It's in His Touch (11 page)

“I figured out that much. What else?”

“And . . .” She stumbled over the words, took a deep breath. “He cheated with my legal assistant, and now they’re getting married. I’m sorry for using you like that. I just wanted him to see that he’s not important to me anymore.”

“I’m not talking about your history with him. He’s an ass, and you’re better off without him.” Blake’s chin hitched up. “Why was he here bothering you? Dialing your phone number seems like it would’ve been much easier than driving up here from Albuquerque.”

Angelique bit her lip. Blake was her adversary, or at least her client’s adversary. Thanks to Gabriel showing up and giving out her personal 4-1-1, Blake already knew way too much that he could try to use against her. A good attorney would do that, find something personal, something that made their opponent vulnerable and twist it to their advantage. No way was she going to tell him about the missing client files and money.

She shrugged. “Some things need to be handled in person.”

Okay, that was a weak excuse, but he’d have to accept her answer whether he bought it or not.

Pushing off the door, he advanced on her. She backed up a few paces, then stood her ground. When he reached her, his hand lifted to her cheek and rested there. A gentle thumb brushed across her skin. And oh, how she wanted to lose herself in that touch. The strength of it, the tenderness. It made her heart ache with longing, and she swallowed, steadied herself.

“There are only two things I’m concerned about.” Just a breath away, his words caressed her cheeks. “Him leaving you the hell alone is one. Especially since he’s marrying someone else.”

“I’m a big girl, Doc. It’s not your problem,” she whispered, her eyes searching his. An earnest warmth glowed in the aquamarine pools.

“You made it my problem when you claimed me as your boyfriend.” His mouth twitched up, and his eyes anchored to her lips. “You’re welcome, by the way. I’m glad I happened to be here at the opportune moment instead of Clifford, the maintenance man who cleans my office on the weekends.”

Blake’s fingertips traced her jawline.

“I could’ve made do with Clifford,” Angelique whispered. But no. No, she couldn’t have.

“Clifford’s about six inches shorter than you and is as big around as he is tall. I don’t think clinging to him would’ve made a big impact on your ex-fiancé.”

His hand found her neck and stroked.

Oh, yeah. Blake made a much better fake boyfriend than Clifford. And the look on Gabriel’s face had been priceless. Almost comical.

She swallowed, her throat closing up. “Wh . . . what’s your other concern?”

“That was one helluva kiss you laid on me.” His thumb made its way to her mouth and traced the outline of both lips. Traitorously, they parted at his scorching touch.

“Was that a concern?” Pulse humming, her breaths came short and quick.

Closing the small space between them, his nose brushed hers. With the side of his index finger, he tipped up her chin so that their eyes locked. Gaze cloudy with desire, he looked as though he intended to devour her.

“Were you thinking of him, or me?” he asked, his voice so thick with lust that Angelique went a little weak in the knees.

Catching her around the waist, Blake hauled her against him and covered her mouth with his. He drank her in, slow and sweet. And oh, mama, she let him. His spicy taste overwhelmed her senses and clouded her mind. Melting into him, her arms instinctively circled his neck, and she opened her mouth against his onslaught, his tongue mingling with hers, searching, caressing, until a small moan escaped from somewhere. It sounded distant, like it didn’t belong to her, but it did. And it communicated her pleasure and how much she enjoyed the feel of him, because he pulled her closer. One hand pressed into the small of her back, while the other found its way to her hair and anchored there at the back of her head. Her purse crashed to the ground, but neither of them flinched.

Digging her nails into his shoulders, she clung to him. Couldn’t get enough of him. It had been so long, so freaking long since a man had wanted her physically. She moaned again. When Blake’s hand released the back of her head, she broke the kiss and let her head fall back. Her eyes shut, he trailed hot kisses down her neck, and his hand found her breast.

She froze. Held her breath until her senses returned. Coldness filled her lungs, and she suppressed an anguished groan. No one had touched her there intimately since . . .

“Breathe, Angelique,” Blake whispered, concern threading through his voice as his hand fell away from her breast.

She opened her eyes and gasped for air. His handsome face etched with concern, he searched her expression. Placing both hands flat against his chest, she pushed back, but he didn’t release her.

