MONDAY MORNING HEATH arrived early to the offices of his orthopedic practice, NYC Sports Medicine, in the heart of the city. He’d given up sleeping around four that morning, went for a run through Central Park, hit the gym, and by seven he was sitting behind his desk looking out over the city and fantasizing about Ally. He hadn’t expected to get dirty with her on the phone last night. He’d only wanted to hear her voice, but hell if she hadn’t surprised him by initiating the dirty talk. Listening to her take herself over the edge last night had been as exciting as hell. It wasn’t until afterward that he’d felt different, wondering what she was feeling after they’d hung up the phone and whether she’d been telling him the truth about never having had phone sex before. It wasn’t something he’d dabbled in before. He’d thought he’d feel vulnerable, jerking off while on the phone, and he liked to be in total control. But with Ally, everything felt different, and his need for control eased.
He reread her text from last night for the tenth time that morning, wondering if she was in fact in New York City, or if she was just playing with him. He liked that snarky side of her, too, because she was snarky sweet, not snarky obnoxious, like some women were. She was the perfect blend of femininity, sensuality, and intelligence, and that was what had him sending her a text even though it went against his cardinal rule.
I thought about your lips all night. It was a very long night.
He set his phone on the desk and opened a patient file. His eyes darted back to his phone every few seconds. He glanced at his watch, wondering what she was doing, where she worked, and if she was thinking of him, too. Why had she volunteered at the conference? Was she linked in some way to the ortho field?
He tried to focus on one patient file after another, but his mind kept circling back to Ally. He wondered why she hadn’t texted back, and he couldn’t stop replaying last night’s conversation in his mind.
A knock at his office door brought his eyes up. Before he could say, Come in, the door pushed open and his younger brother Logan sauntered in, wearing a pair of dark slacks and a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Logan was two years younger than Heath and a private investigator. For a moment Heath contemplated having Logan track down Ally for him, but he quickly nixed that idea. He wasn’t a stalker.
The four Wild brothers looked strikingly similar; they were either six two or three, with broad shoulders, athletic builds, and thick dark hair. They got their blue eyes from their mother, whose eyes had changed to a grayish blue when she’d lost her sight during a home invasion, the same home invasion that had killed their father while he was trying to protect her; the home invasion that had taken place while Logan was on an overseas mission with the Navy SEALS. He’d returned home a broken man, having been fighting for his country while his father lay dying and his mother was savagely beaten.
“Logan. Everything okay?” Heath motioned to the chair across from him. He’d just seen Logan last night at dinner with their mother, as they had every Sunday night since their father was killed.
“You tell me.” Logan leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He raised his brows as if he had a secret he was dying to tell—or rather, knowing Logan, he suspected that Heath had a secret.
And Heath was definitely not itching to share.
Heath leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head, and shrugged. “Mom seemed well last night.”
Heath had told Ally the truth. He was not a man who lied, not even to his brothers. His father, Bill Wild, had raised his boys to have strong family values. Honesty and loyalty topped the list. One would think that having such strong ties to family would lead the Wild brothers to long-term relationships, but that’s where things went awry. Heath had been burned, and he wasn’t interested in being burned again. He lived an honest life, which was part of the reason he had a no-ties rule. He didn’t have any interest in getting into a relationship that might cause him to start acting in ways he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be nagged into defending his actions, either. He was doing just fine sleeping with a handful of women when it suited him.
At least he had been.
Until Ally.