Priceless (9 page)

He gave her an oddly bemused look that made her heart flip over.

“Not sure entirely,” he admitted.

“That must be a first.”

“It is,” he said. He met her gaze. “You confuse me.”

She found his honesty a little
too
charming. Maybe it was part of some game he played. “I’m a fairly straightforward kind of woman.”

“I get that,” he said.

“You are not a straightforward kind of man,” she added bluntly.

“I’m trying to be, at least with you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I wish to hell I knew. I sat there after you’d left the house this morning and tried to figure it out, but I still don’t entirely get it.”

Beth lost patience. She was in over her head with Mack and she didn’t like it. That she’d slept with him
at all was probably a huge mistake. That she wanted to do it again was pure insanity. Hearing that he was beset with uncertainties was not reassuring. One of them surely needed to know what the hell they were doing.

“Well, since it’s such an obvious struggle for you to figure it out, maybe you should just stop trying,” she said. “We spent one night together, Mack. We didn’t make a commitment. You don’t do commitment. From what I’ve read in the paper, you don’t even go out with the same woman twice. I get that. My time is up.”

He frowned at her. “You’re making this hard.”

“What am I making hard?” she asked, unable to hide her growing exasperation. “I just let you completely off the hook. No harm, no foul. Go forth and do whatever the hell you do without giving me another thought.”

“That would be the sensible thing for me to do,” he agreed.

“Then do it.”

He shook his head. “Can’t.”

“Why not? There’s the door. Walk out and that’s that. No big deal.” She held her breath waiting for him to take her advice and go. Instead, he sat right where he was, his expression glum. Beth sighed. “Mack, what is going on?”

“Have you had lunch yet?”

“I’ve had coffee and candy. In my book that qualifies.”

“Not in mine. Let’s go.”

“I don’t have time.”

“You do for this,” he coaxed, his lips twitching
when her stomach growled. “I’ll have you back in an hour, like always.”

“It’s twelve-thirty. There’s not a decent restaurant anywhere that won’t be mobbed at this hour.”

“I’ll have you back in an hour,” he repeated.

Since he’d never before broken that promise, Beth finally gave in. And since the coffee and caffeine definitely hadn’t done what she’d intended—taken her mind off Mack—maybe another hour in his annoying company would do the trick. At least she’d be well fed at the end of it.

“Okay,” she relented. “One hour, and we don’t talk about us.”

“Deal,” he said.

Once again, the instant they reached the very popular crab house on the Potomac River, a table magically appeared. Their food arrived moments later—a dozen steamed and spiced crabs with coleslaw and potato salad.

Mack handed her a wooden mallet with a grin. “Pretend you’re bashing me upside the head, and you’ll get through these in no time.”

Cracking crabs was messy work, but the succulent meat was worth the effort. And thinking of each red shell as Mack’s hard head did give her a certain amount of perverse pleasure as she hammered away. She uttered a little sigh when she’d finished the last one. Only then did she realize that Mack had eaten very little.

“Weren’t you hungry? This is the second time today when you’ve sat there and watched me eat.”

“I’m trying to fatten you up,” he said.

“Planning to have me slaughtered like a pig?”

“Nope. Looking for a little more flesh to hang on to.”

The comment brought an immediate flush to her cheeks. “Mack!”

“Sorry,” he said at once, though he didn’t look especially repentant. “I promised you we wouldn’t talk about us. I suppose that precludes any talk of sex, as well.”

“There is no us,” she said flatly, refusing to get drawn into any discussion of sex.

“Yeah, you would have thought so, wouldn’t you?”

She stared at him, not sure how to take the wry note in his voice. “Meaning?”

“We’re not much alike. You’re serious. I’m not. You’re brilliant—”

“So are you,” she said impatiently, tired of him using his own stereotypical image as some sort of cop-out. “Stop denigrating your intelligence. You have a law degree, which you earned while playing professional football. You can’t juggle all that without being smart. And it must take some intelligence to run a successful football franchise, even if I don’t happen to get why you’d want to.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I think.”

