words.
Love at first sight was a myth. Lust, yes. Love, no. Never let your hormones rule your head. Make love to a woman if you will, but don’t base a marriage on sex.
That was why he had dodged Lacy outside the surgical suite. He was afraid of the way she stirred his body. If he saw her go into the locker room, he avoided it for a while. If they passed in the corridor, he pretended he had something so important on his mind that he didn’t notice her. If they ended up standing side by side at the scrub sinks, he always started a conversation with anyone else in the vicinity.
Although he felt like a heel giving her the cold shoulder, it was for their own good. He could not afford to fall in love, get married, and start a family for at least three more years.
He refused to go through what his parents had gone through. He wasn’t doing that to his kids, nor to himself.
He had no time for a serious relationship, particularly a long-distance one. No, much better to enjoy the simple pleasure of working with Lacy and let it go at that.
Determinedly pushing aside all thoughts of the shy scrub nurse who’d so unexpectedly piqued his curiosity, Bennett followed Grant Tennison into the crowded, noisy nightclub.
Grant waded past a dozen closely packed tables near the door, making a beeline for the bar, calling out greetings to several people as he pushed past.
Glancing around the room, Bennett realized Grant had spoken the truth. The place was crawling with beautiful women. To the right of the bar was an archway leading to the dance floor where a disc jockey played a lively tune. Numerous dancers bumped and gyrated in time to the music. To the left lay a room that housed pool tables, pinball machines, and video games.
Leaning back, elbows against the counter, he ordered a beer and studied the crowd. Bennett found people-watching fascinating.
When he was a boy, his paternal grandmother had loved to take him around with her because he could sit for hours in a shopping mall or an airport or a doctor’s waiting room watching the crowds go by, wondering who they were, what their lives were like, where they were going.
Fond memories of time spent with Nanna were his most prized memories. It had devastated him when she’d died of a heart attack five years ago.
His interest in people, their motives and problems, was what had led him to become a physician, that and Nanna’s absolute belief in him. He ached to be useful to mankind, to do something important and make his grandmother proud.
It was only later, while he was in med school, that he realized he loved surgery best and cardiac surgery most of all. What could be more fulfilling than learning the secrets of the human heart? By helping to correct heart disease, he was giving people a second chance at life, another opportunity to love. In Bennett’s estimation, nothing was more rewarding.
He eyed the front door. Customers came and went. He recognized several people from the hospital.
Bennett was about to spin around on the stool and ask the bartender for another beer when the door swung open and in marched three attractive women. Every head in the place turned to stare at them.
The redhead led the way. She bounced rather than walked. Her hair was shoulder length and curly. She was medium height with a body that wouldn’t quit. A bubbly smile graced her lips, and she swung her head from side to side, greeting everyone in her wake.
Behind her came the brunette. Tall, slender, cucumber cool. She looked neither to the left nor the right but kept her head high and her gaze to the front. She had piercing ebony eyes and a no-nonsense countenance, and she wore an elegant black pantsuit, low-heeled black boots, and pearl jewelry.
But it was the petite blonde bringing up the rear that stole his breath.
“Will you look at her,” Bennett whispered under his breath, his palm damp against the sweating long-necked beer bottle.
She moved with light, delicate steps, parting the air like water. Her hair, the color of moon drops threaded with gold, hung straight as a curtain down the middle of her back, and it was swept back off her forehead with a vibrant green bow. She was about five one, certainly no more than five two, and couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet.
Her daintiness stirred his protective