“She’s resting.” The smile was as pressed and professional as her uniform. “She’s had a busy morning. The hair colorist and stylist were here.”
Ah, yes, HIPAA, he thought. Which meant she wasn’t allowed to tell him about his own mother’s condition. But that wasn’t the nurse’s fault. And if his mother was exhausted by getting a couple of foils crimped on her head and a blow-dry? How the hell did he think she was doing.
“When she wakes up, tell her I …” He glanced back over at his mother.
“Tell her what, Mr. Baldwine?”
He thought of Chantal.
“I’m going to be here for a few days,” he said grimly. “I’ll tell her myself.”
“Very good, sir.”
Back out in the hall, he closed the door and leaned against it. Staring across at an oil painting of some Bradford or another, he found that the past came back again like a bee sting.
Fast and painful.
“What are you doing here?”
Lizzie had spoken the words to him out in the garden, out in the darkness, out in a hot, humid summer night. Overhead, thunderclouds had shut out the moonlight, leaving the blooming flowers and specimen trees in the shadows.
He could remember everything about the way she had stood in front of him on the brick walkway, her hands on her hips, her stare meeting his with a directness he wasn’t used to, her Easterly uniform as sexually alluring as any set of lingerie he had ever seen.
Lizzie King had caught his eye the first time he’d seen her on his family’s estate. And with each return during semester breaks from his masters programs, he’d found himself looking for her on the grounds, seeking her out, trying to get in her path.
God, he loved the chase.
And the capture wasn’t half bad, either.
Of course, he didn’t have much experience past that—nor did he want it.
“Well?” she demanded. Like if he didn’t get on topic quick, she was going to start tapping her foot—and her next move was going to be knocking his block off for wasting her time.
“I’ve come for you.”
Wait, that came out wrong. He’d meant to say that he’d come to see her. Talk to her. Look at her up close.
But those four words were also the truth. He wanted to know what she tasted like, what she felt like underneath him, what—
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Look, I’m going to be honest with you.”
Lane smiled a little. “I like honesty.”
“I don’t think you’re going to feel that way when I’m done with you.”
Okaaaaay, now he was getting hard—and funny, that wouldn’t have bothered him with the kinds of women he usually toyed with. Standing in front of this particular female with an urge to rearrange himself in his pants, however, seemed kind of … tacky.
“I’m going to spare you a lot of wasted time here.” She kept her voice low, like she didn’t want to be overheard, but that didn’t detract from the power of her message. “I am not, and never will be, interested in someone like you. You are nothing but an entitled bad boy who gets off causing chaos with the opposite sex. That stuff was boring when I was a fifteen-year-old, and considering that I’m closing in on thirty this year, I’m even less attracted to it. So do us both a favor—go to the country club, find one of those interchangeable blond women by the pool, and turn them into your twenty-minute StairMaster. You are not going to get that from me.”
He blinked like an idiot.
And he supposed the fact that he was so shocked that anyone would call him on his behavior proved her point.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home. I’ve been here working since seven a.m.—”
Snapping out his hand, he took hold of her arm as she turned away. “Wait.”
“Excuse me?” She glanced down at the contact and back up into his eyes. “Unless you have something related to the flowers in this garden, you have nothing to say to me.”
“You’re not going to give me a chance to defend myself? You’re just going to play judge and jury—”
“You are not serious—”
“Have you always been so prejudicial?”
She stepped out of his grip. “Better that than naive. Especially with a man like you.”
“Don’t believe everything you’ve seen in the papers—”
“Oh, please. I don’t need to read about it—I’ve seen it firsthand. Two of them left yesterday morning out the back of the house. The night you came here, you brought a redhead home from a bar. And then they say when you went for your annual physical on Wednesday, you came back with a hickey on your neck—presumably from when the woman asked you to turn your head and cough?” She cut him off again, putting her palm out to his face. “And before you think I’m keeping this happy catalog of conquests because of some latent attraction to you, it’s because the women on staff keep track of these things and won’t stop talking about them.”
“You want to give me a word in edgewise?” he countered. “Or are you good just keeping this conversation going on your own. Jesus, and you think I’m stuck-up.”