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All in all, Peter thought as he changed back into his street clothes in his dimly lit office, this had been one of the worst Januarys he’d ever experienced.
He remembered Bethany saying it had snowed, and wondered if he was going to have to shovel his driveway when he got home that night. It wasn’t a heartening thought. Despite having lived in Walnut River his whole life, Peter was definitely not a fan of the white stuff.
He paused just long enough to locate some lab and radiology reports and place them in his briefcase. When he stepped into the elevator car, it was empty. He continued to have it to himself all the way down. The doors opened again on the first floor and he walked out, then made his way down the corridor leading to the parking lot.
As he opened one of the double doors and emerged into the frigid night air, he was in time to hear a woman exclaim, “Oh damn,” and then see Bethany Holloway suddenly disappear from view as she slid down the icy stairs.
Chapter Seven
Working triage in the E.R. had honed Peter’s reflexes. Instinct just took over.
Holding on to the banister, he sailed down the steps and grabbed Bethany’s arm just before her body came in ungraceful contact with the icy ground.
With her feet sliding in one direction and her body being jerked in another, Bethany overcompensated. In an effort to regain her balance, she threw her weight forward.
The next second, instead of keeping her steady, Peter found himself going down. He landed flat on his back. Since he was still holding on to her arm, he wound up pulling her down as well.
Right on top of him.
The air knocked out of her, she stared down at his face, stunned. He thought she’d indignantly scramble to her feet—or try to. Instead, she started to laugh. Her laugh, low, melodic and sensual, was highly infectious, not to mention that he could actually feel her laughing.
Picturing how absurd this had to look to anyone passing by—mercifully, there was no one—Peter started laughing, too. He laughed so hard, he became practically helpless and moisture began forming in the corners of his eyes.
Moving with the rhythm of laughter, their bodies rubbed lightly against each other.
Slowly, the laughter died away.
Caught between amusement and concern, Bethany struggled to regulate her breathing. “I don’t think that this is what you had in mind.”
Looking up at her, Peter found himself fighting an urge that hadn’t come over him in a very long time. So long that he could barely remember the last time. The pace he’d kept up these past ten years had left very little time for him to even attempt to nurture a private life. Even if that was partly by choice.
Right at this moment, with her breath drifting down along his face and their bodies pressed together, he was acutely aware of what had been missing from his life. What was missing.
So aware that he wasn’t conscious of anything but the tightening of his groin, the long, warm tongues of desire traveling through his body, heating it.
Making him yearn.
The look in her eyes told him he wasn’t alone here. For whatever reasons, Bethany was experiencing the very same thing. The same attraction, the same electricity.
He wasn’t a reckless man by nature. Acting on impulse was something other men did, not him.
Until now.
In one unguarded moment, Peter reached up and framed her face with his gloved hands. He brought her face down to his.
If having her body on top of his had set off a series of sharp, demanding electric shocks, kissing Bethany multiplied the sensations tenfold. She tasted of fresh strawberries and spring, both equally far removed from the moment.
He lost himself in the sensation.
For one brief shining second, he wasn’t Dr. Peter Wilder, highly respected internist, keeper of his father’s flame. He was just Peter, a flesh-and-blood man who longed for companionship, for someone to be there for him at the end of the day, for someone with whom he could share his thoughts, his plans. His love.
He remembered other dreams he’d once had.
Her head was spinning so badly Bethany thought maybe she’d hit it when Peter had accidentally pulled her down. But she’d landed on top of him and, though his body felt solid and hard, she knew for a fact that her head hadn’t made contact with him.
Her pulse accelerating, she could almost feel her blood, exhilarated, surging through her veins.
Bethany deepened the kiss.
The second their bodies had come in contact, it’d felt as if something had just come undone within her.
But if she didn’t draw back, if she let him continue even for another moment, Bethany was sincerely afraid of what that might do to her resolve, to the walls she’d been building up around herself for longer then she could remember. She only knew that they had been forged to keep the hurt back. If she let no one in, then she would never be hurt, it was as simple as that. She’d be invulnerable, the way she wanted to be.
