SINCE IT WAS NOW just another Monday, Jack tossed in a load of clothes and started loading the dishwasher. As he did, he continued to ponder what he’d learned during the Bowen-shortened weekend.
He wanted to live with Mel. For more than six months. And not as her wife. And mostly not because she needed him as her housekeeper.
He wanted to care for, protect and help Melinda. He wanted to do everything he could to make her life easier. And what he wanted in return was affection, not gratitude.
Well, hell. Wasn’t that l-o-v-e?
Sure felt like it.
The idea stunned him. Then stunned him some more. Love was the last result he’d expected from this crazy arrangement, but he hadn’t expected this arrangement in the first place. He’d seized an opportunity.
Now…he had a choice to make: reclaim his former disdain for the mushy L-emotion—or turn himself into a personal investment opportunity too good for Mel to pass up.
Jack checked the time. Hmm, he had about twenty minutes before the boys would be showing up. Better get the Danish warmed up and the assignments compiled.
By now, most daily household tasks had become second nature, though he still had to check himself when he used the oven. To broil or to bake, that was the question. He still couldn’t see what difference it made where the heat came from, but after that smoke-alarm disaster…Who knew mac-n-cheese could actually explode? Choosing Bake on a hunch, he popped in the pastry.
As he went back to fill the dishwasher soap dish and flip the lid down, Jack wondered how to convince Mel she needed a husband, not a wife, and that he’d be the best candidate for the job.
“What exactly does a husband do in this millennium, anyway?” Jack asked the dust bunny who lived under the table in the breakfast nook.
He’d made his gender-equality statement and he stood by it. But maybe racking up a few traditional male-role accoutrements, like a decent income—and a mortgage to match?—would raise his attractiveness quotient.
He could take the next Certified Financial Planner’s certification exam, scheduled for July, instead of waiting until November. Was he ready? Butterflies rioted in his stomach.
Luckily for Jack, the old guys arrived to tell a few war stories and kaffeeklatsch until, calmed by their distraction, he handed out job slips and made sure O’Banyon had a ride. Despite the geezer’s insistence, Jack wasn’t about to let those cataract-clouded eyeballs navigate Dallas streets.
Ever since ol’ Bob fixed Sherry’s ceiling fan by replacing the switch, she’d been circulating Jack’s phone number as Handyman Central. It didn’t take a genius to jot down addresses and problems and match them up with a retiree having the needed skill. And the men loved the extra money.
They were always offering him a cut of their earnings, but so far, he’d traded his clearinghouse act for their financial info, using it as practice problems for his test.
Once he had the oldsters situated for the day, Jack shuffled the laundry into the dryer, got something out for dinner and paid bills.
“Guess I’ll work up Preston’s profile,” he decided as he peered around the stack of sheets and towels before starting up the stairs. And he’d send in his registration form and fee for the July test.
Just in case his wife preferred an old-fashioned, breadwinner mate.
AS Mel clamped off a blood vessel and stepped back, she acknowledged the thrill of participating, even so secondarily, in a transplant operation. But while Dr. Patel and the main team removed the child’s diseased liver—to be replaced by part of a donor organ being shared with an adult recipient—she couldn’t help cursing the personal opportunity she’d lost this morning.
Her hunger had been reflected in Jack’s eyes. A few more minutes and they’d have been out of earshot from Earth. She could have let nature take its course then.
Now one of them would have to make a play for the other. But who?
Not that it mattered. They were both consenting adults with no other exclusive relationships. They even had a marriage license to legitimize such activity.
She’d do the asking, Mel decided. Because surgeons treat aggressively rather than dose and wait. Besides, Jack made her feel like a woman, but she didn’t have the faintest idea how to play the more traditional female role and get him to ask.
Jack’s feelings were a complete mystery, but she knew what she wanted: one wonderful, womanly memory of union with her husband.
If they could get to it before he booked.
And he would. A guy like Jack Halloran had better things to do than stay married to a geeky doctor with little free time and—Mel recalled her French toast fiasco—no wifely skills at all.
Tonight. When the surgery ended, she’d go home and proposition her hottie husband. Get it over with. Get on with it. Get it on.
Oh, yeah. If Jack agreed to revise the no-sex clause, they’d explore each other thoroughly tonight. Listen to their hearts beat in rhythm. Let their bodies join together. Melt and mold, meld and mingle.
