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She’d just graduated from her nursing program and had been at the hospital for only a few weeks when the most handsome man she’d ever seen had stolen her breath with his quick smile, mischievous eyes and quick wit. They’d had a whirlwind romance, then married and settled into her little apartment close to the hospital, because she’d refused to move into his parents’ Park Avenue penthouse as he’d apparently thought they would. No, she had not wanted to start out her marriage living with her in-laws, whom she’d met only a couple of times. She’d planned to prove all the naysayers wrong over the next fifty-plus years.
She’d been the one proved wrong.
Wrong when Lucas had become less and less enamored with their marriage no matter what she’d done to try to keep things smooth. She’d not expected a lot of his attention. He’d been in the midst of his fellowship, after all. But she had expected him to occasionally make time for his young wife, who’d loved him so much. Near the end, she’d barely seen him, had wondered if he’d even noticed she’d moved out of the apartment as he’d asked her to.
He must have. He’d immediately filed for divorce. For irreconcilable differences and abandonment.
Who’d abandoned whom?
She’d given him her heart, had put all she’d had into making her marriage a success, and he’d discarded her like yesterday’s trash.
She’d sunk into a deeper and deeper depression, but nothing had ever hurt the way the demise of her marriage had, the way he had pierced her heart and bled it dry. Now that she’d carefully nurtured herself back into some semblance of a living, breathing person, had he come back to take shots at her a second time?
She wouldn’t let him.
Her insides seethed with bitterness.
He couldn’t steal her happiness or her peace of mind.
Only, from the moment she’d found out who had accepted the department position, her peace of mind had become a war zone. But it was a battle she would fight and win. She wouldn’t give him so much power over her. Not ever again.
She’d planned to avoid him, to not interact any more than absolutely necessary to effectively perform her job duties.
Apparently, Lucas had other ideas. Like a date he’d very publicly paid too much money to beat Richard to secure.
While the current bid came to a close, Emily glared at her ex-husband, wondering if you could hate someone you used to love more than life itself.
He was no doubt considered quite the catch. She knew better. She knew his flaws, knew that behind that handsome exterior beat the heart of a man incapable of loving another human being, of a man incapable of being there when his wife had needed him.
A man who hadn’t been there on the worst night of her life.
Had he been at the hospital working, at his parents’ or out partying with his buddies when her world had crumbled? Either way, he hadn’t been at her side in that emergency room.
“Lucky you, girl!” Emily’s best friend, Meghan, whispered. “I can’t believe Dr. Cain just bought your basket. And for that price? You must be giving off some major pheromones or something because for a few minutes I thought he and Richard were going to come to blows.”
Emily had never thought that. Lucas had never fought for her. He’d never fought for anything in his whole life. He wanted something and it just fell perfectly into place in his perfect life. She was probably the only mar on his stellar record.
And Richard, well, he was a nonconfrontational beta kind of guy, so she hadn’t been too surprised when he’d let Lucas win the bid. Disappointed, but not really shocked. He would find paying such an exorbitant amount for something he did several times a week for free as a total waste.
Emily would have been highly impressed had Richard stepped up and rescued her from Lucas’s bidding clutches. A knight in shining armor to her damsel in distress. Too bad. She’d have enjoyed Richard putting Lucas in his place.
To be fair, Lucas had raised the bid a stupid amount and Richard didn’t have a deep trust fund to line his pockets, but the bid hadn’t been out of his financial reach. Not by a long shot. Still, he worked hard for his money, was someone whom Emily could relate to. Richard was the same as her, an ordinary person living an ordinary life. She liked it that way.
“You can have him,” she muttered under her breath to her fellow pediatric neuro nurse.
“Are you blind?” Meghan’s expression was incredulous as they exited the stage to make room for the bachelors to be auctioned off. “He’s the hottest thing to hit Manhattan since the term Big Apple was first coined.”
Stepping a few feet away from the stage, Emily wrinkled her nose. Looks could be so deceiving. “He’s not my type.”
“Girl, he is every red-blooded female’s type.” Meghan waggled her perfectly drawn brows. “Tall, dark and handsome.”