“Since you’re busy laying out all our differences, how about this one? I’m a struggling researcher and physician and you’re very, very rich.”

He grinned. “Too obvious and not that important, unless, of course, you’re trying to decide whether to go after me for my money.”

Beth smiled as she was struck by a brilliant idea to get her research project moving along at a swifter pace. Maybe she should test the waters and see if he was open to the idea. Hopefully he wouldn’t conclude that she really was in this just for the money. “Actually
I’m trying to decide whether to get you to fund a new research project,” she retorted cheerfully.

“Just tell me what you need,” he said matter-of-factly.

She stared at him in shock, totally unprepared for his immediate agreement. “I was joking,” she protested. “Or at least half joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered, not quite daring to believe he was as serious as he sounded. She had grants, but with just a little more funding she could hire the kind of assistant who would enable her to move her research along much more quickly.

“While it’s always nice to show your appreciation of a Higher Power, in this instance you should really thank football and wise investments,” he teased. “Of course, if you can’t bear the thought of taking any money earned playing such a stupid game…”

“I’ll give it some thought,” she replied oh, so seriously, then added a quick, “Yes. When it comes to saving more kids, I’m not proud. If you’re really serious about this, I’ll get together with my team and put a proposal together by the end of the week.”

Mack nodded. “I’ll be in to pick it up.”

She studied him intently, then shook her head at the unexpected turn the day had taken. It was yet more proof that she had seriously misjudged Mack. If the sex had been predictably incredible, then this gesture was equally mind-boggling in its unpredictability and its generosity.

“You’re not at all what I expected,” she admitted.

“Not so dumb?”

She flushed. “I thought we’d already established that as a lie. More important, you’re amazingly kind to
Tony. And this whole playboy thing, I’m beginning to think maybe that’s more an image you’ve created for the media than a fact.”

“You think that after last night?” he asked, regarding her with evident surprise. “And all that fancy footwork I danced through this morning?”

Beth thought about it and finally nodded slowly. “Yes. Now that I look back over the last few weeks, I realize that you never seem to have a date. You’ve been spending every evening at the hospital.”

He gave her long, simmering look that made her pulse race.

“What do you think you and I have been doing?” he asked quietly. “I mean even before last night.”

“Grabbing a quick meal on the run,” she said, confused by the hint of amusement in his eyes.

“You with an eligible man. Me with a beautiful, intelligent woman. In my book, those are dates.” His grin spread. “And just look where they led.”

She sat back, stunned. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Somehow she’d dismissed all that earlier stuff as casual, friendly, inconsequential get-togethers, while he’d seen it as some sort of foreplay.

“I doubt you’ll be damned, unless of course you let me take advantage of you,” he taunted. “Any possibility of that happening again? Not right this second, of course, but sometime when you’re not due back at the hospital in less than five minutes?”

Before last night, Beth would have said there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of her letting that happen. Even this morning, with his stinging reminder that he wasn’t to be taken seriously, she would have said a flat no.

Now, seeing the faint vulnerability in his eyes as he
awaited her reply, guessing that he was stepping far outside of his own relationship comfort zone to even ask such a thing, she was tempted to see where this could lead.

With her heart hammering in her chest, she met his gaze evenly. “You never know.”

Mack laughed, as if he’d never expected a different answer. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Has any woman ever actually said no to you?” she asked curiously.

“More than you might imagine. Then again, I’ve probably asked the question a lot less than you’ve imagined.”

To Beth’s very real regret, she wanted to believe that far more than was wise. She wanted to believe that the media had gotten it all wrong, but even she was savvy enough to accept that where there was smoke, there was usually fire. Or in this case, that if gossip paired Mack with a different woman every night, then more than likely he’d done something to foster that impression.

But maybe, just maybe, he’d done it as a defense mechanism to keep from having to put his heart on the line. That was a scenario Beth very much wanted to believe. In fact, she wanted it so much it should have sent her scurrying right straight out of Mack’s life before she got her own heart well and truly broken.

It should have, but she very much feared she wasn’t going anywhere.