The thought of going to bed with Jack made Mel so giddy, she laughed at one of Bowen’s stupid Texas A&M Aggie jokes.
The ancient one about the Aggie being so proud of his Olympic gold medal, he had it bronzed.
HOURS LATER, still awed by Dr. Patel’s skill and the human body’s amazing intricacy, Mel walked into the kitchen.
Empty.
Hmm. His car was here. “Jack?”
She walked through into the family room. Also empty. A quick circuit of the rest of the downstairs yielded the same results.
Maybe he’d gone somewhere. In someone else’s car. Without leaving a note.
Not that she was disappointed, discouraged, distraught, depressed or anything. She was just…tired.
So crash, Burke.
Good advice. Also frustrating as hell. Glumly she climbed the stairs.
Dammit, she’d geared up for a confrontation that would end in consummation, not another night alo—
Mel paused with her hand on the doorknob to her room. What was that sound? And was it coming from Jack’s room?
She moved down the hallway swiftly and silently, like a SWAT team closing in on a crack house. His door was ajar. Holding her breath, she put her ear to the narrow opening between door and frame.
Hmm. Either someone was torturing a small animal during a rainstorm or Jack was singing in the shower.
Refusing to let herself stop and think, Mel slipped into the room, climbed over the clothing strewn across the floor and stepped into Jack’s bathroom—just as the water and the caterwauling cut off.
When he swooshed open the shower curtain, Mel had her hands on the hem of her pullover tee. “Oh,” she said as calmly as she could, which wasn’t very, since she’d never seduced anyone before. “I was just coming to join you.”
Jack grabbed the shower curtain and covered his, ah, assets.
Which, Mel had time anyway to see, were quite substantial.
She tried to remember even one of the logical points she’d thought up on the drive home to convince Jack there was no reason they shouldn’t add sex to their approved-marital-activities list.
Hopeless. That gorgeous male body, slick and flushed, drove everything out of her mind. Sent it all rushing south.
“You…” Jack’s voice raveled the word into about three syllables. “Mel…” With a visible effort, he swallowed. His sapphire eyes darkened to midnight-navy. Finally he managed a complete sentence. “I’m wet.”
Mel smiled. Here goes. “Me, too,” she murmured, releasing her shirt hem and closing the distance between them.
MAKING LOVE WITH MELINDA was everything he thought it would be. And more. Much more.
He knew they should probably talk first. Establish ground rules, clarify what the sex meant, all that stuff. Or at least exchange some sweet compliments.
But when a naked man gets propositioned, then kissed and caressed by the woman he’s been wanting forever—only a very dead, very crazy person would refuse to respond.
Jack wasn’t dead or crazy. Not yet, anyway.
Freeing the towel she’d jerked from the rack and stroked him with, he dropped it in the tub. “I’m dry enough,” he said, not caring now how ragged his voice sounded. He wanted her—so much, he’d be lucky to get her undressed first. “Let’s get some of these clothes off you.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
With her help, Jack set a record for disrobing a female. He set another record carrying her to his bed.
That’s where he slowed the pace. He wanted her as aroused as he was. He thought he’d torture her the way she tortured him, making her teeter for days on the edge of orgasm until she begged him to take her over.
And it might have worked that way. Turning down the comforter and pulling back the sheet, arranging the pillows—and her hair on them—Jack got himself under enough control to kiss her slowly, thoroughly. He cupped and fondled and suckled her breasts. Concentrating on control and technique.
But somewhere along in there, Mel moaned with pleasure.
He was already at peak capacity or he’d have swelled with pride. He throbbed, instead. Then he suckled more. He licked, he used his teeth to gently scrape her sensitive flesh. He moved his hand between her thighs, threading his fingers through her damp curls, blazing a path to…
She moaned again.
That’s when Jack quit worrying about technique. Since she seemed to like it—and he sure as hell did—he just kept doing what he was doing. Somehow he still clung to his control.
Until she twisted out from under him, rolled him onto his back. “Please,” she whispered as she rose above him. Her green eyes glowed like burning emeralds. “I can’t…wait…any longer.”
The hot, hard tip of his arousal touched her hot, wet entrance. “Please.”
With a groan, Jack put his hands on her hips and guided her down.
