Stolen Kiss with the Single Mom Read online

  He managed to get them to the bedroom, though he stopped along the way to enjoy small tastes of her to keep him going.

  How was he going to live without this woman in his life?

  He made himself ignore the pain of the future. They had tonight and he wouldn’t waste one moment of it.

  He set her down beside the bed, then unzipped the dress and let it fall in a puddle to the floor. Standing before him in only the tiny pink bra and panties, she was sexier than his imagination could have comprehended.

  Her smile turned naughty again as she peeled each piece off her body while he watched. He unbuttoned his shirt and then his pants as he tried to catch up with her.

  He laid her back against the bed and took the time to freeze one more moment as he took in the vision she made stretched out before him. He’d make tonight a memory that neither of them would ever forget, no matter what tomorrow brought.

  He followed her onto the bed and began to kiss her. First her lips, and then her neck, stopping at the curve of her shoulder to nip at her collarbone, then soothing the spot with a lick of his tongue before continuing his path to her breast.

  “Scott...” Lacey’s voice came out in a moan as she squirmed beneath him.

  “Shh...” he murmured, before taking one nipple into his mouth and sucking, then moving to the next one to give it the same attention.

  Then he returned to his path down her body. He would taste every inch of her tonight...

  He paused at the top of her thighs, then spread them open.

  “You’re killing me,” Lacey said. “I can’t...”

  “La petit mort, ma chérie,” he murmured as he kissed the inside of her thigh. “You will survive.”

  “God, I love it when you speak French,” she said, then moaned again as his mouth moved higher.

  Her body bucked against his mouth, and when he knew she couldn’t take any more he pushed her over into her climax. Then he crawled over her and thrust inside her before her orgasm died, sending them both into that small death together.

  * * *

  Lacey turned the bacon and then took a long sip of coffee. She’d need a lot of caffeine to carry her through today after the night she had spent with Scott. Just thinking of their lovemaking made her heart race.

  Before, she refused to call the intimacy they’d shared “lovemaking”; instead she’d preferred to think of it as simply sex. There had been no reason to bring love into it. But last night had been different. He’d made love to every part of her body. Taking his time as he tasted her, loved her, until she’d been begging him to take her. He’d stripped her of all her inhibitions, leaving her emotions bare and open to him.

  She felt the flush of heat as it curled over her body along with the memories from the night before. There’d been almost a desperation in Scott that had driven him to take her over and over during the night...

  “You’re going to burn that if you don’t turn it,” Scott said as he came into the room.

  She couldn’t help but stare at this sexy man, dressed in wrinkled formal wear, whose eyes, still heavy with sleep, seemed to devour her with one look.

  She forced her eyes away from him and removed the bacon from the frying pan.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Was that her voice? Just because the man looked like sex on a stick it didn’t mean she needed to lose it in front of him.

  She cleared her throat, then turned back toward him—only to find that he’d moved over to the coffee pot. “I’ve got some grits made, and there are eggs in the warming tray.”

  She waited for him to respond, but he seemed to be lost in thought. Had last night touched him as much as it had her? Would he tell her that he loved her now? Could she tell him that she loved him? Was that what she wanted?

  He turned toward her, and the pain she saw in his eyes stopped her dead. She set the tray of bacon down on the small round table that sat to the side of the kitchen, then walked over to where he stood.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. Was he ill? He did look a little pale. “Sit down. I’ll get your coffee.”

  “I’m not sick,” he said, though she noticed that he did take a chair and sit.

  He might not be sick, but something was wrong. Was it her? Them? Had last night just been a lead-up to him breaking up with her?

  She took the chair across from him and waited for him to tell her what was wrong. Her stomach churned with nerves as she studied him. With shoulders slumped, he stared into his coffee cup. He looked as if he’d lost his best friend—but then he’d already done that, when Ben had died. The only other person she would have considered his best friend was her, and he hadn’t lost her. She was right there beside him.

  Was this about the Extreme Warrior project? Was he worried about her not being able to accept his need to lead their extreme challenges? After hearing Katie’s letter at last night’s awards ceremony she knew she’d never be able to stop Scott from working with the veterans. She might not understand why he felt the need to take the chances he did, but he’d showed her how he worked to keep accidents and injuries from happening. He had been right when he’d said that Katie’s injury could have happened anywhere. People came in all the time with snake bites from their back yard.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said, never looking up from his coffee. “I should have told you earlier. I just... I didn’t want to ruin the time we have left together.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  What did he mean? Was he saying they were over? But why? She didn’t understand any of this. Last night had been magical, and she knew Scott had felt that magic too. He had managed to break down every wall she’d used to protect herself from falling for him and now he wanted to end it?

  Scott looked up from the table, then stood. Was he so anxious to get away from her?

