“Fiddlesticks.” Gracie shook her head vehemently. “This man’s your soul mate. Anyone can see that.”
Janet groaned inwardly. “Please promise me you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Gracie said nothing.
“Mother.”
“Oh, all right. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“I best be on my way.” Gracie waved. “Ta-ta for now and I’ll see you both on Saturday.”
The minute her mother disappeared, Janet shook off Gage’s arm and turned in the booth to face him eye to eye.
“Excuse me, but what was that all about?”
He shrugged and had the moral sense to look embarrassed. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I know I was out of line, but I thought I was helping.”
“Helping? You call that helping? Sheesh, you have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Pardon?”
“Within days my mother will consult a wedding planner. She’ll do online research and send us travel websites on honeymoon destinations. She’ll start thinking up baby names. She’ll invite us to dinner every weekend, just you wait and see. She’ll start asking you to fix things around the house. She’ll want to meet your family.” Janet smacked her forehead with an open palm. “It’s going to be a disaster.”
He smiled indulgently. “Surely you’re exaggerating.”
“Surely you’re clueless about her grandmotherly biological clock.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Is that all you have to say for yourself? Because of you, I just told a whopper to my mother. And I am not in the habit of telling lies, Dr. Gregory.”
“Gage,” he corrected in that oh-so-smooth voice of his. “And it doesn’t have to be a lie.”
“What are you talking about?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and inched away from him, trying to erect some kind of barrier between them. Suddenly the crowded restaurant was too small, too intimate. He was sitting too close. He was just too darned distracting by far.
“We could date each other exclusively. Go out a few times. Catch a movie. Have dinner. Would that be so awful?”
She shook her head. “No way. We can’t date. It’s unprofessional, and I don’t even like you!”
“Oops! Better watch it, you’re lying again.” He gave her that loopy boyish grin that she imagined dissolved most women into pools of melted butter.
But not her. She refused to let him affect her.
“I’m not lying. I don’t like you. You’re egotistical and high-handed and...and...” At a loss for words, she inhaled sharply.
He scooted across the seat toward her, quickly closing the distance she’d eked out. They were almost nose to nose.
“And when you’ve got that little glare thing going on—flashing your eyes fiercely and crinkling your nose—you’re too cute for words.”
“Cute? Cute?” Janet sputtered.
She was five foot ten in her stocking feet and weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds. No tiny thing. No shrinking violet. She was a doctor, a respected professional. No one ever called her cute. Striking? Yes. Commanding? Many times. But cute? Never.
“Uh-huh,” Gage murmured, leaning closer still until she teetered on the edge of the booth, millimeters from tumbling onto the floor. He repeated the word “cute” like he was dropping the gauntlet and just daring her to contradict him.
Damn, why did it have to feel so nice for him to call her cute?
The next thing she knew, he had his arm around her shoulders again. “If we’re going to be dating exclusively, then you’re going to have to admit you like me. That’s all there is to it.”
“I don’t like you,” she insisted again through clenched teeth, but she couldn’t stop looking at his lips, which hovered above hers.
“You do like me,” he said. “And I’m going to prove it.”
She knew what was coming. Rational voice screamed for her to pull away, to tell him off but good. But self-indulgent impish voice, the voice she had pretty well ignored for the past thirty years, was murmuring something very different.
Go ahead. Live a little. Let him kiss you.
Gage lowered his head, his eyes turned murky with desire.
Stop! good old rational voice roared.
Go, bad new impish voice whispered, softer still.
Since when did a whisper trump a roar?
Since now. Ever since she’d met Gage, impish voice had been popping out of her mental box far too often. It was a little scary knowing she had this impulsive, wild side that was aching to break free from the constraints of convention.
Rational voice’s bluster collapsed like a house of cards, surrendering helplessly to the undercurrent of impish voice gently urging her into Gage’s arms.
Janet whimpered. Helplessly, her lips parted, encouraging the kiss through no conscious fault of her own. It was all impish voice’s doing.
His mouth glided over hers, slowly, sweetly, seductively. Like water drops and honey and the finest Oriental silk. He deepened the kiss, tentatively exploring her mouth.
Her stomach flipped. Her knees turned to soup. She felt as if she were falling helplessly into serious lust.
His tongue set her ablaze, sliding, slipping, shifting. Pressure and heat. Tension and fire. Rousing, enticing, exciting.
He was kissing her. Thoroughly, completely. In the middle of a crowded restaurant not two blocks from the office.
Onlookers snickered.
Someone murmured, “Ahh, ain’t love grand.” But they were wrong, this wasn’t love. This was...what?
Nothing but a silly kiss.
No big deal. Not a thing to freak out about. Men kissed women all the time. It didn’t have to mean anything or lead anywhere. Plus, it wasn’t like she was a novice. She’d been kissed before. Lots of times. Just not recently. Okay, so it had been more than two years. Why was she making a federal case of it?
Why? Because the awful thing was, she was kissing him right back. As if she didn’t have one brain cell in her head.
Her world narrowed. Her attention focused on one thing and one thing only. The flavor of Gage Gregory. Tangy, crisp, delicious. Like nothing she had ever tasted. Ambrosia, manna, food of the gods.
Pure, raw, doctor man.
Gage kissed her with a delicious languor, as if he had all the time in the world to indulge himself. She’d experienced instant sexual hunger, and the sensation flummoxed her.
He moved infinitesimally closer. His body pressed against hers. His physical response to their
