Читать книгу: «The Greatest Risk», страница 2

He smiled at her failure, and that smile was devastating, warm and sexy. Of course, he was exactly the kind of man who knew it, and whom a woman with an ounce of sense walked away from. No, ran away from. He had mentioned seven injuries in the span of seven seconds!

Besides, he was exactly the kind of man who could have you breaking all the rules—kissing on the front steps of a public place and loving it—before you even knew what had hit you.

“Look, Maggie, it was nice running into you.”

A different person might have known how to play with that, but she just looked at him with consternation.

“I’m trying to say I’m sorry I ran you down. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you,” he said. He was dismissing her.

It was a carelessly tossed-out offer. He didn’t mean it, and of course there wasn’t anything he could do to erase the fact that she had been wagging her upper thighs at everyone who had come in the main entrance in the last few minutes.

But for some reason, looking into the jewel-like sparkle of those green eyes, feeling the wattage of that devilish grin, Dr. Strong’s homework assignment came to mind.

Be bold. Do something totally out of character.

It would be absolute insanity for Maggie to actually say the words that formed in her brain. She thought of that couple kissing on the steps and was filled with a sudden, heady warmth.

“You could go out with me,” she said, and then at the look of stunned surprise on his face, she stammered, “You know, to make it up to me.”

His eyes widened, and then narrowed. He was looking at her in a brand-new way, and she suddenly had the awful feeling she was coming up short.

She was not the kind of woman a man like this dated. He dated women who had waterfalls of wild hair, who wore skimpy clothing molded proudly to voluptuous curves. He dated women who wore bright-red lipstick and had a matching color for their fingernails.

Fingernails that would be long and tapered, not short and neatly filed. Maggie hid her fingers behind her back, but it didn’t help.

Maggie Sullivan was not Luke August’s kind of woman and they both knew it. Still, why did her heart feel as if it was going to fly right out of her chest while she waited for his answer?

You could go out with me.

Luke eyed the woman in front of him with surprise. She did not look like the type of woman who surprised a man.

She was presentable enough, in that kind of understated way that he associated with schoolteachers, librarians and dental hygienists, though her eyes prevented her from being ordinary. They were a shade of hazel that danced between blue and green. She had beautiful blond hair, untainted by the color streaks that were so fashionable. Her features, her nose and cheekbones and chin were passably cute, but not spectacularly attractive.

And she had a nice body under that prim gray straight-line suit with the uncooperative skirt, and he knew quite a bit more about her body than he should, since it had been flattened under him for fifteen or twenty most delectable seconds.

But Luke had already guessed quite a lot about her from their short acquaintance. She would be the predictable sort. If she said she’d meet you at two, she was the type who would be there five minutes before. The problem with the predictable sort was they always had an expectation that you were going to share their predictability.

He also guessed she would prefer reading a novel to experiencing real adventure. Her idea of a perfect Friday night was probably to be curled up on her couch with a book, a cup of tea and a cat. The problem with that type was that they generally held old-fashioned values of home and family in high esteem, a view that, given his own childhood home life, he was not inclined to share.

He was willing to bet she was the type who could be counted on to bake cookies and bring them into the office, and even though Luke liked homemade cookies as much as the next man, he was wary of what they represented—a longing for domesticity.

If the woman in front of him was all that she appeared, she was sweet, wholesome and predictable.

In fact, not his type at all. Least likely ever to wreck a wheelchair while racing down a hospital corridor.

Also least likely to ask a strange man out. Were there more surprises lurking behind that mask of respectability? Damn. He did like the unexpected.

Still, when he’d asked if there was anything he could do for her, what he’d meant was that he’d pick up her dry-cleaning bill. He should have been more clear about that.

He was going home to his ideal woman in a few more days. Her name was Amber. She had long, wild, red-tinted hair, red lips and eyes that were so black they smoked. A lacy white bra, filled to overflowing, peeped out from under her black leather jacket.

Amber had appeared in his life—unexpectedly—in April of 2002. In fact, she had appeared at the flick of his wrist. He’d been changing the calendar from March, and there she was, April 2002 on his Motorcycle Maidens calendar.

