Flirting with the Doc of Her Dreams. Janice Lynn

little birdie told me.

      Right. I have a little birdie in the middle of my hand that tells people who wake me up where they can go.

      There you go making me laugh again.

      I wasn’t trying to be funny.

      Which makes it all the better.

      If u say so.

      I do. Sorry if I woke you, but now that we’ve established that you are indeed awake, tell me what you’re wearing.

      Beth rolled her eyes at her phone.

      Really? That is so cliché.

      Then give me a cliché answer.

      In the glow of her cellular phone Beth glanced under the bed covers at the old Nashville Predators T-shirt and the silky panties she wore. The panties were passable as sexy, maybe. The well-worn hockey T-shirt—ha, not by any stretch of the imagination.

      A teddy and garters. Four-inch heels too. Customary sleepwear, you know.

      Of course. Very cliché, but great visual.

      Implying that he could visualize her. Of course he could visualize her. Whether it was Eli or some random guy, he’d sexted her specifically.

      What are u wearing?

      Who says I’m wearing anything at all.

      Beth gulped. Okay, so it wasn’t an image of some random guy she was picturing. Just as always, her fantasy consisted of only one man. Eli in the buff, as the owner of that magnificent abdomen and chest from the photo.

      Would be a shame to cover up those abs. That picture really u?

      Would it matter if it wasn’t?

      Depends.

      On?

      Your sparkly personality. That is why I’m texting with u after all.

      Oh? I thought it was because you had a thing for pervs.

      Beth smiled at his quick comeback.

      Well, there is that.

      You owe me.

      I owe u nothing.

      Sure you do.

      What, please tell, do I owe u?

      A picture.

      She laughed. Not that he could hear her. But she laughed at the absolute absurdity of her sending him, whoever him was, a photo of herself. If it was Eli she was texting with, the last thing she’d want to do was scare him away with a selfie.

      I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was u.

      If I did would you resuscitate me?

      Give you a little mouth-to-mouth?

      Hadn’t she just that very day been thinking of Eli giving her mouth-to-mouth? If this was him, there really was some weird connection between them.

      For starters

      You implying it would take more than my mouth on yours to resuscitate you? Are u like old and decrepit or something? They make little blue pills for that u know.

      I’m old enough to know what I want. Are you saying that your mouth on mine is all it would take to get me … resuscitated?

      Ha, Beth thought, she was no siren and her experience wasn’t that she drove men wild with her kisses, but this was anonymous—sort of—texting. She could say whatever she wanted. She could be a sex goddess. A sext goddess. If this was Eli for real, well, at least while texting from the privacy of her own bed she wasn’t tongue-tied, breathless, or running away from him. She kind of liked the freedom their sexting gave her.

      One stroke of my tongue across your lips and you’d go up in flames, Old Man.

      Eli gulped. A real honest-to-God gulp. He was pretty close to going up in flames just at reading Beth’s text.

      It had been all he could do at the hospital to keep from pulling her aside and commenting on their conversation the night before. He’d thought about doing so a hundred times. He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to ask her to dinner with him, to sit and talk and get to know her. Maybe do a little shopping for tying-to-the-bed rope afterwards.

      Maybe if she hadn’t turned a pretty shade of pink and refused to say a full sentence to him, he would have at least issued the dinner invite. But she’d purposely avoided him. He was a hundred percent positive she’d stayed away from the nurses’ station as long as she could. Was that why he barely knew her despite the fact she’d worked at the hospital for several months? He had a vague memory of her starting four or five months previously. Of seeing her in the ICU, but it hadn’t really registered that he’d only seen her from a distance. Until today. Today he’d realized that it was a rare occasion that he’d directly had interaction with her regarding a patient.

      His phone buzzed and he realized he hadn’t yet responded to Beth’s text. What would she say if he told her that her text, thoughts of her, had his entire body hard? That texting with her was the most fun, the most excitement he’d had in months? There might be something wrong with him that he hadn’t been able to commit to Cassidy, but even beyond that, there had been something wrong with him that he’d fallen into a horrible life rut, forgotten how to have fun, and hadn’t even realized it.

      You fall asleep on me? she asked.

      I wish.

      Crazy, but he did wish that. Not until after he’d done a lot of other things with her but, yes, then he would like to fall asleep on Beth Taylor.