Just Surrender... (15 page)

“You should know something. I’m a doctor.”

“I know that.”

“M.D.”

“Oh,” she said, and then casually continued to drizzle hot fudge over her berries.

Tyler waited silently, expecting the outburst, but the outburst never came. “I expected this to be a bigger issue.”

“Why?” she asked, looking at him as if he was out of his mind, but the sparkle in her eyes was gone. “
Why?
Because you don’t like doctors.”

“I’m sure I said that, but you don’t need to take everything I say at face value,” she said, and continued to attack her dessert.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know.”

“Sure.” Another mouthful of dessert later, she frowned at her phone. “Minor emergency. Give me a sec,” she said, then she took off for the back.

If she thought about this rationally, she knew there were worse men in the world. There were serial killers and conceited egomaniacs who only talked about themselves. There were Wall Street tycoons who lived for gold cards and Ferraris.

Rationally she knew that a woman would have to be nuts to hate the medical profession, and a selfish nut at that.

Rationally, Edie didn’t want to be a selfish nut, but her stomach was starting to cramp and she had sat alone in a karaoke bar, convinced that Tyler was…

Different.

Not a big deal, not a big deal, she repeated in her head, but her feet had other ideas, and in less than ten minutes she was standing in her apartment, having left Dr. Tyler Hart in a universe far, far away.

Tyler considered the scenario from every direction and they all ended the same way.

Edie out the door.

He should leave her alone. They had a fly-by-night relationship of little more than sex and he had gotten caught up in the vortex of who Edie Higgins was. Tyler should have been able to do what he always did. Turn the page. Move on.

Nope.

Tyler paid the check, made a quick phone call and then hailed a cab, nearly getting run over in the process. He yelled at the driver, and when he’d realized that he’d done it, he started to laugh.

For better or worse, she’d left her mark. And for the second time in twenty-four hours he had to beg, plead, and grovel to get her back. He’d done it once, he could do it twice.

Not too shabby for an emotional brick if he did say so himself.

“You left.”

“Sorry,” she said, and rang off.

The buzzer rang again.

“Who is this?”

“Tyler.”

“Sorry,” she said, and rang off.

Once again, the buzzer sounded.

She pounded at the button. “What?”

“If you actually didn’t want to talk to me, you wouldn’t be answering the bell.”

“Good night, Tyler.”

“I’ll sing—”

And then she heard it. Eight stories below, a doctor, originally from Texas, was singing like a dying animal.

Reluctantly she buzzed him up.

He stood in her doorway in neat suit, meticulous Windsor knot and a stubborn gleam in his eyes. “You left.”

She nodded once, keeping safe distance between them. She was onto his act now, playing the part of the helpless, clueless, buttoned-up man. Buried underneath all that respectability was the shifty heart of the devil.

“You said it didn’t bother you. If it bothered you, why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged, as if it didn’t bother her, and Tyler narrowed his eyes.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

“Inside?”

She stared into the narrow passage with its muted gray carpet and bright wallpapered walls. “I like the hallway.”

“Please,” he said.

She heaved an exaggerated sigh.

Once inside her small apartment, he didn’t bother to look around, didn’t bother to sit. Every inch of him, every delicious inch of him was focused on her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie.”

“No big deal.”

“Don’t lie.”

At that, she raised her brows. “Why? You own the trademark on that one?”

“I told you.”

“After the fact,” she reminded him. “After you had stood me up,” she added, because the lie on its own, well, she couldn’t throw stones, but he knew her feelings on doctors. He knew why she didn’t get all woo-woo over the workaholic lifestyle, and he still,
still
ended up leaving her high and dry.

“Yes. That was wrong, too,” he admitted.

“So, I don’t see why you’re here. Go back to the hospital, Tyler. All this stress will earn you an ulcer, or raise your blood pressure. Oh, but you’re a doctor, so I guess it doesn’t matter. What specialty?”

“Cardio,” he answered through gritted teeth.

She laughed. “I should have guessed. Are you at St. Agnes?”

“Yes,” he answered, because, of course, all great, dedicated doctors worked there, and yes, Dr. Tyler Hart would be one of those. No slacker here. No, siree.

“It’s a great hospital. Lots of experimental procedures, lots of research dollars, lots of celebrity patients. You heard that prime minister was there?”

“I know.”

“You were the hotshot doc who saved him?”

She saw a flush rise on his cheeks.

He had stood her up because he had been saving the prime minister’s life. This great, noble act should have made her feel better, instead, it only made her want to cry. “Why are you here?”

“Because I do not do things like this. I do not stand up women. I do not tell lies. I am responsible, I am intelligent. I am a good person.”

Yes, he was a good person. He was a great person. Unfortunately, she wasn’t that strong, and the pain was too much.