The heat, the passion, the lust that danced in his eyes slowly transformed into something else.
Oh, God no
.
Not pity
. Her heart sank, then squeezed with anger.

“Let me in. You don’t have to go through this alone,” he said, like she was a charity case.

She pushed harder against his chest, breaking his embrace. Running a hand through her tousled hair, she tried to gather her wits. Finally, she reached for her purse and turned on him like a lion. “What do you know about it?” She headed toward the door.

“Obviously, more than you think. I’m a doctor. It’s my business to know.” There was sadness in his voice.

Great. He really did see her as a victim.

“Like I said, Doc. I’m not your problem.” Angelique jerked the door open and hustled to her car.

C
hapter
N
ine

Angelique’s lips still burned from the heat of Blake’s kiss. She leaned against the windowsill and watched Sarge torture an unsuspecting tree. Tracing her bottom lip with the tip of one finger, her eyes fluttered shut.

Sarge scratched at the door, and Angelique opened it to let him in. Kimberly’s red Jeep crunched into the drive, so Angelique held the door open until her BFF pulled up and jumped out. She blew through the door carrying a purple leopard-print overnight bag.

“Hey, girlfriend!” Kimberly plopped her Bohemian-style purse onto the counter. All the metal objects dangling from it clanked together. “So it’s either belly dancing or line dancing tonight. Take your pick. They’re interchangeable on the bucket list.”

Angelique rolled her eyes, loading a few dirty dishes into the dishwasher. “Really? Those are my only choices?” She picked up a pot and started to scrub it with a Brillo pad. And wondered how long her lips would feel swollen and bruised from the onslaught of Blake’s sizzling kiss. Her bottom lip puckered involuntarily, and she drew it between her teeth.

Kimberly studied her. “Okay, what?”

“
What
, what?” Angelique looked up at her friend and frantically scrubbed a small pot like it had radioactive waste on it. Only the running water and steel wool against metal filled the silence between them. Unless, of course, Kimberly could hear the lust Dr. Tall, Dark, and Hot-some had stirred through every fiber of Angelique’s body.

Tapping her foot, Kimberly waited for an explanation until her eyes finally widened. “Oh. My. God.” She gasped, and Angelique returned her attention to the pot. She really, really needed to get this pot clean.

“You got laid, didn’t you?”

“What?”
Angelique’s head shot up, but she kept on scrubbing. “No!”
Not even close.
So why was she acting like a skittish college girl who’d just lost her virginity?

“Did too.” Kimberly planted both hands on her hips. “You’re totally doing someone. Who is it? No, wait!” she yelled, holding up a hand. “Let me guess . . .” Then she gasped again, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “It’s your hot neighbor, isn’t it? I told you he was fling-worthy!”

“We’re not having a fling,” Angelique hissed, concentrating on the pot. But oh, she’d wanted to when he’d salvaged her dignity by pretending to be her boyfriend, when his lips were on her neck, when his hand slid up that sensitive area over her ribcage. Until his palm found her breast and she panicked like an adolescent playing spin the bottle for the first time.

“Uh-huh. Well, if you scrub that pot any harder, you’ll wear a hole in it.” Kimberly reached over and flipped off the water. “So spill, or I’m making you do number fifty-six on the bucket list, which is skydiving, and I know how much you hate heights.”

“It’s not that I dislike heights, it’s just that I can’t understand why any rational person would willingly jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” Angelique pulled a head of lettuce, a cucumber, a bag of Roma tomatoes, a few stalks of celery, and a purple onion out of the refrigerator.

“I’ll push you out if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

With both arms full, Angelique dumped the load of veggies on the counter. “Mom, Dad, and Nona will be here soon, and I want to have lunch ready. Can we talk about this later?”

“No.” Kimberly started tapping her foot again.

Angelique let out an exasperated sigh.
“All right,”
she said, and filled a large pot with water, salt, and olive oil. Then she put it on the stove and turned on the burner. “At least make yourself useful and make the salad.”

Kimberly grabbed a kitchen knife from the butcher block and laid the vegetables out across the island. “I’ll chop, you talk.”

Hell’s bells. Angelique drew in a deep breath and tried to figure out where to begin. “Turns out Dr. Blake Holloway lives next door.”