W
hen Mack wandered into the Carlton Industries offices after dropping Beth off at the hospital, he headed straight for Destiny’s office. She rarely put in an appearance there, but a few calls had assured him she was in this afternoon. He’d been drawn there because his aunt had a way of clarifying things for him when he was faced with uncertainty. Since meeting Beth, he’d spent a lot of time feeling completely off-kilter.

It had been a most enlightening lunch. He’d discovered that Beth was more of a risk taker than he’d imagined. He’d expected her to turn him down flat when he’d suggested they spend another passionate night together, especially after the way they’d parted just this morning. That she hadn’t said an immediate no had left him turned on and more intrigued than ever.

He wasn’t entirely sure what conclusions Beth had reached about him or about their prospects for the fu
ture. Given his confusion on that point, dropping by Destiny’s office to solicit advice probably wasn’t really a wise thing to do, but he was feeling a bit reckless.

He was also feeling somewhat in Destiny’s debt for steering Beth into his life. Not that he intended to tell Destiny that—in fact, he’d probably claim just the opposite, if she pressed him—but he didn’t doubt for a second that she was smart enough to read between the lines of whatever he did say. He doubted his aunt would be the least bit surprised that he was finding himself more than a little conflicted where Beth Browning was concerned.

“I haven’t seen much of you lately, Mack,” Destiny scolded, after he’d dropped a kiss on her smooth cheek. “Where have you been spending your evenings?”

He poured himself a cup of her special-blend coffee, then lounged in a chair opposite her while he contemplated just how much to tell her. She was bound to take a certain amount of gloating satisfaction in whatever he revealed. He decided to take the cagey route and see what she already knew.

“As if you didn’t know,” he said finally, regarding her with amusement. She was damned good at the innocent act, but he wasn’t buying it. Getting her to confess her involvement in this matchmaking plot could be highly entertaining. Matching wits with Destiny and avoiding her romantic snares had been a lifelong challenge for him and his brothers. He was usually quite good at it. Maybe that was another reason he found Beth so fascinating. She was the first woman he’d met who challenged him mentally with the same deft skill as his aunt.

“Would I be asking if I did?” Destiny inquired tartly, sticking to the charade.

“Of course, you would. You want me to reveal all, so you’ll have a reason to gloat.”

Her innocent look was priceless. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mack.”

“Were you or were you not the one who insisted that I go over to the hospital a few weeks ago to see that sick kid?” he coached, watching her carefully for any hint of a reaction. She kept her expression perfectly bland.

“Tony Vitale?” she asked after a thoughtful pause.

He grinned at the well-honed act, knowing full well that the name had been on the tip of her tongue. She probably got daily updates from the hospital. Lord knew she had sources everywhere. “Precisely.”

“Then you have continued to visit him? That’s wonderful,” she said, regarding him with evident approval. “I’m sure that’s helped his morale considerably. Darling, I’m so proud of you for taking an interest in him.”

“He’s having a rough time,” Mack said, momentarily distracted from his mission to exasperate his aunt. “He’s such a tough kid. It breaks my heart to see him so sick.”

“When I first spoke to his doctor, she said things hadn’t been going well. Has there been any change at all?”

“Only for the worse,” Mack said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Destiny said with genuine sympathy. “His mother must be completely distraught. Surely they’ll be able to turn things around.”

“I hope so.” He met her gaze with an innocent look of his own. “Since you’ve shown such an interest in his case, I imagine you’ll be willing to match the research donation I’m making in his name,” he said.

His aunt’s eyebrows rose, suggesting that he really had caught her by surprise this time.

“You’re funding a research project?” she asked. “Mack, that’s wonderful! What a generous thing for you to do. Of course, I’ll match it. Which doctor is in charge?”

Mack laughed. “I suspect you can pull that name out of thin air in another second or two.”

She looked momentarily perplexed. “I’m sure I have no idea,” she claimed. “There are many fine doctors there.”

“Try,” he pressed.

She appeared to give it some thought. “It wouldn’t be that lovely Beth Browning, would it?”

He lifted his coffee cup in a congratulatory toast. “Bingo.”

