Free The Passion of Patrick MacNeill by Virginia Kantra Page A

the smell of soap and skin.
    "Not here," he murmured.
    Reason blipped across her mind like the warning tone of a heart monitor. She opened her eyes. "What?"
    "Not in the hall, Kate." He sounded patient, almost amused. She might have believed in his good humor if she hadn't felt his impatience pressing against her stomach. "Not when I've got a perfectly good bed to take you to."
    Panic. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't good at this. "Is that what you think you're doing? Taking me to bed?" Her voice was too high. Shaky. She hated it.
    He eased up on her slightly so that she no longer felt him warm and close. She shivered in reaction, in longing, her body protesting the loss of his heat.
    "Aren't I?" he asked coolly.
    She hugged her elbows, not meeting his eyes. "No. I'm sorry. It wouldn't be… It's a completely understandable assumption for you to make, given the way I was grabbing at you. But—"
    "I didn't mind," he interrupted her.
    She felt the slow, betraying crawl of blood in her cheeks. "Yes, well, I shouldn't have done it. It was unprofessional. I realize I aroused, um, created expectations that I had no intentions of satisfying, but—"
    His arm dropped from the wall beside her head. He took a step back. "Kate, relax. What do you think I'm going to do? Jump my child's doctor outside his bedroom?"
    "No, of course not." She drew a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she said again.
    Patrick bit back his frustration. His blood pooled in his loins and pounded in his veins. He could ignore it. What he couldn't dismiss was Kate's obvious distress. He didn't like seeing the brisk and bossy lady doctor so miserable and uncertain. What bastard in her past had convinced her that his erection was her responsibility?
    "Not a problem," he assured her roughly. "Let's go downstairs."
    Her neat white teeth bit down on her lower lip. Patrick wanted to soothe the tiny sting with his tongue.
    His hands clenched at his sides. Sweet heaven, did she have any idea what it did to a man's guts to look at her, with her tidy blouse rumpled and her wavy hair slipping free and her intelligent eyes dark and cloudy with desire?
    Of course she did. No wonder she couldn't wait to get away. He jeered his eager body. In his present state, hard as a rocket and ready to burn, he wasn't fit for a first-time lover. It had been too damn long.
    "Downstairs," he repeated firmly. "I'll make us coffee."
    Straightening her shoulders, she nodded, still not quite meeting his gaze. She marched down the steps in front of him like she was going to her own court martial. He would have laughed if he hadn't found her discipline so endearing, if he weren't still struggling for his own control.
    "You want to wait in the dining room? I'll bring it in."
    She needed the space, he figured, to reestablish some professional distance between them. He needed the time to cool down.
    So he waved her into the dining room while he went into the kitchen. He rinsed out the coffeemaker, counting on the small domestic routine to distract his ready body. Who would have guessed the tart-tongued, prickly doctor would have this effect on him?
    He caught himself grinning like a fool at his reflection in the coffeepot. He shook his head in disbelief, jolted as much by the force of his desire as by its unlikely object. The last time the MacNeill clan had gathered he'd flown Jack to his parents' house for Easter—his worried mother had made her oldest son's celibacy a topic of family concern.
    "Four years is a long time, Padraig ," she'd said in her forthright way, using his Gaelic name. "Too long for a man to do without. It's not healthy."
    Sean, seeing the warning light in his brother's eye, spoke up. "That's not what you told us in high school, Mom."
    And Con, closer in age, added in his cool, assessing way, "Give it time. He might surprise you. Or himself."
    At the time, Patrick had appreciated his brothers' intervention without giving much weight to their words. Holly's accident had killed his