Playboy Surgeon, Top-Notch Dad

Could she do this? How could she not?

Visiting her friend hadn’t been so stressful prior to Oz moving in with him. The living arrangement made sense. Dr Talbot didn’t need to be alone. Oz needed a place to live while he filled in for the heart surgeon.

But visiting with her beloved friend meant routinely seeing Oz outside of work.

Seeing him at work was bad enough.

Seeing Oz laugh and joke with the man she loved, seeing their close relationship, how Oz took care of Dr Talbot—well, it tugged at places inside her she’d rather not have tugged on, thank you very much.

Especially after last night. This afternoon.

She wouldn’t even go into what watching him play with Addy did to her.

She preferred thinking of Oz as a playboy

womanizer. It was much easier to compartmentalize him as totally undateable.

He was undateable. Under normal circumstances he’d have a different woman every weekend. It was only Dr Talbot’s illness curbing his sexual appetite, making him act out of character in ways that made Blair think she might have been wrong about him.

She knew all this.

But why had he touched her hand this afternoon?

“Can I push the bell, Mommy?” Addy asked, bouncing up and down at Blair’s side on the small front porch. “Can I, please?”

Nodding, Blair braced herself. Would Oz be in jeans? Shorts? Please, not shorts. The sight of his hairy, muscular legs about did her in the last time she’d visited Dr Talbot. He’d been out running on the beach and—jeans.

He was wearing jeans.

“Hi, Dr Oz,” Addy greeted him with a toothy smile. She’d lost her first tooth while at school that day and wanted the world to know she’d entered the world of being grown-up. At least that was how her five-year-old mind viewed getting a “grown-up” tooth. Blair preferred not to think about her baby growing up anytime soon. It seemed as if Addy had only been getting her first tooth not so long ago.

Dear Lord, was she prattling to distract herself from the man standing in the doorway?

“Hey, Pipsqueak.” Oz flashed a killer smile Addy’s way, did their usual high-five hand greeting. Her daughter ate up the male attention, batting her lashes and smiling pretty as you please. Oz motioned for Blair and Addy to step inside the house. “You’re looking beautiful today.”

Standing in the hardwood foyer with its white spindled staircase, Addy giggled, eyelashes still fluttering. “What about Mommy? Is she looking beautiful?”

Blair grimaced. Out of the mouth of babes.

Oz’s gaze shifted, ran over her from head to toe.

Oh, my. How did he reduce her to mush with one look? One scorching look, but still, just one look.

“Your mommy looks beautiful, too.” His voice was low. “She always does.”

Blair swallowed, refusing to look at him although she knew he still looked at her, sensed that he wanted her to look at him, that he wanted a response to his heated look, to his words. How could she respond when she didn’t understand what was happening? When she was sure, whatever it was, she didn’t like or want it?

“It’s because I did her hair when she got out of the shower after work.” Addy beamed at Blair’s short bob that she’d blow-dried into a fluffy style. Much fluffier than Blair’s usual cut that slanted in to frame her face. Addy had been so proud of her efforts Blair hadn’t had the heart to comb out the teased locks.

“She even let me put in mousse.” Addy wiggled her fingers back and forth as if they still had sticky mousse on them. “I like mousse.”

Rocking back on his bare feet, Oz arched an eyebrow. “Mousse? That explains why she looks so sexy.”

Addy giggled at his use of the word sexy. Blair melted, wishing she could recapture some of her usual cynicism when it came to compliments from Oz.

What was it about him that made her feel sexy?

Six years and she hadn’t felt sexy, hadn’t even wanted to feel sexy. Now, in front of her impressionable five-year-old daughter, she wanted to throw herself at Oz. She wouldn’t, of course. But she couldn’t shut off the images in her head. Images of Oz.