At least he was faithful to her. He had never turned the page to May. New calendars were a dime a dozen, after all, but a woman like Amber? He’d been searching for her since then. When he found her, then and only then, would he consider giving up the bachelor lifestyle. Meanwhile, he could tell his mother who, after seeking counseling several years back, had started showing unexpected and not entirely welcome interest in him, that he was “seeing” someone.

Amber was not the type who baked cookies, or was content with a cup of tea on a Friday night. She probably didn’t like cats or small children. But the way she unbuttoned her jacket and leaned over the handlebars of that Harley—the exact same make, year and model that he himself rode—who cared?

Meanwhile, it was true, he’d gone through a number of Amber look-alikes. Big-busted redheads, with steamy smiles and promising eyes, some of whom even shared his addiction to all things fast and furious. But somehow it always dead-ended, always disappointed, never even got close to filling that place.

Luke did not like thinking about that place. The restless place. The empty space. He was thirty-four years old and facing up to the fact that the older he got, the harder it was to fill. Speed didn’t do it anymore, not the way it used to. And the broken bones took longer to mend than they used to.

“What do you mean, go out?” he asked, leaning toward her, playing the game he knew how to play. Even though she was not his type, the man-woman thing was an effective form of outrunning that place, at least temporarily.

She actually was blushing a charming shade of crimson, something Amber did not do, and would not do when he finally found her.

“Never mind,” she said, and tossed her hair. “That was a silly thing to say. I don’t know what got into me.”

It was the wrong kind of hair for him. Since Amber, he liked redheads, and not necessarily real redheads, either. But that self-conscious toss had drawn his eye. Miss Priss’s hair was an intriguing shade somewhere between corn silk and ripening wheat.

Considering it wasn’t the type of hair he went for, at all, he found it odd that he suddenly wanted to touch it. “We could,” he said, “go out.”

Her green-blue eyes got very big. Amber would have licked her lips and let her eyes travel suggestively down his hospital gown, but hers didn’t.

“Maggie, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what Nurse Nightmare called you?” He was helping her along, giving her an opportunity to flirt, but she was obviously terrible at this. She was looking everywhere but at him.

“Maggie Sullivan,” she confirmed reluctantly. “But really, never mind.”

“Go out?” he prodded her. “Like for a drink or something?”

“Oh. No. I mean I don’t drink.”

Hell’s bells, this was getting worse by the moment. Amber would drink. Get on the tables and sway her hips and lick her lips when she’d had a few too many.

And he’d be the one who got to bring her home.

“So, what did you mean, then, go out?”

“I thought maybe a movie…or something,” she said lamely.

Worse than he thought. A movie, which meant the big debate. Do you hold her hand? Put your arm over her shoulder? When was the last time going out had meant that to him?

He thought he’d been twelve.

“Did you have a particular movie in mind?” Mind. Had he lost his? Maggie Sullivan was not his kind.

On the other hand, his search for Amber was proving futile. Why not entertain himself until she came along? Maggie was the kind of girl who had always snubbed him in high school, the kind of girl lost behind too many books in her arms, not amused by being tripped by his big foot sticking out in the hall.

Miss Goody Two Shoes and the Wild Boy.

Life had been getting a little dull. Why not play a bit? She’d asked, not him. She’d started it. If she wanted to play with fire, why not accommodate her?

“I had heard Lilacs in Spring was good, but—”

Lilacs in Spring. He was willing to bet it was all about sappy stuff, no motorcycles or pool tables in the script. Kissing. Romance. Eye-gazing. Hand-holding. Fields full of flowers. Mushy music. In other words, the big yuck.

The type of movie he and Amber would not go to, ever.

“Meet me right here, at say, eight?” he said. “We could catch the late show.”

“Aren’t you in the hospital?”

“Did you ever see the movie Escape from Alcatraz?”

“No.”

That figures. “Everything’s way more fun when you’re not supposed to do it,” he explained, attempting to be patient with her. “I loved playing hooky as a kid. There are things a man misses about being a kid.”

He could tell she just wanted to turn and run. She had never gone out with the kind of guy who liked playing hooky, not in her entire life. Instead she yanked her skirt down one more time, lifted her chin and said, “Eight o’clock it is.”

