Candy Halliday – Lady And The Scamp: Lady And The Scamp / The Doctor Dilemma (страница 10)

Shuddering, Cassie tried not to think what might have happened if she hadn’t somehow found the strength to push him away. A few hasty kisses on her neck had rendered her defenseless. If his fiery mouth had captured her own…

She snapped out of her fantasy when an oncoming car blasted its horn. Somehow, she managed to get the Lexus back into her own lane, but the quick movement slid the car sideways and promptly landed it in the ditch. Shaking now from fright, instead of her brief fantasy about Nick, Cassie gripped the steering wheel and took long measured breaths until she could force her heart back into her chest.

“Dammit,” she said, pounding her fist against the steering wheel. “What else can possibly go wrong tonight?”

After flipping on her emergency signal lights, Cassie launched herself from the Lexus and stomped to the back of the car. Glaring at the right back tire that was currently sitting in the deep rut by the side of the road, her first impulse was to take her frustration out on the car. Pretending it was Nick Hardin’s mocking face she was abusing, she gave the tire a swift kick and promptly broke the heel of her four-inch stiletto pump.

“Would someone please tell me what I’ve done to deserve so much grief?” Cassie howled. “This was supposed to be my six weeks of fun-filled freedom. Remember?”

When she didn’t get an answer, she jerked the shoe off her foot, then let out a loud yelp when the sharp gravel shredded her new panty hose and took a quick bite out of the bottom of her foot. “Just shoot me now and get it over with,” she mumbled, glaring at the shoe whose heel was now twisted at a silly angle and just as useless as Cassie felt standing by the side of the road, shoe in hand.

After several cars passed without slowing down, Cassie was prepared to throw herself across the pavement when the next pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Fortunately, her sacrifice wasn’t necessary. What appeared to be a small sports car suddenly slowed down, then pulled off the road and stopped a few feet behind her.

“There is a God,” she mumbled under her breath.

Shielding her eyes against the bright headlights with her right hand, she saw the silhouette of a man get out of the car and start walking in her direction. “Hey, thanks for stopping,” she called out, putting on her brightest smile. But her smile quickly faded when she saw who it was.

Sauntering up beside her, Nick leaned against the Lexus, then sent her a silly grin. “This must be your lucky night, counselor. You’ve had the pleasure of seeing me twice in one evening.”

“Are you following me?” Cassie snapped.

“Think about it, sweetheart,” Nick jeered. “We both live in the same neighborhood, remember? Or did you think this highway was for your exclusive use only?”

Cassie’s only answer was a she-devil glare.

Pushing himself off the car, Nick bent down and examined the tire. Glancing back over his shoulder, he grinned again. “What happened? Did you run off the road daydreaming about me?”

The truth in Nick’s statement reddened Cassie’s cheeks faster than a blistering arctic wind. “The only dreams I have about you are of the nightmare variety,” she informed him.

Nick chuckled, then stood up and held out his hand. “Give me your keys and I’ll see if I can get you out of this ditch.”

“Don’t bother, I’d rather walk.”

Nick’s eyes swept from the shoe in her hand to her one bare foot. “That should be amusing, since you seem to have only one workable shoe.”

Cassie was tempted to take off her one workable shoe and make a neat hole in the center of Nick’s forehead with its knife-sharp heel. Instead, she nodded toward the car. “The keys are in the ignition.”

Nick opened the car door and slid behind the wheel, then motioned for Cassie to step away from the car. He pulled the Lexus forward a few feet, then backed it up, and as if by magic, drove it safely up on the graveled shoulder beside the highway.

Cassie waited until he opened the door and got out before she hobbled in his direction doing a perfect imitation of a peg-legged pirate with a sawed-off wooden leg.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, choking on the word.

“Hey, what are neighbors for?” Nick teased, but Cassie refused to look at him again.

