That she understood.
What she couldn’t understand was why Ty had agreed, why he’d even suggested her going to Texas with him.
That made absolutely no sense at all to her. No matter how many times she’d tried to work out his reasons, she kept coming up blank.
Looking as gorgeous as ever, Ty grinned that sexy Southern grin that, along with his Texan drawl, had all the NICU nurses swooning over him. Eleanor’s body did a little swooning of its own, too.
“Sorry, darlin’.” His eyes twinkled. “Didn’t mean to startle you or the babe. How’s our girl doing?”
At his “our girl” Eleanor’s throat clogged shut. Why, she didn’t know because it was the silliest of phrases and she knew he meant their patient and... Oh, what was she prattling on in her mind for? Just answer the man and be done with it.
“She’s holding her own.” A complete sentence and no stutter—yeah! If nothing else, spending time with him at the ribbon-cutting and reception seemed to have cured her of that habit around him.
He nodded his understanding. “A babe’s fighting spirit makes all the difference.”
“Speaking of fighting spirit, why did you agree to my father’s crazy suggestion that you go to his fund-raiser ball?” She tried to keep her voice light, as if his answer was no big deal. “They aren’t that much fun.”
He shrugged. “Maybe good ole country boy me just wanted to see what it’s like to hang with the big city-slicker politicians.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You can cut the good-ole-country-boy act. The big city-slicker politician ran a background check and obviously liked what he found. He could probably tell me what type of baby formula you were raised on.”
“I wasn’t.”
She stared at him in confusion. “You weren’t what?”
“Raised on formula.” He puffed his chest out. “My momma breast-fed me and my brother.”
“I didn’t need to know that.” Actually, she had a hard time envisioning Ty as a baby, as anything other than the gorgeous man he was.
“Sure you do,” he countered. “Can’t have you showing up in Texas as my date and not knowing a thing about me.”
As his date?
“That’s another thing.” Her brows pulled tightly together. “Why on earth would you want me to go to Texas with you?”
He didn’t seem concerned, just pulled his stethoscope out of his scrub pocket then met her gaze. “Why not? We had a nice time together at the ribbon-cutting reception and you’d be doing me a favor.”
“Just as you’re doing me a favor by going to my father’s campaign ball?”
Ty’s gaze cut to hers. “He really wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I just worked a Texas travel buddy into the bargain.”
“A travel buddy? If you think I’m going to—”
He held up his hand. “Stop right there. I’m not thinking any such thing, but am quite shocked at how quickly your mind went to the gutter, Eleanor.” He tsked, his eyes full of naughtiness.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t hold back her smile. “Try selling your innocence to one of your many fan clubs, Dr. Donaldson. I’m sure they’d be impressed.”
His brow arched. “Not much impresses you?”
Tired of fidgeting nervously with her stethoscope, she put the tubing around her neck and shoved her hands into her lab-coat pockets. “Lots of things impress me, but not your innocence. I’ve seen snakes with more saintly backgrounds.”
“As in the background check your father did? He couldn’t have turned up anything too bad or he wouldn’t have been rolling out the red carpet.” His grin took on a mischievous little-boy gleam. “Sure, I tipped a few cows in my younger days, but—”
“Tipped a few cows?” She hadn’t read her father’s report. He’d offered, but she’d refused on principle. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so haughty.
“You should see what we did to the sheep.” Ty’s brows waggled.
His outlandish comment had Eleanor smothering a laugh and a few of the nurses looking their way.
“Quit distracting me from the real issue,” she warned. “Why do you want me to go with you to Texas?”
This time he was the one fidgeting with his stethoscope. “I like you.”
Her cheeks grew hotter than asphalt on a midsummer day. “You like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
* * *
He liked her? Not meeting Eleanor’s eyes, Ty stalled by checking out Rochelle, listening to her tiny heart, lungs and surgically repaired belly, which still had various tubes and drains in place.
Very unlike him to hesitate to give an answer.
Usually he was smooth with the lines with the ladies. Usually.
Maybe it was because he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted with Eleanor that he was thrown.
That was exactly what was throwing him.
He’d decided not to pursue a relationship with her but had ended up with a date to her father’s campaign ball and with her going home for the weekend with him. Not exactly consistent with staying away from her and avoiding the attraction he felt toward her.
He glanced up, studied her slightly flustered expression, uptight hairstyle, thick-framed glasses and tried to go back to seeing her as just Dr. Aston and not the intriguing woman he’d spent an evening with.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t look at her and not see beneath the surface to the woman she hid below. Couldn’t not want to peel away the layers to let that woman out, to free her, and to sit back and watch the explosion.
More than watch, he wanted to experience that explosion in every shape, form and fashion.
“What are you thinking?” She licked her lips nervously.
That he wanted to lick those soft pink lips, to taste her mouth, to take his time and kiss her all night long.
He cleared his throat. “That our girl is going to make it.”
After frowning at him a moment, Eleanor took his bait and cut her gaze to the baby. “I hope so. She’s such a sweetheart.”
“They all are.”
Surprise flickered in her gaze. “You really like babies, don’t you?”
The question seemed a no-brainer to him, but he understood what she meant. A big macho Texan like him choosing to take care of babies. Could a man choose a more emasculating profession? Not according to his father. In Harold Donaldson’s eyes a man might as well chop off his big boys as to “play with babies all day.”
Ty didn’t quite see things the way his dad did and hadn’t from the point he’d realized he wanted to be a doctor. During his early academic career he’d discovered he specifically wanted to be a neonatologist. Despite his father’s hee-hawing and ho-humming about the “shame of having a son who played with babies,” not once had Ty felt less of a man because of his profession.
He liked what he did at Angel’s, liked making a difference in his tiny patients’ lives and their families’ lives. He’d been blessed with a God-given talent and he was where he was supposed to be in life.
Only