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  “I’m really sorry?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he ran an impatient hand through his hair. “Jeez, Kara, what do you want? Blood?”

  He half expected her to jump down his throat again, but she must have found what she was looking for—if not in his words, then his face—because she suddenly relaxed. “No, but if you’re offering, some of your sweat should work nicely.”

  “My sweat?” he asked, wondering if he looked as lost as he felt.

  She turned and headed down the hall to her bedroom. “I’ve got a couple trunks filled with gear stored at the top of my closet. Can you get them down

  for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He followed her through the house feeling a shock similar to the aftermath of a car crash. It wasn’t unusual for Kara to explode and then simmer down quickly, but this was fast even for her. Any second now, he expected to start feeling the symptoms of whiplash.

  “The boxes are up there,” she said, pointing to the large walk-in closet at the end of her bathroom.

  He followed her directions, feeling a little awkward being in this most private room of hers. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like he’d never been here before—he was the one who’d helped her move her furniture in, after all. The one who’d painted these walls their current shade of sky-blue. But that was different. That was before the room had turned into this sultan’s paradise with the luxurious turquoise quilt and silver throw pillows.

  Before a red lace bra-and-panty set had been draped across the foot of her bed.

  Before he’d kissed her.

  Studiously avoiding looking at her bed—which was more difficult said than done because the thing was huge and dominated the entire room—he headed into her closet and reached for the first trunk. It was a lot heavier than he thought it would be.

  “Hey,” he said as he carried it back into the bedroom. “How the hell did you get this thing up there to begin with?”

  “Mike put them up for me. I haven’t needed them in a while.”

  He stiffened at the mention of her last serious boyfriend—the one she’d almost married. He’d never liked Mike, had thought the guy was a pompous ass more concerned with his reputation in the field than he was in the actual work he did. Lucas had been thrilled when things didn’t work out. Mike was nowhere near good enough for her and the idea that she would now be taking over his team was just one more thing Lucas didn’t like about this trip.

  Dropping the first load onto the floor, he went back into the closet and got the second trunk down. It was even heavier than the first. “What’s in here, anyway?”

  “My on-location biosafety suits.”

  Right. Of course. Because she was going to need the huge positive-pressure suit if she was heading into a situation where a disease like Ebola might have turned airborne. When she worked in the CDC labs, or any other well-equipped labs, they provided the suits for her. But who knew what she was heading into now.

  His chest tightened and he walked to the window, staring blindly into the night. He knew her job was dangerous, knew she regularly dealt with things that could kill her. But she’d had every vaccination there was, so that when she went into the field after cholera or TB, there was little to no chance she would get it—especially with proper precautions.

  But this, this was something totally different. There was no vaccine for Ebola and even if there had been, who knew what would happen with exposure to this strange new strain? Any tolerance built up to it would mean absolutely nothing.

  A part of him was aware that Kara was still talking about something, but it was like she was far away. For the first time in his life, he wished he wasn’t a doctor. Wished he didn’t know exactly what it was she was heading into. Because knowing what could happen, thinking about it, had him paralyzed with fear.

  “Don’t go.” The words came out before he knew he was going to say them, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence about something or other.

  “Lucas.”

  He spun around and stalked across the room toward her, feeling like a crazy man. Feeling like he was going to jump out of his skin any second.

  “Please,” he begged, barely recognizing himself. “I have a bad feeling about this trip and I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you, Kara. Please don’t go.”

  He grabbed on to her shoulders and pulled her into his arms so that her heart beat steadily against his. Then he buried his face in her hair and just breathed, inhaling the sweet strawberry-and-magnolia scent deep into his lungs. He was acting like a maniac—he knew he was—but he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it. From the second he’d heard the word Ebola, his whole world had spun out of control.

  “I’m going to be fine, Lucas.” She murmured the words against his neck because she couldn’t move. Couldn’t pull back. He was holding her too tightly but he couldn’t seem to ease up. “You know I’m careful.”

  “There’s careful and then there’s insane, Kara. This is insane.”

  “No. It’s my job.” She shoved against his chest but he wasn’t budging. At that moment, he thought he could hold her forever if she’d let him. “You think I don’t worry about you?” she asked. “Every day you go to work in the closest thing to a war zone that the U.S. has to offer. Less than a year ago you had a shooting in the lobby of your clinic and you ran straight into it.”

  “That was different. My patients—”

  “I know. Your patients were out there and there was no way you were going to leave them at the hands of some coked-up teenager with a gun. But those people in Eritrea, they’re my patients. If I can help them, Lucas, then I have to go.”