“To each her own, because he isn’t mine. I prefer Richard.”
This time it was Meghan’s nose that wrinkled. “Richard is boring.”
Emily frowned. “Richard is loyal, handsome, intelligent, kind—”
“You deserve so much better than the likes of Richard,” her best friend assured her. Meghan had never understood her attraction to Richard, always claiming that she felt he stifled Emily.
“Not to me, he isn’t.” She’d had excitement and the fast lane while married to Lucas. She didn’t need parties and a revolving-door social life. She liked going home to her apartment after her shift ended, cooking a light dinner for two, discussing their day and occasionally going for a walk or perhaps to a show.
Richard was calm, predictable, stable. Totally to her taste in men.
Totally and completely the opposite of Lucas.
“You can’t tell me Richard is even in the same league as Lucas Cain.”
“You’re right, he’s not. Richard is way above it.”
Meghan gave her an odd look. “You been drinking?”
Emily laughed. “Because I find the man I’m dating more attractive than some new doctor at the hospital, you think I’m inebriated? Richard is my boyfriend. Why wouldn’t I find him more attractive than Dr. Cain?”
“Do you?” a familiar male voice asked from behind her.
Every cell in Emily’s body did a nervous jump to attention, making her legs weak, making her hands tremble, making her heart race. Not wanting to look at him, not wanting to have a conversation with him, she turned to face her ex-husband.
Up close he looked even better than he had from across the room. Why, oh, why couldn’t time have taken its toll and marred the physical beauty of his face?
He told you to leave. He filed for divorce. He’s a cold, heartless jerk who means nothing to you.
Even so, her hands shook and her stomach threatened to hurl the appetizers she’d consumed earlier. “Do I what?”
“Find the man who bid against me more attractive?” His blue eyes twinkled with the same old arrogant mischief. He knew that he was handsome as sin, that women fell to their knees when he so much as bestowed a smile upon them. He couldn’t fathom her finding any man more attractive. The jerk.
“Of course I find Richard more attractive, Dr. Cain.” She put great emphasis on her formal use of his name. “He and I have been dating for almost ten months.”
“Ten months?” He raised a brow as if impressed as his gaze took in everything about her. “Some marriages don’t last that long.”
Her breath lodged in her throat and she dug her fingernails harder into her palms. Mentally, she called him every rotten name she could think of.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “Too many people get married who shouldn’t. Probably because they’re too young to know any better or one of them wasn’t committed to the relationship to begin with. My guess is that when those people become involved in their next serious relationship, they are a lot choosier.”
The arrogant look in his eyes flickered just a little, as if she’d delivered a damaging blow and won that round. Good. He needed taking down a peg or two.
“I bet you’re right.” He turned to Meghan and gave her a smile so charming that it was a wonder she didn’t swoon. “Hi, I’m Dr. Lucas Cain. I work at Children’s with Emily.”
Ugh. He sounded so nice, so polite, and Meghan was tripping over herself trying to form coherent sentences. He’d always had that effect on women. Even her.
But that had been in the past. These days her sentences were freaking pieces of grammatical art. She’d been inoculated against his sexual mojo.
Well, mostly. He was a sexy beast and her body wasn’t dead. Good thing her mind knew better and ruled.
“Me, too,” Meghan practically stuttered. “At Children’s. I mean, I work at Children’s, too.”
Lucas’s brow lifted. “On the neuro floor with Emily?”
Hearing her name on his lips caused tightness to squeeze Emily’s chest. Darn him that he was here creating chaos in her world, not to mention making a blabbering idiot of her best friend.
Meghan nodded, still stammering and stuttering. “I’ve taken care of a few of your patients.”
He flashed one of his most potent smiles and Emily had to forgive her friend. When he was more handsome than anything Hollywood had ever put on the silver screen, how was Meghan supposed to resist? Her friend didn’t know he had a heart of ice and a soul as black as coal.
“Ah,” he said. “That’s why you look familiar.”
