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WILD TURN IN THE SACK, INDEED. Dylan set about the nerve-calming, erotic-image-banishing task of unpacking his solitary suitcase. Something he would have had a chance to do earlier had he not accidentally interrupted Gracie Mattias’s shower that morning. Something he would be doing efficiently now if not for her inflammatory words. With quick, irritated movements, he rehung his blue shirt next to his navy slacks, well away from his tan jacket. Not that it mattered. He was scheduled to be in New York for only another day anyway. Tomorrow afternoon he was scheduled for a brief interview with a reporter from a top psychology magazine, then he was flying to St. Louis.
He decisively closed the closet doors then sat down to take off his shoes. Only then did he grow aware of his semiaroused state. He closed his eyes, determined to ignore the physical messages his body was sending him. He stripped out of his damp clothes and put on the hotel robe. There. He felt better already.
His sexual reaction to Gracie didn’t surprise him. He was only human after all. And she was one hundred percent female in heat. It’s how he acted on that basic, fundamental response that differentiated him from a mindless animal. Humans, in general, had the ability to make conscious decisions. While many still subscribed to the “I couldn’t help myself, it was an accident” philosophy when it came to extramarital affairs, the argument had never held much water for him. A man could always help himself. There was nothing accidental about falling into bed with a woman. In fact, whenever one of his patients tried using the excuse on him, he usually came back with something along the lines of “Right. So what you’re telling me is that you just tripped and fell right into her vagina.”
He carefully hung his suit on the towel warmer in the bathroom, smoothed out the wrinkles, then walked back into the other room. He sat down at the desk, eyed his laptop, the phone, then settled his gaze on Gracie’s book. Sex is Not a Four-Letter Word—Smashing Sexual Conventions. The title was spelled across a glossy white cover in pink and gold raised lettering. He pushed it aside and picked up the telephone receiver instead. Maybe he’d be able to get through to Diana.
A brief knock sounded at the door, then Tanja breezed right in. “Can you believe this rain? Isn’t it awesome?”
“My words, exactly.” Dylan grimaced at her. “You know you might want to think twice about just walking in here like that. You never know when you might catch me…in various stages of undress.”
“I should be so lucky.” She stopped in the middle of the room, hands on slender hips, even the purple spikes of her hair seeming to radiate energy. “Come on, Doc, you’re not the type to walk around your own apartment in your birthday suit, so there’s no real danger there, is there?”
“Coulter, Connor and Caplain, Attorneys-at-Law.”
Dylan stopped glowering at Tanja then asked to be put through to Diana. He drummed his fingers against the desktop, then slid Gracie’s book into the drawer before the PR rep could spot it. Four rings, then he was put through to Diana’s voice mail.
Tanja pried the receiver from his hand and soundly hung it up. “You can call whoever that was back when we get to Chicago.”
“Hey! I was just about to leave the number where I could be contacted.”
“It’s changing so what’s the point.” She swung the closet doors open, eyed the contents, then took out his suitcase and launched it toward the bed. Moments later, his clothes followed.
“What do you mean Chicago? We’re supposed to be going to St. Louis next. And that’s not until tomorrow.”
“Change in plans.”
“Change in plans?” He caught another launch of his neatly pressed clothes and tried to save them further wrinkling. “Don’t I have a say in that?”
Tanja stared at him, tapping her black-painted nail against her lips. “Nope.” She chose a couple of items from the pile and thrust them against his chest. “Get dressed. Our plane leaves in an hour.”
“What about the interview tomorrow?”
“Small-time.”
Feeling stupid, he turned to follow her thorough and completely shameless invasion of his privacy. “What’s in Chicago?”
Tanja stopped hooking his toiletries into his bag and grinned at him. “Only the most popular televised talk show in the country.”
“I thought that was Rosie.”
“Yeah, but Rosie wouldn’t give us the entire hour.” She stuffed the shaving bag into his arms. “With one condition.”
He frowned, clutching his things for dear life. “What condition?”
“That you share the spotlight with one very controversial Dr. Grace Mattias.”
