Dr. Dangerous. KRISTI GOLD
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like using the real thing, so you’re not going to get me to bend on this one. Besides, most women prefer a closer shave. Less whisker burn. Don’t you?”
He was doing it again, making her feel all hot and bothered. And those darned scenarios that kept popping into her brain. The man had more pull than a Supreme Court judge. No wonder he was also known as the Stud of Surgery. “Okay, we’ll work around it. Where are some scissors? I need to cut off the excess fur before we bring out the razor.”
“In the bathroom drawer,” he said, pointing toward the hallway leading from the living room. “First door on the right. Shaving cream’s in the medicine cabinet along with the razor.”
Making her way down the hardwood hallway floor, Brooke came to the small bathroom. It, too, was cluttered with towels and discarded rags piled in the corner.
She rummaged through the organized drawer and found the scissors with little trouble. The mirrored medicine cabinet was much the same, everything lined up in neat rows like multicolored perennials in an immaculate garden. Obviously he’d had some order in his life at one time.
She opened the linen closet behind her. It was bare. No towels, no washcloths. He must be recycling, but for how long? She couldn’t tolerate the thought of many weeks worth of used towels. Only one option remained. She’d have to do laundry. Her mother would be doubly proud.
Gathering up a load of towels in her arms, the shaving cream, razor and scissors tucked in her lab coat pocket, Brooke headed back into the kitchen. “I thought I’d throw a load of towels in—” She halted in midstride and midsentence when she came upon the doctor, sitting at the table, sans shirt.
Her gaze roamed over his bared chest covered by a spattering of golden hair. A well-defined road map to a prime physique. His belly was flat, revealing a nice six-pack of muscle, and she wondered how the heck he’d been lifting weights with one bad hand and a broken leg.
Of course, it probably came naturally for him, as it did for many men. Not that Brooke had seen all that many men who looked like Jared Granger. Not even close.
He seemed unaffected by Brooke’s perusal, and she prayed her mouth was shut. “Where’s the washer?” she asked, when what she really wanted to know was where her good sense had fled.
He pointed to a louvered door to his right. “In there.”
“Okay, then. Let’s see if I can figure this out.” Securing the pile of towels under her chin, she opened the door and stuffed the load into the washer. After tossing a scoop of detergent in, she stared at the knobs for a few minutes.
“Mind if I throw a few more things in with those?”
The hair on Brooke’s neck came to attention when she realized he was standing immediately behind her. She sensed his heat, smelled his cologne and finally got up the nerve to look at him over her shoulder. “What do you have in mind?”
He pointed to a laundry basket sitting atop the dryer. “My underwear and a few pair of socks.”
She surveyed the pile of briefs in the basket. Not surprising. He seemed like a brief kind of guy. “I have room for a few. Nothing worse than being down to your last pair.”
“I ran out two days ago.”
That thought conjured up all sorts of questions she didn’t dare ask. She didn’t have to.
“I’m going native,” he said. “That’s what we used to call it in college when we ran out of Jockey shorts. In case you’re wondering.”
She had been wondering, and going “native” seemed an appropriate description. Right now she was having some fairly primitive thoughts about the man behind her. “Do you want me to teach you how to use the washer?” Her voice came out highpitched and shaky.
“Nope. I can handle the washer. I manage fine with my left hand.”
Then why hadn’t he? Maybe he was playing on her sympathy, knowing she’d feel sorry for him and engage in some menial tasks. Then again, maybe he truly didn’t have the energy.
After tossing a few pair of underwear into the washer with the towels, Brooke turned to find Jared Granger seated at the table. He’d actually retrieved a basin and filled it with water while she’d been taking care of the laundry. So he wasn’t helpless after all. But he was gorgeous sitting there with his bare chiseled chest and tousled blond hair. A woman could sure get a thrill running her hands over all that sinewy muscle.
Brooke slapped the thoughts out of her brain. For goodness’ sake, it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen a half-naked man before. Just not any who had the kind of sensual aura that made women take a second look. A third look…
What was it about him that made her feel all soggy inside? Why did she respond to his questionable comments when she had learned long ago not to react to anything with sexual undercurrents where patients were concerned? Where any man was concerned, for that matter.
Right now she didn’t care to dissect her reaction to Jared Granger. Right now she only had to help the man shave. And Lord help her, she hoped she survived it.
Three
The woman had great hands, and she had them on him.
With a cheerful smile, Brooke lathered Jared’s jaw with shaving cream, patting his cheeks like a kid having a fine time playing in the mud. But the way his body was reacting, she might as well have her great hands farther south.
Nope, he wasn’t dead. At least not all of him. Jared realized that the moment she’d started cutting away his beard. There was something innately intimate about a woman doing this to him. About Brooke Lewis doing this to him, he corrected. Who would’ve thought that something as elemental as getting a shave would be such a turn-on?
He shifted in his seat on that thought.
“Hold still,” she said. “I don’t want this all over me.”
Jared met Brooke’s gaze to find she was concentrating on getting the shaving cream in all the right places. Hell, at this rate, she’d be here until dawn. And he’d be a raving lunatic because, at the moment, her breasts were about level with his mouth. If he moved just a hair forward, he could plant his foamed-up face right into her knit-covered cleavage.
“Do you want to try it?”
Oh, yeah, he did. Thankfully she moved away before he could give everything over to impulse.
“I think you’ve done enough playing with the lotion,” he said. And it was playing on his nerve endings in a not too bad way, as well as other places.
She put the can of cream down on the table beside her and picked up the razor. “I meant do you want to try using this.”
“I already have. I nicked myself about fifty times the last time I gave it the old collegiate try.”
“Okay. Let’s see if we can figure this out.” After placing the razor back on the table, she removed the towel she’d draped over his chest, shook out the hair clippings onto a newspaper she’d placed on the floor, then bent forward again to reknot it at his neck. All the while, Jared considered what it would be like to grab her around the waist, pull her between his parted legs and plant a kiss on that sassy mouth of hers.
He damned his near loss of control. What was it about Brooke Lewis that had his imagination running helter-skelter? Because she’d treated him as though she understood his dilemma? Because she was a woman and readily available? He only wished that were the case. It was more complicated than that. She was more complicated than that.
“Okay, let’s get started.” Moving behind him, she grabbed up the razor and handed it over his shoulder.
“Let’s see what you can do with this.”
He curled the offending object, his recent nemesis, in his left fingers and stared into the mirror she’d set up on the table.