  Kara struggled against him, managing to pull back just enough to lift her soft, delicate hands to his face. As she held him, she looked deeply into his eyes and said, “I need to go.”

  He knew it, had known it all along. And still, “You’re my best friend. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Promise me,” he told her, knowing he sounded desperate but not giving a damn. He was desperate. She meant more to him than he ever could have imagined.

  “Lucas—”

  “Promise me!”

  “I promise.” She looked him straight in the eye, her green eyes shining with sincerity and compassion and something else he couldn’t quite define. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  He shuddered, nodded. Dropped his head so that his forehead rested against hers. Then closed his eyes and just breathed.

  He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, locked in their own little world. Not long enough, because when she finally stepped back he was still not ready to let her go. Wrapping a hand around her long, slender neck, he pulled her face back to his and, for the second time that night, captured her lips with his own.

  If he was going to have to let her go, going to have to spend the next weeks and months racked with

  terror that she was going to die in Africa, he was not letting her leave without having something to hang on to. He’d broken off the kiss in the park when her phone rang, and he’d regretted it ever since. No matter what happened, no matter how it shifted things between them, he was going to have this kiss untainted by fear or sorrow or regret. They owed each other that much.

  But he wasn’t counting on the way they both lit up the second their mouths touched. Like the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve all at the same time. It was as though her mouth had been made for
his.

  That was the first thought that ran through his mind as he deepened the kiss.

  The second was that she tasted like she smelled. Like strawberries and caramel and rich, sweet cream.

  The third was that he wouldn’t mind staying right here, kissing her, for the next decade or so. He had a lot of time to make up for, after all.

  But just because he was acting like an idiot didn’t mean he really was one. So, despite the fact that every instinct he had was pushing at him to stay exactly where he was, he reluctantly pulled away.

  Though every cell in his body screamed for another, longer taste of her, he figured he should check with Kara first. Make sure she was okay with this—or at the very least, not planning to smash her fist into the side of his head for overstepping his boundaries.

  “What…” Her voice trailed off as she pressed shaky fingers to her mouth. When he didn’t answer—he couldn’t because he had no idea what to say—she tried again. “What was that?”

  Any hope that she felt the same way he did dissipated under the shocked weight of her question. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping away from her. “Maybe we can chalk this up to too much champagne?”

  “Neither of us has had a drink in hours.”

  “The stars?” He pointed toward the skylight above her bed.

  “We already discussed the fact that there aren’t any.”

  “Could you at least work with me here?” he finally asked her. “I’m grasping at straws.”

  “I can tell.” She inched closer to him, pressing forward so that her chest brushed lightly against his. Heat streaked through him all over again. “The question is why you feel the need to?”

  “I already apologized. I’m not sure what else to say.” He looked down at her, tried to gauge her mood. She was looking up at him so that her full lips were a scant few inches from his own. As she exhaled, he could feel her warm breath brush over him.

  His entire body tightened at the sensation, until the simple act of breathing hurt. He wanted another sample of her, wanted to delve inside her mouth and explore the taste and scent and touch of her until he’d satisfied the craving that had been years in the making.

  He tightened his hands into fists, fought the desire back. His temper tantrum about her leaving for Eritrea had already put them on shaky ground. Kissing her had made things even less stable. Doing it again might send her running. After all, she’d done her level best to ignore the kiss they’d shared in the park. For her to run from him was the absolute last thing he wanted. He’d rather have Kara’s friendship than nothing at all.

  “Who says you have to say anything? It was just a kiss, right?”

  “Yeah.” He forced the words out between clenched teeth. “Just a kiss.”

  “I mean, it’s not like you really laid one on me or anything.” She leaned in even closer.

  He couldn’t help wondering what kind of kisses she was used to if she qualified what had passed between them as just a kiss. Maybe he’d underestimated old Mike.

  The thought of Mike made him angry and he stepped back from her. Tried to turn away. The last thing he needed right now was to hear about other, better kisses she’d received from men she was more sexually attracted to than him.

  She moved with him, though, as he retreated one step, two, until his back was—literally—against her bedroom wall. The warning bells he’d heard in the park had returned and they were clanging at top volume. But the fact that all the blood in his body had rushed about three feet south of his head made it impossible to pay any attention to them at all.

  “It’s not,” she continued her earlier train of thought, “like you did this.”

  And then she was kissing him, her lips soft and warm and open against his own.

  For a full five seconds, he did nothing, just stood there like a total loser as her lips moved slowly against his. And then reality dawned and he caught fire. Slipping a hand behind her head, he tangled his fingers in her heavy curls and pressed her mouth more firmly against him. Then he pulled her lower lip into his mouth and nibbled softly.