She wasn’t invulnerable now, she realized. She was shaking. Inside and out. Any second now, it was going to occur to him that the cold weather had nothing to do with her reaction.
Her mind scattered in all directions, searching for something plausible to say in order to throw his attention off.
“So.” The single word swooped out of her mouth on a breath that was all but spent the moment she drew her head back. And then she smiled down at him. “About that takeover.”
She felt the laughter rumble in his chest before it burst from his lips. The up-and-down movement was soothing and erotic at the same time. So he did have a sense of humor, she thought, relieved. Thank God for small favors.
“One takeover is about all I can handle right now,” he told her amicably. It was obvious that he wasn’t talking about NHC—he was referring to what had just happened between them.
Confusion, enhanced by nerves, echoed in her head. The only thing she was certain of was that she wanted to kiss him again. She was even more certain that she shouldn’t.
Placing his hands on her arms, Peter gently moved her back so he could sit up. When he did, he drew in a long, deep breath, then exhaled. Slanting a look at her, he apologized. It seemed like the thing to do.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Are you?” Was he sorry that he’d kissed her? The second she thought that, she felt this odd pin-pricking sensation around her heart. What was that? Rather than deliberate over it, she struggled to block it.
Peter’s eyes held hers. “The fall,” he clarified.
Her breath had stopped in her throat and she had to force it back out again, had to consciously make herself breathe.
“And the kiss?” she asked softly.
Peter slowly moved his head from side to side. “I’m not sorry about that.”
She looked at him for a long moment. He wasn’t lying, she realized. An unexpected wave of happiness suddenly drenched her.
“I’m not, either,” she confided. And then she smiled at him, really smiled. “Finally, something we can agree on.” Was it her imagination, or had his smile just deepened?
“I have something else we can agree on,” Peter told her.
A leeriness slipped in again. She reminded herself that this was the man who opposed her ideas, whom she had to win over. She knew he was no pushover.
“Oh?”
He nodded. “That we should get up before someone comes by and sees us.”
A wave of regret came and went. She couldn’t begin to understand it. “Right.”
Bethany was about to spring to her feet, but he was faster. Standing up, Peter extended his hand to her. She looked at it, then raised her eyes to his face.
“Isn’t this what got us in trouble in the first place?” she reminded him.
He continued holding his hand out. “Lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.”
She had a wealth of extraneous knowledge in her head, retaining everything she’d ever read, even in passing. “That’s a fallacy, you know. Lightning’s been known to strike twice in the same place. Sometimes even three times.”
“I said ‘rarely,’” Peter pointed out, trying to keep a straight face, “not ‘never.’”
“Good enough.” Wrapping her long, slender fingers around his hand, Bethany held on tightly as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Once up, she took a step and felt her feet begin to slide dangerously beneath her. Instantly her hand tightened on his. She wasn’t pleased about coming off like some damsel in need of rescuing. “This is what I get for not wearing my boots,” she murmured under her breath.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he offered. “I’m not in any hurry.” For once, he added silently.
She had an independent streak that was a mile wide and she considered it one of her chief sources of pride. It almost made her turn him down. But she also possessed more than her share of common sense and, in this case, common sense trumped independence.
So Bethany murmured, “Thank you,” and then tried to make light of the situation by adding, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
He looked at her and she could all but feel his eyes delving into her. He was probably wondering what she was talking about, she thought. And then he surprised her by commenting, “Streetcar Named Desire. You’re a lot younger than Blanche DuBois.”
She nodded, impressed. “You’re familiar with the play?”
The corners of his mouth curved in amusement. “We’re not entirely backward here. Town’s got a library with books on the shelves and everything.”
She hadn’t meant to insult him, or be patronizing. It was just that she wasn’t accustomed to people who were versed in the arts. Her world had always revolved around business and she’d naturally assumed that his did the same around medicine.
A pink hue overtook her cheeks as Bethany pointed out her vehicle. “The car’s right over there.”
