visited this sanctuary since they’d built a bigger one down by the river. More often it was used illicitly for romantic trysts by patients and hospital staff alike. Elle narrowed her eyes as she walked past, wondering if anyone was inside. But the windows were tinted, keeping passersby from peeking in.
The grounds of Confidential Rejuvenations encompassed over a hundred acres, most of it covered by the thick grove of indigenous trees that ran parallel to the river. Walking paths extended throughout the forest in several directions, but Elle diverged from the beaten trail.
Instead, she ducked under the branch of an aged oak and stepped over a moss-covered fallen log, keeping her eyes to the ground. Several minutes later, she saw what she was searching for—faint footprints in the mud.
Yes. It had to be near.
She crouched, studying the undergrowth, looking for any signs of the baby. Growing up with brothers and a father who hunted, Elle had learned through osmosis a tracking trick or two. She set down the bottles of formula and moved deeper into the undergrowth.
“Where are you little guy?” Elle cooed and pushed aside the thick carpeting of monkey grass slicked with fine beads of rain. “Come out, come out wherever you are. I might not be mama, but I’ve got food.”
Then she heard a twig crack loudly on the path she’d abandoned.
Startled, she rocked back on her heels, hand to her throat, pulse pounding, and jerked her head around. Peering through the newly budded leaves, she stared at the broad-shouldered man silhouetted in the tunnel of trees.
She recognized him immediately as he stood there looking very out of his element in his tailored silk suit. His intense, dark eyes drilled into her as if he could see deep down inside to all the things she tried so hard to hide—her fears, her insecurities, her doubts, the dark secrets she told no one, not even her best friends.
The little hop of sexual excitement catching low in her belly took Elle by surprise.
“Looking for something?” asked Dr. Dante Nash, his voice as cool as well water.
His presence threw her off balance and Elle hated being in a defensive position. She rose to her feet.
“You followed me,” she accused.
“I did,” he admitted without the slightest hint of apology in his voice.
“Why?”
Tree branches separated them. Dante on the path. Elle ankle-deep in the undergrowth, studying him like a cautious child peering from around her mother’s skirt. He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel—interest, attraction, compulsion and possibility.
He shrugged. “Curiosity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you spying on me?”
His smile was slight and didn’t reach his light brown eyes. She found herself wondering when was the last time the man had genuinely smiled, and then Elle wondered why she was wondering.
“Why?” he asked. “Are you up to something that would invite spying?”
Oh, he was good, answering a question with a question, turning things around on her. His cagey manner made her bristle. Mark had been equally adept at evading her questions.
“No,” she denied, realizing just how defensive she sounded.
He glanced at the baby bottles she’d settled on the ground at her feet. “What’s that all about?”
She stepped in front of the baby bottles, blocking his view. Her gaze tracked over him, over the fine lines of his suit, growing damper every minute he stood in the drizzle. She was getting wet as well. She could feel her unruly hair growing frizzier by the second. “I really don’t think it’s any of your concern.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dante said. “Looks to me as if that baby formula came from the supply closet of Confidential Rejuvenations.”
“What if it did?”
“That’s theft in anyone’s book. Are you a thief, Elle Kingston?” His eyes locked with hers and he never looked away.
It was damned disconcerting. A buzz of sexual energy sizzled down her neck.
“What are you?” she snapped. “A cop?”
For a moment so brief she was sure she must have imagined it, a look of uneasiness passed over his face. He moved closer, pushing the soggy tree branches out of his way, and with each step toward her, Elle’s heart beat harder and her breath grew more shallow. He stopped within an arm’s length of her and she quelled the sudden urge to reach out to run her fingers over his strong, commanding jaw and fit the tip of her finger into the cleft at his chin.
“Mark’s been talking to me about buying into Confidential Rejuvenations,” he said. “It’s in my best interest to know if the hospital has a big problem with employee theft.”
“The formula expires in two days. It would be thrown out anyway.” She didn’t owe this man an explanation, so why was she giving him one?
“Who’s the formula for?”
Good grief, why wouldn’t he just go away and leave her in peace?
But he just kept staring at her, one eyebrow quirked up on his forehead, that irritating half smile hanging on the corner of his too-tempting mouth.
She glared. “Don’t you have patients to see?”
“Nope. It’s my first day. No patients yet.”
“Then go unpack your stethoscope or something.”
“Already unpacked.”
She glowered at him.
He shrugged. She could tell he was enjoying jerking her chain. “I was bored,” he said. “Following you seemed like more fun than staring at the four walls of my office.”
“And I’m busy.”
He glanced around at the forest. “Doing what?”
“That’s none of your business, Dr. Nash,” she replied tartly.
“What are you hiding, Nurse Kingston?”
The seductive way he said her name sent flames of lust licking through her belly. This was ridiculous, the way her traitorous body was reacting.
“Nothing,” she denied.
“No?”
She shook her head.
“Then why are you outside in the rain, while your hair goes wild all over your head?”
“I’m a water nymph in disguise,” she retorted.
His smile broadened and for the first time it reached his eyes. A real smile. “I can see that,” he murmured. “So much fiery red hair.”
He closed
