of awareness he’d have called supernatural if he wasn’t supposed to be a rational surgeon. He’d immediately known there was someone in the club worth seeing.
But his interest—while authentic and entirely sexual—had gotten a little off track when something about her had struck him as familiar. He’d started clicking through the possibilities as to why.
Slept together before? No. That body would be impossible to forget.
Someone who’d been in the club before? No. He’d only owned it for five years, but if he’d ever seen her there, he would’ve paid attention. Would’ve gotten her number.
Someone he’d known in his past? One of his former marks? No, she wouldn’t have looked at him like that if that was the connection.
Hospital? Family of patient? Staff?
Then it had crystalized.
Bradshaw. This morning’s nurse. He’d seen her not even ten hours ago, and would see her again Monday morning. Would she have this magnetic draw hidden in gray cloth and without the sexy makeup and inferno-red lips?
Not if she went home with him tonight—and the way she blushed and smiled said she would. Things could get messy at work. He was already certain she’d not tell his secret, but this might be too big a hope.
The song ended and another began, but he couldn’t change his thoughts as easily as he changed keys. He wanted her and that was reason enough to engage in a little after-hours fun.
The eye-roll when she’d spoken of marriage told him she wouldn’t take one night out of context. That helped. That made it easy. Why was he still thinking about it?
The lights made it impossible to see her or her table and he wanted to look at her. When the next song rounded out and his hands were free, he snatched a radio from the side, turned away from the crowd. Quietly, he issued an order for Max, Manager of The Inferno, to have the lights lowered to anything but spotlights.
When the lighting shifted to swirls of color over the dance floor, his vision cleared.
Still at the table, he confirmed, but she sat there staring at her phone now, a tiny, satisfied, smug little smile curling one corner of her now naked mouth.
Jefferson had texted back after getting the photo.
Suffering. Good. Just as Dante expected. A little light manipulation of the man who’d humiliated the woman coming home with him tonight. It felt like justice, not that he could really tell the difference between justice and vengeance these days.
Time came for the piano to join in the next song again, and he finally let the music take him. Forty-five more minutes, a half hour break, and then another long set before he could do what he really wanted: drag Lise home with him and peel that dress off her.
* * *
While Dante played, Lise’s courage started to wane. Her desire was there—had been there all the time, bubbling under the surface of her quiet everyday life—since she’d gotten the job in Neurosurgery. Ignored. Designated unimportant—a luxury, a frivolous, stupid luxury that had no business in her daily life. But it felt different now. She’d had the lusty crush for years, and it had never caused her insides to quake.
One night could be amazing, or it could lead to life-plan-altering complications.
As much as she wanted him to jump down from the stage, capture her head and kiss her senseless again, what would it do to their work relationship? Had that kiss already changed their work relationship? Would she already be unable to look at him without imagining his hands in her hair and on her bare throat?
She loved her job. She also loved the money—which had enabled her to buy a little cottage of her very own in pricy Miami. Money had gotten her to the first goal on her list of what a responsible woman would do before having a child.
One kiss could be forgotten.
One night with Dante...wasn’t worth her future plans.
The very idea of losing her unconceived child opened a cavern inside her, refining her focus.
Right.
Remember the plan. Even knocking it off schedule was unacceptable, or would be as soon as she selected the best donor and worked out a schedule of some sort.
Who even knew how long or how many tries it might take to get pregnant once she’d found The One from her database?
Good decision.
While she gave herself a mental pep talk, her cell phone buzzed—another message from Jefferson, this time with an ETA.
* * *
Dante swung the door of his office closed a little harder than he meant to, knocking a jacket off the hooks on the door. He left it. Max usually spent his evenings on the floor, which suited Dante—it meant he could have solitude in the office they shared whenever Dante wanted.
Lise wasn’t there. She hadn’t waited, and he’d been so certain she would. Worse, as much as he’d fiddled with her phone earlier tonight, he hadn’t gotten her number.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d so misjudged someone. He’d given her exactly what she’d wanted, but she’d left anyway.
Had she left when Jefferson had finally decided to come groveling—something he felt confident he’d accomplished for her? He could check security tapes, but it didn’t really matter. Her decision. He was just angry about effectively being stood up by a woman who wanted him.
The phone in his pocket buzzed, interrupting one of his favorite pastimes—analyzing others—and he fished it out before flinging himself on the leather sofa he occasionally napped on between sets.
This wasn’t the emergency ringtone from his answering service or the hospital. He didn’t have to answer it right now—it could wait until tomorrow, or later.
One rule governed his time at the club: don’t violate the sanctuary. Don’t bring the outside in, don’t take the inside out. Lise’s appearance tonight had completely obliterated his rule.
Turning the screen up, he read a text from the latest Valentino wife—Cassie, married to his twin—with a request for a consult tomorrow at Seaside. His day off, but he never turned down those requests and texted back to confirm.
Lise being there had felt like a violation until he’d been completely turned on by her. But even as the thought came, he knew Lise wasn’t the reason he’d answered the text—she didn’t have his number either.
Over the past few months he’d watched all his brothers marry and start families. That was why he’d answered. Why he’d even opened the text after seeing who it was from. They all had bigger lives, which to him meant the possibility more things could go wrong and need fixing. Fixing problems was his primary role in the family.
Wives and kids meant more people to take care of. His circle had expanded from three to seven, with eight and nine still gestating. That kind of serious growth demanded more of his attention—even within the sanctuary.
He must be crazy even thinking about trying to increase those numbers further by