For the second time in an hour, Dylan found himself sputtering for a response. “No way…not a chance in hell…over my dead body…” The objections tumbled from his mouth one right after the other, having little or no impact on Tanja as she put his laptop away.
“Come on, Dylan, you guys made quite the team this morning. Everyone loved you. You pulled in some of the highest ratings the show has ever seen.”
His brows shot up. “We did?” He’d never gotten high ratings in any of his promotional efforts before. Hell, he hadn’t been able to give away his first book, and it had never gone to a second printing. The thought that he may have reached not just someone but a wide range of someones today…well, that was what this was all about, wasn’t it? It might mean a turning of the tides. Instead of days filled juggling patients with teaching, he could reach a nationwide audience. Command impressive fees for speaking appearances. Prove once and for all that his parents were wrong and he was right.
Tanja smiled at him and added his briefcase to his overloaded arms. “You did.” She turned him around, then patted his bottom. “Now get a move on, Doc. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
4
Chicago
A KITCHEN.
Well, maybe not a kitchen, but definitely a kitchenette. One of those kinds that you could barely move around in but held all the basic necessities, like a new microwave, an old stove and an empty refrigerator. Gracie was vaguely aware of the door closing after the bellboy as she stood staring at the cramped space immediately to the left in the enormous Chicago hotel room. She’d come across a place like this once before, in Fort Lauderdale. Likely this wing used to be an apartment complex that had been converted to a hotel. A quick glance around the spacious living-dining area, and the bedroom and bath to the right, fueled her speculation.
The strap to her laptop-carrying case slid off her shoulder. She allowed the case to drop slowly to the floor, enraptured with her new find. She hadn’t had grains of salt under her fingernails since she began this crazy promotional tour. She opened and closed cabinet doors, peered into the empty but cold refrigerator, eyed the limited number of pots and pans, all with a ridiculous grin on her face. Someone watching might have thought she’d unearthed Atlantis instead of a chipped old stove, but she was beyond caring. She’d been in dire straits ever since she and Rick had caught dinner at a poor excuse for a Thai restaurant last night in New York and she had itched to get back into the restaurant kitchen to show the clueless Greek owner how it should be done. Instead, Rick had guided her out of there before she irreversibly embarrassed someone. Like herself.
Gracie ran her hand across the clean counter then straightened the miniature coffeemaker. Okay, so the place didn’t even come close to resembling her own state-of-the-art kitchen in Baltimore, but it was workable. Truth be told, she’d done a lot with much less in her first apartment, right after she’d graduated from college. Back when she had been determined to strike out on her own, pull her own weight and ignore the checks from her father’s accountant that piled up, unopened, on the scratched desk near the door that bore at least three dead bolts and countless chains and security devices. She’d never been prouder than when she’d made that little one-room place home. And she’d learned the finer points of making do with what one had. A trying but immensely gratifying experience. Especially when all her hard work had landed her a spot with a midlevel psychiatric practice before branching out on her own four years later.
She leaned against the wall and tapped a finger against her lips. A list. She had to make a list of what she needed from the store. The essentials were here. She wouldn’t have to invest in salt and pepper or sugar. The hotel had provided coffee and a small selection of teas, though she always traveled with her own supply ordered specially from Arizona.
What should she make? Something simple, requiring the fewest ingredients. But something that would fill the small place with a delectable aroma and would go with a good bottle of red wine. No, white. Fish. She was in Chicago, wasn’t she? Surely they would have a good selection of fish. Waking up to the smell of fish would remind her of home if not endear her to her neighbors.
A brief call to the concierge gave her directions to a small family-owned grocer a couple of blocks away. She hung up the phone on his offer to have an order placed on her behalf, then grabbed her purse and headed for the elevators.
A small cowbell above the advertisement-covered door announced her arrival at the grocer. No larger than the hotel room she had just left, the neat grocer had a good selection nonetheless. And plenty of fresh produce. As she happily made her selections, she allowed her mind to wander at will. Although only after five p.m. central time, darkness enveloped the street, weaving a web of billowed intimacy Gracie embraced. Chicago’s climate was similar to New York’s, albeit windier, earning the architecturally rich city its name, but it had an altogether different atmosphere. The unique, laid-back flavor of the mid-west was laced throughout despite the city’s valiant efforts to shrug it off. And the people weren’t as cynical, the lapping waves of Lake Michigan against the coast seeming to lull them into a feeling of peace.
