Dr. Irresistible

“Congratulations on your engagement, Renee,” he muttered to the room at large. He left the scalpel where it lay, jutting garishly out of the blood-red icing. “I’m just so damned happy for you, I can’t stand it. Nor can I cut this cake. You guys are on your own.”

Hell, let everybody cut their own pieces, he thought. How was he supposed to get two dozen slices of equal size from such a strangely shaped confection, anyway? “Some of us have pulled double duty and would like to go home,” he continued irritably. “Now if you’ll excuse me…?”

As an afterthought he withdrew the scalpel, intent on returning it to the OR, from which he’d filched it in the first place. But before he could even complete one step toward the exit, the entreaties began in earnest.

“Oh, come on, Dr. Mahoney,” a collection of voices cajoled. Nurses, doctors and orderlies alike begged his forgiveness and urged him to stay.

“We’re sorry, Seth…”

“We didn’t mean it…”

“We were just kidding…”

“We’ll let you have the biggest piece…”

“You’re the only one who knows how to do this right…”

“We need that scalpel—we couldn’t find a knife…”

But their gentle wheedling did little to soothe him. He was tired, he was irritable, he’d had a rotten day and he wanted to go home. The last thing he wanted to do was join his colleagues in a party to celebrate the upcoming marriage of one of their own. It was just too fitting a Friday punctuation mark for what had been a lousy week.

Nothing had seemed to go right today. Nothing. His BMW roadster had made funny noises all the way to work this morning, and he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, ace mechanic—couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was wrong with it. He’d been drenched by rain as he’d sprinted from the parking lot to the hospital, because he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, mind like a steel trap—had forgotten his umbrella. And as he’d changed into his scrubs, he’d realized that he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, sartorial wonder—was wearing one black sock and one gray sock.

Fortunately Mrs. Hammelman’s surgery had gone well. He was, after all, one of New Jersey’s—hey, perhaps one of the nation’s—leading neurosurgeons. But everything else that day had been a mess. The cafeteria had been out of club sandwiches by the time he’d found a minute to grab lunch. The soda machine had been out of Orange Crush when he’d gone on a break. Then the ATM in the lobby had told him that he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, financial wizard—was overdrawn a full $3.86. And he’d had a pounding headache for the past three hours that simply would not be assuaged.

And to top it all off it was Friday, and he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, object of many a woman’s desire—did not have a date.

He didn’t have a date, he marveled for perhaps the hundredth time. How on earth could such a thing have happened?

By now he’d had enough of the hospital and its denizens, and he wanted to go home. Home, where he could kick off his shoes, and his mismatched socks, fix himself a club sandwich—which would be better than the hospital’s, anyway—open an Orange Crush, and call the bank to yell at someone about his ridiculous, and certainly nonexistent, overdraft.

Of course, the date part was going to be something of a problem, he mused sullenly. He couldn’t think of anyone else to ask out—no one who would say yes, at any rate—and he wasn’t much for inflatable women. Then again, the way today had been going, he was sorely tempted to—

The thought never fully materialized in his brain, thanks to the woman who breezed into the room just then. He couldn’t quite curb the soft smile he felt curling his lips when he noted her arrival. Prudence Holloway, the most bewitching, bothering and bewildering woman he had ever had the dubious good fortune to encounter. And the most inappropriately named, too, he recalled, his smile growing broader.

Prudence, he thought. What had her parents been thinking?

Well, well, well. Maybe he didn’t have to beat such a hasty retreat just yet.

“Hi, everybody,” she said breathlessly to the room at large.

She raked a restive hand through the mop of dark-auburn curls that danced atop her head with the rush of her movements. Although he had always been partial to long hair on women, somehow Seth was grateful that Prudence’s unruly tresses weren’t quite lengthy enough to cover her nape. She had a nice neck. Among other things.

Inescapably, his gaze fell to the top half of the shapeless, raspberry-colored nurse’s scrubs. Although he had no foundation for his suspicions—God knew Prudence wouldn’t let him get within arm’s reach of her, more’s the pity—he was fairly certain that the baggy garment hid some truly spectacular and decidedly dangerous curves.

The only time he’d seen her out of her scrubs, she’d been in something else—more’s the pity—namely maternity clothes, generally made out of some awful awning-like fabric and decorated with bows and frippery that no self-respecting woman would dare don when she was unpregnant. Prudence had been huge, unwieldy and irascible during her pregnancy, Seth recalled wistfully. And during that entire nine-month span, he’d been even more enchanted by her than ever. Because Prudence Holloway was just too adorable to ever be anything but…well…adorable.

Ever since he’d come to work at Seton General Hospital two years ago, Seth had been utterly enraptured by Nurse Prudence Holloway. Why? He had no idea. Maybe because her pale-green eyes were so expressive and held no secrets. Maybe because her lush mouth, whether smiling or frowning, open or closed, could incite a man to commit mayhem. Maybe because he had noticed right off that she had a wry sense of humor and quick wit. Maybe because she had been so huge and irascible during her pregnancy. He hated to say it, but she was just so damned cute when she was angry.

Or maybe it was just because, even when she wasn’t pregnant, she continued to be, if not huge, then certainly irascible. At least around Seth. And he simply was not accustomed to having women respond to him in a way that was anything but enraptured. Even complete strangers succumbed to his abundant charm. Prudence, however, had been anything but charmed by him. Even after two years, her resolve to avoid and deter him had eroded not one iota.

Two years ago Seth had assured himself that her less-than-eager response to his more-than-obvious allure had resulted from the fact that she was seeing someone. She’d been blinded—who knows why, when she could have had Seth?—by some geek named Kevin who had worked as a pump jockey in a less-than-profitable filling station.

