Priceless

Every positive point Mack had accumulated in recent days flew out the window as Beth walked away from his taunting gaze. The man was maddening. He was an immature, skirt-chasing rogue. Worse, he prided himself on it.

Giving Tony advice on women? Please! What was he thinking? If Maria Vitale heard about that, she’d probably ban Mack from ever seeing her son again.

Then, again, maybe she wouldn’t, Beth concluded with a sigh. Mack was good for Tony, inappropriate remarks and all. He made the boy laugh, and under current circumstances, even Beth could forgive him a lot for accomplishing that miracle.

That didn’t mean she had to like Mack or spend another minute in his company. She’d simply steer clear of him. It shouldn’t be that difficult. It wasn’t as if he was underfoot at the hospital all day long.

He had a job, an important job in the view of some people, even if she wasn’t among them. He had a family, even if at least one member of that family was in part responsible for pushing Mack into Beth’s life. He had a lot of community obligations. And, goodness knows, he had a social life. Given all that, it was astonishing that he spent any time at all at the hospital. Avoiding him should be a breeze.

Satisfied with her plan, Beth had barely made it back to her office when Mack appeared in the doorway.

“You!” she muttered, not sure whether she was more annoyed at him or at herself for not anticipating that he’d be right on her heels.

Mack chuckled. “You didn’t actually think we’d finished talking, did you?”

“I had high hopes that we had,” she told him. “Don’t you have a date or something?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he responded. “But I have time for this.”

“For what?” Beth asked warily as he strode across her office.

“This,” he said, lowering his head to touch his lips to hers.

It began as a gentle, exploratory kiss, maybe meant to tease, maybe to shock. Beth reached up to shove him away, but instead found herself clutching his jacket just to hold herself upright. Her knees were suddenly unsteady, her heartbeat frantic. In some distant part of her brain, she heard herself saying that this was crazy, that it was stupid, that it was dangerous. The litany of warnings went on and on, as did the kiss until her brain shut off and her senses took over.

She heard a soft moan of pleasure and realized it came from her as Mack’s mouth plundered hers, making her blood sing and her head reel. This was bad. Really, really bad.

But oh, so good, she thought with a whimper of dismay as he slowly pulled away, one arm still firmly behind her back, one hand gently cupping her chin.

As her eyes fluttered open, she was looking into his steady, turbulent gaze. She couldn’t have looked away if her life depended on it.

“What the hell just happened here?” Mack murmured under his breath.

Beth had a hunch he was asking the question more of himself than of her. Even so, she was tempted to offer Destiny’s explanation of chemistry, which she was pretty sure she totally understood for the first time in her life. She wondered how Mack would react to the idea that she and his aunt had had a little tête-à-tête about sexual attraction. She had a hunch he’d be more stunned and exasperated than he already seemed to be.

“I’m actually asking,” he said, when Beth remained silent. “What just happened here?”

Something in his tone irked her even more than his assumption that he could walk into her office and kiss her senseless. “I would think a man of your worldliness and sophistication would recognize a kiss that got out of hand better than most,” she snapped, jerking away and moving to stand behind her desk. It wasn’t much of a defense, but she’d take anything she could get. “I think you should leave now.”

To her annoyance, Mack seemed vaguely amused by her response, or maybe by her actions.

“Retreating to a neutral corner, Doc?”

“No, trying to get some work done. I’ve already wasted enough time on you for one day.”

“A great kiss is never a waste of time,” he told her, his lips curving into a smile. “Especially for a woman who didn’t start dating till after she turned twenty. You have a lot of time to make up for.”

Great? He thought the kiss was great? Beth had certainly thought so herself, but as he’d just reminded her, she sure as heck didn’t have his level of expertise on the subject. How flattering was that? One of the region’s most eligible, sought-after bachelors thought she was a great kisser. It almost made her exasperation with him fade.

“Go away,” she said, because she was pretty certain that letting him stay another second was a bad idea. She just might be tempted to throw herself at him to see if the kissing could get even better.

Suddenly she recalled what Mack had said when he’d first entered her office. He had a date. The man had a date and he’d been kissing her. Maybe that was par for the course in his life, but not in hers. It seemed a little sleazy, in fact. No, a lot sleazy. She frowned at him.

“Go away,” she repeated more emphatically. “I wouldn’t want you to be late for your date.”

“Date?” he echoed blankly.

“You told me you had a date,” she said tightly.

He muttered an expletive and got out his cell phone.

“You can’t use that in the hospital,” she told him.

He muttered something else, then picked up her phone and dialed, punching in the numbers so hard the phone practically bounced on her desk.

With his gaze locked with Beth’s, he offered some sort of halfhearted excuse to whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up.

Beth stared at him. “You broke your date?” she asked incredulously.

“I broke the damn date,” he said, not sounding especially happy about it.

“Why?”

“Because I’m taking you to dinner instead.”

She bristled at the assumption. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I just broke a date for you. The least you can do is have dinner with me. You don’t want me to spend the evening alone, do you?”

Beth couldn’t decide which part of his recitation to react to first. “Okay, let’s get something straight,” she began. “You did not break that date for me. I didn’t ask you to do it.”

“No, but after that kiss we shared, you’d have been furious if I’d gone through with it,” he said.

“Furious? I don’t think so. I might have thought you a little sleazy,” she admitted, “but then I don’t have a very high opinion of you to begin with, so that shouldn’t be too worrisome for you.”

“Cute.”

“I’m not finished,” she said. “Whether or not you spend the evening alone or with a steady stream of willing women has nothing whatsoever to do with me.”

“I didn’t think so, either, at least not until a few minutes ago,” he agreed pleasantly.

“What happened a few minutes ago?” she asked cautiously.

“I kissed you and decided I’d rather take a chance on getting to do that again instead of going out with a sure thing.” He settled down in the chair beside her desk. “If you have things to do, I can wait.”

Beth sorted through his latest outrageous claim and tried to decide whether to be flattered. Since listening to flattery was dangerous around Mack, she concluded it was smarter to ignore it.

“I could be a long while,” she told him to test his determination. “A really long while.”