Kimberly’s mouth hit the floor. “You’re doing the town doctor? The one who brought your thong home?”

“No!”
Angelique pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I’m not doing anyone.”

“But you want to,” Kimberly said in a singsong voice.

“No, I most certainly do not.” Angelique bit her lip, because since this morning when she and Blake had made out like two teenagers with their clothes still on, she’d wondered what it would be like to run her hands over his
bare
chest, down his sleek, muscled back to the firm butt that his worn Levi’s cupped so nicely. But then he’d want to do the same to her without clothes on, and when he got to her fake boobs . . . She shuddered with fear. “I just . . . we . . .”

“Totally pushing you out of the plane.” Kimberly pointed the small knife at her.

“Okay.”
Angelique gathered her thoughts, then recounted the whole bizarre mess with Gabriel at the bakery.

Kimberly chopped and diced more urgently. “We’ll sue him for defamation, and then we’ll file a civil suit. He’ll be wearing rubber boots from Walmart instead of eight-hundred-dollar Italian shoes by the time we’re done with him.”

Angelique filled another pot with sauce and set it on the stove. “And Blake . . .”

Kimberly arched a brow while dicing a stalk of celery.

“
Dr.
Holloway happened to be handy, and I kind of pretended to be with him.”

Kimberly’s chopping ceased completely when Angelique described the kiss.

At the memory, Angelique busied herself by stirring the sauce as rapidly as she’d scrubbed the pot. “Don’t tell Mom I’m using sauce out of a jar.”

Kimberly did a turning key motion to her lips. “It’s in the vault.” She grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and took a big bite.

“And all of that was
after
I almost broke his nose in a volleyball game,” Angelique said as she hid the empty marinara jar at the bottom of the trash can.

“Holy shit,” Kimberly said, mouth still full of apple chunks. “Red River is like a soap opera. I’m gone a few days, and all hell breaks loose.”

Angelique took up Kimberly’s position in front of the chopping board and viciously attacked a carrot.

“Sweetie.” Kimberly put her hand on Angelique’s arm that wielded the knife. “That carrot is dead now—you can rest easy.”

Angelique stared down at the carrot, then put the knife down. She rubbed a hand over her cheek.

“Maiming the guy might make it harder to get him into your bed.”

“I wasn’t trying to get him into my bed,” Angelique said through gritted teeth.

“Well, you should’ve been.” Kimberly threw the apple core in the trash. “It’s just like competitive diving.”

Angelique started to speak, but her mouth just hung open. “Wait.
What?
”

Kimberly snagged a ripe banana this time, never able to satisfy her voracious metabolism. “Coaches make their divers get right back up on the board after an accident, so they’re not consumed with crippling fear that will prevent them from performing again.”

“Uh-huh.” Angelique eyed the meat-tenderizing mallet on the counter . . . maybe a good whack would bring Kimberly back to planet earth because Angelique still didn’t know what diving had to do with Blake Holloway.

“You! Sex! Men!” Kimberly hollered as though it should be obvious. “I’m the coach and you’re the diver. You can’t just stop because of the bad break you caught with health issues. And because Gabriel was a shallow idiot.” She smacked and swallowed. “You do realize Gabriel was a shallow idiot long before you had breast cancer, right?”

Yes, yes, Angelique did realize that. It had taken her longer to see through his smooth, well-dressed facade of perfection than it should have. Looking back, the signs were there. She just hadn’t wanted to see them, which made his betrayal all the more humiliating.

“He would’ve still been a shallow idiot even if you’d never gotten sick, so stop thinking all men are going to react to it like he did.”

Angelique went to the stove, stirred the marinara sauce, and then turned the burner on low. “I am not having this conversation.”

Kimberly ignored her. “If your hot neighbor is a doctor, then he of all people will be understanding about the surgeries. Give him a shot.”

Angelique wished she could, except it was so much more complicated than that. Doctor or not, what if he didn’t want to get naked with the bride of Frankenstein? And another rejection like the one Gabriel had doled out was more than she could withstand. She’d had her limit of heartbreak for one lifetime. She wasn’t opening herself up for that again.

