He took a quick, sharp breath. So much for trying to appear unaffected.
He could tell she was trying not to smile as she gestured toward an overstuffed, ruffled sofa, indicating that he could take a seat. “Or would you rather stand?”
It was as if she knew him. He shrugged. They both remained standing.
She meandered to the other side of the room. “So you’ve reconsidered my offer to act as your fiancée at that dinner party.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said lies are like dogs.”
“They are.”
“But?”
“Coop claims playacting and lying are two entirely different things.”
“I see. You said Coop read you the riot act because you turned my offer down. Is that why you reconsidered? Because Coop made you see reason?”
“Coop has nothing to do with this. I thought about what you said. About pitying me.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. It was my temper talking. I’m sorry.”
“I had it coming. But I don’t want your pity.”
“What do you want?”
She must have walked closer when he wasn’t looking, because he could see her eyes, round in the dimly lit room, the pupils so large only a narrow circle of green surrounded them. Like pools of appeal, they invited him in. He was in the process of taking his second step when it occurred to him that she wasn’t the one who had moved closer.
He needed to loosen his tie. And he wasn’t wearing a tie. He settled for clearing his throat. “It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what I need.”
“What do you need, Tripp?”
His gaze strayed to her mouth, his throat convulsing on a swallow. He had to clear it again in order to say, “I need that position in Santa Rosa.”
“Why?”
“Santa Rosa is a city of more than a hundred thousand people. It’s a wealthy area; the practice is a private one with new, modern, state-of-the-art equipment. The facility is only a thirty-minute drive from San Francisco and caters to the wealthy. My salary would more than triple. I need the money and the prestige.”
She looked him in the eye and said, “You don’t strike me as the type who cares about prestige.”
He told himself he had no business feeling complimented. “It isn’t for me. It’s for a clinic I’ve set up to aid the poor. Right now, it’s operating on a shoestring. I want to expand it in this area. Eventually I plan to open a dozen more up and down the California coast. It’s going to take donations, and backers with deep pockets.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” She asked a hundred intelligent questions. And he, a man who preferred yes and no answers, poured out the story of the clinic’s meager beginnings, and his hopes and plans for its future. Sometime during the conversation, he’d taken a seat on her comfortable sofa and she’d sat in the matching chair, her bare feet tucked underneath her.
Maybe there was something to that aromatherapy after all.
The sky outside her windows went from milky white to gray to pitch black. The candles burned low; she didn’t turn on a light. Sometimes, their conversation flickered like that candlelight, illuminating other topics, her brothers and sisters and a few of the foster kids he’d known while staying with her family. She spoke lovingly of her father, but never mentioned her mother. She seemed concerned about her oldest brother, Rand, and was worried because she hadn’t heard from her younger, adopted sister, Emily. It occurred to him that he didn’t know Amber well. He’d lost touch with most of the Coltons. Other than staying in contact with Joe, Tripp had been too busy clawing his way through med school to maintain strong ties with the huge, extended Colton clan. He hadn’t even known Emily had left town and hadn’t contacted anybody. He hadn’t known that Amber lived in Fort Bragg, either. Inez had been only too happy to supply him with that information when he’d shown up at the ranch in Prosperino earlier. Funny, he’d expected Amber to live in a grand house like her father’s, but her home was quite modest.
She didn’t seem to want to talk about herself, though. Every time it happened, she steered the conversation back to his pilot clinic or the position he was after in Santa Rosa.
“How many times have you met with the doctors at this exclusive practice?”
“Two.”
“How many times has your rival met with the same people?”
“I don’t know.”
She procured a notebook out of nowhere, and began jotting things down. She wanted to know about the dinner, and who would be attending. She was professional, exuberant, warm and smart. God yes, she was smart. He was in awe.
The wind rattled a window. Although he didn’t feel a draft, the candles flickered.
Their gazes met, held. The images from his dreams the previous night shimmered through his mind. His breathing deepened, his gaze skimming over her body.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.
“Working.” He cleared his throat. At least she hadn’t asked him what he was thinking. It was a good thing, because he would have been even more hard pressed to come up with a good answer.
“What time could you be finished?”
“Four or five.”
“Think you could come back to Fort Bragg around five?”
“You want me to come back?”
She looked at him with a lift of her eyebrows that seemed to say, “Isn’t that what I just said?” But she only nodded.
After a moment, he did, too.
She wrote something in her notebook, tore the page out and tucked it into his hand. “Meet me at this address, say, at five o’clock. We’ll begin the tweaking then.”
Tweaking?
He’d be damned if he would let his imagination go there. He rose quickly to his feet.
Despite his best efforts, he got a mental picture and warmed ten degrees. She was circling him. It gave him a moment to get his body under control.
“What do you mean, tweaking?”
“At this point,” she said from a place directly behind him, “appearance is everything. There’s a wonderful old-world men’s clothing store right here in Fort Bragg.”
He peered at the address on the sheet of paper in his hand. “A men’s clothing store? You want me to buy a new suit? That’s what you meant?”
“Unless you already own a dynamite one. What did you think I meant?”
Never mind what he’d thought. “Dr. Perkins has already seen me like this.”
She looked him over. “There’s certainly nothing wrong with the way you are. Not from a female’s perspective. This Dr. Perkins doesn’t happen to be a woman, does she?”
He shook his head.
And she sighed. “Too bad. Oh, well. This weekend, we’re going to give the people affiliated with Dr. Perkins’s practice a new and improved version of Dr. Tripp Calhoun, the finest pediatrician in sunny California.”
She ushered him to the door. Although he didn’t remember doing it, he must have opened it, because he walked through.
“Tripp?”
He turned on the top step. “Yes?”
“I’m glad we’re going to be friends again.” Before he could answer, she reached