She scurried away and he watched her, amused. “I bet I’ll never see her again,” he said out loud. Just the same, he knew he would be waiting here at eight o’clock just in case Miss Maggie Sullivan decided to surprise him one more time.

Something hit him hard in the knees and he turned around. Billy Harmon grinned at him from his wheelchair. His bald head was covered with the baseball cap Luke had given him yesterday.

The kid just tugged at his heartstrings, a surprise to Luke, since he liked to deny the existence of a heart.

“Hey, Billy, you escaped Nurse Nightmare. Good man!”

“Luke, I got two rolls of toilet paper. You want to do something with me?” Billy leaned forward, his eyes alight with glee as he laid out his plan for laying a toilet-paper trail all the way from Nurse Nightmare’s private bathroom facilities to the men’s locked ward.

Luke scanned the boy’s face, looking for signs of weariness, but there were none. That nurse had been right, he wasn’t a doctor. But he knew mischief could be a tonic, especially for a kid who knew way too much about the hard side of life. In Luke’s evaluation, Billy needed his mind taken off the bleak realities he faced everyday, and that wasn’t going to happen if he was lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

“I’m in,” Luke said, picking his wheelchair up off the floor. He inspected it for damage, found none and settled himself in the seat. He followed Billy’s example and hooked the toilet paper roll on the back push grip where it began to unroll merrily behind him.

But the whole time he laid his toilet paper trail down the hall, Luke August was uneasily aware that he was thinking of eyes that were an astonishing shade of blue and green, not the least little bit like Amber’s.

He tried to imagine if those eyes would be laughing or disapproving if she was watching him right now.

Who cares? he asked himself roughly.

He realized he did. And that maybe he was the one who needed to be thinking long and hard before he showed up in that hospital foyer at eight tonight.

Two

L uke caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of the hospital front doors, and felt satisfied with what he had accomplished. He was wearing the green overalls and the white-bill cap of a hospital custodian.

“Evenin’, Doc,” he greeted his own doctor as she hurried by him out of the building. She was an Amazon of a woman, in her mid-fifties, but they were on a first-name basis, and she had that gleam in her eye whenever she saw him. What could he say? It was a gift.

But tonight she barely glanced his way. “Good night,” she said politely.

It wasn’t just that she hadn’t recognized him. It was as if he was invisible. People leaving the hospital as the end of visiting hours approached bustled by him in the main foyer with nary a glance, returning his casual greetings without really seeing him.

Invisible. Exactly the effect he had been attempting when he had raided the maintenance closet on his floor. Luke swabbed the floor with his mop and congratulated himself on his ease with the art of disguise. He liked trying on other personas and slipped into them easily.

He would have made an excellent spy or undercover cop, he thought. He realized he probably would have excelled in a career in acting. In fact, he had entertained the idea of becoming an actor after one successful role in a high school production. A girlfriend had talked him into playing Hook in Peter Pan and he had gotten a great deal of mileage out of telling his upscale and very conservative parents he planned to hit Hollywood upon graduation. He could not find a single other career choice that his parents disapproved of as heartily as that one, which was guaranteed to get a rise out of them both.

His eventual choice, a career in construction, had certainly proven to be a close enough second in the disapproval rating. Nevertheless, he hadn’t looked back.

“Manly, too,” he muttered to himself of his career choice. Now, though, he enjoyed being in character, an eccentric floor cleaner who muttered and swabbed. No one watching would be even remotely aware that Luke kept a surreptitious eye on the front door.

“Visiting hours are now over,” the tinny voice over the public address system announced officiously.

Luke glanced at the clock, confirming what he had just heard. Eight o’clock, on the dot.

“Big surprise,” Luke said to his washtub, giving the mop a vigorous wring. “Miss Maggie Sullivan, an on-the-dot kind of gal if there ever was one, is not coming.”

After his weak moment this afternoon, when he had caught himself actually caring what Miss Maggie would think of a grown man unraveling toilet paper down a hospital corridor, Luke had arrived at the conclusion that he was not going out with her. There was something dangerous brewing under the surface of that pristine exterior.

Still, as the hands of the clock had ticked closer and closer to eight, curiosity, that worst of male vices, had gotten the better of him.

