Sophie heard a speedboat motor hum in the distance through the increasingly loud throb of the heartbeat in her ears.
After a moment she summoned her voice, trying to grasp on to a fleeing sense of reality.
“Thomas? What a surprise. It’s me—Dr. Gable? Sophie? From Dr. Lancaster’s office?” She waved lamely at the glistening waters and laughed. “I hadn’t realized we shared space at Haven Lake as well.”
Despite her growing uncertainty, she’d forced her voice into the level, reassuring tone she took with someone who was agitated or panicked. She’d had her share of crisis training to become a physician, but even before she’d gone to medical school she’d worked for a year as a clinical social worker with abused children. She’d long ago learned to soothe instinctively . . . without thought.
She was so caught up in the bizarre, electric moment that it never occurred to her to question why she would treat a six foot four male in his prime, a man who typically moved through the minutes of his life with the easy grace of a prince, like an agitated child. Especially since Thomas Nicasio hardly seemed childlike to her at that moment. If anything, he reminded her of a wild, cornered animal.
A wild, dangerous animal?
The worn black T-shirt he wore carried the inexplicable caption Mighty are those that flirt with fate, EOD. The material skimmed across his long, lean torso, making it easy for her to see his rapid breathing. She’d never seen him in anything but a suit before, but she had to admit his broad shoulders, narrow hips, strong thighs, and long legs were perfectly suited to jeans. Her gaze skittered across his crotch. She glanced guiltily back up to his rigid face in time to see a spark ignite in his eyes.
Her heartbeat amplified in her ears.
A strong sexual current had often leapt between them in the past, but at the moment, Sophie felt burned by the heat of his stare. She tensed when he took a step toward her.
“Tom. Call me Tom.”
Her mouth fell open at the sound of his deep, hoarse voice. Why did he sound like he hadn’t spoken in days? Her expert eye took in the pinched look of his bold, masculine features, the whiteness at the corners of his mouth, the look of exhaustion that seemed to reside behind the maniclike intensity of his gaze.
She turned her shoulder to him in a nonthreatening stance and beckoned with her hand.
“Why don’t you come inside, Tom. You must be thirsty.”
For a few seconds she had no idea what he would do, this man who was both familiar to her and yet a stranger, a man who had never said much more than a few dozen words to her at a time if he spoke at all. He might have laughed. He might have flown at her in a rage. Anything and everything seemed possible in that gravid moment. Considering her readiness for catastrophe, what he did next should have seemed mild.
Instead, it jolted her to the core of her being.
He walked toward her with a long-legged stride that ate up the space between them in a second. She tensed and a tingling sensation ran beneath her skin when his gaze traveled over her naked torso.
He halted less than a foot away from her.
Close.
Closer than casual human contact.
“I came looking for you.”
She felt his warm breath tickle her upturned face. He reached for her. His hand felt hot and dry encircling her own, as if he had a furnace working overtime inside him. She just stared up at him, speechless.
“I came looking for you, Sophie,” he repeated.
“Why?”
He just nodded soberly toward her house. She was still stunned when he gently urged her to accompany him, his stare never leaving her face.
The wraparound porch was a landscape of golden light and shadow when they approached the side entrance to the house. The door squeaked open, and she led him onto the screened-in portion of the porch. Their hands were still locked, so she felt it when he paused. She turned back to see him staring at her work in progress. He glanced from the painting to the lake, and back at the canvas again, his expression unreadable.
“It’s not very good. I just do it for fun,” she said, wondering why she whispered. Maybe it was because the atmosphere suddenly seemed electrically charged, expectant . . . like the air before a storm. Her breath stilled when he suddenly transferred his gaze to her naked abdomen.
“I was wondering why you had purple paint on you.”
She gave a small laugh when she saw how his well-shaped l
ips quirked—very slightly—in amusement.
“I used to tell Rick you were like the little girl in the neighborhood who was always so clean; the kind that Mama wouldn’t let play rough with the other kids . . . the kind that was never allowed to get dirty.” His palpable gaze flickered over her breasts and neck before he met her stare.