His Innocent Temptress

Alex looked at the dark two-story building in front of him; the boxlike veterinary office and the small apartment on the second floor. Quite a difference from The Desert Rose. Cheerless, with no grass, no flowers or trees. Just a cement area for parking and a double string of animal pens running the length of the cemented rear yard. Banded by streets at the front and on one side, there was a vacant gas station across the side street, while the other side of the building lined up closely with a small manufacturing plant, and the rear butted up against a small tire yard and automobile graveyard.

Hugo Clark served as vet for large animals for the most part, servicing his clients and patients on ranches more often than in his own office, which he reserved for treating dogs and cats and rabbits and, probably, the occasional armadillo. It wasn’t as if he needed a fancy office.

He certainly could afford a separate home for himself and his daughter, though, that was for sure, as he was the most prominent vet in the Bridle area. Alex wondered, just for a moment, why Hugo hadn’t taken more care about where he raised his daughter, then forgot about it as he remembered that he was here to take that daughter out to dinner.

Cade had teased the hell out of him before he left the ranch, warning him to wear steel-tipped shoes if he planned to take Hannah dancing, and reminding him of the day Hannah had come to the ranch with her father and fallen headfirst into a pile of manure.

Poor kid. She sure was a nervous sort. High-strung, like a young filly. Awkward, like a foal just finding its legs. Raw, unschooled, and yet with an air of promise about her, as if, with the right trainer, she could be a real champion.

Not that he would be volunteering for the job. He was here to thank her for the splendid job she’d done that afternoon. She’d saved the mare, he was sure of that, and probably the foal, as well. She’d been calm, focused, secure in her knowledge and not at all afraid to give him orders, take charge, take action.

And then, once the foal had been delivered, she’d reverted to type, turning back into Hannah Slip-on-a-banana, tripping over her own feet, stumbling over her own words, and generally reverting to the klutz he’d known and mostly ignored ever since he could remember.

But did he know her at all, beneath the shy, almost nerdy outside that she showed the world while trying to hide herself from it? Obviously not, because he hadn’t believed she could handle the mare, hadn’t even suspected the strength in her slim body, the calm purpose she could exhibit, the self-confidence that had practically oozed from her pores as she did the job she had been trained to do.

Hannah Clark wasn’t quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it was rather like there were two of her—the competent doctor, and the insecure, stumbling girl who’d always stood very much in her father’s shadow.

Not that Alex planned to look any more deeply into Hannah’s life, the hows and the whys of it. He was here to take her out to dinner, thank her again and then forget about her until the next time they needed a vet at The Desert Rose.

He’d knocked on the door twice, with no answer, and finally tried the knob, which turned easily, opening onto a set of narrow, steep wooden steps. No wonder she didn’t hear his knock. He’d thought there might be one or two rooms downstairs, and the bedrooms upstairs, but it would seem that the entire first floor had been turned into offices, leaving the second floor for all of their living purposes.

Talk about your cramped quarters. Alex already could tell, from looking at the building, that there couldn’t be more than four rooms upstairs, none of them very large. Hugo Clark probably filled up each of them every time he entered a room, leaving very little space for his shy, easily spooked, motherless child.

Damn, now he was getting melodramatic. Alex smiled, blaming his more imaginative and passionate side on his Arab roots, but also pleased to know that he was, even in Texas, very much his father’s son.

He climbed the steps in the dark, having checked the light switch and finding the bulb burned out at the top of the stairs, and knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately.

He blinked twice, adjusting to the light spilling out into the stairway, then smiled at Hannah, who seemed to be blocking his way into the apartment.

“I’ll get my purse and be right with you,” she said without preamble, turning away from the door. Alex stepped back just in time, as the door closed in his face. He grinned, shook his head and headed back down the stairs, figuring it safer than standing on the top step to wait for Hannah to come barreling through the doorway and knock him down those same steps.

He stood in the small dark hallway, listening as at least three locks were turned, then looked up when Hannah, holding tightly to the railing, came toward him. Her legs were long, for such a petite woman, and her slacks were slim, allowing him to imagine how straight her legs could be underneath them.

But that was about all he could imagine. She wore a dark jacket, fully buttoned, and a white blouse that, by all rights, should have been cutting off circulation to her brain. The entire effect, minus the slacks and her sweep of blond hair, was like one big No Trespassing sign.

Not that the woman had anything to worry about on that head. It wasn’t as if Alex had a death wish, and trying to get close enough to clumsy, nervous, klutzy Hannah Clark to kiss her wasn’t something a guy would think about without first reviewing his health insurance. The only other time Alex could remember kissing as a sport not without potential mishap was the time he’d kissed Melody Pritchert when they’d both had teeth braces, and they’d gotten their hardware stuck together.

Kissing Hannah Clark would probably start with him putting his arm out to hold her and having her react like a startled mare, rearing up, and end with his arm in a cast.