He’d found everything he needed in the maintenance closet on his floor, including a name tag that said Fred. It was really the best of both worlds—he got to see if she showed up without being the least bit vulnerable himself.

Really, Luke told himself, it was as if he was studying human nature, nothing more. He wanted to see how accurately he had judged her character, and now he congratulated himself on his astuteness.

He’d surmised Miss Maggie had never asked a man out before in her life. He had predicted she would get cold feet.

Okay, he might have also been just a tiny bit curious what she would have worn had he happened to be wrong.

But he wasn’t. He looked at the clock again. Three minutes after eight. If she was coming, he would have bet his last fifty cents she would have been here at precisely five minutes to eight. She was not the kind of woman who would be late. He knew these things. He should have let Billy in on it. They could have bet five bucks, though it would have been a shame to take Billy’s money.

Just underneath the hearty round of congratulations he was giving himself as he wrung out the mop one final time and prepared to go back to his room, Luke became aware of something besides self-congratulation stirring in his breast.

He realized he was wringing the mop just a little too vigorously, the handle bending dangerously under the pressure he was applying. He paused and analyzed the unwanted feeling that hovered at the edges of his consciousness. Could it be?

Disappointment?

No! He would never be disappointed because a little mouse like that had stood him up! Or if he was, it was only because he had gone to a great deal of trouble to be able to have a front-row seat to her reaction to being stood up by him.

He felt the cool draft of the front door opening, and out of the corner of his eye caught a flutter of movement. He turned his head marginally, froze, then ducked his head and began mopping again. He slid another glance out of the corner of his eye.

Her.

He waltzed the bucket around so he was facing her, but kept the bill of his cap down. He peered at her from under it and digested the fact the little mouse, Miss Maggie, had managed to surprise him again.

She had not been five minutes early. And she was not a no-show, either.

Maggie Sullivan stood, a trifle uncertainly, scanning the foyer. The outfit was worth waiting for. It was evident she had worked very hard at choosing it, and had arrived at a look that was not in the least overstated, and that was certainly not designed to impress anyone. Still, there was no denying the way those plain black trousers, flared faintly from knee to ankle, hugged the lovely feminine swell of hip that had caused her so much trouble earlier in the day. She had on a light-brown suede jacket over a black T-shirt that promised to be formfitting if he ever had an opportunity to get a better look at it.

He remembered the soft press of that form just a little too well.

“Brilliant,” he muttered at the murky water in his bucket. The girl was obviously brilliant. She had chosen an outfit designed to make it look as though she was not trying to impress anyone, least of all not him, and that had succeeded in intriguing, nonetheless.

It was not an Amber-approved outfit. No cleavage or glimpses of underwear were to be seen, but it was a long way from the Miss Priss he had knocked right off her feet this afternoon. Her blond hair was free and cascaded down over her shoulders in a shiny wave. He felt that same rebel need to touch it that he had felt this afternoon.

He tried to read her features, but the little tilt of her delicate nose, the furrow at her brow and the quick glance at her watch were not all that readable.

Was she disappointed that he hadn’t showed? He was amazed that he couldn’t tell. She glanced at her watch, took another look around, then spun on her heel. He thought maybe he had caught a quick glimpse of something on her face before she had turned away. Relief?

That Luke appeared not to have shown up? That seemed unlikely, especially since she herself had gone to the trouble of getting here.

Still, she was leaving. Would she give up that quickly? He had been at his station, a patient patient, for a full half hour.

Wait. Her shoulders slumped marginally as she pushed at the door. In that one small gesture he read a heartrending weariness at the ways of the world, and at the callousness of his sex.

He was not the kind of guy who could be trusted with a girl who got hurt easily, and he was the least likely guy to save his sex from a reputation of being callous. In fact, he had probably personally helped his gender gain that reputation!

Nope, Luke August knew himself inside out. He was superficial and insensitive, and for the most part, damned proud of it.

Let her go, his voice of reason cautioned him.

“Hey, Maggie.” It was his other voice.

She spun, startled, and scanned the room again. Her eyes rested on him briefly, studied the empty foyer, and then returned to him, understanding dawning in them.

He rested his hands on the top of the mop, pushed the bill of his cap up with the handle and grinned.