“I understand she’s very dedicated,” Destiny said smoothly, not giving away by so much as the blink of an eyelash that she’d all but hand picked the woman for Mack, most likely because of Beth’s dedication and brilliance.

“And very beautiful and very available, but then that never crossed your mind when you sent me scampering over there, did it?” he asked.

Destiny looked for a moment as if she might try to keep up the charade, but eventually she simply shrugged, conceding the game. “It might have crossed my mind,” she conceded.

Mack laughed at her total lack of chagrin. “Oh, give it up, Destiny. You’ve been meddling again, and you’re damned proud of it.”

She leveled a look directly into his eyes. “Do you honestly have a problem with that, Mack? It worked
rather well with Richard, didn’t it? He and Melanie are deliriously happy.”

“But I’m not in the market for a wife,” Mack pointed out, though with considerably less vehemence than he might have a few short weeks ago.

“Neither was Richard,” she reminded him.

“Why are you so blasted anxious to marry us all off?” he asked curiously. “Do you have someplace you’d like to be besides here? Are you thinking of going back to France and taking up your Bohemian lifestyle once we’re all settled? Is that what the rush is all about?”

“This isn’t about me,” she said. “It’s about you. Not a one of you has learned the first thing about love. I simply can’t understand how I failed so abysmally at teaching you the most important lesson of all. I decided it was past time I did something about it.”

Mack heard the genuine frustration in her voice and regretted that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. “I know you think we won’t be happy without wives and children, but there are other measures of happiness, Destiny.”

“Name one,” she challenged.

“I can do better than that,” he claimed, then ticked them off for her. “Success, friendships, family.”

“Family is exactly what I’m talking about,” she retorted impatiently.

“We have each other and we have you.” He gave her a penetrating look. “Unless, as I said, you’re anxious to leave after all these years and want to be sure we have someone in our lives to take your place.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “I’m perfectly content with my life just the way it is.”

He gave her a wide-eyed look. “How can that be? There’s no man in your life.”

She frowned at having her own argument tossed back in her face. “There is no need to be snide, Mack.”

“Just pointing out the obvious flaw in your case for marrying us off.”

“If you are so fiercely determined never to marry, why are you still seeing Beth?” she asked.

He honestly didn’t have an answer for that. As they’d discussed at lunch, Beth wasn’t at all like the women he usually dated. She wasn’t wild or carefree. She was serious and thoughtful and took far too many of her patients’ problems to heart.

In recent weeks he’d often felt ashamed at how little he took seriously and how easy his life was. He’d always been conscientious about good deeds—Destiny has raised him and his brothers with a strong sense of their obligation to give back to the community—but he hadn’t taken it to heart the way Beth did. She genuinely cared about people. She had a passion for her work. More important, it was work that truly mattered. What he did was frivolous by comparison. Even his visits to Tony were window dressing. They weren’t the thing that would ultimately save the boy. Only Beth and her team could do that.

Mack cared about his brothers and his aunt. He even cared about Tony Vitale and other kids like him. But in general he’d learned to keep the world at a distance. Losing his parents so young had made him wary about loving anyone too much. It was too hard to tell when fate might snatch them away. He was terrified that the simple act of loving someone might doom them in some weird way. He knew it was a kid’s reaction to
loss, but more and more lately he’d come to realize that he’d never entirely gotten past it. Faced with his growing feelings for Beth and his attachment to Tony and the fears they’d stirred in him, he was coming to accept that he was as haunted by it as his other brothers had been.

“Mack,” Destiny coaxed gently. “You don’t go out with a woman like Beth Browning unless you’re serious about her. She’s not one of those clever, worldly women you can toss aside with no harm done.”

Mack nodded, accepting the truth of that despite Beth’s own claims to the contrary. “I know that.”

Acknowledging that meant he ought to give Beth up now. It was the right thing to do, the noble, self-sacrificing thing to do. He’d been telling himself that all day. It hadn’t kept him from making another date with her.

The sad truth was, when he thought about how empty his life would be without her, he couldn’t begin to contemplate doing the right thing.

“Well, then?” Destiny prodded.

