“You’ve reached the voice mailbox of Officer Carter Sullivan. Leave a message…”
“Uh, Carter, this is Joni Montgomery,” she stammered. “Call me.” Then she recited her phone number.
She returned to the nurses’ station and tried to concentrate on work, but thoughts of Carter kept intruding. Thoughts of that incredible kiss. Memories of him holding her. Would you get out of my head? she wanted to shout.
“Joni, there’s someone here to see you,” a nurse told her before headed down the hall.
She looked up from her charts at a broad-shouldered man in the crisp blue uniform of a San Antonio police officer. Her heart did a back flip and she felt the blood rush to her face. How was she supposed to deal with Carter calmly when her body reacted so fiercely to him?
“I get a kick out of the way you blush so easily.” He grinned and moved closer to the nurses’ station. “I didn’t think women did that anymore.”
“Blushing is merely an involuntary physical reaction.” She busied herself straightening a stack of patient charts that didn’t need straightening. “Like hiccups, or sweaty palms.”
“Hmm. More attractive, though. Especially on you.”
She could feel his gaze like a hot caress on her skin. When she raised her head, she found him regarding her with a half smile on his lips that would have made a nun have second thoughts about her vocation. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You forgot to tell me how to get in touch with you. Then I remembered you said you worked at Santa Rosa. I took a chance you’d be here today.”
“I just called and left you a message at the station.”
His smile broadened. “Then you didn’t chicken out.”
She’d wanted to, but she hadn’t been able to think of any other way to appease G.P. Or any other man who would be sure to have her grandmother packing her bags and heading out of Texas in short order. “We made an agreement. I intend to keep my part of it.” After all, how hard could it be to endure one date with him?
“I stopped by to find out what the plan is for tomorrow night, and so we could get our stories straight before the big event.”
“Speaking of getting stories straight…” She moved out from behind the nurses’ station. “Let’s go back to the break room for a minute and talk about a few things.”
The closet-size room at the end of the hall had just enough space for a table and two chairs, a small refrigerator and a cart that held a microwave, a coffee-maker, and assorted boxes of crackers, cans of coffee and jars of tea bags. A half-empty box of donuts sat on the table.
Joni shut the door behind them and turned to face him. “Why didn’t you mention last night that you have children?”
His smile vanished. “What the hell?” He stared at her, true astonishment on his face. “I don’t have any children. Where did you get an idea like that?”
She clutched the back of a folding chair. “When I called the station, the man who answered asked if I was one of your kids.”
Laughter exploded from him. She tightened her grip on the chair. “What’s so funny about that?”
Carter shook his head. “He wasn’t talking about my children.”
“Then who was he talking about?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “The area I patrol attracts a lot of street kids. Runaways. I try to get to know them—let them know if they ever need anything, they can call me.”
“Street kids.” Her heart gave a little twist. “That…that’s really nice of you.”
“Yeah, that’s me. A regular saint.” He cocked one eyebrow. “Sorry to disappoint you. I know you were expecting worse things from me.”
Touché. She looked at the floor. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“So what’s the deal here?” He leaned toward her, his hands on the table between them. “Did you date a cop once and he did you wrong? Did you have a runin with a bad cop once upon a time? Did your parents threaten to turn you over to the police when you were little and you were bad? Or do you just not like the cut of the uniform?” He looked down at his blue shirt and pants. “I hear women really go for the brown sheriff’s department getup. Maybe I should try that.”
She bit back a smile. Did they teach cops how to ask serious questions in such a nonthreatening manner? No, she’d bet this particular approach was a Carter Sullivan original. “The uniform is great,” she said. And he looked great in it. Every female in the emergency department, including one woman lying on a stretcher, had checked him out when he walked in.
She crossed her arms under her breasts. “I don’t like adrenaline junkies.”
He straightened and drew his eyebrows together. “Try that one again.”
“You know. Men who get off on danger. Cops. Firefighters. Test pilots. Race-car drivers.”
“So the danger thing doesn’t turn you on?”
Why did he put the question that way? This had nothing to do with sex. “Men into those things are selfish.”
He rubbed his chin, considering. “How do you figure that? Haven’t you heard the term ‘public servant’?”
She shifted her weight to one hip. “I’m not saying you don’t provide a public service, or that what you do isn’t important. But nobody stays in that kind of work long if they don’t get a rush from courting danger. Only, when they get hurt—and odds are they will—their families are the ones who pay the price.”
He nodded. “So you figure you’ll just avoid that hurt altogether and stick with nice, safe guys. Like accountants.”
“That’s it.” Her shoulders relaxed. Maybe he did understand.
“What if I told you I pulled an accountant out of a wrecked car just two days ago? Head-on collision with a dump truck.”
“I’d say it sounded like a story you made up to prove a point.”
Laughter lit his eyes. “Okay, so it was a shoe salesman. Same difference.”
“The odds are still in the accountant’s—or the shoe salesman’s—favor.”
He moved around the table to stand in front of her, uncomfortably close. “So love to you is a matter of playing the odds?”
She raised her chin, staring past his shoulder, and tried not to breathe too deeply of his leather-and-soap scent. “Who says I can’t love a safe man as much as a danger junkie?”
“That’s only if we really get to choose who we love.”
She jerked her gaze to his. Why did he look so sure of himself? So certain he was right. “Of course we do. That’s what the whole dating thing is about. Choosing.”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Love’s not like that at all.”
“Who made you an expert?”
He stepped closer, backing her up against the door. She couldn’t move away without pressing against him, could scarcely draw a breath without the tips of her breasts brushing his chest. But more than his physical proximity, his gaze held her, silencing her protests, stealing thought. “So when you kissed me last night, it was because you chose to do so?”
She swallowed. “Of course.”
He leaned over and pressed his lips to her throat, barely catching her flesh between his teeth. Heat knifed through her, melting a path from