She took them to paradise in less time than it would take even someone as succinct as Madonna to say it.
Not that Jack minded the speed of the trip, but the next time, he stayed in charge—and made it last.
And last. And last. Until they both begged for release and found it together.
Afterward was almost as good as during. Sated, languid, warm. Their bodies still entangled, they drifted to sleep.
Sometime later, Jack awoke. They’d left the lights on; the sky visible through the window was dark. Propping his elbow on one of the pillows and his head on his hand, he watched Mel doze on.
And wondered how anything so right could feel so…wrong.
Damn. He sure as hell wasn’t ready to give up the best sex he’d experienced in his life, but…
Jack sighed and let his free hand play with Mel’s silky chocolate hair.
He wanted more. Sex without love seemed wonderful but, for the first time ever, incomplete. And all Hallorans knew that love without commitment was just talk.
Was that what had him squirming inside? Some antiquated sensibility that a woman as special as Mel deserved more than casual, uncomplicated sex?
She hadn’t asked for anything more! And maybe she didn’t want more.
Or maybe, with her life devoted to medicine, she didn’t know there was more to want.
Should he keep his mouth shut, take what she offered and slowly try to show her what more they could have together?
Or should he refuse to get back in the sack with her until she agreed to a long-term commitment?
Oh, right, like he’d hold out for more than an instant if she so much as bared a toenail or fluttered her eyelashes suggestively!
Momentarily conclusionless, he stole out of bed, tucked Mel in carefully and dressed in the hallway. Then he went downstairs to whip up some energy-boosting dinner. Chicken with raspberry-balsamic sauce, steamed broccoli and jasmine rice.
“Take that, Red Chef!” he muttered as he finished the low-fat but flavorful sauce.
He served Mel dinner in bed. When she shivered from the air-conditioning, he gave her one of his shirts to put on; it sure looked better on her than it ever had on him.
And he wanted to take it right back off her.
THIS IS, Mel decided as she accepted another bite of saucy chicken, the height of decadence.
And she was savoring every minute of it.
Jack had to be the reigning lovemaking champion. Not that she had enough experience to judge that for herself, but she couldn’t imagine anyone needing to be any better than he’d been. Than they’d been.
Twice!
Then he’d brought her this delicious meal and practically fed it to her, bite by bite. And now…was that just a gratuitous bulge in his jeans or was Jack’s interest in applied erotica reviving?
Hers was. Rapidly.
“Do you—?”
“I want to—” Jack cleared his throat. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
Mel signaled him to go first. She didn’t mind a bit sharing the aggressor role. “No, you.”
Before Jack could speak, something buzzed. Mel looked around, her heart suddenly pounding. Was there a rattlesnake loose in the room?
The buzzing came again.
With a disgusted expression, Jack got up, dug through the clothes on the floor, removed something and handed it to her.
“You’re being paged, Dr. Burke,” he said heavily, then muttered something that sounded like an offer to disembowel Bowen while she checked the readout.
“Sorry about that,” Mel said as she scooted to the edge of his bed. “It’s not the hospital,” she added, reaching for the phone. “Probably a wrong number—I don’t recognize it. Let me check. Otherwise, we might get paged every ten minutes.”
She smiled across the rumpled sheets. “And I’d rather not be disturbed again tonight. How about you?”
His dark blue eyes blazing, Jack corralled the tray. “I’ll remove the breakables while you take the page. And no,” he added as he crossed the room, “I don’t want to be disturbed by anyone tonight. Except you, Melinda. But you disturb me all the time.”
“Good or bad?” Mel asked.
“In a bad, very bad way,” he said with a deep chuckle that set her insides tingling. “And, believe me, that’s way good.”
As Jack departed and Mel punched in the phone number showing on her pager display, she admitted she felt a smidge of relief at the interruption.
All she needed was a little bit of breathing room. A fingersnap’s worth of time to make sure her head was still on straight. And that her heart wasn’t wandering down any blind, dead-end, no-win alleys.
Jack made her body sing. He made her laugh. He gave her attention, consideration and care.
None of which meant she’d give up her career for him. Not that he’d asked, of course, but…
Medicine was her life. Trading pediatric surgery for the role of Jack Halloran’s wife would make her brother’s death meaningless.
She couldn’t do that to Harry. To her parents. To herself.
