Free Bosom Buddies by Holly Jacobs Page B

trusting sort, but you don’t seem very trusting right now.”
    “Answer the question, Ian Thomas Ryan.” Allie shook a finger in his face. The urge to stomp her foot in frustration was almost overwhelming. The urge to have it land on Ian’s foot was even more tempting, but she restrained herself. No one could say Alexandra McGraw wasn’t the model of restraint.
    Good judgment, no.
    Restraint, yes.
    “I just mentioned my problem to him.”
    “Which was?” She wanted to scream, he was being so difficult.
    “A tremendous pain in the ass.”
    She sank onto the couch and buried her head in her hands. “Oh, Ian.”
    “And I mentioned that, as a physician, it was his duty to see that he relieved my pain.” He sat next to her and looked at her thoughtfully. “I take it there’s been a change in attitude by some of the staff?”
    Allie peeked through her fingers. “I began to be suspicious when the same people who’d been ostracizing me for weeks suddenly sought out my company. And when Nurse Mary Sunshine came up to me and actually hugged me while she apologized, I was certain something was up. It was spooky, Ian, darned spooky.” Allie shuddered.
    “I’m sorry people are being nice to you,” he said, no repentance in his voice, a hint of a smile in the stony face.
    “It’s not the being nice, it’s the reason why they’re being nice.” She sighed. “Did I ever mention why I moved away from home?”
    He shook his head.
    “Well, the problem with having three brothers raise you is that they don’t ever seem to notice when you are, in fact, raised. The final straw was the night they busted into my living room at ten o’clock at night and kicked my date out.”
    “What was wrong with your date?” he asked.
    Allie felt herself blushing as she began to remember, oh so vividly, the incident. “Oh, Bull wasn’t quite corporate enough for them.”
    “Bull?” An eyebrow rose with elegant disdain.
    “Don’t give me that look. That look is one of the reasons why I moved away. The final straw.”
    “So, what was wrong with Bull?” he asked.
    “He drove a Harley.” Allie had thought riding a motorcycle would be thrilling, but she’d found it was just noisy, and the taste of bugs wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
    “Riding a Harley doesn’t make someone a hardened criminal.” Ian didn’t sound too pleased to admit it.
    Allie sighed, wishing she could be less than honest, just this once. “Well, the license plate did.”
    “License plate?”
    “Well, Conner—he’s the cop—ran the plate when he saw us at the theater, and it turns out Bull was in a bit of trouble.”
    “What kind of trouble?” That warrior tone was back in Ian’s voice.
    It was a tone that reminded her so much of her brothers.
    “Well, it had to do with a 7-Eleven and some missing money,” she admitted. She’d gone too far not to admit the whole thing.
    “He robbed a 7-Eleven?” Ian asked.
    “Well, it turns out he robbed a lot of 7-Elevens.” Another tragic mistake by Allie McGraw. Dr. Slimeball and Bull, the Harley-riding thief.
    Allie sighed. Someday she was going to get it right. She glanced at Ian. He was a washout too. They were just too different, and that was a shame because Ian had a lot of redeeming qualities. But there was no way Allie had moved so far away from home just to replace three overbearing brothers with another overbearing man.
    “And you were mad that your brothers came after the creep?”
    Allie couldn’t tell if Ian sounded incredulous or annoyed. Maybe it was a combination of both. “No. What I was mad about is that they ran the plate in the first place, just because he was with me. And, beyond that, that they felt the need to interrupt my date with Bull in order to arrest him.”
    “Oh, those cads.” Ian’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.
    “You can’t imagine what it’s like having the three of them dogging your every move, questioning your every choice, monitoring your friends and