Millionaire M.D.

Instead, faster than she could get the words out, he leaned down.

Half the town-maybe more-was sardine-packed in the Royal Diner, most of them familiar, the baby squawking louder now, children screaming from another booth and Sheila shrieking something to Manny in the back. Yet he kissed her. Just bent down, and softer than the stroke of a petal, brushed his lips on hers.

Like a rose hungry for sunlight, her whole body strained upward for the touch of him. Her throat arched at the same time her eyelashes swooshed down. It wasn’t dark behind her closed eyelids. If anything, there were fireworks of light and soft, silver flames. Her closed eyes just cut out the riffraff sensory images in the restaurant until there was nothing in her mind-nothing in her sight, sound, touch, taste, but Dr. Justin Webb and his wicked, wicked mouth.

Her conscience scrambled for some common sense. Some inhibitions. Some sanity.

Nobody home behind any of those doors.

Oh my, oh my. She didn’t let go. Not with men, not with anyone. You get too close to people, then if they abandoned you-even if they never meant to or wanted to-your heart broke. You didn’t die. Your heart just hurt and ached and never stopped aching. Nothing was worth that. She was sure of that yesterday, and she was sure of it today.

But her lips clung to Justin’s and wouldn’t let go. Her hands didn’t touch him. Her breasts, her legs, her tummy-no body part was connected to him except her lips. And tongue. His warm, silky tongue touched hers, gentle as a spring breeze, not demanding, not taking, just…offering. Touch. Taste. The intimacy of himself.

Heat flushed her body head to toe.

The baby revved up the volume of tears. A child galloped past toward the rest room. A plate clattered on the floor. The jukebox twanged out another song about pickup trucks and getting up in the morning. Neon lights flashed on, off, on, off into the dark winter night street outside. Winona saw. She heard. She just didn’t care.

And then Justin lifted his head, eyes suddenly darker than a midnight sky. “It’s a good idea, don’t you think? Kissing in public.”

“What?” He might as well have suggested rolling naked in a mud puddle. It would have made as much sense.

“Everyone in town realizes that we know each other, Win. But just in case…this way they’ll get the picture that we’re close…that we were thinking about getting married even before Angel entered the picture. This way we’ll look like a couple. So it won’t seem contrived or hokey when we tie the knot.”

“Tie the knot,” she echoed.

“And you’re damn right. There was a very serious reason I asked you to marry me. It’s because I thought we could make it together. And I thought that ages before you ever laid eyes on our beauty here.”

He touched Angel’s cheek, which was enough to startle her from whimpering into a gurgle for him. And then he strode for the door.

All that noise, all that chaos, but there suddenly wasn’t a sound in the restaurant but the scratched tape from the jukebox. Some folks were being polite. But the others were either outright staring at her or at Justin’s departing figure.

Swiftly, Winona gathered up the baby, patting, soothing, trying to grab her jacket and car keys at the same time. He put a drug in his kisses. Well, what else could she possibly think? Maybe she didn’t recognize the controlled substance, but it was there. In the taste of him. The mood. The look in his eyes. And whatever was in that damn chemical went straight to her head.

And it was still going straight to her head.

Blasted man-richer than a tycoon-yet he’d forgotten to pay for their dinners. So she had to finagle that money out of her pocket, get her jacket on, get Angel and all the baby paraphernalia, all under the watchful, smiling eyes of everyone in the whole darn diner.

But when she finally hurtled into the night a few moments later, she sucked in a lungful of frigid winter air and, out of absolutely nowhere, smiled, too.

There was nothing funny about her situation. Nothing. She needed to figure that man out, and pronto. Somehow there still seemed to be a marriage proposal hanging between them. More worrisome yet was the stunning, startling thought that he actually wanted to marry her. But boy…

That man sure could kiss.

Six

Justin drove to the Texas Cattleman’s Club, but when he parked the Porsche, he turned the key and sat there, motionless. His meeting with the guys was at eight. It was already a few minutes after. He could see lights on within the building, recognize some of the other members’ cars in the lot. His mind needed to be on the plane crash and the missing jewels and serious business. Instead, all he could think about was Winona.

He was so in love with her.

Technically, loving her was old news. Heaven knew, he’d figured out his feelings for her long, long before he’d kissed her in the diner.

But that kiss was the first time he’d really dreamed, thought, believed that she could come to feel the same way about him. The baby was the first need he’d seen in Winona, the first dent in her emotional armor, the first emotion that she’d willingly revealed to him…but that kiss wasn’t anything about Angel. It was about them. About something new and strong and powerful building between the two of them.

Justin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking that when a man got a taste of heaven, it was tough not to want it all. Both the problems and the joys. It was possible that Winona wanted to adopt every abandoned kid in the county for the rest of their lives, and God knew the woman was stubborn, closed in, too independent to lean on him even when he damn well wanted to be leaned on. But he really didn’t care. Justin was also well aware that she was confused about the emotions suddenly exploding between them, but just as Shakespeare had said, all was fair in love and war. She’d been doing a lulu act on his heart for a long time. It wouldn’t kill Win to be off balance for a bit.

Not when the cause was right.

Whistling, he finally climbed out of his classy chassis, and hiked toward the building. When he stepped inside, his mood promptly sobered.

He had to quit thinking about Win. For that matter he had to quit thinking like a cockeyed dimwit in love. This was no time to be singing in the rain.

He could hear a game of poker going on in the far room, saw a few men putting on their coats, leaving the card room where cigar smoke gushed out in a fog. From old habit, his eyes shot to the Leadership, Justice and Peace motto on the far wall. The actual sign wasn’t that intrusive or large; most strangers ambling in rarely seemed even to notice it. But for him, it was like making eye contact with an old friend, and abruptly he charged toward the east rooms, expecting to find the others in the standard meeting area off to the right…and he did.

The room was as comfortably overloaded with testosterone as a room could get. A fire blazed in the hearth. A boar’s head hung over the stone mantel. The pool table stood under a Tiffany chandelier, untouched, rack ready. The furniture was all leather, couches and big chairs, with ottomans to put your boots on-but no one was sitting tonight. Justin braced, feeling how much tension the others were giving off. Matt was pacing like a caged cougar, Dakota standing in the window, pensive and still. Aaron still wasn’t back from Washington, but Ben was here now…typically, the sheikh had on his proper kaffiyeh for a serious meeting, and any other time Justin would have smiled. Ben was an extraordinary man who’d become a special friend, but he did have a way of looking like a desert warrior, between his kaffiyeh and those fierce dark eyes and rigid posture.

“For someone who’s usually never late, I can’t seem to catch up with a clock today to save my life. I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.” Justin strode in, feeling guilty as a shamed hound. “And hell, you’re all looking as dark as a thunderstorm. Are we talking more bad news? Dakota, I take it you looked for the red diamond-”

“No. I came here earlier, intending to do just what we said-check on the red diamond and report back to the rest of you,” Dakota said. “Only when I got here, I discovered there was a problem. The wine-cellar door was unlocked.”