Mail Order Stepbrother(4)

“There you go, pretty lady.”

Melanie looked up, focusing on his face for the first time. He was tall, broad shouldered, and blond, the kind of guy she tended to gravitate toward. And he had a beautiful smile. She picked up the glass and made a sort of saluting gesture. “Thanks.”

“You can’t possibly be here alone.”

“Unfortunately, I am.”

“That’s a crime.”

“Are you flirting with me?” She looked up again, a soft smile slipping over her lips. “It’s been so long…”

“I doubt that.”

“The last guy who flirted with me was a construction worker whose leg had been severed in an accident. And that was during the last week of my residency, too many years ago to say.”

He shook his head as he leaned toward her over the bar. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re just not paying attention.”

“Maybe.”

Melanie sipped at her drink as she surveyed the room. Tanya was dancing with her husband, an amazing looking lawyer that rumor said she met when he visited his niece on the pediatric floor. And Kylie, one of the pediatric interns, dancing with a doctor from orthopedics. She recognized a couple of the surgical techs and two phlebotomists who did great jobs with her patients. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

How does one do that again?

And then she saw the hunk from radiology on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall as he quietly observed what was going on around him. When his eyes met Melanie’s, he smiled. Was it stupid that that little gesture made her heart skip a beat? Was it even stupider for her to decide to go over there and see if that smile meant anything more than, “Hi, some doctor I work with…”?

She finished her drink and set the glass on the makeshift bar, smiling gratefully at the bartender. He winked and offered an encouraging nod. Well, if things went really bad, at least she had the bartender in her corner.

“Hey, Mel!” Tanya called.

Melanie smiled, making the nurse smile as well by moving her hips in a little shimmy as she made her way across the dance floor. Tanya whistled, and that made Melanie laugh. And then she was suddenly in the hunk’s arms, his warm palm pressed against the low edge of her backless dress.

“Hello, Dr. Spence,” he said in a voice like melted caramel.

“Hi,” she returned, a little breathlessly. “You’re Jack, right?”

“Right.”

The music changed in that moment, from the pulsing rock that had been vibrating the walls to a more subtle, romantic tune that gave Jack the incentive to pull her tighter against his rock hard muscles. He smelled like warm sugar cookies, his soft t-shirt like the icing on an erotically tight cake. Melanie felt her nerves come to life as he ran his hand slowly up the length of her bare back as she rested her hands on the warm spot above the waist of his slacks.

“How long have you been a radiology tech?” she asked, feeling like she should say something before her fevered thoughts went too far to the wrong side of the professional/social line.

“Three years.”

“Did you always want to work in a medical setting?”

“No.”

Her eyebrows rose as she waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. She moved back just slightly so that she could see his eyes—a warm brown that reminded her of big, puppy eyes.

“What did you do before?”

A slow smile made his bottom lips swell a little right in the center, in that place she found herself imagining pulling between her teeth and nibbling on like it was the best tasting piece of toast she’d ever had.

“Do you want my resume?” he asked softly. “Or do you want to have a night of mind-numbing fun?”

Fun!

That should have been her first clue that something was wrong. But when a Roman god lookalike comes on that strong to a woman who hasn’t had a man in longer than she cared to admit, it would take a hammer to the head for her to realize she shouldn’t fall for his pretty smiles and hot, vodka flavored kisses.

He didn’t wait for her to answer his question. He just assumed. Granted, he assumed correctly, but Melanie didn’t even have a chance to think his question through before his lips were stealing hers, his hand slipping downward until he was tugging her close enough to him that they could hardly move in rhythm to the music any longer.

She didn’t object. She opened up to him, her own hand sliding up the length of his back and then down again, sliding over that perfect ass in a way she had imagined doing since the moment she first laid eyes on him.

She should have been more careful.

Somehow, they ended up out in front of Willis’ suburban house, falling into the back seat of his Ford Mustang, laughing at the tumbled way in which they fell. And then his hands were in her hair and he was tugging her up to his mouth, returning to the breath-stealing kisses that made her nerves tingle from her toes to her tender scalp. Her skirt was around her upper thighs, her hands tugging at the belt holding his heavy slacks in place. Another minute and she would have discovered whether the rumors about him were really true—whether or not he really was hung like a…