“Oh, well.” She gave a harsh laugh that relayed her frustration with both him and his statement. “Excuse me for not recognizing it. Tell you what,” she went on, her anger evident in the flash of her eyes and the jerk of her chin, “when you figure out exactly where I fit into your plans, be sure and let me know, will you? But don’t bother to call. A note will be fine. Which reminds me.”

  She walked stiffly to a small scared desk nestled in the corner of the room and rummaged around until she found what she was searching for. “I don’t want your money, Mr. Prince.” She faced him defiantly, extending what he recognized was a check written on a Prince Enterprise account. He should have known when he’d asked Ben two weeks ago to send her the money that she wouldn’t spend it.

  He looked from the check to her. “That was to reimburse you for your time and the care you gave me.”

  “I don’t care what you call it. It’s conscience money and I don’t want any part of it.”

  He scanned the stark apartment before returning his gaze to hers. “Keep the money, Carmen. It doesn’t begin to cover what I owe you.”

  “You’re damn right it doesn’t.” She ripped the check in half and shoved the pieces into his hand. “But what you owe me can’t be paid off like a bad debt.”

  Shouldering around him, she walked to the door and swung it open. “Please leave. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to see you anymore. And I don’t want you coming around here bothering me.”

  Hugging her arms snugly around her waist, she stared at the floor.

  He watched the tense set of her slim shoulders and felt an answering tension build inside him. One thing, and only one, would keep him away from her. “Do you love him?”

  Her head came up.

  “Dallas,” he said, reacting to her frown. “Do you love him?”

  “I can’t see how that would be any concern of yours.”

  His heart tried to hammer its way out of his chest as he took a step toward her. “Answer me.”

  Amid the anger and the righteous indignation, he saw the hesitation before she angled her chin and stood her ground.

  “I don’t have to answer to you.”

  He searched her eyes, wanting to see only one answer. It was there, thinly veiled, monumentally important. She didn’t love Dallas. She couldn’t possibly love him—and respond the way she just had in his arms.

  He let out a breath of relief and triumph and tried to figure out how to handle things from here. Bullying her into a verbal admission, however, wasn’t going to accomplish a thing.

  “You’re right,” he said, curbing his impatience. “You don’t have to answer me. But it seems I have a lot of answering where you’re concerned.”

  He touched a hand to her hair. “This isn’t over, Carmen. You need to know that up front. I’ll be back.”

  Tipping up her face, he touched his mouth to hers. His intent was to promise. But her mouth was so soft, her lips so yielding, he lingered, gently arousing, patiently stirring the reluctant fires within her to new life.

  He pulled slowly away, brushing his thumb in a tender caress along her cheek. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to convince me to stay away.”

  After a final searching look, he walked past her and out the door.

  CHARADE

  Cindy Gerard

  SEVEN

  “You’re pretty quiet today, sweet thing. You wanna talk about it?” Eddie Hernandes hiked a hand on one hip of his baggy white orderly scrubs and leaned a little harder on his mop handle. “Say at my place tonight, a little after nine?”

  Carmen made a final notation on a patient’s chart before tucking it back into the cart. “Not tonight, Eddie.”

  Reaching over Carmen’s shoulder to replace the chart she’d been working on, Barb Jennings grinned, first at Carmen, then at Eddie. “This guy giving you problems again?”

  “I don’t wanna give her no problems.”

  “Yeah, we all know what you wanna give her, slick. What we can’t figure out is why you can’t seem to catch the message that she don’t wanna what you got.”

  Another day Carmen would have smiled at Eddie’s harmless flirting and Barb’s sassy teasing. Today wasn’t just another day. Today was the day Logan Prince had shown up at her door, kissed her senseless, and left her questioning both her sanity and her resolve to forget about him.

  Undaunted by Barb’s smart remarks, Eddie maneuvered his mop around the floor until he was once again in Carmen’s direct line of vision. “That right, Carmen? ‘What she says?”

