Instant Gratification (Wilder #2)(17)

Ah, hell.

“You need a tetanus shot. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” He felt his vision go a little fuzzy. Jesus, he was f*cking pathetic.

“You going to pass out on me?”

“Not if you take your coat off again.”

“Nice try.” She was preparing the tetanus shot, and he was sweating and feeling sick when she glanced over at him. She shook her head and sighed. “Unbelievable.”

“I know.” He swiped his brow. “I—”

“Not you. Me. I can’t believe I’m going to do this for you, but…” She let the coat hit the floor. “Consider it a present, from me to you.”

It was a great present. She had great legs, long and toned. Great arms, too. But his gaze dropped to her breasts as she came to a stop at his hip, shoved up the sleeve of his shirt and swiped his skin with an antiseptic gauze. Her skin was smooth and creamy, and his mouth watered. She smelled amazing, too, like—“Ouch!”

She slapped a Band-Aid on him. “You might have a sore arm for the next few days.”

“I have to rock climb tomorrow.”

“Maybe I should have given it to you in the ass then?”

He laughed, but when he looked at her face, he realized she wasn’t kidding. “You really are mean.”

She smiled as she bent for the doctor’s coat, giving him a heart-stopping view. “I know. And honestly? You shouldn’t be rock climbing. Not with your ribs and stitches and other various injuries. You shouldn’t be doing anything tomorrow.”

That said, she covered up again and was ushering him to the door, pushing him out into the night, the sound of the bolt sliding home his only company.

Well, that and the memory of her in those little boxers and cami, took him all the way home, followed him into his shower and through a whole night of new and even more erotic dreams.



The next morning, Emma opened the clinic’s doors for all the patients who hadn’t broken into the place in the middle of the night. It was eight sharp, and she had one patient. Cece Potter, Moody’s waitress. The young twenty-ish woman needed an antibiotics prescription for a throat infection, and alternately called her “Dr. Sinclair”—in a snooty tone, and “that woman that Stone’s seeing”—also in a snooty tone—which was more disconcerting.

“I’m not—” Emma started.

But Cece Potter, not interested in explanations, was gone, and Emma had no other patients to distract her.

That woman Stone was seeing?

Seriously?

By noon she was ready to tear out her hair when Missy Thorton showed up with a sprained thumb. Missy was the cashier at Thorton’s Hardware store in town. She’d been in Wishful since the dawn of time, or close to it. She had a sweet face and a grandmotherly shape that lowered Emma’s resistance because she had a soft spot for women who looked like they’d lived and lived well.

“Is your daddy back at work yet?” Missy asked as Emma x-rayed her thumb.

“Not yet. Nothing’s broken. I’ll just wrap it and—”

“Maybe I should go to South Shore for a second opinion.”

“You could, but this isn’t complicated.”

“Hmmm…”

It took some convincing, but finally Emma was wrapping the woman’s sprained thumb. Outside the window, the street was busy with the lunchtime crunch. The shops were doing a good business. Everyone was doing a good business but Emma.

“Hmmm,” the woman said again.

Emma looked up into Missy’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“What if it’s broken?”

“I showed you the x-ray. There’s no break.”

“Hmmm.”

Across the street, a pickup pulled up and parked. Stone’s. He wore loose jeans and a polo shirt. Tall and sure of himself, he pulled out a clipboard and headed toward the corner building, moving with the carefulness of someone who’d been beaten up by three women in a bar only a week ago.

Or whatever had really happened to him.

Oblivious to her eyes on him, he headed—limping slightly—down the sidewalk, stopping in front of the old, rundown building on the corner. It had a FOR SALE sign on it.

Bending his head, he wrote something on the clipboard.

“I hear you treated him,” Missy said.

“Who?”

“The man you’re staring at instead of concentrating on your patient who.”

Yeah. Point taken. But just looking at Stone invoked memories, his bad boy eyes, filled with wicked intent, his smile, the one that backed up that intent.

His naked body sprawled on her examination table.

She gave herself a second to digest that image.

“He is a fine boy.” Missy was smiling shrewdly. “Very fine.”

Except Stone Wilder was no boy. In fact, just remembering how little he resembled a boy brought a little secret tingle to certain places she hadn’t thought about in a while.

“And he’s very good at what he does,” Missy went on.

Yes, well, how hard could it be to play all day long?

“My niece’s boy was heading straight for juvie last year,” the older woman said. “And landed himself on one of those treks the Wilders take troubled kids out on. He did really well, but when he wanted to go again, Stone told him that he couldn’t go out if he kept up the stealing. So Trevor gave it up. The trek changed him, calmed him down. That was Stone’s doing, pure and simple.”