Emily wasn’t buying that he hadn’t known who Meghan was. No doubt he knew everything about her best friend.
Meghan’s lashes swooped downward. “I guess you heard what I was saying about how you looked.”
Her best friend was flirting with her ex. Not that Meghan knew, but still. Gag. Gag. Gag.
Just take Emily out and push her in front of a taxi driver right now. She couldn’t take any more.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go find a ladies’ room.” She went to move past Lucas, but the photographer chose that moment to appear.
“Hello,” the overly friendly guy said, smiling and motioning for Lucas and Emily to pose. “Get together for a photo for our website.”
Emily clenched her teeth and moved one step closer to Lucas.
The photographer frowned. “Smile. Look happy. You just brought in more money than any of the others.”
There was that. Raising money for a good cause did make her happy. She sighed and focused on the help that would be provided to her patients’ families because of Lucas’s generosity.
Surprisingly, he looked a little hesitant. Lucas off guard. Now, that was something new. Still, he put his arm at her waist and smiled for the camera.
Trying to ignore the fact that he was touching her, Emily curved her lips upward.
The photographer’s flash went off a couple of times.
“Thanks.” The photographer turned to Meghan and her winner, who’d joined them. “Your turn, Pretty Lady.”
Meghan curled up next to the stockbroker she’d gone on a couple of dates with.
Which moved everyone’s attention off Emily and Lucas.
Her throat suddenly tight, she glared at him. “Congratulations. You’re such a winner.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9754999b-fd35-5361-820e-b014a26ef1ff)
THAT HADN’T GONE anywhere near the way Lucas had mentally rehearsed his first encounter with Emily outside the hospital.
Then again, what had he expected? He should thank his lucky stars that she hadn’t made a scene.
The look she’d given him said she’d like to have smacked him. Or worse.
“I think you two got off on the wrong foot.” Meghan rejoined him after the photographer had snapped a few shots of her and her date winner. The brunette frowned after Emily. “I don’t understand how that’s even possible. Emily gets along with everyone. She’s the sweetest, kindest person I know.”
They hadn’t gotten off on the wrong foot, but they’d ended that way.
He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath, catching the faintest whiff of Emily’s perfume still on the air. She’d always worn the light vanilla scent. He could never smell anything even close to the fragrance without being haunted by memories of the past.
Lately, most everything had his mind filling with Emily.
Ever since he’d been offered the position at Children’s, he’d been confronted with memory after memory. Probably because he’d known taking the job meant coming face-to-face with his biggest regret.
To head the department, oversee research in traumatic brain injury, play an active role in the decisions being made that would impact how things were done on the pediatric neurology unit—Children’s had offered him all that and more. The position was his dream come true.
He’d still hesitated.
Because of the woman walking away from him.
Just as she’d walked away five years ago.
Not that he hadn’t deserved her leaving. He had. He just hadn’t thought she’d walk away from their marriage, no matter how bad things got.
He’d been wrong.
But Emily had been right to leave. She’d been so unhappy, crying more often than not. Marriage to him had rapidly done that to her. He’d thought she was depressed, needing counseling, but when he’d suggested as much, she’d burst into tears. That night had been the night she’d packed her things.
His wife leaving him had hurt like hell, but he had gotten over it, had moved on and made a good life for himself.
But seeing Emily again had been tough. More so than he’d been prepared for. He wasn’t sure quite what he’d expected of her, but the cold shoulder he got every time he walked onto the unit just had to go.
No, he didn’t expect her to do cartwheels that he’d joined the hospital where she worked, but he was a good pediatric neurosurgeon and was now medical director of her unit. What had happened between them was a long time ago, water under the bridge, they’d both moved on. He was happy. She was happy. There was no need for awkwardness between them.
That was why he’d bid on her date.
Mostly.
As Emily’s bid had proceeded, he’d grown more and more annoyed with the man she’d arrived with.
The man she’d been comparing him unfavorably to.
The man who’d acted as if bidding on Emily was an inconvenience.
Emily was too good for the guy.
He supposed it could be argued that she’d been too good for Lucas, too. She probably had been.