When he remained leaning against the driver’s side door blocking her escape, Cassie made a dramatic production of looking at her watch. “Look, it’s getting really late, and…”

“I owe you an apology for what I said in front of Evelyn Van Arbor,” Nick interrupted. “I couldn’t care less what those idiots think about me, but I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

Cassie slowly raised her eyes to meet his, deciding she was much safer in his presence when he was being rude and nasty. “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now.”

“For what it’s worth, I did try,” Nick told her. “I went back inside to explain the situation to the old bat, but she was too busy giving an Academy Award performance for anyone who was willing to listen.”

Caught off guard by his sudden show of sincerity, Cassie managed a tiny smile. “Careful, Mr. Hardin, your bad-boy image is losing out to those fine Georgian manners of yours.”

Nick instantly raised an eyebrow. “Why, counselor, if I didn’t know better I’d think you’d been checking up on me.”

Trapped by her own smart remark, Cassie felt the heat penetrate her cheeks again. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she sputtered. “It’s no big secret that you moved here from Atlanta. I simply read in the paper that you…”

Nick interrupted Cassie’s explanation when he reached out and pulled her to him. She did a little hip-hop dance across the ground when he dragged her into his arms. After kissing her so thoroughly that the cloud walk she was doing didn’t require the aid of both shoes, he opened the car door and guided her safely into the driver’s seat.

Leaning down, he whispered close to her ear, “Now, this is the part where you say ‘Follow me home, Nick, so we can finish what we started earlier on the veranda.”’

Outraged that the oaf would have the audacity to think she would hop into bed with him the minute he crooked his little finger, Cassie pushed him backward, then promptly slammed her car door shut. “No, this is the part where I say ‘You’ll come closer to being served Popsicles in hell than you will to finding me in your bed, Nick Hardin!”’

Cassie tore off down the highway while Nick blew her a sweet little kiss.

NICK WAS STILL CHUCKLING to himself as he walked back to his classic ’57 Corvette, which he kept covered in the garage except for special occasions. Feeling the lower half of his body stir at the thought of how good the angry Cassandra had felt in his arms, Nick removed his tux jacket and noticed it still held the faint sent of her expensive perfume. Tossing his jacket on the passenger’s seat, he slid behind the wheel, trying to remember when he’d ever been so taken with a woman.

He couldn’t.

Cassandra Collins had entered his life like a menacing whirlwind, and since the day he found her standing by his swimming pool, everything about her confused his thoughts and made him doubt what he thought were his deepest beliefs. He’d only attended the fund-raiser in the hope of seeing her again, though he had expected her to be on the arm of the stuffy senatorial candidate she’d been dating. To find out she was no longer involved with anyone both pleased him and bothered him that it did.

Nick certainly hadn’t been prepared for their collision on the veranda earlier. In fact, he couldn’t even remember pulling her to him—only that he had. And once her voluptuous body was pressed against his own, nothing else seemed to matter.

For one brief moment, Nick had actually felt complete.

But is this spitfire attorney typical wife and mother material? Nick kept asking himself as he drove along the highway. Not a chance. She was, after all, twenty-eight and still single, which led him to believe that her career came first in her life. She would probably even be the type of woman who refused to damage her perfect figure in order to give him the children he so desperately wanted.

No, Nick already had an image of the type of woman he wanted for a mate. She would be down-to-earth, fun-loving, warm and giving. And she would love him beyond all reason, always placing him first in her life, preferring to raise a family instead of having a career. Even if he had preferred the social, career-oriented type, everything about the sassy attorney’s actions told Nick she wasn’t interested.

Or was she?

Despite her silly protests, Nick hadn’t missed the wanton look his kisses had produced in those blue-green eyes of hers. Or how visibly shaken she’d been when she finally managed to get control of herself and push him away. As different as they were, Nick knew Miss Uptight Socialite couldn’t deny the electricity that existed between them any more than he could. He only hoped Cassandra Collins would continue to keep her distance if they were forced to deal with the dog issue.

Heaven knew he wouldn’t have any control over his actions if fate kept throwing them together.