sizzling heat started in the vicinity of her throat and melted downward to pool in the intimate parts of her anatomy. God, was she actually panting?
Scrambling to regain her dignity, she straightened her spine and glared at him. “Let me go, or I’ll scream so loud the king himself will hear me,” she ordered through a stiff jaw.
“Not unless you promise to listen!” His grip eased, but his hand remained coiled around her arm. For all his good-natured affability, Elliot had a stubborn streak as unyielding as tempered steel.
“I’ll give you sixty seconds.” She made a show of glancing at her watch, the old-fashioned kind with the sweep hand. “Starting now.”
“You’re right, I behaved like a jerk,” he grated, his jaw rigid.
It was difficult to look down her nose when she was looking up, but Kate leaned back far enough to make a stab at it. Anything was preferable to standing with her nose all but buried in that sexy chest hair. “And your point is?”
“I’m apologizing, damn it. That’s my point.” He looked thunderously angry—and yet, buried deep in his eyes was the same black emptiness she’d seen on the day he’d buried his wife and child.
Death was no stranger to those in the medical profession, especially surgeons and technicians involved in high risk cases. Over the years she’d grieved at every loss as though it were her own child, and as a matter of personal choice remained involved with helping parents come to grips with their own grief.
But never, in all the years since that bleak gray day in October, had she seen anyone suffer the way Elliot had. Her heart expanded and she nearly reached out to him before she remembered how easily he had shredded both her heart and her secret dreams.
“Katie, I’m truly sorry,” he said when she remained silent. “I shouldn’t have dumped my foul mood on you.”
“I agree completely, and your time is up.” She directed a pointed look at the large sinewy hand still holding her captive.
His brows lowered. “You’re still ticked off.”
“No, I’m in a hurry to get to the hospital, Doctor. I have patients to attend to!”
“Point taken.” Finally he let her go. The sensory imprint of those strong, callused fingers lingered, but she refused to indulge the need to rub away even that reminder of his touch. “I’m heading back myself. If you give me five minutes to throw on some clothes, I’ll go with you.”
Her self-possessed poise was beginning to fray. For the sake of her pride—and her peace of mind—she had to put some distance between the two of them.
“I don’t have five minutes, Doctor. And if I did, I wouldn’t waste them on you.”
Anger simmered for an instant in his eyes before fading. “Seems you’ve changed more than your looks, Kate,” he said quietly.
The whisper of hurt in his voice struck her as the worst kind of hypocrisy. He wasn’t the one who’d walked out of the pool house ten years ago, a pathetic basket case. Who hadn’t been able to get out of bed for a week. Who’d come close to hating herself for the humiliating spectacle she’d made of herself. Worst of all, who hadn’t been able to let a man touch her for years afterward.
“If you mean I’m no longer a…hmm, let me see if I can get this right. Oh yes, I remember now, ‘a stupidly naive little girl on some misguided mercy mission,’ you’re completely correct.”
He winced, then raked his free hand through his hair, leaving it tousled. Beneath the sun-bleached brows his eyes searched her face. “I hurt you more badly than you let on, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you hurt me, but I also realize I was as much to blame for what happened as you were. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He bowed his head, his free hand pinching the bridge of his nose. When he glanced up again, regret shimmered in his eyes like tears. “Katie, it’s not that I didn’t appreciate—”
“I’m not going to discuss the past with you, Elliot,” she interrupted, her voice bordering on shrill. She took a breath and tried to ignore the conflicting emotions in her chest. When she spoke again, she had her voice—and herself—under control again. “You and I are here to do a job, not walk down memory lane. I’m sure we can treat each other with appropriate courtesy on those few occasions when we’re forced to spend time in one another’s company.”
The disbelief in his eyes had her teeth grinding together. Clearly, Golden Boy wasn’t used to being rejected.
“Is that what you really want, Kate?”
“That’s what I want,” she said in her firmest tone. She felt a sharp stab of satisfaction. Less than admirable, perhaps, but completely human.
He hesitated, then sighed heavily, his big chest rising and falling mightily. Then, as she made herself hold her gaze steady on his, his jaw turned hard and ice formed in his eyes.
“In that case, Doctor, I won’t delay you a moment longer.” Without another word, he turned and stalked off with long, angry strides.
Alone in a bathroom the size of a regular hotel room, Elliot jerked the towel from his hips, wadded it into a ball and slammed it into the shower stall. As he stepped into clean briefs, he worked to level emotions that scared him.
“Way to go, Slick, you handled that real well,” he muttered as he dug into his shaving kit for his razor. As he slapped lather on his jaw, he forced his fractured thoughts into something resembling reason.
During the past ten years surly had been his mood of choice, followed by rude and uncommunicative. No matter where he was or who was around him, he’d been an equal opportunity…jerk. His jaw tightened as Kate’s outraged words rang in his ears again.
Self-involved? He tried to dispute that, but couldn’t. Not that it bothered him all that much. A man who’d had the best part of himself amputated tended to think about what was missing. In his case there wasn’t a prosthesis he could buy to replace his wife and baby girl.
All he wanted was to be left alone. Most people got the message quickly enough. Medics Without Limits colleagues who worked with him soon learned to leave him strictly alone between assignments. No one invited him to share a meal or a beer…or a bed.
Damn it, Kate Remson had been way out of line!
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken one look at a woman and wanted her beneath him naked. No, damn it, not just a woman. His sister’s best friend. The solemn little brown wren he’d come to love as much as he loved Sarah.
Little Katie Remson, who’d always seemed to have her nose stuck in a book, had become a knockout with enough sexual wattage to short-circuit common courtesy and scramble his senses.
No wonder he hadn’t recognized her, he consoled himself as he methodically scraped away a night’s growth of whiskers. The black-rimmed, soda-bottle glasses that had dominated her face were gone, no doubt replaced by contact lenses—or maybe she’d had one of the new surgeries designed to correct her kind of severe myopia. Whatever the reason, he had been mesmerized by those golden eyes with the curly lashes and expressive brows.
Instead of the scraped-back ponytail or that twisted-up bun thing, her hair was now cut into one of those fashionable styles he’d first seen in Paris a few months back—like she’d just gotten out of bed after a hot and heavy night of sex. While she’d been looking up at him as if he was some kind of peasant and she was the queen, his fingers had itched to touch the soft wisps at the nape of her neck.
But it had been her mouth that had had life returning to his groin. For about ten seconds, he’d been in real danger of embarrassing both of them, which was why he’d thrown attitude her way. And hadn’t she tossed it right back?
Damn straight she had. Worse, she’d gotten him as worked up as a horny sixteen-year-old. Hell, the woman could wake