“Can I see the trout, please? Yes, that one. To the left.” Grace accepted the paper-protected fish from the woman behind the counter and examined the clear condition of the eyes and the pinkness of the gills. She stared down into the open mouth, the sight comically reminding her of Dr. Dylan Fairbanks’s reaction when she’d told him he needed to get laid.
She handed the fish back. “I’ll take it.”
She added the item to her basket and turned toward the produce section. While Dr. Dylan’s facial expression had resembled that of the trout, she had the distinct impression that he was anything but a cold fish. Something elemental lurked in his green eyes. A maturity, an intensity, an innate sexuality that made it difficult to meet his gaze head-on initially, yet held you captive thereafter. An intriguing paradox that reminded her how her skin had tingled after their meeting at the radio station. How verbally sparring with him had made her wonder what going a couple of rounds with him in bed might be like.
He was a sex therapist, so she didn’t doubt he’d know all the exciting little details. But there was a difference between knowing and practicing. And she suspected that Dr. Dylan would put into practice everything he’d learned.
A shiver shimmied down the length of her spine, making her feel suddenly warm in her light raincoat.
Absently adding a couple of lemons to her basket, she moved on to pick through lettuce. An idea danced along the fringes of her thoughts and she unsuccessfully tried to grasp it. She envisioned her book. No, no, it didn’t have anything to do with her mother’s refusal to read it. She made a face, banishing the image of Priscilla’s tight-lipped face before it could spring roots. She moved to the tomatoes, testing them and adding a couple to her groceries. Rick? Did it have anything to do with her assistant and his mysterious company that morning in his New York hotel room? No, that wasn’t it, either. Although the idea of a couple struggling against twisted sheets did ring a distant bell. Either that, or someone else had just entered the grocery store.
She edged along peppers and mushrooms then came to a halt before a large display of cucumbers. She slowly picked one up.
The bell rang louder. And along with it came a vivid image of Dr. Dylan Fairbanks’s grinning face when they’d discussed masturbation.
Stumbling right in on the heels of the image was her sheer terror when the radio shock jock had asked Dr. Dylan whether or not he was a born-again virgin. She’d barely registered his response, so afraid that the host would shine that “virginal” light on her. Thankfully, he hadn’t. But that did nothing to assuage her longstanding fear that someday, someone would ask her the question, despite her carefully made-up appearance of being one hundred percent hot tamale who practiced the very advice she preached. And then where would she be? Not that she was a virgin by any stretch of the imagination. But she wasn’t what she pretended to be, either.
Leading up to the promotional tour, she’d been petrified of being fingered for a fraud. Her theory on the need for sexual safaris was the greatest of her unpracticed advice. She remembered seeing an interview once with a marriage counselor who had never been married. The host had virtually thrown the psychologist’s advice right out the window, despite her years of backbreaking field research. Of course it had been one of those late-night, openly televised forums where the host made a point of going for the cheap shots. But the fact remained that if her limited sexual experience were to come to light, her hope of getting her word out would be little more than a car left abandoned at the side of the road with its hood up.
She absently ran the pad of her thumb over the prickly exterior of the cucumber, the innocuous movement sending a thrill of awareness over her skin. There was no denying that she was attracted to Dr. Dylan, though she firmly limited her attraction to him to physical attributes. What other reasons were there for being attracted to him? She didn’t know him. She knew some of his stuffy opinions, but that was a far cry from knowing the full man.
Who wouldn’t be attracted to him physically? He was tall, enigmatic, handsome as all get-out, and downright sexy.
And the concept of a sexual safari with him posed a decadently intriguing challenge, indeed….
She stood stock-still for a full minute, staring blindly at the cucumber she still held, her mind growing sluggish as it put two and two together. Then everything snapped together. Her heart did an erratic flip in her chest as she tripped straight over the path her subconscious had been trying to lead her down for the past few minutes.
