“Hang on, I’m coming,” a muffled—and decidedly irritated—male voice called from within. An instant later the door opened, and she found herself looking directly at a man’s muscular, broad-shouldered, bare chest.
Water droplets glistened in a ragged triangle of golden chest hair spread over superbly developed pectoral muscles. Below a corded midriff, a dark blue towel was slung low on narrow hips, held in place by one large hand wearing a wide golden wedding band.
Acutely embarrassed, she reluctantly lifted her gaze to the man’s face. Stretched taut over sharp bones and hollowed planes, his skin had a patina of bronze from a burned-in tan. Heavy blond stubble added harsh texture to a jaw that was decidedly square. Deep lines framed a mouth that was well-shaped, but set in bitter lines.
“Well?” he demanded impatiently, and from beneath sun-bleached brows, green eyes fringed with brush-thick golden lashes bored into hers.
Her first reaction was hurt that Sarah’s dad would deliberately omit to mention that Elliot was one of the doctors he’d been contacting. Her second was a wild—and wholly unexpected—joy at seeing her first love again.
“I…when Signor Francetti said Dr. Hunter was next door, I naturally assumed it was your father.”
Suspicion tightened the muscles around eyes that she saw now were badly bloodshot. “You know my father?”
“Well, of course I—” She broke off when she realized he was still glaring at her as though she were some kind of rudely aggressive stranger. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it,” she said with a choked laugh. “That makeover must have really done a job.”
His gaze narrowed to a near squint, then turned dangerously impatient. “Look, lady, I have a raging headache and a real short tolerance for riddles. In two seconds I’m closing this door, so if you have something to say to me, get to it, or go the hell away.”
Heat suffused her face and her breath hitched. “You rude, self-involved…jerk! I can’t believe I once thought you were the kindest person I’d ever met.”
His mouth twisted into a sardonic sneer. “Maybe that ‘didn’t we meet someplace before’ baloney works on some guys, honey, but I’m damned sure I would remember a hot little number like you.”
A hot little number? Of all the unmitigated gall! And yet the purely female part of her psyche felt a little thrill. Her last semiboyfriend had dropped her after three dates because he considered her a cold fish.
“A thousand dollars donated to charity says we have indeed met—and more than once,” she retorted with a new recklessness that both frightened and exhilarated her.
Disgust deepened the bitter lines bracketing his mouth and made his deep voice raspy. “You’ve got a talent for bluffing, I’ll give you that.”
It cost her, but she lifted her chin and offered him a taunting smile. “Oh, I get it, you’re as chintzy as you are rude.”
A dark and savage emotion flared in his eyes. She refused to step back, though the protective instincts in her reptilian brain had already tensed her muscles and shot a hot bolus of adrenaline into her system.
At twenty-one Elliot’s body had been a magnificent example of well-conditioned, superbly developed male anatomy. A twelve on the hunkability scale she and Sarah had worked up during a sleepover in their sophomore year—not that Sarah had agreed, of course, but a sister couldn’t be expected to be objective.
Now, at thirty-one, he seemed taller and far more muscular and a thousand times more formidable. She locked her knees and forbade herself to show fear. Or anything else, for that matter.
“Five thousand to the San Sebastian Victims Relief Fund says we’ve never laid eyes on one another,” he challenged in a voice that had gone even harsher, though she would have thought that impossible.
Oh, she was going to enjoy this, she thought in a burst of anticipatory pleasure.
“Done,” she declared before she lost her nerve. In fact, some imp inside her prompted her to extend her hand. “Shall we shake on it, Doctor?”
He hesitated, then removed his right hand from the doorjamb where it had served to prop him up. He had beautiful hands, his long fingers supple and sensitive, his wrists thick with muscle, his grip strong enough to hold a scalpel steady for long, painstaking hours. As his fingers curled around hers, she noticed that his wide palm was rimmed with calluses that hadn’t been there ten years ago.
The inner shiver caused by the friction of his skin against hers was expected. After all, the last time he’d touched her had been in the heat of passion, and the body remembered, even when the mind forgot.
“Ball’s in your court, lady,” he challenged as the handshake ended. “Where exactly was it we met, you and I?”
He was crowding her now, looming over her in a blatant display of masculine arrogance. Strong scents of soap, mint toothpaste and wet, angry male teased her nostrils. Her senses wobbled a little before she regained control.
“Actually, I’m not really sure, but…” She paused, deliberately prolonging her private exhilaration.
“I thought so, you little—”
“…but my mother told me once that your mom brought you next door to see me a few days after I was born. Of course, I doubt you would remember that, since you were practically a baby yourself. I certainly don’t. What I do remember, however, is crashing my new red trike into the plum tree in your backyard one Christmas morning, then screaming bloody murder when you offered to sew up the cut on my chin with your mom’s petit point needle. I think I was four at the time, which would have made you five.”
Shock splintered his eyes. His gaze narrowed, skimmed like lightning to her toes, then moved slowly upward until it zeroed in on her face. Holding her breath, she watched recognition settle into those familiar eyes, followed by something very like guilt.
“My God! Katie? Is it really you?” Now his voice was rough, as though forced through a constricted throat.
Ah, revenge truly was sweet, she thought, her lips forming her coolest smile, the one she’d practiced in front of the mirror for weeks before trying it out on smugly superior male colleagues during her residency.
“That’s Dr. Remson to you, Doctor.” She felt a rush of pure vindication. “You can leave the receipt for the donation with the desk clerk.”
Feeling empowered and deliciously militant for the first time in her life, she turned and stalked off, her sandals slapping the carpet with each proudly furious step.
Behind her she heard an angry curse, followed by the unmistakable sounds of pounding footsteps. She quickened her pace, but refused to sprint.
“Stop running away, damn it,” he all but growled in her ear a split second before he grabbed her arm and, with an ease that infuriated her, jerked her to a halt.
Her leather soles slipped on the carpet’s thick pile and she skidded sideways. Her hip collided with his hard thigh before she found her footing. He jerked back as though scalded. The towel flipped open, exposing one muscular thigh and, for a brief instant, more intimate parts of his anatomy.
A 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.”