her head, Nora said, “She didn’t know what was you?”
Axel shoved to his feet to pace. “We never got to the name exchange, all right? We hit it off—sexually, that is. We just sort of went with it. Then things went wrong—and no, you don’t want details about that either. We parted company, end of story.”
And since then, he’d thought of her at least every other minute.
“But you never learned her name?”
He tapped the file on his desk. “I know it now. Libby Preston.”
Nora slowly shook her head. “Lord, Axel, this is incredible, even for you.”
“Yeah, I know.” He rubbed his face. “When she screamed, I damn near had a heart attack.”
Fighting a grin, Nora said, “I had a heck of a time explaining things to the women in the waiting room.”
He could only imagine. “What’d you tell them?”
“That a sonogram had shown triplets.”
Axel laughed. “Good thinking. That’s enough to make any woman shout.” He immediately sobered. “I wanted to talk to her.”
“So talk to her.”
“I can’t.” Remembering the way she’d laid rubber in the parking lot, he scowled. “She ran out on me.”
“So now you have her name. You even have her phone number and address.”
Removing temptation, Axel shoved the file toward Nora. “That’d be unethical in the extreme. Given her reaction here, I’d say she obviously doesn’t want to see me.”
“No!” Feigning shock, Nora gaped at him. “It can’t be. A woman who’d reject you? I’ll be disillusioned for life.”
“Ha ha.” But to set the record straight, Axel explained, “I sort of embarrassed her. By…sort of rejecting her first.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
“She’s only twenty-one.”
“So?”
“I’m thirty-five, Nora. A sophisticated doctor. A seasoned womanizer.”
Nora rudely laughed.
“I am, damn it.” Hands shoved in his pockets, he muttered, “She’s barely out of high school.”
“I took her history, Axel. She’s twenty-one, totally legal by anyone’s standards. If you like her—”
“Like has nothing to do with it.” Lust drove him, nothing more. Pure, unadulterated, unfulfilled lust. “In fact, I’m not sure I do. Like her, that is.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Axel narrowed his eyes on Nora. Since marrying Cary, she’d gotten awfully cheeky. “The young lady has a temper that could flay a man alive. And she doesn’t moderate what she says. And she’s a…”
“A what?”
He pinched his mouth shut. Libby’s sexual history, or rather lack of history, was listed on her file, but he wouldn’t discuss it with anyone. “Never mind.” And then, “Her name is Libby. A pretty name, huh?”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Culligan is waiting on you. And if you’ve never waited naked in a paper sheet on a cold plastic table, then let me tell you, it’s excruciating.”
Axel knew that. He made it a point to be especially sensitive to the needs of his patients, and he went out of his way to make the ladies feel as comfortable with him as he could. He never kept them waiting, was always as gentle as humanly possible, and treated every woman with extreme respect.
Which meant his personal woes would have to go on the back burner for now. “Right. Let’s go.”
Nora shoved Libby’s file back across his desk with deliberate provocation. “Take care of business. Finish out the day. Then call her. If she tells you to lose her number, then yes, calling again would be a breach of professionalism. But until you call, until you give it a shot, you just don’t know.” And with that instruction, Nora left the room.
Knowing he couldn’t make a rational decision right now, Axel followed. And because he really did care about the women he treated, he succeeded in stifling all thoughts of Libby.
At least until his last patient left.
Then he sat down at his desk, picked up her file—and finally made up his mind on what to do.
At seven o’clock, with the sun still out and birds still singing, Libby curled into the corner of her open hide-a-bed, wearing a nightshirt, a rumpled sheet over her lap, only half watching the kick-ass movie she’d rented from the video store. She didn’t want to go to bed yet, but she didn’t really want to stay up either. She felt miserable. Cold on the outside, hot on the inside. Achy and mortified and mind-numb with the reality of what had happened.
Her toenails were now painted purple, she’d put intricate braids into her hair, and she’d given herself a facial. None of that had been distraction enough. An uneaten quart of cherry cordial ice cream sat on the end table, a soup spoon spiked into the middle. She’d meant to have a binge, but somehow, that didn’t really appeal either.
Moving to Timbuktu appealed. Changing her name and her identity appealed. Raping one very delectable doctor…No. She detested him, and the embarrassment he’d caused her. She really, really did. Sort of.
Blast it, she was lonesome. And soooo mad.
But it was red-hot, unbearable humiliation that she suffered most of all.
Groaning aloud, she curled in on herself and for the millionth time relived that awful moment when Dr. Dean had stepped into the exam room. Her heart had shot into her throat and her stomach had bottomed out when those brown eyes she remembered so well had locked with hers—then skipped down her sheet-covered body.
Thank God her feet weren’t in the stirrups.
She hadn’t been sure about that part, if she was supposed to be ready when he came in or if he’d want to talk first. Luckily she’d decided to remain stiff and straight until instructed to do otherwise.
At first, he’d looked very much the doctor, professional but detached—then scorching recognition had flooded his expression. After she screamed.
She curled tighter, half laughing at herself, half moaning in tortured agony. She’d actually done that, screamed like a raving lunatic and ordered him out of his own office. Wearing no more than a sheet. Waiting for him to…
No! No, no, no. She was not going to keep thinking about it.
So she’d screamed. Big deal. Under the circumstances, screaming seemed a reasonable, perfectly understandable reaction to discovering his true identity.
Oh why oh why did he have to do that for a living? And why, out of all the docs in town, did
