wire-rimmed sunglasses to shade his eyes and she wore the hat, pulling it low over her brow the way a desperado might. She looked so damn cute in that hat. The breeze was tangling her hair, which she’d left loose around her shoulders, and the sun was reflecting off the curls that escaped from the shade of the hat.
She clapped a hand over the crown and tilted her head to let a little sun fall directly on her face. “I spend too much time under artificial light,” she said. “It’s the only thing I regret about my job.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve often wished I could set up a booth in Central Park and see my patients there.”
She glanced at him with a smile. “Wouldn’t that be cool? I’ll bet kids wouldn’t mind coming to the doctor’s office so much if they didn’t have to sit in those scary little waiting rooms. You could call yourself the Doc in the Park. I think you should try it.”
“I’m pretty sure my insurance agent would have a heart attack.”
She waved a hand. “Minor detail. I’ll bet you could revolutionize pediatrics with a gig like that.” She sat up straighter. “Okay, my turn to row again.”
He didn’t want to give up the oars. For one thing, it kept his hands busy. “It can’t be. I just got started.”
“You’ve been rowing for at least fifteen minutes, and I admit you’re better at it than I thought you’d be, considering you’re such a city boy.”
“I keep telling you I was on the rowing team in college.”
“Yeah, yeah, but that doesn’t give you special privileges. Come on. Trade places with me. The rowing’s the fun part.”
“Another five minutes. Then we’ll switch.” He’d quickly discovered that physical exercise was exactly what he needed. Besides, rowing the boat across a section of water gave him a sense of accomplishment and control. Apparently he’d needed that, too.
Of course, Mary Jane needed and wanted those rewards as much as he did. He’d figured out right away that she wasn’t the type to sit in the boat and let the guy take the oars, no matter how many rowing medals he had stashed in his closet at home. She’d gone so far as to push back the sleeve of her T-shirt and flex her muscles for him to prove that she was capable of rowing them across the lake.
He’d never had a woman insist on doing her share of the manual labor, and he’d tried to talk her out of it, even using her pregnancy as a reason. She’d laughed and mentioned the heavy trays she carried at work every day. Finally he’d run out of arguments and had let her take the first turn at the oars, much to her delight.
Watching her row had proved to be its own special torture. Each time she’d pulled on the oars her breasts had thrust against the fabric of her T-shirt. By now he was pretty sure that Longhorns logo was burned permanently into his retina.
“Wasn’t this the greatest idea?” she asked.
“Yes.” He couldn’t believe how something so simple was so cleansing. He wasn’t really in shape for rowing, but the slight ache in his shoulders felt great. While he worked up a mild sweat and listened to the rhythm of the oars clunking against the oarlocks, he enjoyed the lush green of the trees surrounding the lake, the familiar dank scent of the water, the white clouds scudding across the sky and the sun warming his back. “It makes you feel glad to be a—” He brought the sentence to a screeching halt and stared at Mary Jane in horror at what he’d been about to say.
She leaned forward and put a hand on each of his knees. “We are alive,” she said, looking hard at him as she gripped his knees. “And, Morgan, that’s not our fault. We shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”
“I guess not.” But he had plenty of other things to feel guilty about, and topping the list was the selfish, wild pleasure he felt whenever she touched him. They’d rowed into a fairly secluded inlet, and nobody seemed to be around on this week day. If he had no conscience… But he did have a conscience, and fortunately it still worked. “You can have the oars now,” he said.
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