just happened here?”
Something in his tone irked her even more than his assumption that he could walk into her office and kiss her senseless. “I would think a man of your worldliness and sophistication would recognize a kiss that got out of hand better than most,” she snapped, jerking away and moving to stand behind her desk. It wasn’t much of a defense, but she’d take anything she could get. “I think you should leave now.”
To her annoyance, Mack seemed vaguely amused by her response, or maybe by her actions.
“Retreating to a neutral corner, Doc?”
“No, trying to get some work done. I’ve already wasted enough time on you for one day.”
“A great kiss is never a waste of time,” he told her, his lips curving into a smile. “Especially for a woman who didn’t start dating till after she turned twenty. You have a lot of time to make up for.”
Great? He thought the kiss was great? Beth had certainly thought so herself, but as he’d just reminded her, she sure as heck didn’t have his level of expertise on the subject. How flattering was that? One of the region’s most eligible, sought-after bachelors thought she was a great kisser. It almost made her exasperation with him fade.
“Go away,” she said, because she was pretty certain that letting him stay another second was a bad idea. She just might be tempted to throw herself at him to see if the kissing could get even better.
Suddenly she recalled what Mack had said when he’d first entered her office. He had a date. The man had a date and he’d been kissing her. Maybe that was par for the course in his life, but not in hers. It seemed a little sleazy, in fact. No, a lot sleazy. She frowned at him.
“Go away,” she repeated more emphatically. “I wouldn’t want you to be late for your date.”
“Date?” he echoed blankly.
“You told me you had a date,” she said tightly.
He muttered an expletive and got out his cell phone.
“You can’t use that in the hospital,” she told him.
He muttered something else, then picked up her phone and dialed, punching in the numbers so hard the phone practically bounced on her desk.
With his gaze locked with Beth’s, he offered some sort of halfhearted excuse to whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up.
Beth stared at him. “You broke your date?” she asked incredulously.
“I broke the damn date,” he said, not sounding especially happy about it.
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking you to dinner instead.”
She bristled at the assumption. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I just broke a date for you. The least you can do is have dinner with me. You don’t want me to spend the evening alone, do you?”
Beth couldn’t decide which part of his recitation to react to first. “Okay, let’s get something straight,” she began. “You did not break that date for me. I didn’t ask you to do it.”
“No, but after that kiss we shared, you’d have been furious if I’d gone through with it,” he said.
“Furious? I don’t think so. I might have thought you a little sleazy,” she admitted, “but then I don’t have a very high opinion of you to begin with, so that shouldn’t be too worrisome for you.”
“Cute.”
“I’m not finished,” she said. “Whether or not you spend the evening alone or with a steady stream of willing women has nothing whatsoever to do with me.”
“I didn’t think so, either, at least not until a few minutes ago,” he agreed pleasantly.
“What happened a few minutes ago?” she asked cautiously.
“I kissed you and decided I’d rather take a chance on getting to do that again instead of going out with a sure thing.” He settled down in the chair beside her desk. “If you have things to do, I can wait.”
Beth sorted through his latest outrageous claim and tried to decide whether to be flattered. Since listening to flattery was dangerous around Mack, she concluded it was smarter to ignore it.
“I could be a long while,” she told him to test his determination. “A really long while.”
He picked up a medical journal from the corner of her desk. “Take your time. This doesn’t look like fast reading. It ought to keep me occupied for hours.”
She stared at him, thoroughly bemused. “You’re really not going to leave, are you?”
“Not without you,” he said, already flipping through the journal.
“I don’t understand you,” she said plaintively.
Mack looked up and met her gaze, looking almost as bemused as she felt. “To tell you the honest truth, Doc, I’m not real sure I understand what’s going on here, either.”
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