Free An Irresistible Impulse by Barbara Delinsky Page A

big city.” Bourbon and water.
    “That’s right.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “I worked in the pediatric ward of a hospital.”
    “You must love children.”
    “Yes.”
    “But you don’t have your own.”
    “Nope.”
    “Aside from not having married, any other reason?”
    Resting her head back against the tree, she grew more reflective. “I’ve got time. I’m just not ready…for either marriage or children. When the time’s right, I’ll know it.”
    “What about your fiancé?”
    She shot him a fast glance. “He’s not my fiancé.”
    “Then…what? You must have some sort of relationship with him—for him to call on the phone and announce himself that way.”
    “He’s my boss.”
    “Your boss? You’re carrying on an affair with your boss?”
    “Not…quite,” she drawled. Then she studied his dark expression and grinned. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous.”
    “Damned right I am,” he admitted without hesitation. “You’re a beautiful woman, Abby.”
    As his tone grew more husky, she felt her own response. But before it could swell to anything more than a gentle tremor in her limbs, she wrenched her gaze from his and looked off toward the garden house. It seemed unfair that Ben should be able to excite her with no more than a word, a tone, a glance. She’d never felt this deep stirring for Sean. Had she ever felt it before? Or had the fact of sequestration, a kind of contrived captivity in itself, done something to her senses?
    “You never told me how the college is managing without you for these three weeks,” she said, drawing on one of the many questions in her mind in an attempt to bank the fire. “Hasn’t the semester just begun?”
    Ben indulged her momentarily. “Jury dutyis high-priority stuff. My colleagues will cover for me.”
    “Particularly if a book is forthcoming from the experience?”
    He didn’t answer, simply studied her. Then his indulgence ended. “Why would your…your boss call himself your fiancé?”
    “Uh-oh. We’re back to that again?”
    “Why not? I have an interesting theory.” He looked toward the horizon and gestured where headlines might be. “Beautiful young nurse chased around examining room by doctor madly and passionately in love with her.”
    “That’s absurd, Ben! Sean doesn’t chase me.” Not in the most ludicrous sense, at least.
    “Do you date him?”
    “Yes…. He’s a nice guy.”
    “A ‘nice guy’? Hmmmmm. That’s a poison for passion if there ever was one.” He paused. “But…is it true?”
    “Is what true?”
    “That he’s in love with you?”
    She shrugged. “He says he is.”
    “And you’re stringing him along?”
    Abby looked up sharply. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve told him over and over again that I’m not in love with him and that I won’t marry him. I don’t exactly call that ‘stringing him along.’ ”
    “But the poor guy may be suffering….”
    “That’s not my fault!” she exclaimed withgrowing indignation. “How much more blunt can I be? Or do you suggest that I agree to marry him”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that?”
    Unfazed by her show of irritation, Ben delved further. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? You could do worse,” he stated with a calmness that irked her all the more.
    Abby’s spine stiffened. “I don’t believe you, Ben! You sound like my mother!”
    “Maybe she has a point.”
    “ She’s not the one being pushed into marriage. If I don’t love Sean, I won’t marry him. My Lord, the divorce rate is high enough!”
    “But surely there would be something in it for you…even without love. Security…kids…sex…?”
    Fully incensed now, she scrambled to her feet and stood before him with her hands on her hips. “It so happens that I have security. I have a good job…and a trust fund left by my father. Furthermore,” she gulped, “I have kids…dozens and dozens of them, all of whom I can send home at the end of the