  Carmen gave him a friendly smile—the same smile that had probably prompted fast Eddie’s proposition in the first place. “You’re a nice guy, Eddie. But I’m not looking for a relationship right now, okay?”

  “He don’ wan no relationship, Carmen,” Barb piped up, mimicking Eddie’s lazy drawl. “He jus’ wanna get you in the sack, right, Eddie?”

  “Why you got such a smart mouth on you, Jennings?” he asked good-naturedly.

  Barb fluttered her lashes at Eddie. “I guess you bring out the best in me.”

  “Yeah?” Eddie slicked a straggling hank of long black hair back behind his ear. “Well, maybe you wanna come to my apartment tonight and see how good my best is,” he suggested with a grin full of hopeful innuendo.

  Barb gave a snort of laughter. “That’s what I like about you, Eddie. Your sense of devotion. And your optimism.”

  “Do I take that as a yes?”

  “In your dreams, Romeo. In the meantime, Masters is looking for you.”

  “Oh, hell.” Eddie glanced nervously over his shoulder as if afraid the head floor nurse would materialize out of thin air.

  Eunice Masters had the attitude of a drill sergeant and the tenacity of a pit bull. A hungry one. Everyone, including Eddie, took great pains to stay on her good side.

  “What does she want?” he asked worriedly.

  “Something about a gross of missing gloves.” Barb winked covertly at Carmen. “You been playing doctor again, Eddie?”

  Muttering under his breath about needing to check on supplies on the fifth floor, Eddie made for the elevator, glancing furtively over his shoulder for signs of Eunice as he pushed his mop bucket ahead of him.

  “You shouldn’t tease him so much,” Carmen said, working hard at fighting a grin.

  “And you shouldn’t be so nice to him. It’s always getting you into trouble. Besides, Eddie was born to be teased. He’d feel neglected if I didn’t give him a hard time at least once every shift.”

  Barb grabbed another chart and began scribbling. “He was right about one thing, though. You’ve been awfully quiet all day. You feeling okay, kid?”

  Carmen hesitated, then forced a smile. “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “Ummm.” Glancing at Carmen out of the corner of her eye, Barb nodded measuringly. “Like you’ve been fine for the past few weeks now. You can talk to me, you know.”

  Barb Jennings and Carmen had begun their tour of duty at Ben Taub Trauma Center together five years ago. Barb’s background was strictly upper middle class and private school. Despite the difference in their backgrounds, they’d become solid friends and confidantes from word one. Some things, however, Carmen couldn’t share. Not even with Barb. Logan Prince and how he had affected her life was one of them.

  “I’m okay, really,” she insisted, feeling guilty for the lie.

  “If you say so.”

  Barb busied herself checking next week’s schedule before ducking behind the nurses’ desk to slip off a shoe and massage her aching foot. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with that hunk a burning love I saw leaving your apartment when I came to pick you up this morning, would it?” she asked without missing a beat.

  Carmen frowned at her clipboard and wrote like crazy.

  “Look, I know it’s none of my business—”

  “You’ve got that right.” Softening her dismissal with a quick, if-you-want-to-stay-my-friend-don’t-ask smile, Carmen went back to her chart notations.

  Barb, however, whose small stature hid a bullish persistence, was notorious for ignoring Mac-truck-size hints.

  “Now we can do this the hard way and I can wheedle the information out of you bit by bit, or you can lay it out in a line. I have a set of very persuasive thumbscrews I keep in my purse for just such occasions. Your choice.”

  “My choice is to call it a wrap. I’m officially off duty as of” —Carmen glanced at the clock— “forty-five minutes ago. And your line of questioning is officially off limits, comprende?”

  Barb sighed. Accepting defeat for the moment, she slipped her foot back into her shoe. “And so ends another fun-filled day at Ben Taub. You don’t have to be manic-depressive to work here, but it sure helps,” she mumbled to no one in particular.