She stared at him, her hand still on the door. It occurred to him that she was considering bolting, and that he would be sorry if she did. But then she let go of her grip on the door, turned, folded her arms over her chest and tapped her foot.

In that pose, she reminded him of a teacher he’d had in the sixth grade. A formidable woman whom he had not liked one little bit. Why hadn’t he just let her leave?

That’s what I told you to do, the voice of reason reminded him churlishly.

It occurred to him that underneath that stern expression, Maggie was trying not to smile. But the smile flickered across her lips, disappeared and then reappeared again, the sun peeping in and out of rain clouds.

The sun won, and that smile changed everything.

Cameron Diaz, eat your heart out, Luke thought. Maggie Sullivan’s smile was wide and infectious. She had glossed her lips some kind of soft, shimmery shade of peach, and he saw the kissable plumpness of her lower one. In the blink of an eye that smile transformed her from an old-maid schoolmarm to a woman who looked young and carefree and quite astoundingly beautiful.

Not beautiful in the Amber way, all painted and promising seduction. Beautiful in quite a different way, natural and graceful, like a doe pausing in a meadow.

He noticed the smile lit her eyes to a shade that was electric, and she had little crinkles at the edges of them that told him her smile was one hundred percent the real thing.

His eyes were drawn to the plumpness of her bottom lip again. How was it possible he had been in such close proximity to her this afternoon and not noticed how kissable her mouth was? It must be the gloss, because now it seemed he couldn’t focus on anything else as she came across his nicely cleaned floor toward him.

“You’re full of surprises,” she said, stopping, looking up at him through a tangle of thick lashes.

Whoo boy. He was full of surprises? She was the one who was late. And here. And beautiful in some spectacular, understated way he had not appreciated in a woman before. And the biggest surprise of all? Miss Maggie had lips that could be declared dangerous weapons.

“You, too,” he said.

“Me?” She laughed with disbelief and self-consciousness. “Oh, no, I don’t think I’m a surprising kind of person.”

“You’re here,” he pointed out. “That’s a surprise.”

“You didn’t think I’d come?” The smile faded, and with it went the spell of great beauty it had cast. Not that she wasn’t cute enough, if you had the librarian fantasy.

Which he didn’t. Amber in black leather was all the fantasy he needed.

“No, I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Oh.”

He noticed how awkward she was, just plain bad at the man-woman interchanges. It was a quality he should not find the least endearing.

But he did, not that it changed anything. Luke August did not date awkward girls. Or ones that were easily hurt. And yet her eyes wouldn’t let him go, beckoned to him, a lighthouse to a ship lost at sea.

“So, er, why did you come? If you thought I wasn’t coming?” she asked.

He lifted a shoulder. “Floor needed mopping?”

“Well, that explains the outfit.”

He suddenly didn’t want her thinking about his outfit for too long. He didn’t want her arriving at the real reason he’d worn the disguise—to spy on her, and then to slip away, unscathed by her smile. It was too late for plan A.

Luke decided to formulate plan B as he went along. “It’s part of my escape plan,” he confided in her. “Nurse Nightmare takes a dim view of her patients ducking out to catch the late show.”

“The late show,” Maggie repeated, as if she had only just remembered why she was here. She looked around uncomfortably, took a deep breath and began talking, the fast chatter of someone who was nervous, or trying very hard to sell a product they didn’t actually believe in.

“Actually, Luke,” she said, “I asked you to go to the movie with me on an impulse.”

“You don’t say?” he said dryly.

She hurried on. “I had decided not to come. But then it seemed so unfair to leave you waiting with no explanation. So I just came to tell you, it’s off. No date.”

He regarded her silently. Well, well, well. Another surprise from Maggie Sullivan. She was brushing him off? It was actually much worse than just plain being stood up. He was not entirely accustomed to this turn of events. He found himself reluctantly intrigued by it, so he folded his hands more firmly over the mop, leaned his chin on the tops of his hands and let her flounder.

“You wouldn’t have liked it, anyway. The movie,” she added hastily as if, left to his own devices, he would have assumed it was something incredibly, indescribably naughty.

“Why the change of heart?” he asked, enjoying the little flood of crimson that was staining her cheeks. She had quite amazing cheekbones, when they were highlighted like that.