That was it! She needed to put on her safari gear and bag one sexy prey in the shape of Dr. Dylan Fairbanks. Mussing some bed sheets with him would put an end to her feelings of being a fraud.
The earth began rotating again, and along with it a show of thigh-quivering mental pImages**. A bare, sculpted torso. Strong, hair-covered legs. Ragged breathing. Soft, needy cries. Slick, sweat-covered skin. A pulse-throbbing erection pressed against soft flesh, preparing to enter.
Gracie’s breath caught as she swallowed against the saliva gathering at the back of her throat. She shakily patted her hair. Okay, the prospect of sleeping with Dylan clearly wasn’t offensive. She gave a feeble laugh. Who was she kidding? She was practically wetting herself just thinking about it.
Trying to get a grip on herself, she considered that sleeping with Dr. Dylan could have some drawbacks. After all, he wasn’t a nameless, handsome face picked out at random in a neutral gaming zone.
She put back the cucumber she held and picked up one of the larger ones.
She would get the once-in-a-lifetime chance to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Dr. Dylan Fairbanks and his ancient, out-of-whack philosophies were way off base.
She added the cucumber to her basket, and couldn’t help noticing the suddenly rubbery condition of her knees, and the anticipatory searing heat that rushed through her bloodstream.
Yes. Hunting Dr. Dylan was exactly what she needed to do…
DYLAN OPENED THE DOOR to the small grocer’s, grimacing at the sound of the cowbell announcing his arrival. Right now he just wanted to blend in with the background. Carve out a little privacy so he could start thinking straight again. Not that the hokey cowbell prevented that. Rather the bright yellow V-necked sweater and olive-green cargo pants he had on pretty much ruled out blending in with the background.
He tugged at the too-snug shirt material, telling himself for the fifth time since leaving the hotel that he should have left his suit on. But after the soaking it had taken in New York, then the wrinkling on the plane, he wasn’t sure it was salvageable, much less wearable. The morning’s mishaps had slid into a day full of disasters—the latest debacle being the loss of his luggage—and he had little choice but to allow Tanja to go shopping for him. Why didn’t it surprise him that the PR rep had completely ignored his express instructions to find something suitable, something he would buy for himself and instead bought him a temporary wardrobe more suited for a teenager than a responsible adult?
He felt like a…break-dancer.
He cringed. Boy, he’d just dated himself there, hadn’t he? In all honesty, he had no idea what a kid on the cutting edge of fashion was called nowadays. And he’d had no idea what to do when Tanja had given him a tart little wave and disappeared on him…again.
At least one thing was going in his favor. The instant he’d discovered the kitchen in his hotel room, he found the perfect opportunity to temporarily place his budget and himself on a diet. Though it had been years since he’d had to worry about money, and weight had never been a problem, waste was something he’d never been very good at. A habit that stemmed directly from his parents.
Finally freeing a pint-size cart from the one it was attached to, he turned the corner and promptly bumped into an older gentleman. He was rerouting a path around him when he realized the guy was eyeing the prophylactics section. He did a double take, not wanting to see the man who was old enough to be his grandfather read the back of a package that touted the words “colored,” “ribbed.”
“Sorry,” Dylan said under his breath, and headed down the next aisle.
He reminded himself that his foul mood wasn’t the result of what he’d just seen—although it hadn’t helped any. His foul mood had gotten worse when he’d taken his seat on the plane to Chicago and found himself sitting across the aisle and one row back from one Miss Hottie. A woman who not only hadn’t seemed to notice him, but kept crossing her long, long legs in a way that had been…well, downright distracting. He hadn’t checked, but he was certain he had a bruise from where the businessman sitting next to him kept elbowing him in order to get a better look.
He checked the price for a box of shredded wheat, frowned, then put the box back. He pushed the crippled cart down the aisle, idly wondering what the sex doctor had on tap for tonight. And who those plans included.
