With a Little Help by Valerie Parv

that’s all.”
    He frowned. “What else do you think I want?”
    She dragged in a deep breath. “Isn’t it obvious? Me.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    W HAT THE HELL ? S TANDING IN front of him, slim but curved in all the right places and barely reaching up to his chin, Emma looked like a terrier ready to take on a rottweiler. Her workout clothes were rumpled from sitting on the grass, and her skin glowed with recent exertion. Her hair was carelessly twisted at the back and caught up in a tortoiseshell clip, making him want to undo the golden mass and send it tumbling to her shoulders. The red-gold strands curling around her ears and nape teased at him like a promise of things to come.
    He pushed the thought away. Somehow she’d gotten the idea that he wanted more from her than her catering skills. Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d felt the attraction between them from first meeting. He’d seen her brother slip the vodka into her drink, but hadn’t known until later that it wasn’t her idea, intrigued to think she needed Dutch courage to approach him.
    Since then he’d relived the memory of her kiss more times than was good for him. Her approach had been naive, fueled by the party mood, but the tasteof her had awakened a desire for more. When Cherie had suggested he talk to Emma about his birthday dinner, he’d felt like a nervous teenager.
    Unlike the model types he usually dated, Emma wasn’t beautiful in the runway sense. Her looks were too distinctive, her nose a fraction too sharp, and her mouth a touch wide for perfection. But when she smiled or gave her infectious laugh, she was stunning. A pang of jealousy still gripped him when he thought of her laughing with another man at her parents’ function. She hadn’t ever laughed with Nate like that.
    Her sea-green eyes shone now and she clasped her hands together, her expression daring him not to take her seriously. “You’d better explain what you mean, because I seem to have missed a step or two.”
    â€œI doubt you’ve missed a step in your life, Dr. Hale,” she said. “Did my mother suggest I might be part of the package if you hired me?”
    His patience was becoming strained. “I can’t deny it’s an attractive thought. But if anyone put that idea in my head, it was you.”
    She looked taken aback. He was almost sorry to see some of the fire fade from her eyes. Anger was a pure, honest emotion, stripping a person of artifice. What you saw was what you got. And in Emma’s case, what he saw was enough to raise his blood pressure several points.
    â€œReally?” She sounded skeptical. “We’ve had only one business meeting.”
    â€œAnd another meeting that was pure pleasure.” For him, anyway. It was hardly his fault if she felt embarrassed by the encounter. He’d go back for seconds anytime.
    Color bloomed in her cheeks. “I might have known you’d bring that up. I made one mistake…”
    â€œAre you sure it was a mistake?”
    â€œIt—it had to be. I didn’t want…”
    Her stammered denial was enough to convince him that she’d been as affected by their brief kiss as he had. He was tempted to see if the chemistry he recalled was still potent and leaned close enough to feel her breath whispering across his mouth before he caught himself. His shoulders felt stiff as he pulled back, and a growing discomfort told him they weren’t the only part of him hardening. He was going to end up proving her right about scheming to have her as part of the package.
    â€œYou have some rigid ideas about doctors’ lives,” he said. “I invited you along on this walk to show you we aren’t all the same. If you and I are going to work together, it will be easier if you stop treating me as the enemy. You can’t deny that’s what you’ve been doing.”
    She let her hands drop to