Wicked

Renae pushed up her large, dark sunglasses on her nose and turned up the volume on the radio, hoping to edge the heavy thoughts out of her mind with a little rock ’n’ roll. Heart’s “Crazy on You” filled the humid air and she nudged the volume level up even farther.

Of course, it was just her luck that the tune would make her think of Dr. Will Sexton again.

She sighed. That’s all right. She knew that a little time and effort and avoidance would put him right back where he belonged, which was solidly in flirt territory. Whenever her heart or her hormones threatened to lead her in the wrong direction—which, granted, wasn’t often—she knew that as quickly as the emotions surfaced, they could as easily die away. And if she ever questioned the philosophy, she needed only to remember the pillow-shock syndrome that nearly every red-blooded human being had gone through at one time or another. Namely that moment when you opened your eyes the following morning to find the person who had seemed perfectly suitable and lust-worthy a few hours earlier had turned into the person you wouldn’t be caught dead with on a deserted island overnight.

And experience had taught her that the sudden, unexpected change in her playful connection to Will bore all the earmarks of pillow-shock syndrome.

Great sex material one day.

The date from hell the next.

She smiled to herself as the radio station launched into another Heart tune, this one more befitting her mood: “Even It Up.” Forgetting she hadn’t meant to, she began turning into the regular parking lot at the building, then at the last minute swerved back into traffic, earning her irritated honks from the drivers behind her. She waved her apologies then swung around to the back lot and claimed the last open parking space. She glanced at the SUV to her right, thinking it looked an awful lot like Will’s….

Then he climbed out.

ALL RIGHT THEN, some sort of higher power had it in for him.

That was Will’s deduction as he stood next to his SUV and stared at Renae, her long, tangled sun-kissed hair, her clingy white T-shirt that did little to hide the lacy bra she wore underneath and her big, black glasses that made her look like the one-hundred-percent luscious, hot American woman that she was.

He flinched when the radio station she was tuned in to launched into the opening strains of the old The Guess Who song “American Woman” before she switched the ignition off and plunged them both into a shocked kind of silence.

“Come here often, do you?” he asked with a raised brow, accepting that avoiding her now was out of the question.

She gave him a leisurely once-over then pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, her smile decidedly decadent. “Funny, I parked over here to avoid you.”

He chuckled at her refreshing honesty. “Ironically, I was doing the same thing.”

The way he saw it, the only thing to do now would be to walk with her to their building. To give her a brief wave then take off would be so appallingly rude as to make him shudder. So he waited as she pushed a button that put the top up on the hideous pink contraption she called a car, gathered what he could see was the costume she’d been almost wearing that morning from the back seat, then joined him next to his SUV.

“I know why I want to avoid you,” she said as they began walking together down the path that would take them to their building. “But why are you avoiding me?”

Will was amazed by the myriad emotions pulsing through his bloodstream caused by merely walking next to the woman. For one, he couldn’t seem to keep his gaze off her pretty tanned face, even though it was currently devoid of makeup. And the way he kept eyeing her T-shirt and jeans, one would think he hadn’t seen a woman dressed in that way before. But it was the fact that he was inordinately interested in her feet, wrapped in her hot-pink flip-flops, that was the cause for the most concern.

“Are your feet actually tanned?” he found himself asking.

Renae looked down, appearing as caught off guard by his inane question as he was. The problem was he’d never before really noticed a woman’s feet and whether or not they were tanned. And it was more than just the neon-pink toenail polish she wore. There was just something wickedly attractive about her feet that made him fantasize about seeing them sticking out of a tub full of frothy bubbles…while she sat gloriously naked on top of him.

“Why yes, I guess they are,” she finally responded, throwing him a sexy little smile. “And you’re avoiding my question.”

Will stiffened a bit. “Well, it’s not that I’m avoiding your question, actually. It’s just that…” He couldn’t help grinning. “It’s just that I can’t recall it.”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“Ah, yes. That question.” Will eyed their building that seemed to loom outrageously far away. He felt the urge to pull at his collar, although he wasn’t wearing a tie but rather a white open-throat polo shirt. And a pair of stonewashed jeans and sports shoes he couldn’t wait to get out of.

What was the question again? Oh, yes. Why was he avoiding Renae?

“Well, you see,” he said carefully, “there’s this little issue of another woman that I’m seeing—”

“The resident.”

He squinted at her although the sun was behind him. “You know about her?”

“Lucky filled me in.”

“Ah, yes. Lucky. Colin’s Lucky, I presume?”

Renae seemed interested in his mouth as he spoke. “One in the same.”

“And she would have shared this information because…”

“I asked for it.”

“I see.”

Will shoved his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans despite the abominable heat. Partly because he was filled with the almost irresistible urge to tuck a windblown strand of her dark blond hair back behind her ear. But mostly because he was afraid where the itchy appendage might roam from there. More specifically down the line of her intriguing back to her nicely rounded bottom, which might make it necessary for him to usher her straight into his condo and the bed therein.

But while he couldn’t touch her, he could look at her. And what a feast for the eyes she provided, too.

He cleared his throat. “And your reason for wanting to avoid me?”

She smiled. “Oh, pretty much the same. The resident.”

He chuckled softly at that one. “You’re avoiding me because I’m dating someone else?”

“Mmm-hmm. Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Because that doesn’t strike me as something you’d do.”

The pathway wasn’t disappearing under his feet at the quick rate he’d like it to. But the building was finally coming up. Thank God. He honestly didn’t know how long he could withstand such a strong dose of temptation incarnate without succumbing to it.

“How so?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem like the type that when she wants something, she takes it.”

“Funny,” she said for the second time in so many minutes. “You strike me as the same.”

He looked at her. Really looked at her. At the appealing shape of her mouth. The openness of her attractive face. The wanton invitation right there in her creamy-green eyes and said, “Your place or mine?”

Without batting an eye she said, “Yours, definitely.”

IF THE HUNGER RAGING through Renae’s body had been for food, she would have devoured an entire buffet.

No sooner had the door to Will’s condo closed behind them than they were going at it like a couple of sex-starved teenagers, all groping hands and wild hormones. Her plastic-protected costume dropped to the floor along with her purse even as Will yanked up the hem of her T-shirt and cupped her breasts.

“Ouch,” she said when he squeezed a little too tightly.

“Sorry.”