She came around the corner and froze.
Curt was standing next to the jukebox, holding his fist to his mouth as if it was a microphone, belting out the lyrics.
With Jason.
Jason had his arm around Curt and they were swaying and singing their hearts out.
Over the heads of their little fan club, Jason saw her.
He gave her a smile and a wink.
And her heart tripped.
He was funny, charming, sexy, and damn, did he generously dish out the orgasms. And now he was creating a diversion so she could slip out of the closet.
Wow.
She made her way to the front door and pushed it open without anyone noticing. Except for the gorgeous guy with the deep green eyes whose gaze followed her out.
It was really too bad she was never going to see him again.
Chapter Three
Jason blew out a breath and checked his watch.
He crossed an ankle over one knee. He checked his watch again. He reached for an old Sports Illustrated but didn’t even open it. He rolled it up and tapped it against his shoe. He checked his watch again.
It was only five after ten. His appointment with the lawyer had been scheduled for ten. As a guy who had people waiting on him on a regular basis, Jason knew that five minutes felt a lot longer on this side of the door. And that five minutes wasn’t really all that long. But he was antsy.
It didn’t help that he hadn’t slept well the night before. He’d expected to feel completely comfortable, back in the little town he’d loved from the first minute he’d stepped onto Main Street. But comfortable was not how he would describe himself at the moment. Even though he was sitting in an office on Main Street in Hope Falls.
Main Street Hope Falls was a five-block stretch of small storefront businesses. Hanson Family Practice, Dr. David Hanson’s long-time practice, was a block over in a remodeled old two-story house with a wraparound porch. David had lived in the upper rooms and had used the first floor as his clinic with a welcome desk, waiting area and four treatment rooms.
Jason had loved everything about it. The comfortable, homey feel when you walked in, the fresh flowers on the front desk, the fact that patients showed up an hour early for appointments because they might run into someone they knew in the waiting room and that would give them time for coffee and to chat. But most of all, Jason had loved how beloved David had been. He’d been more than a doctor to this town. He’d been their counselor, their cheerleader, their confidant. He’d brought many of them into the world, and had held many hands as they left this world.
David Hanson had been the kind of doctor Jason wanted to be. Strove to be.
Even when that type of doctor, that type of practice, was a huge disappointment to his parents, who had wanted him to be a big-city surgeon. Or, at least a small-city surgeon, like his dad was.
So coming back to Hope Falls, to visit David’s grave, to retrieve whatever it was that David had left him in his will, should have felt good. Sad and nostalgic, sure, but good.
And it had felt like coming home.
Until he met her.
Tara.
Tara, with the silky hair and big blue eyes and mischievous streak, who he’d had the hottest sex of his life with.
Tara, who had ruined all the comfortable, nostalgic feelings and filled him with heat and lust and need that had robbed him of several hours of sleep and was now making him antsy and edgy and distracted.
Because he wanted to find her.
He wanted another taste of her, but even more, he wanted to buy her coffee and get to know her.
In one night, less than one night, she’d turned the trip upside down and he felt a mix of guilt and desire that were at war inside him.
So far the guilt was winning, which was keeping him in the chair in the lawyer’s office. For now. But the desire was building the longer he was awake, because the longer he was awake, the more minutes he spent replaying last night with her and every touch, every sigh, every pulse of pleasure.
He wanted more.
Jason gripped the arms of his chair. Maybe it really was all the emotions of being back in Hope Falls. Maybe it was the idea of truly facing the fact that David was gone. He’d gotten to town around four the day before, so he hadn’t really been here long. He’d purposefully avoided going past the clinic. He’d visited David’s grave, but Jason knew that going to the clinic, and seeing it working without David, would be when he missed his mentor the most, when it really hit that David was gone.
Maybe all of that was working on his subconscious and making him feel more wound up than usual and he was attributing that to the night before with Tara.
That made more sense.
The door to the office opened and a woman walked in.
No, not a woman.
The woman.
Tara.
And Jason knew that no, his emotions about David were not what had been driving him to go find her.