  Ben Taub Hospital was Houston’s premier trauma center. Both women felt the burn of a ten-hour shift that to them had become routine but to most people would be utter horror. Both women dealt privately and silently with the long-term impact each day’s events had on their lives.

  Carmen’s tension reliever was the volunteer work she did at the free clinic associated with the Casa de Amigos Community Health Center. Barb’s favorite tension reliever was food.

  “How about a pizza and a pitcher of beer,” she suggested hopefully. “Both would taste pretty damn good about now.”

  “On two conditions,” Carmen said, heading down the hall beside her friend. “It’s my turn to buy and no probing disguised as small talk.”

  “Okay,” Barb agreed grumpily. “It’s a deal. But I’ve got to tell you, Rodriquez, you’re no fun. No fun at all.”

  It was close to midnight when Carmen let herself into her apartment. Stuffed with pizza, pleasantly mellow from that one last glass of beer Barb had insisted would be good for her, Carmen was still grinning over Barb’s snide wit and jaundiced perspective on young Dr. Carrington, whose mission in life was to sleep his way through the entire nursing staff at the trauma center. Barb Jennings’s resistance, according to Barb herself, had completely thwarted that mission, however.

  Carmen found herself wishing she had that kind of savvy and self-assurance where men were concerned, that playful irreverence that allowed Barb to take men or leave them as long as it suited her own purpose. To enjoy them or torment them, depending on how the mood struck her.

  While Barb’s free-spirited perspective was enviable in theory, Carmen realized that in fact, it was something she herself could never do.

  She couldn’t play with anyone’s emotions—like Logan Prince had played with hers. His deceit still stung. She wished she could put the hurt behind her. She wished she could forget about him or at the very least think of him with anger instead of with longing.

  “Why not wish for the moon?” she grumbled as she headed for her bedroom and stripped off her uniform.

  Unfortunately wishing didn’t make anything happen. And just as unfortunately, what she truly felt toward Logan Prince made forgetting him impossible.

  It wasn’t reasonable, it wasn’t even smart, but what she wanted more than anything was to believe what he’d told her. She wanted to believe that aside from the physical desire she knew he felt for her that there was something else. Something less fleeting than attraction. Something as substantial as love.

  Love. The word wrapped itself snugly around her before an accompanying fear caused her heartbeat to ricochet against her ribs.

  “You shouldn’t have had that last glass of beer, Rodriquez. Will you listen to yourself? Love.” She shook her head. “I mean, really. Love? As in loved by Logan Prince? This is a lark for him. A little game. An intriguing diversion.”

  A knock sounded. She whipped her head toward the door. Every instinct inside her told her who was out there knocking. An unsolicited prickle of excitement at the prospect of it being Logan spurred the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat.

  “Make an appointment tomorrow. Neurology. Get that head of yours examined,” she muttered under her breath.

  Logan Prince couldn’t be on the other side of that door. Despite his parting remarks and pretty words, he wouldn’t go to such lengths to see her. It was after midnight. Even on a lark, he was not the kind of man who would humble himself with something as common as chasing a woman. Especially not a woman as common as she was.

  Besides, from everything she’d read, women chased Logan Prince, not the opposite. Wealthy women. Socially connected women. High-fashion. High-profile.

  And those were the women who belonged in his life.

  Slipping into a floor-length red satin robe, she berated herself again for the trip-hammer beat of a heart that hadn’t given up thinking it might be Logan. Wrapping the robe’s belt tightly around her waist, she walked hesitantly to the living room as a knock sounded again.

  Barb had been pretty wound up when she’d dropped Carmen off a few minutes ago. It was probably Barb, deciding not to call it a night after all.

  She reached for the dead bolt, convinced she’d see Barb’s sappy grin, when a low voice penetrated the door.

  “Carmen, it’s Logan.”

  She jerked her hand back as if the doorknob were on fire. Her legs weren’t as quick to react. She backed slowly away.

  When the back of her knees hit the sofa, she sank down onto it, staring in silent denial at the closed door.