He gave her his arm to hang on to. They proceeded carefully. His shoes were rubber soled and he was far more sure-footed than she was, but he took small steps to match her pace. The snow crunched beneath their feet as they went.
“Is it true?” he asked, breaking the silence just as they reached her sedan.
She wasn’t sure what he was asking about. “That it’s my car?”
They’d reached their intended destination, but he was in no hurry to reclaim his arm. He rather liked the way she held on to it. “That you’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Maybe that had been giving too much of herself away, even though it had sounded like a flippant remark. “Well, I’ve moved around a bit, so most of the people I interact with are strangers.”
Which brought up another question in his mind. “Why did you move around so much? Army brat?”
The question made her laugh. Her father in a uniform, now there was an image. “Hardly. Both my parents made their mark in the corporate world.” Nannies had raised her and her older sister because her parents put in ten-, twelve-hour days, seduced by the promise of success, then working even harder once it came. “For the most part, I lived in New York until I went away to college.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward, I moved around.”
“Which brings us back to why?” He looked into her eyes. “Unless you think it’s none of my business.”
It wasn’t, but she answered him anyway. “I was looking for the right fit,” she replied, and then asked a question of her own. “Is this part of some psychological workup, Dr. Wilder?”
He shook his head. “Not my department.” And then he looked down into her eyes. “We’ve kissed in the snow, Bethany. I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you?”
She shrugged, looking away. The parking lot had thinned out a great deal. What was left had a layer of snow on it. “I guess maybe we can. Does this mean you’re going to use my first name when you growl at me at the next meeting?”
“I didn’t growl,” he protested. “I just raised my voice a little.”
She smirked at him.
Peter blew out a breath. She was right, he’d let his anger get the better of him. “If I growled, I apologize. For the sound, not the sentiment,” he emphasized, wanting to be honest with her.
Bethany inclined her head. They’d made a little progress, she supposed. “Fair enough. Does this mean that you’re willing to listen to the positive side of NHC taking over the hospital?”
She asked the question with a smile that he found very difficult to resist. He supposed that he could listen. That didn’t mean she could convince him, because some things were written in stone. But to refuse to listen made him out to be irrationally stubborn and he didn’t want her thinking of him that way. Not after what had just happened between them.
“I might be willing to listen,” he allowed, enunciating each word.
“But?” she pressed, sensing that the word was hovering about, waiting to emerge from his lips.
“No ‘but,’” he assured her. “Just a condition.”
“A condition,” she echoed. “What condition?”
She was looking at him warily. It amused him. No one had ever thought of him as someone to be wary of. “If you let me buy you a cup of coffee, I let you talk.”
He expected her to be relieved, and perhaps a little embarrassed for being so suspicious. She appeared to be neither.
“Is this going to be like the last time you bought me coffee? You walked out on me in mid-sentence,” she reminded him when he looked at her quizzically.
“No, it won’t,” he said with a warm smile. “This isn’t going to be like the last time. You can finish your sentence and I’ll finish my coffee.” He turned to his right. “There’s a coffee shop two blocks down. It’s open late. Is that out of your way?”
“No, it’s not.”
Maybe he wasn’t quite the stick-in-the-mud she had thought he was. Lord knows he didn’t kiss like a stick-in-the-mud. He kissed like a man who knew his way around women. But then, she didn’t have much experience in that area.
Bethany smiled up at him and nodded. “Okay, you’re on.” She glanced over toward his car. “I can drive,” she suggested. “Since your car looks like it’s gone into hibernation for the winter.”
“No, I think I should dig it out.” The sooner he got it running again, the better. “Don’t go anywhere,” he cautioned.
“And miss the chance of engaging in another argument with the chief of staff?” she teased. “I think not.”
He stopped. “Temporary chief of staff,” he reminded her.
“You could be chief permanently if you wanted the position.”
She said it with such certainty, he almost believed that she meant it. He wanted to set her straight before things got too complicated. Peter shook his head. “I don’t want it.”