“Or to Jack,” she whispered as the phone rang again.
So she’d just have to make sure he never asked.
The ringing stopped as someone picked up. “Hello?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar.
“Hello. This is Melinda Burke.”
Before she could say anything more, the voice on the other end gave a heartfelt “Thank God,” then added, “It’s Bobby. Noreen’s husband.”
Mel listened as he went on—the words spilling out, full of panic and terror and pleading.
JACK PRACTICALLY TELEPORTED back upstairs. Good to go didn’t even begin to cover his condition! Well, he was married to an insatiable goddess. How lucky could a guy get?
He started to race down the hall then screeched to a halt.
“Mel? What are you doing?” She’d relocated to her room, which was okay, but she didn’t appear to be prepping for a long night of love. She looked to be—
“Packing.”
Jack thought about clamping his arms around her ankles and refusing to let go. Instead, he asked, “Why?”
She ceased wadding up clothing and looked at him, clearly distressed. “The page…my cousin’s been in an accident. She’s in surgery at Presbyterian. It sounds pretty bad.”
“But why are you taking clothes?”
“Because I’m meeting Bobby at the hospital and taking the baby home. He wants me to keep her until Noreen’s out of—” Mel plunged her hands into her hair and pulled outward. “I don’t know what to do with a baby!” she wailed.
“Of course you do,” Jack said. Was she nuts? “You’re a—”
“If you say ‘woman,”’ Mel warned him conversationally, “I’ll relocate your cowlick.”
“—pediatrician. That was my call all along,” he insisted firmly. “You’re a pediatrician.”
“That doesn’t mean I like kids enough to get along with them,” Mel informed him.
It doesn’t?
“I went into pediatric surgery so Harry’s life wouldn’t be wasted.”
Jack stared at her. This was so not right. “Why build a career around kids if you don’t like them? That seems like a waste of your life.”
Mel’s soft green eyes turned to serpentine. “I didn’t say I don’t like them.”
“What?!” She’d drive him crazy if he wasn’t already so close he could walk.
“I don’t know how I feel about kids! I’ve only been around sick ones—and I’m too busy getting them well to worry about feelings.” She wadded up another cotton T-shirt and slam-dunked it into the soft-sided bag she was packing. “And making my brother’s death count is not a waste of my life.”
She didn’t add “you jerk,” but Jack could hear it. Okay, an issue for another time.
“This’ll be a good experience then,” he said with the hard-edged cheerfulness of an elementary school phys ed teacher. “Nothing like a day or two with a baby to find out whether you—” Oops. He almost said “want one.” And that would be putting the layette before the trousseau. Or whatever.
“—like them,” he finished quickly before changing, sort of, the subject. “Let me grab a few things, then we’ll go. You drive, I’ll call Bowen so he can’t tell you no.”
“We’ll go? Y-you’re coming with me?”
“Of course. We’re in this together, Mel.”
She didn’t say anything, but he’d bet big that lowering her shoulders like that spelled relief.
Was that sweet or what? The woman could transplant a liver, but baby-sitting a normal, healthy infant scared her to death.
SOMEWHERE NEARBY, a baby whimpered. Reflexively Mel got to her feet and looked around. Huh. She’d slept in her clothes again. In a chair in Noreen’s minuscule living room.
They’d been baby-sitting less than three days, but she felt as exhausted as she had after her first week of internship.
The parallel was exact. Overwhelming demands meeting inexperienced uncertainty. It took everything out of you—faster than the latest annoying behavior became a syndrome with a Web site.
Another whimper. Proof that babies were tougher than they looked. Swiping her hair off her face, Mel went in search of her niece.
So far, she’d managed to diaper, feed and burp the five-month-old without harm. This, though, was her downfall: the soothing stuff. She just didn’t have the patience for it.
Luckily for them all, Jack did. His magic touch extended to babies, too. He’d hoist the kid up against his shoulder and walk her to sleep.
And while Amber slept…Mmm.
Not that they made love in Bobby and Noreen’s bed.
Just everywhere else they could think of—and what an imaginative partner Jack was! Athletic, too. Great flexibility, strength, endurance. And a very well developed, ah, circulatory system.
“What time is it?” Mel asked as she entered the bedroom and intersected Jack’s path.
