scent.
“I want you,” he said, “very much.”
He wanted her. She saw the desire in Bennett’s handsome face and knew it was true. She shivered. All her life she’d hoped, yet feared, that she would one day be the target of such stark desire.
Lacy had ached for the thunderbolt to crash into her life, while at the same time dreading the inherent loss of control that accompanied it.
She couldn’t take the pressure. Could not keep staring into those mesmerizing eyes. She dipped her head and sucked in air through her open mouth, desperate to get enough oxygen to clear her addled brain.
Lacy knew she should say something, respond to his bold declaration, but her shyness flooded back, more vicious than ever. She simply couldn’t speak.
Trepidation welded her teeth shut. She wanted him, too. More than he would ever know. But if she told him that she accepted his proposal, if she agreed to his no-strings-attached proposition, could she surely change his mind? Was the thunderbolt really as infallible as her family insisted? Could she, after all, trust her emotions? Was she willing to proceed on blind faith when logic and common sense urged her not to be foolish?
“Lacy?” He murmured her name. He’d taken her hand in his and was gently caressing her fingers with his thumb. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Uh-huh.” That utterance was all she could manage.
“I want you so badly I can taste it, but I don’t want you to get hurt. If this isn’t what you want, Lacy, if you are looking for something special, no harm, no foul. We don’t take this any further.”
What to say? If she agreed to a frivolous fling, she could end up with a broken heart despite what her family said about the thunderbolt being a sure thing. What if this feeling she had for Bennett was not the thunderbolt at all but merely a severe case of lust?
If that were true, Lacy had never lusted after anyone before, not even a movie star. This thing she had for Bennett was mental as well as physical. At least two dozen times over the past five weeks, she had anticipated his every need in the operating suite, handing him instruments before he had even asked for them.
A rational-minded individual like Janet with a healthy skepticism for anything as fanciful as the thunderbolt might argue that Lacy was such a good scrub that she automatically knew what any physician would need under the circumstance.
But it was more than that.
In her mind, she could hear Bennett say “Kelly clamp” or “Abbott retractor” before the words came from his mouth. Once he needed a rarely used tool, and she’d placed it in his hand before he’d even finished asking if she had one on her tray.
That’s how closely attuned they were.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” he said.
“Me, too. That is, er, you, I mean, not me,” she stammered.
“Would you like to dance?” He gifted her with a gentle smile.
Things were moving way too fast. Flustered by the pressure of Bennett’s hand on hers, disturbed by her vacillating emotions, and swamped by shyness, Lacy knew she had to get away from his distracting physical presence so she could think this through.
Frightened that she might say yes before she had time to consider the consequences, she pushed back her chair and got to her feet. The way she was going, if he asked her to shimmy out of her black lace panties, she would break her neck complying.
“Lacy?” A frown creased his handsome brow. “Are you all right?”
“Bathroom,” she muttered.
A rowdy drunk winding his way through the tables bumped into the back of her chair. Lacy teetered on her absurdly high heels.
“’Scuse me,” the drunk mumbled, then lost his balance and stumbled against her.
“Oh!” Lacy breathed.
She saw alarm on Bennett’s face, then watched him push back his chair and lift his hands to catch her as she tumbled headlong into his waiting arms.
5
Momentum drove Lacy’s backside into Bennett’s lap. Her legs flew into the air, exposing yards of creamy skin. Reflexively, he curled his arm around her waist, and cradled her body against his elbow.
“You’re all right,” he whispered.
The sexy feeling of his rock-hard thighs beneath her soft buttocks robbed her of speech. An acute throbbing sensation hummed straight up through her bottom, and unless Lacy was mistaken, she had raised an equally compelling reaction in him.
He wanted her.
Their gazes collided again.
She saw hot desire in his face—hungry, raw, dangerous. For her! Her