  “If you want to call it quits just say so,” she said as her temper began to rise.

  She stood and took their unused dishes to the sink. He could at least have eaten the breakfast she’d cooked for him before he broke up with her.

  “I don’t want to call it quits. That’s the last thing I want,” he said as he walked over to where she stood. “I want us to work through this. I want you to believe that I’ll come back to you. I want to be enough that you’re willing to take a chance on us.”

  She turned around to face him. She looked up into his eyes, so full of pain. And...hope?

  “Just tell me what it is, Scott,” she said.

  He opened his arms to her and she walked into them. It felt so right, so safe to be held by him now—something that she would never have believed a few weeks ago. Whatever this problem was, they’d work through it.

  She felt his chest expand as he took in a deep breath. She held on tighter to him.

  “I’m being deployed back to Afghanistan. I leave in six days,” he said as he rested his head on hers.

  She stood there, frozen in that spot, as she tried to make sense of his words.

  Scott had finished his time in the military.

  How could they make him go back to Afghanistan?

  It didn’t make any sense at all.

  She let her hands slide down his back, then took a step away from him. She needed to understand what he was saying.

  “You’ve been out of the military for three years now. They can’t make you go back into service,” she said. “Besides, you were injured. The damage to your leg was extensive.”

  “And it has healed now. I climb mountains and my leg holds up fine,” he said.

  “It still gives you trouble. You still limp when you’ve pushed yourself too hard. You should tell them about the limp. You should make them see that you can’t be expected to be deployed again. Just tell them you’re not going.”

  She heard the terror in her voice. She couldn’t be expected t
o sit at home again, waiting for the doorbell to ring. Waiting for the army chaplain to tell her that Scott had been killed. Waiting for her life to be destroyed once again.

  She’d wanted to scream at the men who had come to her house the day Ben had been killed. She’d wanted to tell them to shut up, to leave and never come back, but she’d known she couldn’t. She’d had to be strong. She’d had to be brave. She’d had to be there for Alston and for Ben’s parents.

  “It’s only for six months, Lacey. One of the doctors has become ill and has had to be flown home for surgery. They’re working short-handed right now, and they need me to cover until he’s recovered.”

  “Why can’t you just tell them no?” she said.

  She didn’t know what to say to him to make him understand. She couldn’t do this again.

  “I only served four years. I had four years left of inactive reserves. By the end of this deployment my eight years will be completed and I won’t have to worry about getting called up again. We just need to make it through those six months. They really need me, Lacey. It’s hard enough in the hospitals over there without them being short. I have to go.”

  But she needed him too. How could he expect her to go through this again?

  She thought of the days she’d lain in bed, too depressed to get up and get dressed. She had functioned the best she could, to make sure Alston was taken care of, but she hadn’t been the kind of mother she’d wanted to be. It had only been when Scott had come home and helped her get her act together that she’d seen just what a lousy job she was doing.

  She couldn’t put herself and Alston through that again. She’d been through hell when she’d lost Ben and she couldn’t do it again.

  She felt panic rise up inside her as her heart sped up. She turned and gripped the side of the counter and forced herself to take the deep, calming breaths she needed to fight it down.

  “I know I don’t have the right to ask this of you, but I can’t just walk away from you. I love you, Lacey. I want us to be together forever. I want to make a real family with you and Alston. I just need you to believe in us. Give us a chance.”

  She felt the tears as they rolled down her cheeks and then suddenly she was sobbing. It was as if she had lost Ben all over again, but instead of Ben it was now Scott she was losing. She wanted to believe that Scott would come home, but she couldn’t. There was no guarantee that he would come back to her and she could not live with the fear of losing him.

  “I can’t do it, Scott. I’m sorry.”

  She turned around and threw herself in his arms and held him tight. If only she could hold on to him forever. If only she never had to let him go.

  She pushed herself away from him, then ran from the room. Closing the bedroom door behind her, she curled up on the bed. She buried her head in the covers and breathed in the scent of Scott and cried.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WHERE’S THAT TRAUMA BLOOD?” Scott asked as he quickly examined the gunshot victim lying on the trauma table.

  The kid couldn’t be over nineteen. He was just a boy. What could he have done to get himself shot?

  They’d stripped him down at the scene and he could see two entrance wounds in the chest.

  “We need to turn him over,” he shouted to the nurse beside him.

  Where was Lacey? There were too many inexperienced nurses in the room. She was in charge. She should be there to help.

  He examined the kid’s back and saw that there was only one exit wound. He would need to go to surgery. His job until the surgeon arrived was to stabilize the patient, and with the amount of blood this kid had lost it was going to take this whole team to do it.

  “I’ve got the blood,” one of the younger nurses called as she walked into the room carrying a red cooler.

  “It should have been here five minutes ago. Let’s get it going,” he said as he looked up at the monitor.

