Instant Gratification by Jill Shalvis Page B

pressing up against the material of her cami, a sweet set of hips and a strip of bared belly, revealed by the boxer shorts she’d rolled over several times to adjust to her frame.
    She moved past him, picked up one of the doctor’s coats hanging on a rack and slipped into it. Damn.
    “Sorry,” she said at his expression. “Only invited midnight callers get to see me in my pj’s.”
    “Can I get an invite?”
    Her laugh told him no way in hell was he getting an invite, but he smiled anyway. “You look pretty when you laugh.”
    She was still smiling when she came close and bent, peering at his knee. “No stitches this time.”
    “Good.”
    She straightened and eyed the cut over his eye. “And that looks to be healing. I thought maybe you’d need some antibiotics, but you don’t. But .”
    Ah, hell.
    “You need a tetanus shot. You know that, right?”
    “Yeah.” He felt his vision go a little fuzzy. Jesus, he was fucking 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 ofthe 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