He met his aunt’s gaze and made a decision. “I’d like to bring her to dinner one of these days. How would you feel about that?”

Destiny’s eyes glowed with immediate excitement. “I’d be delighted. You know that I love meeting your friends. I’m free tonight. Will that work?”

He concluded he might as well get it over with. Maybe after seeing him and Beth together, Destiny could help him sort out his feelings. “Tonight’s fine for me. I’ll check with Beth and get back to you in an hour or so.”

“Perfect.”

He studied the glint of anticipation in her eyes war
ily. “You won’t make too much of it?” he asked. “I rarely bring a woman to dinner, because you always get this gleam in your eyes—the one that’s there right now, by the way—and start imagining wedding bells.”

“I will make Beth feel welcome, and I will not bring out a single bridal magazine,” Destiny promised. “I won’t even leave one conspicuously lying around the living room.”

He knew there were a million other sneaky ways to get the same message across. “And you won’t drag out Richard’s wedding pictures?” he asked, naming one of them.

“Heavens, no,” she said with suitable indignation. “I certainly know better than to force someone to look at family photos. That can be so tedious.” She grinned. “Though there is one of you in the bathtub at two that I think is awfully cute. Few women could resist it. In fact, it might plant a few ideas about how absolutely adorable your babies will be.”

Mack gave her a genuinely horrified look. “I just changed my mind. I’m not bringing Beth anywhere near you.”

Destiny laughed merrily. “I was teasing, darling. I won’t embarrass you.”

“You swear?”

Destiny sketched a cross over her heart. “Not one inappropriate word,” she vowed.

Mack frowned. “Why doesn’t that reassure me?”

“Because you have a cynical nature,” she told him. “Anything in particular you’d like me to cook? One of my Provençal specialties perhaps?”

“Anything,” he said, wondering if he was making a huge mistake in exposing Beth to Destiny’s probing gaze and clever questions. “Just keep in mind that I’m
lucky to steal her away from the hospital for an hour. This can’t be one of your long, drawn-out, five-course meals.”

“Fine dining can’t be rushed, darling. You know that.”

“I also know that Beth will refuse to come if she thinks this is going to be some sort of formal occasion. It has to be just the three of us, and it can’t be one of your dressed-to-the-nines nights. She’ll probably have to come straight from the hospital and then go right back there.”

His aunt scowled at that. “If you insist. Would you like hot dogs and baked beans? Those are quick and easy,” Destiny said tartly.

Mack knew she wasn’t entirely kidding. She had her standards when it came to the way someone in their position should entertain. “I think you can do better than that,” he told her. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”

She studied him intently, then finally nodded. “Okay then, but may I ask one thing?”

“Sure.”

“Why does this dinner mean so much, Mack, if Beth’s not becoming important to you?”

“Can’t we just have a nice meal together without turning it into a precursor to an engagement?” he asked plaintively.

“I can do that,” Destiny agreed readily, then gave him a far too knowing look. “Can you?”

Because he didn’t have a ready answer to that, Mack merely frowned and headed for the door. “See you tonight.”

“I’m looking forward to it, darling,” Destiny said cheerfully.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Mack muttered, already regretting
the impulse that had caused him to make the arrangements for this little get-together.

He’d told himself that he wanted Destiny’s insights and impressions of the relationship, but maybe the truth was something else entirely. Maybe he was hoping that exposing sensible, down-to-earth Beth to the realities of life with a Carlton would scare her off and he’d never have to break her heart by doing what he always did…walking away.

Beth’s day had gone from bad to worse. A patient had swatted away a bottle of bright-orange antiseptic, sending most of it cascading over Beth’s blouse. Though there had been a faint hint of amusement lurking in his eyes, Peyton had soundly scolded her for missing the morning meeting. And Tony had regarded her with a hurt expression for not being there for his transfusion.

“You know it hurts less when you’re the one who has to stick me with a needle,” Tony said accusingly. “I was counting on you.”

“Oh, sweetie, I know and I’m sorry,” she said, although somewhat relieved to hear the feistiness in his voice and to finally see some color in his cheeks.