He didn’t release her until she began to relax and at last fall asleep. Gently, he laid her on the bed and looked up at the tall woman Blair had sent after the raincoats. “Clean her up and send her to the Infirmary tomorrow. I want to talk to her.”
The woman nodded silently, looking up at Lee with big, worshipful eyes. She turned to Blair. “I hope you appreciate this man, honey, ain’t many like him. He—.” The woman stopped at a look from Lee.
“We have to go.” With surprise, he glanced down at the raincoat he wore and then looked across the patient’s bed at Blair.
“I learned it from my doctor-sister,” she said in answer to his silent question and suddenly worried about how Lee would react to her help with the girl.
But as Lee packed his instruments, took her arm and led her outside, he made no mention of her expertise. The people around them mumbled thanks and looked at both Lee and Blair with dull eyes, and Blair thought the young women were thinking that any one of them could have been the girl on that bed.
“Do you come here often?” she asked Lee on the way down the stairs.
“About once a week a doctor is here for one reason or another. I guess I’ve been here as often as any of them.”
At the carriage, Lee paused in front of Blair and she was sure he’d say that he knew who she was. “I really appreciated your going with me on the case and that I didn’t have to leave you somewhere first. It meant more to me than you’ll know.”
She gave a smile of relief. “You were very good with the woman, fast, as careful as possible.”
With a slight smile, he touched the hair at her temple. “You’re sounding like Blair again, but whatever the reason, I thank you for the compliment.”
When Blair was in medical school, she had had a teacher who warned them that the curse of young female doctors was that they tended to fall in love with whichever man was the best surgeon. The instructor had said that all a new female intern had to do was see a doctor remove an ovarian cyst that was difficult, and she’d soon be swooning over him.
At this moment, Blair thought that Lee was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. He’d handled the technical side of the case quite well, but, more, his compassion was such as she’d never seen matched. When he moved toward her to kiss her, she realized that she wanted him to kiss her as herself, as Blair, rather than as Houston.
She turned her face away.
Leander dropped his hand from her face instantly, and the anger in his eyes was frightening. He turned away, every movement showing his anger.
Blair felt a moment of panic. Right now, she was Houston and not Blair, and of course she would kiss the man she loved.
Blair caught his arm. He stopped and looked at her, his eyes blazing with fury, and it took a great deal of courage not to step back. Boldly, she put her arms around his neck and touched her lips to his.
He stood there as if he were made of stone, not moving, not responding to her advances.
For a moment, it occurred to Blair that Dr. Leander Westfield was certainly a spoiled man if he reacted so severely to his fiancée’s refusing him a single kiss. As he continued to show no reaction, she thought of this as a challenge, like getting through the first year of medical school.
She stood on tiptoe and began to show a little passion to this unyielding man.
She wasn’t prepared for his reaction—nothing that had ever happened to her in her lifetime had prepared her for his reaction.
He caught her head in his hand, twisted her head around and applied his mouth to hers with a passion that made her breath disappear. And Blair reacted in kind. She pressed her body against his and only clung harder when he pushed his knee between her legs and thrust his tongue into her mouth.
“Excuse me,” came a voice with laughter in it, and it was several moments before Lee pulled away.
Blair stood there with her eyes closed and was glad of the support of the carriage behind her or she probably would have fallen. She was vaguely aware that it was the dreadful gambler-man who was there, and that he was smirking at them even while he spoke to Lee, but she didn’t really care. Perhaps Houston’s reputation was ruined forever, but the last thing Blair was thinking about was her sister.
“Ready?” she heard Lee saying softly in her ear when the man was gone. She could feel the warmth of his body so near hers.
“For what?” she murmured, then opened her eyes.
“Houston, we don’t have to go to the reception,” Lee said.
Blair stood up straighter and remembered who she was and where she was and that she was with her sister’s finance. “Yes, of course we do,” she said shyly, not meeting his eyes and ignoring the fact that his hands lingered much too long on her waist as he helped her into the carriage.
Once seated, she kept her eyes on the road ahead. So this is why Houston loves him, she thought. And to think that she’d worried that they were too cool to each other in private.
She glanced at him once as he turned to her, and his eyes were alive, sparkling—and hungry.
She gave him a weak smile and told herself to think of Alan. Alan. Alan!