The Doctor's Lost-and-Found Heart. Dianne Drake
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I just packed up. But you don’t get to call it a whim.”
“Why not?”
“Because coming to Argentina on a whim makes me sound irresponsible.”
“There’s something wrong with being irresponsible? Lots of people do it every day, and do it well.”
“You sound like you believe irresponsibility could be an admirable goal.”
“Not admirable. But definitely a goal for some people. Me included, if I get my way. And don’t pull out your analyst’s couch and tell me to lie down because there’s nothing there you’d be interested in.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Doctor. I think I’d find plenty to interest me if you were stretched out on my couch.”
“Let me guess. You’re psychoanalyzing me, aren’t you? Because my goal is not to have a goal.” It was said with a certain amount of amusement, because the idea of boots off and under her analyst’s couch was suddenly the only thing on his mind. Boots off, belt off, stethoscope off …
“I don’t psychoanalyze. I treat conditions.”
“And I’m a condition to treat.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion,” she countered, her smile never breaking.
“My opinion is I’m the challenge you may want to take on, which is why you’re here. But I’m also the challenge you won’t crack, which is why I came.”
“Faulty logic,” she quipped. “You’re here because you did crack under the challenge. Caved right in when I asked.”
“Or agreed because there was a need for my services, as simple as that.” Caved right in was more like it, but he wasn’t about to give her the advantage of letting her discover she was right about him. Amanda was resourceful. She’d find a way to use that kind of information again. Which, on second thought, might be interesting. Too bad he didn’t even go as far as interesting. “Oh, and in case you’re interested, I’m impressed by your hospital.”
“Changing the subject, Jack?”
He laughed. “You bet I am. It’s safer that way.”
Her smile didn’t waver, but the edges around it softened. “Then the conversation is changed. Wouldn’t want you feeling uncomfortable.”
“Sounds like you’re not really changing the conversation, just twisting it around to suit your purposes. Only my opinion, of course.”
“My only purposes are what concerns the hospital. But Caridad is nice, isn’t it?” she asked, taunting him with her eyes. “I’m proud of what Ben’s done here. Which is why, when I’m running off to Argentina a few times a year, it may seem like a whim to some, but I’m actually here doing something I believe in with all my heart.”
Something about her looked different. He studied her for a second, realized her hair wasn’t twisted into its usual tight, librarianesque knot at the nape of her neck. It was loose, full of curl, wild. And her eyes had … The only way he could describe what he saw was los ojos del fuego. Eyes of fire. She was Amanda Robinson, but a different version from that he knew back in Texas. “So, I’m assuming we’re roommates?” he said, turning around and walking over to join Ezequiel at his bedside.
“Yep, roommates. You over there, me over here, curtain down the middle.” She bumped her bureau drawer shut with her hip, then grabbed a handful of clothes she’d left on the bed, and headed for a nook he figured had to be the bathroom. “You don’t mind sharing, do you?” she called back over her shoulder, as she pushed back the door to the nook and walked into the room behind it. “Because the supply closet in the hospital isn’t taken, if you’d rather have that. But you’d have to sleep sitting up.”
“I’m fine,” he said, kicking off his leather cowboy boots and letting them fly to the floor in the middle of the room.
“Good. Because the supply closet is a tight fit, especially if you’re claustrophobic.”
Except he wasn’t claustrophobic. Right now, though, he was feeling a little gynophobic. Afraid of women. One woman in particular. Amanda Robinson was different, and that bothered him. What bothered him even more was that he was bothered about it in the first place.
In the tiny bathroom, the only place where’d she’d be able to find privacy in their living arrangement, Amanda leaned back against the door and drew in a deep breath to steady her nerves. She was shaking. Actually shaking … hands, knees, a few parts in between. So, what was that about? She knew Jack, had been the one to ask him here. Now, seeing him out of his Texas element … Even her breath was shaking as she shut her eyes and conjured up his image. Usual rough cut even rougher. Hair mussed, that sexy, sexy dark stubble on his face. Even the glisten of sweat on his face made him sexy. Sexy …
No! He couldn’t be sexy. This wasn’t about sexy.
Amanda’s eyes flew open to stop the flow of pure sexual fascination with a man she was trying hard to repudiate as sexy. And failing miserably. Yet what had all that dialogue been about, especially the part where she had been getting him stretched out on her couch? Really? Was that what she’d said to him? Her analyst’s couch, for heaven’s sake!
Another round of shakes hit her because she didn’t know what had come over her, and she didn’t like it the least little bit that, rather than annoying her, his streak of opposition had tweaked something. Woken it up. Lit some kind of a fire.
It was like she was seeing Jack for the first time. Enjoying what she was seeing way more than she should. And now she was getting stressed out about sharing quarters with him, sleeping mere feet away from him. Forming an intimacy by proximity, something that had never bothered her all those years she’d slept in the hospital on call with colleagues and strangers alike. It was a bed, and everybody concerned was too tired to care who was in the bed across from theirs.
Except now she wasn’t tired, and she did care, because … Well, it was the jungle. It was always the jungle, and the jungle always made her feel like someone other than who she was. Why? No clue. But from the moment she arrived here—every single time she arrived here—the old Amanda started giving way to the new one. Sometimes it crept out of her by slow measures, sometimes it leaped, like a hungry panther.
Sure, there had to be a psychology to it, and as a psychologist she should have been able to figure it out. But maybe she liked the way she felt when she unpinned her hair and took off her pearls, which was why she avoided that little analysis. It just plain felt good to be Argentina Amanda.
So here she was, throwing off those figurative pearls by changing into something more comfortable than linen slacks and fitted blouse, anxious to get on with the panther inside her. Yet when she opened the door, she couldn’t take that leap. That was the other Amanda fighting to take her back. The one who took control so completely now all she could do was stand in the doorway and stare at Jack, who’d apparently shooed Ezequiel away then stretched out flat on his bed. Either asleep already, or trying to bring on a self-induced trance.
She took a deep breath to calm herself, and to help her hang on to the last few shreds of that other Amanda … shreds she was a little afraid to let go of. “Look, Ben’s in clinic for another hour, and I’m on my way to the kitchen to see what I can find to eat. Care to come with me?”
“Thanks … not hungry,” Jack said.
“Thirsty? There’s always a pitcher of fresh lemonade.”
“Not thirsty.”
This was the way it was going to be? “Are you always so non-responsive?” she asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a doctor, and doctors are supposed to be responsive.” He rose up,