  “Carmen, open up. I want to talk to you.”

  Her heart bucked, then lurched into a headlong gallop. Foolish heart. Foolish woman.

  Persistent man.

  On one level, that pleased her. On another, she realized that without her knowledge, her brain had taken a hike. She’d like to blame her reactions on fatigue. Even on anger. But for all her attempts to call it otherwise, a spade was still a spade no matter how it was disguised. She was thrilled that he’d come back. Thrilled and frightened and at a total loss as to how to defend herself against the feelings he stirred in her.

  Until she figured out how to get herself under control, the best defense, she decided, was no response at all. If she ignored him, maybe he’d go away. Logic dictated that if she didn’t open up, he’d do just that.

  Logan Prince, however, wasn’t in a logical mood.

  “Carmen, I know you’re in there. I saw you come home. A few minutes of your time. That’s all I ask.”

  She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “You ask too much,” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her, praying on one hand he’d leave, hoping on the other he’d persist. Not knowing how she would react to either choice he made.

  “Come on, Carmen. Either open up, or I’ll make such a ruckus out here, you’ll wish you had,” he warned her after a long silence, and in such a definitive tone, she knew he meant business.

  She rose on shaky legs and crossed the room. “Why don’t you leave this alone?” she pleaded, pressing her forehead against the door.

  “We both know I can’t do that.”

  Praying for strength, she threw the dead bolt.

  Logan breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the slide of the bolt and the turn of the latch. It had been a cheap trick, threatening her like that. He felt a twinge of remorse, but it melted to a feeling a righteous justification the moment she opened the door and he saw her standing there.

  Red was her color. Satin was her fabric . . . and nearly his undoing.

  “Hi,” he said, aware of the huskiness of his voice.

  “We’ve played this scene once already today.” She watched him with fire in her eyes and a white-knuckled grip on the doorknob. “At the risk of sounding redundant, why are you here?”

  Ignoring her cool reception and counting on those telling eyes of hers to reveal her true feelings, he stood his ground. “I told you I’d be back.”

  She looked so confused. So uncertain. So absolutely lovable.

  “You look tired, Carmen. You’re working too hard. When was the last time you had a day off?”

  “Did you listen to anything I said this morning?” She was trying very hard to stand her ground. But from the slight tremor in her voice, he knew that even she felt herself slipping. “I didn’t want to see you then,” she continued, working hard at sounding angry, “and just because I let you bully your way in here tonight doesn’t mean anything’s changed.”

  But things had changed and they both knew it. Unable to resist, he touched a hand to her cheek, then smiled when she neither flinched nor pulled away.

  “I bullied the door open,” he said, acknowledging her assessment of his method. “It remains to be seen if that tactic is going to get me inside.”

  “As if I could stop you.”

  Turning her back on him, she left the door open in silent, if grudging invitation. Then she walked to the sofa, dropped onto a corner, and tugged her robe tightly around her.

  He shut the door behind him as he stepped inside. “Have you wondered why that is? Have you wondered why you couldn’t stop me?”

  She looked up at him, then away. “Because you’re bigger than me.”

  He grinned, aware as he did so that in spite of the mess he’d made of things between them, since he’d met Carmen Rodriquez, he’d been grinning more than he could ever remember. Spontaneous, straight from the gut, just because it felt good grinning.

  “Is there a chance it’s because of my money?”

  “Your money doesn’t impress me,” she snapped, as if the notion was preposterous.

  He grinned again with an odd mixture of self-castigation and relief. He’d known her answer yet felt compelled to test her—a conditioned reflex. The irony, however, wasn’t lost on him. He expected her to trust him, but it would seem he needed a little more practice in the trusting game himself.

  “That’s what’s so special about you, Carmen. You’re not impressed with my money. You’re not intimidated by the implied power.”

  Snagging a side chair, he pulled it directly in front of her and sat down. He leaned forward, propped his elbows on widespread thighs, and simply enjoyed watching her try to ignore him.