Free The Passion of Patrick MacNeill by Virginia Kantra Page B

desire. All his energy and attention since then had been focused on Jack. It was disconcerting to discover that all systems were go again.
    Not that he was going anywhere. Kate Sinclair had called a halt to that.
    Patrick spooned grounds into a paper filter, the rich aroma sharp to his heightened senses. He should be glad. He had no heart for a serious relationship, and she struck him as a woman who took most things seriously. Pushy, opinionated and probing, she was the worst woman in the world for him.
    Yet he was oddly grateful to her. There was something reassuring about his body's almost painful response to that unexpectedly passionate kiss in the hall. Patrick grinned derisively. Sort of like completing a successful pre-flight inspection when you had no intention of taking off.
    When the coffee finished dripping, he filled two mugs and carried them through to the dining room. Kate turned quickly from her examination of the pine breakfront to accept the proffered cup. She was wearing her doctor's face again, he noted, interested and polite.
    "Black, right?"
    "Yes. Thank you." She blew on the coffee before sipping. "You have some lovely pieces here," she added, nodding toward the cabinet.
    He had a bowl and a jug of blue-glazed
North Carolina
pottery, a Waterford bud vase he'd given Holly on their first anniversary and an incomplete set of his grandmother's china. Nothing, Patrick thought, to arouse much excitement. Which probably explained the doctor's intense interest in them now.
    "Thanks," he said wryly.
    She actually tossed her head, so that her light brown curls danced above her shoulders, and stabbed one slim finger at the glass. "Yours?"
    He moved closer to see what had brought that note of challenge into her voice. A miniature tea set was displayed on the second shelf, its delicate, creamy porcelain painted with twining shamrocks.
    "My mother's."
    She inspected it, her face softening. "It's very pretty," she said, almost wistfully.
    Her yearning expression pulled another admission from him. "She gave it to us when Holly was pregnant. Said she hoped it would encourage us to produce a female grandchild."
    "Oh, that's sweet."
    Kate was sweet, Patrick thought with a shock. Her wavy hair, scented by some citrusy shampoo, brushed his shoulder. Her face was open as a child's. Her very vulnerability made her dangerous in a way her no-nonsense competence did not. He tightened his hands on his coffee mug until it seared his palms and stepped back, away from her.
    " We going to talk about tea sets all night?"
    "No, of course not. Actually…" She squared her shoulders. "I felt we should talk about what happened upstairs just now."
    He lifted an eyebrow. He couldn't resist. The workings of this woman's mind were a mystery and delight to him. "What happened?"
    "What didn't happen," she clarified. "What isn't going to happen. "
    Amusement loosened the knot in his gut. "Fine. What isn't going to happen?"
    "We're not going to have a relationship. Apart from Jack being a patient at the burn center, I mean."
    He'd just finished telling himself the same thing. So why did it irk him to hear it from her?
    "And how are we not going to do that?"
    "It shouldn't be difficult," she said primly, standing with her hands clasped around her coffee mug and her neat ankles close together. "You don't really want me, and I can't afford to want you."
    Fascinating as he found the second half of her pronouncement, he couldn't let her casual dismissal of his desire pass. "You don't think I wanted you?"
    "I think that's evident."
    "Honey, I don't want to flatter either one of us, but I'd say all the, ah, evidence, pointed the other way."
    Her face turned scarlet. "Obviously, physically, we respond to one another. We're both adults. And you clearly have a great deal of experience—"
    "I haven't had any experience, as you put it, since Jack's mother died."
    Her lips parted in surprise before she pressed them firmly together. "There you are, then. That's