Free Tangling With Ty by Jill Shalvis Page B

“Hey,” he said softly.
    â€œHey.”
    â€œSorry about upstairs.”
    â€œYou mean about staring at me in that dress?”
    His mouth quirked. “Not for staring, no. Sorry you were so uncomfortable in it. You looked…amazing.”
    â€œYeah. Funny what a low-cut, tight number like that does for a man. Did you lose a lot of brain cells?”
    He let out one of those slow, dangerous smiles. Dangerous, because she couldn’t take her eyes off it. That, combined with his warm hand in hers, and suddenly she stood there on the sidewalk, completely forgetting she didn’t want to stand there with him. Staring at him.
    â€œDarlin’,” he said, “I lose brain cells every time I look at you.”
    His voice melted her all the more. Unfair, very unfair. “Well, if this does it for you…” She gestured down to her military-green cargo pants and plain white T-shirt. “Then you have even bigger problems than I thought.”
    His see-all blue eyes never left hers. “It has nothing to do with what you’re wearing. Or how you look.”
    Oh, God. Why did he say such things? No one had ever said such things to her, and she had no idea how to handle it. If she’d been hands deep in an emergency surgery, or up to her eyeballs in X rays… those she could handle.
    But this wasn’t work, this was far more personalthan work had ever been, and she was at an utter loss. She inhaled a breath and held it.
    â€œYeah,” he said. “Scary shit, huh? Let’s go eat, Nicole.”
    â€œBecause Taylor said to?”
    â€œBecause I can’t get you out of my head. We might as well spend some time together and see where it goes.”
    â€œIt’s going nowhere.”
    He smiled again. “Let’s go see.”
    â€œNo.” She fumbled for her car door, slid in. “I’ve really got to go.” She turned the key.
    And the engine simply coughed.
    She turned it again, with more force, but she got that ridiculous wheezing noise that told her the battery was dead. Again. “Damn it.”
    â€œSounds like battery trouble.” Easy as he pleased, he opened her door, tugged her out. “Lucky for you, my car runs like a sweetie. I’ll drop you off at the hospital, then charge your battery while you’re at work.”
    â€œI don’t want—”
    â€œIt’s no trouble.”
    Naturally he didn’t take her right to work, but stopped at a cute little sidewalk café a few blocks away. “For sustenance,” he explained as he got out and came around for her.
    Came around for her. Nicole stared at him as he ledthem to a table, while she tried to remember the last guy who’d opened a door for her.
    Or put his hand lightly on the base of her spine, touching her as they walked.
    Her skin still tickled. That it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience had her head spinning. “Who are you?” she said over the table, bewildered, which wasn’t a common problem for her.
    He lowered his menu and smiled. “What you see is what you get.”
    â€œWhy do I sincerely doubt that?”
    â€œI don’t know. What about you? Is what you see what you get?”
    She glanced down at her plain clothes, ran a finger over the silver hoops in her ear and lifted a shoulder. “I think so.”
    â€œTell me about the earrings. What do they mean?”
    â€œHow do you know they mean something?”
    â€œA hunch,” he said, which she didn’t like, because it was true.
    How did he seem to know her so well? “There’s one small hoop for every year of medical school,” she admitted. Her own personal badges of honor, during a difficult time when she’d been struggling to survive in a fast-paced, adult world while still in her late teens.
    With a slow smile that bound her to him in a way she didn’t understand any more than the ease withwhich he seemed to know her,