Sizzling Nights with Dr. Off-Limits

She’d put on hot tea and sipped on a cup while she waited.

Bless him that he’d taken the boy’s death so hard. That, she understood. Didn’t she feel a similar responsibility for each person she took care of?

She’d had patients die over the years. When you took care of the seriously ill, death happened.

No doubt Lucas had lost patients in the past, too, but something about Kevin Rogers had clearly gotten to him.

She glanced at her cellular phone, noting the time. He’d been in her bathroom for a long time. Was he okay?

Intent on knocking on the bathroom door to see if he needed anything, she went to her bedroom and stopped just inside the room. Lucas lay on her bed, his hair damp, nothing on but a towel about his waist, and he was out cold.

“Lucas?”

No change in the even rise and fall of his chest.

“Lucas?” She had to wake him. He couldn’t stay.

Only, he still didn’t stir. Could she really wake him and send him away when he was so completely exhausted?

She winced.

She didn’t want him to sleep in her bed.

But she couldn’t bring herself to wake him.

She walked back into the kitchen, put away the food, flipped off the lights, stared at her sofa for long minutes contemplating how comfortable it would be, then sighed.

She didn’t have to work tomorrow, but she didn’t think she’d sleep a wink on the sofa, either.

Lucas wasn’t the only one exhausted.

With her heart pounding and her insides shaking, she went back into the bedroom, studied the sleeping man in her bed.

A man she’d loved. A man she’d hated.

A man... What was it she felt for him now?

She didn’t love him. She didn’t hate him.

What was this feeling inside her? Definitely, she felt something. Sexual chemistry as she’d claimed? Yes, she felt that, but there was more.

Looking closer, she noted the redness around his

eyes.

Dear Lord. He looked as if he’d been crying.

Emily swallowed the knot that formed.

Had he cried in the shower over Kevin Rogers’s death?

Her heart tightened to where she couldn’t breathe.

Forget the sofa. She crossed the room, turned off the lamplight and snuggled up against a man she suddenly wanted to comfort and protect from the whole world.

Not a feeling she welcomed. Not a feeling she wanted.

But she hugged him and fell asleep with her arm wrapped around him all the same.