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Something to concentrate on other than everything about her that infiltrated his senses and left him reeling.
He probed more, not saying a word. He tested the range of motion, flexibility, and sensitivity of both feet.
He tenderly pressed his fingers and thumb against her heels. Then he glanced up at her, being particularly careful to shift his gaze from the ankle he held gingerly in his hand to her face…bypassing all the temptation in between.
“So?” she asked in a tentative voice.
Evan’s brow furrowed. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Any sort of pain you’re experiencing, long-term ailments…anything at all that, were I your regular doctor, I’d find in your medical records?”
“Hmm…” She pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “Nope.”
“Not a single thing?”
The corners of that luscious mouth of hers turned down slightly.
He said, “Staci, this is crucial. I’m not going to judge. Just tell me straight.”
She gave him a sarcastic look. “You’re not going to judge? Please, Evan, I—”
“Wait.” He held up a hand to stop her. First, he had to get past the jolt he received low in his gut when she called him “Evan.” Not “Nick.” Then he had to shift his brain from all thoughts of their intimate relationship and concentrate on this professional aspect, and he needed her to do the same. “Let’s just put aside all of the tension between us because of our individual beliefs—and what happened at the Four Seasons. Tell me honestly what you’re feeling.”
She gnawed her lower lip. An alluring gesture that he tried to ignore.
Then she told him, “This is one of the things I’d like to discuss in detail with you tonight at dinner. When you’re not all lab-coat-wearing, furrowed-brow judgmental. Because even though you say you’re not judging right now, Evan…you are.”
He gently returned her foot to the floor and took the chair opposite her, clasping his hands together and letting them dangle between his parted thighs. “I apologize again if I’ve been—”
“An ass?” she finished for him.
He smirked. “You just love that word, don’t you?”
“Actually, I put you in the pompous ass category a while back. I’m letting you slide right now.”
“How very thoughtful.”
She smiled graciously, luminously.
Was she warming up to him?
Did it matter?
Evan was a singularly focused man who didn’t get caught up in all the extracurriculars—such as complicated relationships and messy scenarios like this. He’d learned from a young age the dangers inherent to both.
When you grew up the only “accidental” son of a rocket-scientist-level genius mother who’d never married and who knew absolutely nothing about raising children or even dealing on a regular basis with human beings rather than lab animals, your life was not ever going to be normal.
So Evan didn’t strive for normal. He strove for successful. Universally helpful.
Hence his expanded work in prosthetics.
But that was neither here nor there at the moment. He repeated, “Anything you care to share with me, Staci?”
She crossed her legs and gave him a look that demonstrated her own probing—centered on whether or not she could trust him.
Then she ventured into what she clearly considered risky territory with a reticent, “Sooo, my arches ache from time to time.”
“Hmm.”
Her brow jumped. “Hmm?”
