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  “Nina and I were discussing our reconciliation. Weren’t we, Nina?” Guy’s voice demanded an answer, but Nina leaned against Alex’s chest, clutching him to her, still mindless from his kiss, and said, “What?”

  Alex grinned down at her and tightened his arm around her, and she felt the heat flare again and breathed harder. Stop this, she told herself and turned her head to look at Guy. Looking at Guy was usually a complete turnoff, so that should help her get her mind back.

  Guy was surveying Alex’s outfit with palpable scorn. “So this is what an up-and-coming young doctor wears these days, is it?”

  “Only on his way to get laid,” Alex said cheerfully, and Nina shivered at the thought and he held her tighter. “Nice suit,” he said to Guy. “Bet it takes hours to get out of that.”

  Nina tried to listen, but she didn’t give a damn what Guy said. He’d been irrelevant before, but now he was invisible. She had things to think about. Like why Alex had French-kissed her to impress Guy when Guy couldn’t have known the difference. Alex must have wanted to. Of course, he did like women in general. It didn’t mean anything in particular.

  Don’t lose your grip here, Nina told herself, and then Alex moved his hand down her side to her hip, and the heat that small stroke generated in her made her dizzy all over again, and she let her head drop to his shoulder.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Nina,” she heard Guy say from far away, and she said, “Mmmhmm,” not caring, and then the door shut behind him, and she was alone with Alex.

  Nina tried hard to pull herself together. “Uh, thank you. That was—”

  “Shut up, Nina,” Alex said, and kissed her again, and Nina leaned into him so eagerly that she gave up any hope of pretending to herself that she didn’t want him.

  He had the most amazing mouth. She’d known since yesterday that he had surgeon’s fingers, but this was the first she realized he had a surgeon’s mouth. He could work miracles with that mouth. He could bring the dead back to life with that mouth. He sure as hell was bringing her back to life with that mouth. She wanted to tell him that, but to do that she’d have to take her lips off his, and she had no intentions of ever taking her lips off his, of losing that insanely glorious stroke of his tongue in her mouth, of…

  He was pulling her toward the couch, and then down on the couch with him, and then he rolled to pin her underneath him and the length of his body was hot and hard on hers, and she clutched at him, opening her legs to bring him closer to her as he pressed against her. All the while he kissed her, his tongue teasing her mouth open, his lips on hers, and then on her neck. He shoved her T-shirt up and cupped his hand around her lace-covered bra, and she cried out at how good the pressure felt against her swollen breast. She’d never wanted any man so much, never wanted hands and mouth so hard on her, never wanted to be taken so roughly before, never wanted to be so marked and possessed. She wrapped her legs around him to bring him as hard against her as possible, and he rocked his hips into hers, biting her shoulder while she gasped and clutched at him, and then his mouth was on hers again, bruising her, and she was lost, tearing at his T-shirt, trying to rip it off. He rose a little to help her, and she pulled it over his head, clutching it in her hand while she arched up to meet him, but he said, “Nina!” and his voice was full of horror, not lust.

  He jerked away from her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up into a sitting position, and from far away she focused on her hand and saw blood.

  “Oh, hell,” Alex said, and she looked at him, broad and beautiful in the lamplight, his chest furred with blond hair and his muscles clenched from holding her up, his mouth dark from kissing her and being kissed, and she thought, What’s a little blood? and kissed him again.

  He kissed her back, hard, and then groaned and said, “Nina, love, we’ve ripped some stitches, let me look at it,” and she moved to his mouth again.

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right. Kiss me now.”

  And he did, but his kiss was gentle, not hot. “I hate this, but I have to fix your hand, Nina,” he whispered to her. “You’re hurt. Let me fix it.”

  He sounded so much like Guy that she woke up. “All right,” she said, and used her free hand to pull her T-shirt down while Alex unwrapped the bandage.

  “It’s not bad,” he told her a moment later while she was still coming down from her sexual high. “We can fix it here. Do you have a first-aid kit?”

  Nina felt tired suddenly. “In the bathroom,” she told him.

  Alex kissed her again, still gentle. “Stay here,” he told her. “Don’t get any ideas about moving.”

  She watched him cross the floor to the bathroom, naked except for those damn Daffy Duck shorts, and she wondered if she’d lost her mind. If her hand hadn’t started to bleed, she’d have been naked with him in another five minutes, and he would have been glorious—he was glorious even in Daffy Duck shorts—and she would have been middle-aged with a middle-aged body.

  Good thing her hand had started to bleed.

  She met him halfway across the floor, half expecting him to say, “I told you to stay put,” but he just bandaged her hand again, standing there in the hallway.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her when he was done. “I’m sorry. I never—”

  “It’s not your fault.” She patted him on the shoulder with her good hand, and he looked unhappier than she’d ever seen him. She reached around him and opened the door. “Thank you for helping me with Guy.”

  Alex stood there for a moment, looking confused and hesitant and sexier than anybody else on the face of the earth. “Nina, could we talk about—”

  “No,” Nina said, pushing him gently out the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Nina—” he said, and then she closed the door in his face and leaned her forehead against it. Her hand throbbed from the stitches, and her body throbbed from his hands, but mostly her mind throbbed from how much she wanted him and couldn’t have him and how close she’d been to disaster.

  Fred licked her ankle.

  “Thank you, Fred,” she told him. “You did good tonight. Just like Lassie, after all.”

  She went back to the couch to turn off the lamps and saw Alex’s T-shirt on the floor. She picked it up and held it to her face, inhaling his scent for a minute while Fred watched. “I’ve got it bad, Fred,” she told him. “I’ve got it so bad I’m going to sleep in this T-shirt tonight, that’s how bad it is.”

  Fred yawned.

  “Yeah?” Nina said. “Wait’ll you fall in love. It’s the pits.”

  “YOU WERE RIGHT,” Alex said ten minutes later when Max picked up the phone.

  “I’m always right,” Max said, yawning. “I also have to be at the office tomorrow at eight. Could you tell me about your triumph tomorrow night? I’ll bring the beer.”

  “It wasn’t a triumph,” Alex said gloomily. “It was close, but then her hand started to bleed, and by the time I had her bandaged again, she said no.”

  “Never stop to bandage,” Max said.

  “That’s very humanitarian of you, Dr. Moore,” Alex said. “And I still don’t know why she stopped. I bandaged her hand, and she looked at me and said, ‘Thank you and good night.’ I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

  He heard Max sigh on the other end of the line. “Let me think for a minute.” There was a long silence, and then Max’s voice came cautiously. “I hate to ask this, you couldn’t have been this dumb, but you did change your clothes before you went up there, didn’t you?”

  Alex was lost. “My clothes?”

  “Hell, Alex, you’re hopeless,” Max said.

  “Since when are you the big clothing authority?” Alex asked, annoyed. “I haven’t noticed you dressing like GQ.”

  “Alex, listen to me carefully,” Max said. “I’m telling you this as your brother and as your best friend.”

  “All right,” Alex said. “Let’s have it.”

  “Never wear Daffy Duck shorts to seduce a woman. You want her