  She gasped, laughed a little, then wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with an exuberance that delighted him.

  He ran his tongue over her lips, exploring the bow-shaped indention in her upper lip that had driven him crazy for more years than he wanted to admit. Then he moved on to the full curve of her lower lip and the tender corners of her mouth. She tasted so good, felt so good, that he wanted to go on kissing her forever.

  He nudged her lips with his tongue, waited for her to open for him so he could explore all of her. She didn’t immediately comply. Instead, she smiled against his lips—that same tender, lopsided smile of hers that captured his attention—and his heart trembled a little in his chest.

  Which was stupid, he told himself. This was just a kiss. Just an experiment on her part, nothing to get himself all worked up about. But this was Kara, and he’d waited so long to touch her like this, to kiss her and hold her and feel her like this. No matter what happened later, he would take these few moments and savor them.

  And then, with a flick of her fingers, she changed everything.

  * * *

  SHE WAS ON FIRE, HER entire body aflame as Lucas kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. And still it wasn’t enough. Frantic, frenzied, she moved her hands to the buttons of his tuxedo shirt. She wanted more. She wanted everything. She wanted…him.

  She flicked at the buttons with fingers made clumsy with need and frustration. The first two gave way pretty easily under her onslaught, but the third one was more stubborn. She moaned a little, yanked at it and still it wouldn’t give. Frustration ripped through her. She wanted to see Lucas, to touch him, to feel him.

  He must have felt the same way, because with a muffled roar, he pushed her fingers away and ripped the shirt straight down the middle, sending buttons flying everywhere. She might have found it funny any other time but right then it was perfect, necessary, exactly what she needed.

  Part of her couldn’t believe they were doing this, but she was past paying attention to it. She’d spent her entire adult life denying herself things she wanted—it was hard to lose what you cared about if you didn’t care too much about anything. If you didn’t claim anything, or anyone, as your own. But she wanted this, wanted Lucas more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She was heading back into a nightmare in a few hours. Damn it, for once in her life she would take this. Take Lucas. She was burning for him and the sweet abandon that being touched by him promised. This time she would not deny herself.

  Sliding her hands up Lucas’s chest, she hooked her fingers in the shoulders of his now-open shirt and flicked it off. Watched with satisfaction as the shirt tumbled down his arms and onto the floor. And then she was touching him, her fingers sliding over his warm, taut flesh as she forgot each and every worry she had about this. About him.

  She wanted to taste him, to smell him, to immerse herself in the experience of loving Lucas. She looked down at where her hands rested on his chest, small against the massive bronze expanse of skin. They trembled a little—from desire or trepidation, she wasn’t sure. She tucked them behind her to hide their shaking and replaced them with her lips and tongue.

  But Lucas must have seen the fine trembling, because he pushed her away. Just an inch or two, enough so that he could put one long finger under her chin and tilt her head so that she was looking him straight in those crazy, beautiful eyes of hi
s.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, his voice tight with both need and restraint. Desire was plain on his face and she knew it cost him to ask, knew it would cost him more if she changed her mind. The fact that he asked anyway dissolved her last remaining inhibitions and she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his warm, sexy mouth down to meet her own.

  “Damn straight,” she murmured against his lips, and when she did, felt his tenuous grip on control vanish along with her own. Her hands tangled in the cool silk of his hair, holding his head to her as his tongue gently parted her lips. But she didn’t want gentleness now, didn’t want him to hold back when everything she felt for him, everything they were to each other, was welling up inside of her. She wanted all of Lucas, his power as well as his concern, his passion as well as his tenderness.

  Her tongue met his, touched, tangled, tantalized, as she explored his mouth the way she had wanted to for far too long. She sucked his lower lip between her own, nipped softly and laughed at his groan of arousal. Her hands slipped between them, slid over his hard abdomen and toyed with the beginning of the happy trail that started just beneath his belly button.

  “We need to slow down,” he gasped, his hand capturing hers and bringing it to his lips where he pressed kisses over her palm and at the tip of each of her fingers.

  She melted at his tenderness, his sweetness. But that sweetness wasn’t what she wanted. The aching emotion it brought to her was exactly what she was trying to escape from with this act of total impulsiveness. If she got swayed by it, if she let it in, she didn’t know what would happen to her. To them.

  “I don’t want to go slow,” she told him, hooking two fingers over the waistband of his dress pants and yanking him away from the wall before spinning him toward the center of the room.

  His eyes widened and he grinned in a way that was both familiar and yet completely new. She could see in his eyes that he felt the same about her and it made her feel wicked, wild. Wonderful.