if he was very lucky, he could close his eyes for a few more minutes. Sleep was far more important than sex these days. Then he’d shower, grab some steaming, black coffee, and maybe, just maybe, feel sane again.
“How are you supposed to start a family someday if you chase off all the women?” Carmen called up the stairs. “Answer me that.”
He answered that with one concise muttered word.
Carmen tsked. “You were rude, and isn’t she your boss at the clinic?”
Yeah, and just what he needed, yet another politically correct bureaucrat telling him what to do. And yet…Maybe Carmen had a point. If he tried harder, added a smile, even turned on the charm he used to relax his patients…he might actually get his sentence reduced.
Luke pictured the woman’s wild, gloriously red hair bouncing in the morning sea breeze. The sparks in her eyes. He thought of the way she’d drawn in a huge deep breath just before she’d blasted him, as if she was so amazingly angry she could hardly think.
Nope. He doubted he could get her to reduce his “volunteer” time. She wanted his head on a platter—her platter. He’d written his own death sentence, damn it.
The doorbell rang.
“Ah, hell, what now?” He looked down at Carmen. “I’ve had five hours sleep in two days.”
Carmen’s entire face softened. “Yes, baby. You work too hard.”
“I just need a few more minutes of shut-eye. You can chase her off, okay?”
“What if it’s an emergency?”
“It’s not. It’s just Red, looking to take a piece out of my hide for being late.”
Carmen grinned. “She did seem to be a natural, temperamental redhead, didn’t she? You know, rumor has it you used to be able to soothe a woman. They say you even used to like women.”
He still did. In bed. But right now he was too tired to think of sharing his mattress, plus he doubted Faith McDowell would be interested anyway. She seemed to expect more out of a person than what he had in mind.
He didn’t have more. He gave it all to work and his patients, gave everything he had so that at the end of the day, there wasn’t anything left.
Maybe it was the way he’d been raised, with parents who’d rarely taken the time for him or his brother, Matt, pawning them off like unwanted luggage on everyone and anyone who’d take them. Maybe it was because it’d been so long since he’d taken a breather, he could hardly remember who he really was. He didn’t care.
He wanted sleep.
The doorbell rang again.
“Tell her I’ll be there soon.”
“Clearly, she needs you now.”
With a groan, he padded back down the stairs, glaring at Carmen, who unlike everyone else in his life, didn’t back down from him. “This is why I hired you, you know. You’re supposed to scare people away.”
“Stop being so curmudgeonly.”
Stopping in midstride, he stared at her. “Curmudgeonly?”
“It’s someone who’s grumpy, and—”
“I know what it means, and I’m not—Oh, forget it.” He settled his hand on the knob and hauled it open, finding himself looking down into the intelligent, and still fuming, eyes of the woman who was to be his boss at the clinic for the next three months’ worth of Saturdays.
You used to like women.
Oh, but he definitely still did. He just wasn’t used to being looked at as if he was pond scum, especially by a wildly attractive woman with steam coming out of her ears.
Absolutely too long without sex.
“You’re still not ready,” she said exasperated.
Deciding there should be a law against facing a furious woman before having a cup of coffee, no matter how lovely she was, he shook his head. The question was, would he ever be ready for a day full of aromatherapy and yoga? God save him. Despite his to-the-bone-fatigue, his lips quirked. “I need more than sixty seconds.”
Her gaze appeared to be riveted on his chest. “We don’t have more than sixty seconds,” she murmured.
He’d stumbled half-naked out of bed to get the door earlier, and now, given the way she looked at him, he glanced down to make sure his sweats covered all the essentials. Yes, he was covered, but if she kept staring at him like that, as if he was a long, tall glass of water and she was dying of thirst, those essentials were going to make themselves known regardless of his irritation.
“Here.” Carmen materialized from behind him and wisely shoved a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. He nearly cried in gratitude, and might have actually hugged her, but then she said to Faith McDowell in apology, “Give him until the coffee’s gone. Two minutes tops, he’ll be human again. I promise.”
“Oh.” Faith smiled sweetly. At Carmen, not Luke. “Yes, I understand. Thank you.” Kindness and genuine caring poured from her. Her voice, light now that it was directed at someone other than him, was the most amazingly sweet, musical voice Luke had ever heard.
It reminded him of…sex. Unbelievable, what sleep deprivation could do to a man.
Carmen and Red—her hair was whipping around her shoulders, long and wild—watched him with twin expressions of expectation, waiting for his coffee to work the miracle that wasn’t going to happen, not to day. “I’m going upstairs now,” he said carefully. “To get showered and dressed.”
“Is that going to take more than five minutes?” His new boss glanced at her watch, quivering with impatience.
“Ten,” he said, then paused as if he really cared what she thought. “Is that okay?”
She considered this. Considered him. “Just remember, the patients are counting on you.” Her voice was cool again. The wind picked up, and with a sound of annoyance, she tossed back her wild hair. Her sweater, thin and ineffective against the chill, slipped off one shoulder, revealing the fact she was…chilly.
In an odd reaction, considering he didn’t like her, Luke felt a physical stirring at the sight.
Sleep deprived, he reminded himself. A dangerous thing.
Shrugging back into the sweater, Faith crossed her arms over her chest. “This is really a two-way street, you know. I’ll be helping you, too.”
“How, exactly, is that possible?”
“You’ll be practicing—and hopefully improving—your people skills.”
It was one thing to be so tired as to be lusting after a woman who thought him an insensitive idiot, but it was another thing entirely to let her think he needed her in any way. He needed no one, and he certainly didn’t need help with his people skills.
“You might not realize this, but one of the basic people skills is charm. I can help you there.”
Carmen laughed at that, but when he whipped around with a murderous expression, she vanished into the kitchen.
“In order to charm,” Faith said. “You need to stimulate the people around you. Can you do that?”
He thought of the inexplicable way his body had reacted to her. “Stimulation isn’t a problem,” he managed with a straight face.
“Good, because this is very important. The clinic is very important, and we have so much to do. Today alone we have babies to deliver, allergies and sinus infections, healing bones and…”
Luke’s mind drifted back to her body. How was it she looked so good in those scrubs? But she did, she looked soft and curvy, and—
“Dr. Walker?” Hands on her hips, she cocked