
“I understand. Thanks for checking on that for me.”
“I consider it part of my job. Despite any preconceived ideas you have about us, agents really do take care of more than the paperwork.”
“I’ll remember that.” Mark raised his hand in promise. “From now on, no preconceived ideas about agents or about doctors turned talk-show hosts.”
Henry gave him a nod. “That would be a good thing to remember.”
A good thing would be to wear sensible shoes on an athletic field. But Mark had stuck his own foot in his mouth enough already, so he refrained from saying it out loud as he watched Eva approach him.
To keep her heels from sinking into the grass, she had to take mincing steps on tiptoe, making her hips sway even more than he’d noticed earlier.
He’d always been a sucker for curvy women. His ex had cured him of a lot of his downfalls, but apparently not this one.
Mark had to exert great willpower to keep from gawking as Eva walked towards them.
Instead, he turned back toward the practice field where his nephew was now doing push-ups as punishment for some transgression, likely mouthing off. Mark worried about the boy. Aaron was too much like him at that age. The kid was going to get into real trouble if he didn’t change his ways.
But no amount of advice was going to keep Aaron safe from himself. Again, experience talking.
Mark gave the assistant coach a nod and a knowing look, even though the man wouldn’t see it with his attention focused on Aaron. If not for the dedication of men like him, he wouldn’t be who he was. He didn’t know how he would have turned out without such dedicated role models, he only knew he would have become someone a lot, lot worse.
Aaron had a good heart. But he also had a hot head. Between his mouthiness and his temper, he was too much of a handful for Mark’s sister to handle along with her new husband.
In the three months since Aaron had moved in with him, Mark’s grocery bill had quadrupled, his electricity bill had doubled and his social life had become non-existent.
Which explained why the Hispanic hottie in front of him captured more of his interest than he wanted to give her.
Time for a date night. What did he do with that cute little history teacher’s number?
Eva pointed her clipboard at him. “I’m only doing this for the numbers.”
“What numbers?”
“Ratings.” She looked out at the field then back at him. “Let’s get this right out in the open. It wasn’t my idea to partner with you, but I’m a professional and intend to make the best of it. I’m hoping you’ll extend me the same professional courtesy.”
Mark knew what she was referring to. “Professional courtesy like acknowledging your medical degree?”
“That’s a start.”
“I looked you up. You’re legitimate.”
“I looked you up, too.” She gave him a hard stare up and down. “You do a lot of volunteer work for the local high schools, this school in particular. You’re well respected among the educators and the coaches in the area. I’m impressed with your work.”
He hadn’t been expecting a compliment. “Thanks.”
“But you need to understand from the beginning that I’m the lead on this project. Got it?”
“Got it.” Mark gritted his teeth. It went against his nature to follow anyone’s lead. But his years in sports had taught him how to be a team player even if he couldn’t always be team captain.
Apparently, his tone didn’t convince her, because Eva put her hands on her hips, straining the fabric across her breasts as she drove her point home. “Those tricks you learned for getting through those five-minute press-release interviews you did when you were in high school won’t always save you when you have to fill a thirty-minute segment.”
She was a lot of woman. Swimsuit model came to mind—not the über-skinny kind selling women’s fashions but the kind that made it into men’s sports magazines, the kind that were substantial enough for a real man to put his hands on.
Women had always complimented his large hands.
He concentrated on her mouth instead. But those full red lips were as much of a distraction as the two buttons that threatened to pop.
Eyes, Mark. Look in her eyes and no lower.
“Are you listening to me, O’Donnell? This is a topic I’m very passionate about.”
Those flashing black eyes echoed her words. Yes, she was a passionate woman.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Veracruz. I’m a big fan of passion.”
Her brow furrowed, warning him she was readying herself for another impassioned lecture. As much as he would enjoy watching her deliver it, he also respected what she’d said.
“Give me a chance to try again with a better reply.” He was usually quicker thinking on his feet than this. He held up a hand, buying time as he gathered his thoughts.
“I have to admit, if you hadn’t stepped in and helped when I was explaining the heart-attack symptoms, I would have been sunk.” Mark always gave credit where credit was due. “To do this series the way it needs to be done, I’m going to need your experience.”