Even if Blake was understanding, she didn’t want his pity, and they wanted completely different things in life. They had nothing at all in common. Not to mention the fact that he hated everything she represented.

Dr. Blake Holloway just wasn’t an option.

A knock sounded on the front door.

“That’s probably my parents, so don’t say anything about Gabriel. It’ll just upset them.”

Kimberly polished off the banana and pitched the peel into the trash. “Fine. We’ll plot his demise later.”

Angelique hurried to the door, and her mom rushed in full of hugs and kisses. Her mom’s salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, and it still held quite a bit of jet-black for a woman her age. The familial resemblance was unmistakable.

“Glad you made it, Mom. How was the drive up from Albuquerque?”

“Beautiful as always this time of year.” Her mom’s New York accent was still noticeable even after all these years in the Southwest. “We even saw a herd of big horned sheep coming through the pass.” She looked around. “The firm rented you a nice place.”

“That’s because my baby girl deserves the best.” Her dad walked in carrying two Health Shack grocery bags. “Hi, sweat pea! We picked up some groceries in Taos.” He set the bags on the counter and gave her a bear hug. His waistline had expanded several inches since he retired a few years ago, but he still had a full head of hair and a keen mind. “You’re looking good.” He chucked her nose like she was five years old. “What’s this?” He squinted through his bifocals at the fading red patches on her neck.

“Just some poison oak.” She waved off his concern and hustled to the stove to throw some pasta into the boiling water. “I got some medicated lotion for it.”

“Well, I’ll cut that down for you before we go back to Albuquerque in a few days,” her dad said, concerned. “I never knew you were allergic to it.”

“Neither did I, but there’s no need. My neighbor already came over and cut it down.”

Kimberly coughed. When Angelique shot her a shut-up-or-die look, Kimberly busied herself with chopping the rest of the veggies.

“Where’s Nona?” Angelique asked, returning to the counter to unload the groceries. “Did you forget her in Taos?”

“I tried, but the woman followed us here anyway.” He snatched some antipasto from one of the grocery bags and popped it in his mouth. “She runs fast for an old lady.”

Her mom made an annoyed clucking sound and swatted him on the arm with a wooden spoon that she’d grabbed from a utensil jar on the counter.

Dad rubbed his arm.

“Nona’s still in the car,” her mom said. “A couple of old codgers flirted with her in the geriatric section at the health food store. She’s trying to type their numbers into her smartphone but keeps dialing the fire department accidentally.”

“Accidentally my right butt cheek,” Kimberly scoffed. “She just wants to talk dirty to those good-looking firefighters.”

“At my age, I’ll take whatever action I can get.” Nona walked through the door. She looked at least a hundred and ten years old. With a slight hunch to her shoulders, she shuffled along without a walker, insisting she looked younger without assistance. Soda-bottle glasses magnified her eyes into saucers, her silver hair held a bluish hue, and her New York accent was thicker than the traffic in Manhattan during rush hour. “I won’t be needing to dial 911 for a while.” She put a hand under her back-combed hairdo and fluffed it, the pungent odor of Final Net wafting around. “I have a date.”

“Way to go, Nona.” Angelique gave her a high five as she walked past to shut the door. Nona often forgot such trivial details. Details like putting the car in park, which was why her driver’s license had been revoked.

Mom sputtered. “You don’t even know the man! What if he’s a criminal?”

“Well, I have the solution,” Kimberly announced, and everybody groaned.

“Please, God, let it not be another crazy idea on your bucket list,” Angelique said, because skydiving was looking better and better.

“I’m so underappreciated by this family,” sulked Kimberly, crossing both arms over her breasts.

Another groan rounded the kitchen.

“I can forgive and forget, if you’ll go line dancing tonight.” She put an arm around Nona’s shoulder and squeezed. “Saturday night in a town this size? Cotton Eyed Joe’s is sure to be jumping, and Nona can invite her date.”

Great. Just what Angelique needed. More interaction with the people she was about to help put out of business. Thank the angels in heaven her parents wouldn’t be the least bit interested in line dancing.

Mom clasped her hands under her chin. “Oh, that sounds like fun. Of course we’ll all go.” She looked at Angelique. “There’s nothing else to do up here, right? We might as well join in with the locals.”