“Morning.” He stopped patting the baby he held long enough to tuck a strand of Mel’s hair behind her ear and smooth his thumb over her eyebrow, cheekbone, and lip. “Thursday morning,” he clarified, twinkling his blue eyes at her and smiling.
As if he didn’t care that she wasn’t very good with babies. Or cooking. Or anything domestic, when it came down to it.
But the question haunted her. Stopped her from bringing up the topic of making their arrangement permanent.
What if—when it came to the long haul—Jack wanted a wifely wife? After her French toast disaster, he’d said something about not expecting her to be Donna Reed on her first day off.
Did that mean he’d expect Donna-like behavior from her later?
Later, like now?
“Bobby called,” Jack said over the baby’s continuing whimpers. “Noreen’s still in SICU, but he thinks she’ll be moved to a regular bed this afternoon”
“Good.” Mel breathed a sigh of relief. Bobby could take the baby with him then. And they could go home.
“Waaa!”
“Here.” Mel made herself hold out her arms. “Let me have her. You’ve done your tour.”
Jack didn’t bother disguising his relief as he handed Amber over. “We’ve been awake and fussing since three.”
Mel couldn’t blame his eagerness. Amber was her niece and adorable when she slept, but…
“Are you sure she isn’t sick?” Jack asked. “’Cuz she’s leaking.”
“What do you mean?” Mel’s hand went to Amber’s diaper.
“Not there,” Jack answered, as crankily as she’d ever heard him. Which, compared to Bowen, sounded like Emily Post on her best behavior. “Her nose is running. She’s drooling like a fountain. Maybe she’s got rabies.”
After putting the infant down for a quick visual examination, Mel absently chewed on her lip as she considered symptoms and diagnoses.
Aha. A possible explanation occurred to her. Gently she rubbed a fingertip over Amber’s gums. Yep. Score one for the doc.
“What’s wrong?” Jack demanded.
Smiling now, Mel said, “Noreen’s really going to be chapped about this.” She bent to kiss the baby’s soft, fat cheek, then picked her up. As she turned her smile on Jack, she said, “I just hope Bobby’s home before—”
“Before what?” Jack shouted, ramming fingers through his hair. He knew they taught doctors to remain calm in crises, but this was ridiculous! Shouldn’t they be calling 911 or rushing to the nearest doc in the box or something!
“Before Amber’s first tooth comes in. I know they’ll want to see it right away.”
Jack sank into a chair, cradling his head in his hands. My God. He’d just gone to hell on a high-speed train and now…
He looked up at Mel holding the baby in one arm, letting the kid gum her other forefinger and resting her puckered-up lips against Amber’s temple.
Now I understand what Tess means. About life and love and pain.
He also understood what Melinda meant to him. What he wanted—no, needed—for his life and hers.
“Would you see if we’ve got any ice?” Mel asked him, still getting chewed on and drool-soaked. “I’ve heard that numbing the gums makes babies less uncomfortable when they’re teething.”
He wanted to say, “I’ll remember that for our babies,” but he cautioned himself not to get too far ahead of himself. Not yet.
Right now, he just drank in the sight of his woman—his dear, sweet, smart, sexy woman cradling the tiny, quiet, cuddly baby.
Without thinking, he blurted, “I gotta tell you, Mel—I don’t intend to be your house spouse much longer.”
Meaning, of course, that he wanted to be her adoring husband. The father of her undoubtedly adorable children. Her co-mortgage holder. The guy who brought home at least half the bacon and saved for the kids’ college and took Mel on romantic getaways whenever possible.
Before he could get it all said—hell, before he could get any of it said, Mel whirled close to him. Close enough to poke his chest with her drool-covered finger.
“Too bad, buster,” she grated, glaring at him between rapid eye blinks. “We made a deal and you’re going to honor it. Either you continue to be the house spouse for the rest of the six months or you arrange for a substitute housekeeping service to take over before you bail.”
Mel whirled away. Then whirled back to plop Amber in his arms. “Here. Try the ice, but don’t give her frostbite. I’m going to check on Noreen, then I’m going to work. I’ll be back…later.”
Congratulations, moron, Jack saluted himself as he watched Mel gather her doctor paraphernalia and almost run from the apartment. You certainly handled that well.
Gingerly he let Amber grab his finger and stick it in her mouth. Now what, brainiac?