The voice of reason tried to interject in his inspection. Luke, it asked him, when was the last time you were with a girl who blushed?

“I just don’t want to,” she stammered, and then added, apparently for emphasis, “Really.”

Twelve. Same age that I last took a girl to a movie.

“Really,” he repeated, not quite sure if he was amused or aggravated. “Women rarely say they don’t want to. To me.”

“I’m sure that’s quite true, Mr. August,” she said formally. Her eyes skittered away from his, looking for an escape. “I mean, it’s obvious you’re a very charming man. And attractive.”

Her blush deepened as if telling him he was attractive was something she would now have to confess to the neighborhood priest on Saturday night.

“I have to go,” she said frantically.

Not so fast, little Miss Maggie. “What part don’t you want to?” he asked. He deliberately lowered his voice. He took one hand off the mop handle, tried to fight the renegade urge one more time and failed. He picked up a strand of her hair, felt the tantalizing silk of it between his thumb and finger, and then let it fall.

She gasped as if he had asked her to have sex on the foyer floor, and tucked the offended strand of hair behind her ear. “The movie part,” she squeaked.

She was not in his league at all. That was evident. His league was women who knew how to play the game—who breezily returned the repartee loaded with sexual innuendo, who blinked their lashes and tossed their hair, who leaned a little closer to let him have a peek down shirts that were unbuttoned one button too low.

Luke could not have guessed it would be so much fun playing a different game, toying with Maggie. The thing was, he couldn’t predict what was going to happen next with her. And that lack of predictability was just a tiny bit refreshing.

“What’s so scary about a movie?” he asked, knowing darn well it wasn’t the movie she was scared of.

Unless he was mistaken, little Miss Maggie found him wildly attractive. One touch of his lips on her lips, or on her neck, one little nibble on her ear, and she would probably lose control of herself.

The thought of Maggie Sullivan losing control of herself flared, white-hot, in his poor male-hormone-driven brain.

Down, Fred, he ordered himself.

“Who’s Fred?” she asked, bewildered.

He realized he had spoken out loud, recovered and pointed to the name tag on the hospital-issue coveralls.

“Oh.” She was very flustered.

“You were explaining about the movie,” he reminded her silkily.

She looked down at her suede jacket and picked an imaginary fleck off of it. “Okay,” she said, looking back at him suddenly and jutting out her chin, the determined look of a woman about to come clean, “it’s about the popcorn.”

“Popcorn?” he echoed. He had expected anything but that. Popcorn? Was she serious?

She nodded, deadly serious. “Do I get popcorn?”

He wondered if it was a trick question. There it was again. Every single time he thought he was sort of figuring her out, she tossed a curve at him.

“Do you want popcorn?” he asked cautiously. He was not accustomed to being with women who were complicated, hard to read, easy to offend.

“Of course! What’s a movie without popcorn?”

“Agreed.”

She sighed. “But if I get popcorn, then I have to decide about butter.”

“That hardly seems earthshaking,” he said, but he could tell she thought it was.

She sighed again, then blurted out, “Do I get my popcorn with butter the way I like it or without so that you’ll think I at least try to be skinny?”

He slid his eyes over the lushness of her curves. What a shame skinny would be on her.

When he looked back at her face she looked earnest and indignant, and Luke found he had to put a hand up to his mouth and bite on his knuckle so he wouldn’t laugh. It would be a mistake to laugh in the face of her earnestness.

“And then,” she continued, “if I say to hell with what you think since you’ve already seen my skirt stuck around my hips—”

She didn’t look like the kind of girl who used even mild curse words like hell very often. Dare he hope he was already being an evil influence on her?

“—and get the butter, maybe even double butter, then my fingers are covered in grease and if you try to hold my hand, not saying that you would, but—”

He held up his hand to stop the flow of words, choked down the laughter that was trying to get out and gazed down at her, trying to discern if she was attempting to amuse him or if it just came naturally to her.

It occurred to him that it had been a very long time since he’d been anything but bored with any woman, with the notable exception of Amber.

Having tamed the twitching of his lips, he finally said, “Has anybody ever suggested you might take life a tad too seriously?”