The Doctor's Secret Son

His expression brightened. “Then you do want a repeat?”

Ugh. She’d walked right into that one.

She studied his toffee-colored gaze, his smooth tanned skin, the obvious sexual interest in his eyes. “You do?”

“What sane man wouldn’t want a repeat of what you and I had?”

There was that.

“Sex without strings?”

His gaze narrowed. “Not exactly how I’d have worded it.”

She didn’t let her gaze waver. “Which doesn’t make it any less true.”

His forehead furrowed and he did some studying of his own. She refused to look away, refused to shift her weight or show any sign of weakness.

Even if her insides quaked at the power this man had over her.

“Did you want strings, Chrissie?”

Heat rushed into her face. She was going to have to be careful of what she said. Which was why she needed to stay away. Nothing good could come from spending time with Trace.

“No, of course not.” She hadn’t. She’d known what they shared was just a man and a woman thrown together by circumstances and sexual attraction. “You told me you weren’t the marrying kind. I didn’t expect anything to come of our weekend together.” She sure hadn’t expected to become a mother. “No strings was fine.”

A tired look came over his face and he raked his fingers through his hair. “I was leaving the country in three days. I couldn’t have done strings if I’d wanted to.”

Something in his tone had her insides fluttering with a bundle of nervous energy.

“Did you want to?”

* * *

Good question, and one that Trace had asked himself a thousand times in the years that had passed since he’d last seen this woman. What would he have done differently had he not been committed?

“I didn’t allow myself to consider strings as a possibility.” Which was what he always came back to when his mind got to wondering. Not that he would ever have settled down, but he would have liked more time with Chrissie, to have been able to let the fire between them burn out naturally.

Her pretty face pinched and her gaze averted. “Which explains why you never asked for a phone number.”

Although he was sure she didn’t want them to, her words conveyed that she’d been hurt. That he’d hurt her stung.

“There was no point in my asking.”

“I see.” Her lower lip disappeared again.

“I don’t think you do.” He lifted her chin and stared into the greenest eyes he’d ever looked into. “I was leaving the country, had volunteered for a crazy assignment. Putting you or any woman through the stress of a relationship when I was over there, especially when nothing would ever have come from that relationship anyway—it wouldn’t have been fair.”

Her chin trembled beneath his fingertips and Trace wanted to kiss her so badly his insides ached. They were alone in the medical tent, but someone could walk in. Which didn’t overly concern him. He’d seen and done too much to let something as irrelevant as someone seeing him kiss Chrissie get to him. But Chrissie was still sending mixed signals.

One minute hot, the next cold.

When he kissed her next, he wanted her to want it as much as he did, not to be second-guessing herself.

He would kiss her again. Soon. She might not want to admit it, but she wanted the kiss as much as he did. Everything in her expression, her stance, her eyes, said so.

“Well, I guess you’re a damn saint, then, eh?”

There went the cold again. And the hurt.

“Far from it.”

Looking away, she shrugged. “Not to hear Agnes tell it.”

“Agnes is biased. She’s my godmother.”

Chrissie’s eyes widened. Obviously Agnes hadn’t told her that part.

“Her husband, Bud, and my father grew up in the same neighborhood and were best friends. Somehow, that friendship survived my father’s personality all these years.”

“Something wrong with your father’s personality?”

Ha, now there was a tricky question if ever there was one.

“Most people would say he’s near perfect.”

Her eyebrow arched. “But not you?”

Not a subject he wanted to discuss any more than he wanted to discuss Sudan or Yemen or Kerry. Maybe less so.

“So, about those Braves...”

He watched emotions play across her face, but she let any further questions she had go. How many times had he closed his eyes and recalled her face? How many times when the whole world seemed to have gone crazy had he closed his eyes and just remembered everything about her?

“Yeah, well, apparently you don’t recall, or maybe you never knew—” her chin tilted upward “—but I’m not a fan of baseball.”

Well, no one was perfect even if in his mind she was close.

“That’s un-American,” he teased.

She shrugged. “Overpaid bunch of men who never grew up as far as I’m concerned.”

His lips twitched. “I’ll have you know those guys work hard.”

She gave him an accusing look. “You sound as if you’re one of them. Former player or just a wannabe?”

He laughed and it felt good. Foreign, but good. He’d not had many reasons to laugh over the past four years. It hadn’t all been bad. Some parts had been wonderful. He’d been helping people who desperately needed help. But overall there hadn’t been nearly enough laughter.

For all the craziness, he’d felt as if he was doing something positive in the world, had felt alive and needed.