Her hands went to her behind, face burning. How long had he been able to see through her pants? “I only wear these on Saturdays. They’re day-of-the-week panties, and Saturday they’re lips.”
“Oh, my God,” he said, before his eyes dropped down below her waist as if he were visualizing a seven-day panty parade.
Josie froze with her hands still on her ass. Every inch of her body was dripping with desire, shot clear through her until she was in agony. She was reduced to the intellectual level of an amoeba.
“What are the other days?” Houston said, sounding very intrigued.
Then some little devil in her, the one that was annoyed he had been so casual and blunt with her, smiled at him. “Since you only wanted one night, I guess you’ll never know.”
Chapter Six
Houston drove his Jeep across the sand at Acadia Inlet Beach and glanced at the water.
The sight was incredible. The waves of the Florida coast were normally mild-mannered, making for only recreational surfing as opposed to the competitive level of beaches in Australia and Hawaii.
But today they were high and glorious, and he couldn’t wait to test them out. He parked next to half a dozen other cars and cut out the engine, taking in a deep breath of the salty air. He loved the beach. He loved the feel of the hot sand beneath his feet and the warm water lapping around him.
It soothed him. It was the only place he let go, the one time in his life when he was willing to sacrifice control and let the ocean guide him. But even then, surfing was a fight against nature, a determination to control the wave, the ride, the outcome of each time he lifted onto his board.
As a kid he hadn’t known control, watching his father abuse his mother, knocking her around and more often than not coming home smelling like stale beer and sweat. The day his father had left for good was the best day of his life, and at that moment Houstonhad taken control. Of his life, his mother’s, and his little sister Kori’s.
He had only been fifteen, but he had been single-minded from then on, determined that he would find a way to be successful, to support his mother and sister. Emotionally and financially.
He had achieved that. He enjoyed being a surgeon, and he knew he was good at it. When he did something, he liked to be successful at it. Sometimes he wondered if that’s why he had never considered marriage. He didn’t like to lose.
A game, a challenge, or his heart.
He fought for control to the bloody end of every battle, and knew he was far too cynical to make anyone a good husband. So he dated casually and spent the majority of his time focusing on his career now that his sister had married one of Houston’s oldest friends and his mom was busy being a grandmother.
Giving quality of life back to elderly patients was satisfying. He took himself and that responsibility very seriously, and he was meticulous in his methods, checking and rechecking himself and his co-workers over and over again. His patients trusted him to heal them to the best of his ability, and he never wanted to compromise that trust.
Houston had been aware over the years that his bedside manner was a little lacking, but it had never been easy for him to start up conversations with people. He wasn’t a talker. It was something he had to work at, force himself to remember to smile and make conversation. Unlike Josie Adkins, who he thought could chat with a tree stump.
After leaving the hospital for the day, he’d stopped off at home and changed into a T-shirt and swimming trunks. He pulled off the shirt and tossed it on the seat of his Jeep, shaking his head just at the thought of Josie.
He must have lost his fucking mind.
Instead of counseling her, like he had intended to, he hadkissed the hell out of her and asked her to spend the night with him. He was just about certain she was going to say no.
Josie was already hanging on to her residency by a thread, and was clearly nervous that being involved with him would snap that tenuous hold. He didn’t understand her logic. If one looked at her med school records, she was brilliant. Her rapport with the patients was fantastic. Yet she was nervous, tentative, and downright clumsy, none of which could be explained by an attraction to him alone.
He suspected at times that her heart wasn’t in surgery, and that she would be happier in a more patient-oriented specialization. It was why he had held back on allowing Josie control in the operating room.
She was an enigma he hadn’t figured out yet.
Not to mention she was damn adorable. And he was more interested in stripping off her little dick-tease lip-print panties than psychoanalyzing her.
Grabbing his shortboard out of the back of the Jeep, he turned his mind resolutely back to the surf. Josie was back in the cool, sterile, hushed hospital, while he was out here in the glorious sun facing the best swells all summer.
“Hey, Houston!”
He looked up to see Dennis and Christian walking across the sand towards him. He’d been surfing with these guys since high school, and he’d never doubted for a minute they’d be out here today, even if they all had more responsibilities now than they’d had fifteen years ago.
“Hey, guys, what’s up?”
“What took you so long?” Dennis scolded as he dropped his board in the sand, and then himself.
“A patient. What do you think?” His friend would never guess he’d been begging for sex from a hospital colleague and he wasn’t about to tell him.