  He was tachycardic, and his blood pressure was low, but it was holding. If they could get some blood into him he might make it.

  “Where’s X-ray?” he shouted across the room.

  He watched as a young man pushed the machine into the room. Could he move any slower? Didn’t he understand that this kid was going to die if they didn’t get him stabilized soon?

  He backed out of the room with the rest of the staff while the X-ray was taken, then quickly returned to the patient’s side and checked out the screen on the X-ray machine.

  “It looks like one of the bullets hit his left lung. He’s going to need a chest tube.”

  “His oxygen saturation is dropping,” the respiratory technician said.

  “So is his pressure,” said one of the nurses.

  Scott looked up to see the pressure had dropped down to eighty over forty-four.

  “Is the blood going? Where’s Lacey?” he asked. “We need that blood going or we’re going to lose him.”

  “I’m over here,” he heard Lacey say.

  He looked over to where she and another one of the nurses were setting up the blood to rapidly infuse.

  “The blood is starting now,” Lacey said.

  “His oxygen stats are still dropping,” the respiratory tech told him.

  “Where’s that chest tube tray?” he said.

  “It’s right here, Doctor,” Lacey said beside him.

  There was no missing the censure in her voice. Yeah, he knew he was being a jerk, but right now all that mattered was saving this kid.

  He gowned, and then prepped the incision site. After making the incision he inserted the chest tube, then began to stitch it in place.

  He couldn’t help but remember that night when he’d stood in a room just down the hall, when that drunk had grabbed the scalpel and held Lacey hostage. Just thinking about that night made him angry. Not just at the drunk, but at himself too.

  He should never have kissed Lacey that night. No, that was the anger and pain in him talking. If he had it all to do over he knew he’d kiss her again.

  The young kid’s vital signs began to stabilize as they continued to transfuse him with multiple units of blood. As soon as the trauma surgeon arrived to take him to Theater, Scott left the room. In a few days he’d be back in Afghanistan, taking care of patients just like that kid, and some of them wouldn’t be much older.

  * * *

  Lacey tried to ignore the rest of the staff as they gathered at the unit coordinator’s desk and gossiped. She’d seen the looks some of the staff were giving her. Everyone was wondering what was wrong with Scott and they all assumed that she knew.

  Of course she knew. The man was about to leave the States and return to the place where he’d lost his best friend. It wouldn’t be easy for him to do that. And then there was the issue of the two of them—though if anyone understood why she couldn’t deal with the danger he was going to be in, it was him. He’d seen her at her lowest, with an empty bottle of alcohol at her side. And he’d stayed by her as she’d crawled her way back up, she reminded herself.

  “I just talked to Dr. MacDonald. He says that Scott is being redeployed to Afghanistan. He turned in his notice today,” one of the respiratory techs was telling the group.

  “Well, that sucks,” one of the new nurses said. “Don’t they have to hold your job open for you if you’re deployed?”

  “Dr. MacDonald said Scott told him he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he returned, so he decided to turn his resignation in.”

  Lacey couldn’t help but look over at the group. Why would Scott turn in his resignation? He loved his job working in the ER at the hospital. Was it because of her? They’d worked together before they’d ever become romantically involved, so that didn’t make any sense.

  “Don’t you have something to do? You know...something like taking care of your patients?” the unit coordinator said.

  “Thanks, Gloria,” said Lacey, wh
en the crowd broke up.

  “No problem,” the older woman said, then returned to her computer. “Maybe you could go talk to him? He’s been impossible to work with for the last two days. I’m thinking there might be a mutiny if he doesn’t stop biting everyone’s head off.”

  “Where is he?” Lacey asked.

  She’d take this one for the team. It was her responsibility as charge nurse to make sure everything ran smoothly in the department.

  And this has nothing to do with the fact that I’m worried about him.

  “He went into the doctors’ lounge,” Gloria said.

  Knowing that she was the last person he’d want to see, she prepared herself. This was the problem with dating someone that you worked with. Things had a tendency to cross over between your personal and your private life if you weren’t careful. They’d crossed that line the first time Scott had kissed her, and now they were paying the price.

  Scott sat at the table, holding a soft drink in one hand while the other one tapped a beat on the table. He looked up and scowled as she walked into the room.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I was being a jerk in the trauma room and I owe everyone an apology,” he said. “I’ve got it. You can go now.”

  “You were, and you do, but that isn’t the only reason I need to talk to you,” she said.

  She saw the glint of hope in his eyes when he looked at her, and then it was gone. She was relieved that he had accepted her decision to end their romantic relationship. She’d explained her reasons for not continuing and she was glad he wasn’t pushing back at her.

  If only it didn’t hurt so much to see him like this.

  “What happened out there, Scott? That wasn’t you,” she said.