“You look very nice tonight,” he said almost automatically as Hannah hesitated on the bottom step, looking at him as if she had no idea what came next and hoped to hell he had a clue or they were both in big trouble.

“Thank you,” she said formally, then pressed her lips together as if she didn’t trust herself to say anything more without giving away nuclear secrets or some such thing.

“You’re welcome,” he said, taking her hand so that she’d come with him out of this dark, confining hallway. Otherwise, he believed they might end up standing there all night. “I made reservations for six-thirty, so we’d better get a move on, all right?”

After a false start that called a halt until Hannah bent down to replace her left shoe, they actually made it out the door and into Alex’s vehicle without further mishap. He sighed as he closed the passenger door, hoping Hannah would put on her seat belt without incident, and wondered if he should be offering up the rest of the evening for some poor souls somewhere.

NERVOUS WAS SUCH A LAME WORD for the feeling that had invaded Hannah when she’d heard Alex’s knock. There should be a bigger word, one that sounded the way it felt—a real bam of a word. A ka-pow-ee sort of word that gave true meaning to the slam-in-the-gut sort of terror Hannah had felt, was still reeling from as she sat across the table from the man of her dreams and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed her to order linguine with clam sauce.

With garlic.

But the garlic wasn’t the worst of it, especially since she certainly wasn’t counting on a good-night kiss.

It was the linguine that had proved a challenge too great for her and her trembling hands. Linguine twirling, to Hannah’s mind, could qualify as an Olympic sport, with degree-of-difficulty scores for picking the right amount to put on the fork, for twirling, for getting the slippery noodles into your mouth without dribbling the ends onto your chin.

She’d seen the grin twitching at the corners of Alex’s mouth when she’d finally figuratively thrown in the towel and cut the linguine into pieces. But anything was better than having to rescue another forkful of the stuff from her lap.

“So,” Alex said as the waiter cleared the plates, “what made you decide to come back to Bridle after veterinary school? I would have thought you’d get as far from here as possible.” As he said the words, he winced, adding, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You’re talking about my father,” Hannah said, believing she knew what he meant. “Dad’s getting on, and I thought he needed me. He married late in life, you understand, and I was born when he was nearly forty. Besides, I want to work with horses, and this is horse country with a vengeance. Your stables alone keep us pretty busy.”

“True enough,” Alex said, picking two slices of chocolate cake from the serving cart the waiter had pushed up to the table and handing one to Hannah. “Coffee?”

She nodded and the waiter poured cups for each of them.

“You know, Hannah, I stood in front of your apartment tonight and realized that you might have had it pretty tough, growing up there without a mother.”

“And with my father,” Hannah said, feeling disloyal, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Something about the look in Alex’s eye had kept her talking all through dinner, and telling the truth more often than not. In fact, the only flat-out lie she’d told was to say that college had been a lot of “fun.” College had been work, which she had liked, but it certainly hadn’t been fun.

“He’s very…direct.”

“Blunt,” Hannah translated.

“Maybe a little stern.”

“Rigid,” Hannah amended.

Alex grinned. “Opinionated?”

“If that’s your opinion,” she shot back, then almost gasped when Alex laughed. What was she doing? She was teasing with him, bantering back and forth. And it was fun. “Want to go for the gold?” she heard herself ask. “And number one of the top ten reasons Hugo Clark is not exactly a barrel of laughs is…?”

Alex’s grin faded as he sat forward, propped his chin on his hands and looked at her. Through her.

She waited, trembling, wishing she’d kept her big mouth shut.

“He doesn’t appreciate what he has?” Alex asked at last, his voice low, intimate.

Hannah bowed her head, concentrated on pleating her napkin in her lap, then mentally slapped herself for fidgeting and folded her hands on the edge of the table. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Wrong. Somebody should have noticed sooner,” Alex told her sincerely, then rocked her to her core by adding, “I should have noticed sooner. Life with Hugo hasn’t been a picnic, has it, Hannah-banana?”

He reached across the table, took her hands in his. “I’m glad you came home, Hannah. And I’m glad we’re here tonight, as adults, rather than as the sometimes rotten kids some of us used to be. Not you, but me. Let me make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me?” Hannah’s mouth was so dry she was surprised she could even form words. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, exactly,” Alex said, releasing her hands and handing her a fork so that she could eat the cake in front of her. “And I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of do-gooder, or a penitent making up for past sins. Still, I do remember the way you were pretty much on the outside of things growing up, even if you were younger than I, and Cade and Mac as well. I remember you coming to The Desert Rose with your dad just about once a week, and I remember the way we used to tease you.”

Hannah poked the fork into the cake, breaking off a piece but not daring to lift it to her mouth just yet. “It wasn’t so bad. Except maybe the day Mac tossed me into the watering trough. It was hot, and he said I looked like I needed some cooling off. He was just having fun, and I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve at the time. I think I thought it was fun, too, until everybody else started to point and laugh.”