dinner, inadvertently overhearing Simone and an Australian nurse discussing him—or rather his family’s money. Simone had been bragging that she’d managed to catch herself a rich Canadian doctor—her sole reason for working in such God-forsaken countries on a boat that didn’t even have a swimming pool.
As if that was important on a hospital ship.
He’d been about to reveal himself when he’d heard something even more enlightening—that the baby she was trying to pass off as his belonged to a Mercy Ship colleague. A married colleague.
To say she’d been shocked when she’d looked up and seen him standing there was an understatement. There’d been tears, pleas, threats and hysterics but in the end he had been done. He’d finished his contract and come home.
She wasn’t the first woman who’d thrown herself at him after learning that his family owned the largest shipbuilding company in the Pacific Rim and she probably wouldn’t be the last. He’d just have to be more careful, that was all. Besides, he wasn’t interested in marrying someone he couldn’t see himself growing old with.
Not that he was against marriage. He wasn’t. But he hadn’t found a woman who wanted him rather than what his family’s money could do for her. Hadn’t found a woman with whom he could build the kind of relationship his parents and grandparents had.
He sometimes wondered if he ever would.
Arriving at his Jeep, he keyed open the door and slid inside. About to shove his key into the ignition, he realized he was still holding the condom. Tossing it into his console, he chuckled at the horrified embarrassment on the woman’s face and her insistence that it wasn’t hers.
Now, there was a feisty little bundle of contradictions, he thought, picturing her huge gray eyes as she’d blurted out that she was taking a break from anything with a Y-chromosome, stirring up all kinds of mixed emotions he hadn’t been ready to feel.
Shaking his head at himself, Dylan cranked up the engine. Reversing out of the parking bay, he drove toward the exit, feeling much more cheerful than when he’d landed a few hours ago. He had a few days to catch up with his family and then he’d be back in the saddle at St. Mary’s as a consultant.
And if the thought of seeing a certain hot little doctor again made him smile with anticipation he chalked it up to the long flight, three days without much sleep and eight months of celibacy.
DYLAN FELL BACK into the hospital routine as if he’d only been gone for a week. His old partner, Steve Randall, had been so delighted to have him back that he’d cleared his calendar and headed for the South Pacific, leaving Dylan to handle any upcoming surgeries that couldn’t be postponed.
Although he’d have liked to say he was too busy to think about the sweet little brunette from the parking lot, it was kind of disconcerting to discover that he was as susceptible as the next guy to a pair of soft gray eyes and a sweet sassy smile.
He was thirty-five, for God’s sake. A surgeon. He’d been dating for twenty years; having sex for almost that long, and he’d never—not once—thought about a woman during surgery.
That was until he’d looked into the smoky eyes of an irresistible brunette as he’d reached for the scattered contents of her purse.
Not only had she invaded his dreams but the Zen-like calm he usually adopted in the OR as well. It had to stop. Distraction was costly—especially in his profession. With Steve off in Bora Bora he didn’t have time to take a lunch break, let alone think about a woman determined to stick to her man embargo.
He wondered what had happened to leave her so wary and mistrustful of men. And if he experienced an inexplicable urge to find the guy who’d done it and pound him into the ground it was only because he had two sisters and would do the same to any guy who messed with them.
Yeah, he assured himself, he was feeling protective in an entirely fraternal way. It certainly wasn’t because his ego had taken a little beating. Besides, he knew next to nothing about her other than the fact she worked at St. Mary’s. Even if he’d wanted to prove to himself that he’d imagined the entire incident, St. Mary’s was a large hospital. She could work anywhere, and he didn’t have the time—or the inclination, he assured himself—to hunt down a woman who wasn’t interested.
It was just as well that she’d turned him down because he wasn’t looking for anything more than the occasional good time with an attractive woman who knew the score. And since she hadn’t seemed like the “occasional” type, or even a “good-time” girl, he would forget all about her and focus on cementing his professional reputation.
With back-to-back appointments and two solid days of surgery, by the Thursday evening of the following week Dylan was ready to call it a day. He grabbed his leather jacket and turned off the lights as he walked through the darkened waiting room. It was after eight and he had plans to meet up with a couple of kayaking friends at a sports bar near the marina. He hadn’t seen them since his return and was eager to get back on the water.
He dug in his pocket for his Jeep keys and was about to lock the door behind him when his cell phone rang. A quick glance at the caller ID had him smiling. “Hi, Mom, what’s wrong?”
His mother’s light, familiar laugh floated through the phone. “Nothing’s wrong, darling. I’m just calling to find out how my favorite son is doing on his first week back and to invite him to dinner.”
“Mom, I’m your only son.”
“Still my favorite,” she teased. “But don’t tell your sisters.”
Dylan chuckled, because he’d heard his mother tell his sisters the same thing. “I’d love dinner, Mom but I’m on call. It’ll take too long to get back from West Vancouver if there’s an emergency.”
“That’s the beauty of my plan, darling,” said Vivian St. James smugly. “We’re having dinner at the Regis with the Hendersons. You remember Fred and Daphne, don’t you?”
For some reason his mother’s overly bright, chatty tone put Dylan’s senses on alert. He grimaced when her next words confirmed his suspicions.
“Well, their daughter Abigail is back from Europe, and we can all have a wonderful dinner tog—”
And there it was. “Mom,” he interrupted gently. “Don’t.”
There was a short pause, then a bewildered, “Don’t what, darling?”
Dylan sighed. “You’re trying to set me up again.”
“Don’t be silly!”
His mother gave a laughing snort but Dylan could tell that he’d hit the nail on the head. His mother was trying to get him a date in the hopes that it would lead to the altar. She wanted grandchildren before she died—which was ridiculous because she wasn’t yet sixty.
“Even if that’s true, young man,” she said in her “mom voice”—the one that said he was being deliberately uncooperative. “And I’m not saying it is, you need to get out and meet people. Women.”
“Mom,
