To do so would be to lose control, period. Not just over his desires, but over his entire life. Because to kiss Lucky, with those false charges hanging over his head, would be akin to kissing his career goodbye.
“Well, we all do what we have to in the end, don’t we?” she finally said.
She stepped away, but not before brushing against him in a way that made him grit his back teeth to keep from shuddering with need.
She smiled at him, picked up her purse from the desk, then let herself out the exit door.
Colin swallowed hard, and he was pretty sure sweat dotted his brow as he collapsed into his desk chair and made a mental note to himself never again to be alone in a room with Miss Lucky Clayborn.
LUCKY WAS LATE for work. Again.
Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d lingered at Dr. Colin McKenna’s office after the group session, acting on an explosive attraction she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
She knew enough about men to know that not many of them had the strength to do what the sexy doc had. Oh, yes, involvement with her would very surely put his career in jeopardy. But she’d seen the fiery attraction in his eyes. Had felt his erection, long and thick, pressing against her sex. And she’d known he had read her own signals clearly. Not that she’d been subtle about it. No, subtle would have been easy to ignore for a man like Colin McKenna. So she’d laid it out there for him…literally.
And he’d had the strength to refuse her when another guy would have shoved up her skirt and taken her right then and there on the desk.
A shiver ran the length of her spine as she rushed inside Harry’s Sports Bar.
Lucky waved a quick hello to the head cashier as she hurried back to the employee lockers just to the right of the kitchen and then shoved her purse inside the one marked with her name. She was aware that a couple of the male waiters stood in the corner watching her strip down to her bra and shimmy into her Harry’s T-shirt and apron. She barely glanced their way as she closed her tank inside the locker then twirled the attached combination lock.
“You’re late.”
The manager’s name was Harry, although he wasn’t the Harry on the sign, no matter how much he liked to pretend he was, especially when introducing himself to customers. “Hi, I’m Harry. Are you enjoying your meal?” he would say, leaving them to think he was the Harry of note.
He was somewhere in his mid-forties, was at least that many pounds overweight, and more often than not could do with a shower.
Lucky caught the way he stared at her breasts under the tight T-shirt and put her hand on her hip. “I told you I had an appointment.”
“You also told me you’d make it here on time,” he said to her breasts.
Since she’d landed the job four months ago, Harry had come on to her no fewer than ten times, usually when she worked closing and after all the staff had shared a wind-down beer. Now she usually opted for the earlier shifts even though the tips were better later, her patience for his unwanted attention wearing thin.
As she looked at him now, she suspected the same could be said for Harry. He looked a broken plate away from firing her and hiring another waitress that might be more open to his advances, despite the wedding ring on his left hand that he tried to hide with his class ring.
“I’m sorry. The session ran over,” Lucky said then reached around him to pick up a tray so she could bus a table in her station nearby.
He caught her arm when she tried to pass. “Consider this your second warning, Lucky.” He smiled at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “I don’t think I need to tell you there won’t be a third.”
“Understood,” she said as Connie, another waitress, came up on Harry from behind. Since Connie had been there over a year, she was apparently more open to Harry’s attentions.
She was glad when Harry moved his gaze from her breasts to Connie’s, and she left to go clear the table and take an order from a couple of guys who were sliding into a booth near one of the big-screen televisions on the back wall.
Lucky had been waitressing since she was seventeen and the job was second nature to her. She liked the noisy atmosphere, the nonstop movement, the odd hours. If every now and again her feet felt swollen a point beyond pain and her back ached, she just treated herself to a long, hot bath and a day spent reading then rushed right back into the fray. She’d never given much consideration to doing anything else. She liked her life the way it was. Uncomplicated. Routine. Familiar. With a little spice like the delectable Dr. Colin McKenna thrown in to liven things up from time to time.
Just thinking of him made her smile.
“What’ll it be?” she asked the next table as she straightened the condiment caddy and took out her order pad.
She was doing pretty much the same thing an hour later when two men walked in and took a booth in the next station. She usually gave customers only a cursory glance, but one of the two warranted a double take. Simply because he was one unmistakable Dr. Colin McKenna.
Lucky stood staring in his direction. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world…of course, he would have chosen Connie’s station to sit in.
“Are you going to take our order or not?” the guy in the booth next to her asked.
“Not,” she said, walking away.
COLIN ACCEPTED a menu from the girl who had seated him and his best friend, Will Sexton, then stared at the five big-screen televisions on the walls tuned in to different sporting events. He raised a brow at an archery competition then settled his gaze on Will.
“Come here a lot?” he asked.
Will and he had roomed together in college and had remained best friends ever since. While he’d gone the psychiatric route, Will was now a surgeon at St. Vincent-Mercy’s Trauma I Center.
“Don’t you?” Will asked in his thick British accent, cocking a grin at him. “Reminds me of the pubs back home.”
Colin highly doubted that, but didn’t say anything. Mirroring their choice in careers, Colin liked things quiet and subdued while Will’s motto was the more chaotic the better. At least in most things. When it came to their sex lives Colin usually liked things a little more wild, while Will had always chosen the sorority girls with the pink ribbons in their hair. Even now he was dating a sweet little resident who planned to go into pediatrics.
Of course, Colin’s preference had made turning down Lucky Clayborn in his office earlier all the more difficult.
Merely thinking of the hot, seductive woman made him tug at his collar, something he was free to do now that she was no longer in front of him.
“Welcome to Harry’s, gentlemen. Can I get you something from the bar?”
Colin looked up and nearly choked for the second time that day when he found himself staring at none other than the woman in question.
As soon as he had verified that not only wasn’t she a figment of his imagination, but that she was a waitress, he noticed that Lucky didn’t look anywhere near surprised. In fact, her predatory smile told him she’d probably spotted him the moment he’d walked in.
“Hello, Dr. McKenna,” she said with that sexy, throaty voice of hers. “Or may I call you Colin now that we’re no longer in the office?”
Will raised a brow at him. “Friends, are we? And here I thought you’d avoid a place like this like the plague.”
Colin dropped his hand from his tie. “Actually, we met elsewhere. Will, this is Lucky Clayborn.”
Will briefly offered his hand to Lucky. “Such an auspicious