“We had sex, Tyler. It was good. It was fun. Go do your doctor thing and don’t worry about me, will you?”

“You’re supposed to know how to do these things.”

“What things?”

“The emotional crap.”

“I can’t do the emotional crap. Don’t be a brick, Tyler. Not now. I suck at the emotional crap. I love to tell everyone else what to do because what you can’t do, you teach, right?”

“You can do this,” he told her.

“Maybe, but I won’t. It hurts, Tyler. I don’t want to hurt.”

“I like you. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“It’s the sex. It confuses people. You’re too intelligent to be confused.”

“I’m not confused,” he insisted, sounding not even remotely confused.

Edie lifted her hands in frustration. “Do you want the sex?”

“Yes. No. I don’t care.”

She stared at him, letting her silence make her point.

“I’m not,” he insisted.

“What?”

“Confused,” he stated very firmly. “We can do this.”

“Why are you in the city, Tyler? Really? The truth.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, his jaw tight with tension. “The ACT/Keating Endowment Award.”

“You won it?”

“No, I’m one of the candidates for it. It’s a two-month fellowship, and then the decision will be made about who stays on to work with Dr. Keating for another two years. It’s a life-changing opportunity.”

“How many other candidates are there?”

“Two hundred.”

“How do they decide who gets this great and glorious honor?”

“Dr. Keating picks someone.”

“The sharpest, the hardest working, the most creative, the biggest overachiever in the bunch?”

“Something like that.”

“And you want this fellowship, don’t you? You want it bad, don’t you, Tyler?”

“I’m going to win.”

“Putting in all the hours, all the doc-talk, all the suck-up, all the research that winning entails.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“Do you see why I have concerns? Do you see why I am skeptical that you will have two minutes, much less ten minutes, much less ten days in the next two months. When exactly were we supposed to see each other? How many times will I be left waiting alone? How many promises would you need to break?”

“None. Some.”

“No. You can’t do everything, Tyler. You can’t be everything to everyone. You want to be Dr. Hart, you go ahead, but you can’t be Perfect Man, too.”

“We could try?” He tried to reach out to her, but she backed away.

“No.”

“All right. Then we do it your way. No promises. No dates. Sex. You said that’s all you wanted because you don’t do relationships.” He used quote fingers, just in case she missed the sarcasm in his voice. “If we’re not involved, then it shouldn’t matter if I’m a doc, right?”

The devil was crafty, sly and stubborn.

“I don’t like this.”

“Why? Are you worried that you’d get involved with a surgeon?”

She was already involved. She knew it. He knew it. It was a big part of the problem. She put up her chin. “I’m not worried.”

“Prove it. Put up or shut up, Edie.”

“Very crude, don’t you think?”

“Hey, it’s New York.”

Edie pulled her shirt over her head, and whipped off the rest of her clothes, and then stood there, naked and defiant. Of course, since he was a doc, naked meant nothing to him.

The doc’s eyes flared. “Don’t do this,” he warned, but Edie knew when she had the devil by the tail.

“I thought we had decided we were going to do this,” she said, hands on hips. “Put up or shut up, Tyler.”

Put up, it was. He had her flat on her back, on the floor, and didn’t bother with his clothes. She heard the rasp of a zip, the rip of the condom wrapper and the heavy pant of her own breathing, but then he was between her legs, filling her, killing her, and it was a glorious pain.

“I don’t like this,” he protested, even as his body drove in for more.

“I can…tell,” she managed to say, her fingers twisting at his buttons and knots. The man had too many clothes, she needed to touch…
skin.
There. Her hands found the strong arch of his buttocks, and she held tight, absorbing each thrust, loving this, needing this.

Needing him.

He found her mouth, and she tasted coffee and lust and the same furious need as her own. His tongue mated with the fast rhythm of his cock, and her hips lifted higher, wanting more. This was Edie’s crime. She always wanted more.

He gave her more. Over and over. He rode her until she forgot her anger, forgot her fears and forgot her own name. It was the very best sort of sex. Driven by arguments unfinished, words left unsaid. He pulled her on top, his chest heaving, his shirt half undone and his tie like a noose. Only the serious eyes belonged to Dr. Tyler Hart. Edie didn’t want to get trapped there, but he was sneaky and sly. His hips slowed their pace, his fingers trailed over her breasts, and she arched into him, meeting him halfway.

He opened his mouth to speak, and she covered it with her own. It was meant to be a sexy kiss, a fuck-me kiss, as her fingers slid into his hair, locking him to her.

She and Tyler stayed there for a long time, entangled on the floor. Sometimes she slept, sometimes she woke to find him inside her, but each time he tried to speak, she shushed him with a kiss. She didn’t want promises. Promises, just like hearts, were meant to be broken.