And then, after that relationship had fizzled, and Prudence continued to avoid Seth, he had excused her disinterest in his none-too-subtle advances as being due to her delicate condition. Because she was out of sorts and uncomfortable in her pregnant state, and romance was understandably the last thing on her mind. He’d even thought her lack of response might be because she was still carrying a torch for that geek Kevin—though such a commitment to a man hadn’t kept other women from succumbing to Seth before. On many occasions.

Not that he would ever pursue a married woman, of course. He simply never felt hindered in his flirtations by a woman’s marital state. Or her background. Or her foreground. Or her middle ground. Or her age, race, creed, color, species or planetary origin. And he saw no harm in engaging in the occasional flip comment whenever there was a beautiful woman around.

And naturally, to Seth, all women fell into that beautiful category. And he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, lover of women—was simply predisposed to flirting with anything that produced estrogen. Prudence Holloway was no exception.

Except…

Except that Seth couldn’t seem to stop flirting with her, even though she’d made it more than clear over the past two years that she did not intend to indulge his efforts. And that was something he simply could not understand. Because, simply put, there was no Mr. Prudence Holloway. Nor did there seem to be a Mr. Prudence Holloway in training anywhere. And her obviously—and adamantly—single status was something that only fueled Seth’s, oh…idle curiosity about the nurse.

And it had naturally caused him to pump up the volume on his flirtations, too. He’d even ventured to ask her out once or twice—or fifty-seven times, but then, who was counting? But she’d always declined. Politely at first, then with more gusto. He supposed it had been the time he’d dropped onto his knees before her in the OR and begged her to go out with him that had promoted the gusto on her part, but still…

The least she could do was return his flirtations, even if she had no interest in carrying through with them. Hey, any other nurse would do the same. It was only polite. But not Prudence. Noooo. She constantly rebuffed him.

Him. Dr. Seth Mahoney. Dr. Irresistible.

How could she do such a thing?

In the long run Seth had finally given up asking her out, when it became clear that she would never, ever, not in a million billion trillion zillion years, not if he was the last man on the planet, dead or alive, go out with him. He knew that, because she’d told him that. In exactly those words. And the fact that he—he, Dr. Seth Mahoney, a prince among men—had failed in his quest to curry fair Prudence’s favor did not sit well with him at all.

Still, he no longer asked her out. But he hadn’t stopped his entirely one-sided and unreturned flirting. Nor had he stopped fantasizing about her during his off hours. Or during his on hours, for that matter. Like right now, for instance. As his thoughts drifted off to the sublime, Prudence tossed a Tupperware container full of what appeared to be…springerlies, if Seth wasn’t mistaken…onto the table with the other baked goods that each member of the neurology unit had brought for today’s party to celebrate their co-worker’s engagement.

Unfortunately, Prudence being Prudence, she put just a little too much effort into the action, something that resulted in sending the container careering down the entire length of the table. Not just that, but it ricocheted off every other container in its way, and sent nearly half of them tumbling over the edge of the table before falling and spilling open itself.

Yep, springerlies for sure, Seth thought as they went skittering across the floor. Broken springerlies now. Broken springerlies with, he noted further, black, burned-to-a-crisp bottoms.

What had her parents been thinking when they named her Prudence?

She didn’t even seem to notice what had happened, so automatic were her gestures as she went to clean up the mess. Then again, Seth thought, this was pretty much standard procedure for her, from what he’d witnessed in the past, so it was really no surprise that she found this to be no surprise.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” she said as she collected crushed cookies from the floor, speaking, evidently, to both nobody and everybody in the room. “Tanner was so into the separation thing today. I didn’t think I’d ever get away from the day-care center.”

Tanner, Seth knew, was Prudence’s nine-month-old son, whose acquaintance he had first made when the lad was all of ten hours old. Although Seth worked in neurology, he often spent his breaks and lunch hours in the hospital nursery, not just to cozy up to the neonatal nurses—who were notoriously, in a word, hot—but also to cozy up to their infant charges—who were notoriously, in a word, adorable.

To put it mildly, Seth had a real soft spot for kids. Someday he hoped to have one or two—or ten—of his own. And now, at the ripe old age of thirty-three, he was beginning to think seriously about the whole family thing. The problem was, biologically speaking, anyway, he himself didn’t have all the necessary equipment for creating a family. In addition to a womb, he was going to need a second set of chromosomes for everything to work out the way it was supposed to work out. And so far he just hadn’t met the right second set of chromosomes. Or the right womb, for that matter.

And lately he was beginning to think he never would.

For some reason that thought sent his gaze bouncing from the top half of Prudence’s scrubs to the bottom half, which was currently sticking out from beneath the table as she reached for the last of the broken cookies. Yep. Nice curves indeed. Nice, round, lush, fertile curves, he couldn’t help but notice. And he’d seen her with her son on a number of occasions. A more loving woman didn’t exist anywhere in this universe.

Well, loving toward her son, at any rate, he amended. Where men were concerned, however, Prudence was considerably more…prudent. These days, at least. There had been a time, however, when… Well. Tanner was a pretty good indicator of Prudence’s past where men were concerned. Still, she seemed to have learned her lesson there. Because she definitely kept her distance from the male half of the population these days. Much to Seth’s unrelenting frustration.

“So the little tike was out of sorts today was he?” Seth asked as he approached her, knowing beforehand that she would respond to his query with a brittle smile.

Ah. Bingo. There it was now. As she backed herself out from under the table, she threw that smile over her shoulder at him, and wham. It hit its mark perfectly. Then there was another wham, but this time it was Prudence’s head hitting the edge of the table as she tried to rise to standing.