He slowed in front of the frozen food section. Only two freezers, but the essentials for the single professional on the move were all there. And a good deal more affordable than the box of cereal he’d just placed back on the shelf. Not that he didn’t have money. But given the way he was raised…well, he wanted to be frugal. On occasion that meant forgoing his favorite cereal for a cheap TV dinner.
He reached in and grabbed the brand on sale and tossed it into his cart, telling himself he’d only succumb to buying it if nothing else popped out at him.
He resumed warring with the uncooperative cart. It didn’t help matters that every time he moved, the metal thingies on the side pockets of the unfamiliar pants clinked. He glanced down, wondering how much damage he would do if he just ripped them off. Who wanted to make so much noise? A young woman with a small boy watched him as he passed. He managed a polite smile. Just barely. He wished something else would hurry up and grab his attention before he gave up and went back to the hotel to nuke the frozen dinner.
He had turned the corner to the produce section when something grabbed his attention all right. More accurately, someone.
He tried to pull the cart to a halt, only to have the front wheels fight him and end up crashing against a display for canned beans. Dylan hardly noticed. Despite the fact that Grace Mattias had her back turned to him, there was no mistaking all that red hair. Did the woman always dress like that when going to the market? While he couldn’t make out much of her legs, he’d recognize those shoes anywhere. And her white raincoat was cinched tightly at the waist, emphasizing her trim figure.
He glanced around, trying to determine if she was alone. Judging by the basket she carried, and the absence of any hovering, panting male, he surmised she probably was.
Though why he should care, he didn’t want to begin to explore. Lord knows, he was the last man who wanted to be hovering or panting over a woman like Gracie.
Still, he found himself watching her as she picked up a pear, running her fingertips along the odd-shaped fruit, then lifting it to her nose. He swallowed hard at the thorough, thoughtful inspection, then opened his mouth, as if about to take a bite of the fruit she held himself. He caught himself and snapped his teeth together. She put the pear back on the display, then began to turn. Dylan quickly pretended interest in the items next to him. Peaches. Figured.
There was no reason to think Grace would recognize him. Hell, he didn’t even recognize him. He couldn’t have looked more different from this morning had he tried. Which, of course, he hadn’t. But maybe Tanja’s bad taste had its advantages. The last thing he wanted was to engage in conversation with Gracie Mattias so soon. It was bad enough he’d have to appear with her tomorrow after what she’d said to him before leaving the elevator in New York. To have her see him here, alone…well, he could only imagine what she’d have to say about that.
“Why, if it isn’t the world’s most prominent sex expert.”
Dylan nearly crushed the overripe peach in his hand at the sound of Gracie’s voice. He fought the desire to play it off, glance around as if to question who she was talking to. But the way she’d addressed him left no doubt to whom she was speaking. And pretending otherwise would only make him look…more desperate.
He turned his head, managing surprise. Which wasn’t difficult because a scene from an Al Pacino movie suddenly sprang to mind. Pacino had met the heroine-slash-suspected-serial-killer at a small market just like this one. She’d also been wearing a raincoat…and had nothing on underneath it.
Something warm and wet dripped between his fingers. He glanced down to find he’d pulverized the peach.
To his chagrin, Grace’s smile widened. “Don’t tell me. You have a kitchen, too.”
“Kitchen?” he repeated dumbly, reaching for a handkerchief that wasn’t there. What good were so many pockets if they didn’t hold anything?
She handed him a paper towel she’d torn from an overhead holder. “Yes. My hotel room has a kitchen. Well, a kitchenette really, and I decided to cook. I naturally assumed that was the reason you were here as well. We must be in the same…hotel. Again. Which only makes sense if the show’s putting us up.”
She made a production of looking into his cart. Which made the fact that the only item in there was a frozen dinner that much worse.
“Sense. Yes.” Dylan wondered if sleep was going to be anywhere on his itinerary of things to do now that he knew Gracie would be showering…er, sleeping under the same roof.
She straightened, shifting her full basket from one hand to the other. “You know, since you’re obviously eating alone—” she gestured toward the cart “—and I have plans to…eat alone, why don’t we eat alone together?” Her smile had the strangest effect on him. “I’ll even let you get the wine. After all, it’s not like either of us has to drive home or anything.”