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A hint of a self-deprecating — endearing, dammit — grin tugged at his lips. “Fair enough. I’d like to get to know you better. I want arelationshipwith you. If you’ll give me another chance.”
Like it or not, she couldn’t stop her heart from speeding up. But her brain wasn’t as easy as her ticker. “Why the one-eighty?” she asked. “Why would I buy into such a turnaround?”
He trailed his finger across her still-crossed arm, and just that little touch sent a shiver through her. His grin reappeared, this time a sly version of it. “Because the sex was good?” he said in a husky voice.
The combo of contact, that voice, and the memory of being with him… Crap, she was going down in flames in record time.
“Good?” she asked, acting offended.
“Stupendous?”
“A little better.” She had trouble wiping the smile from her lips.
Sawyer pried her stubborn arms apart and twined their fingers together. “Come here.” He pulled her closer, so she was nestled between his legs. “I’m about to veer from theHow to Win Chicksmanual, just so you know.”
“Okay...”
Their entwined hands were at shoulder level, and he leaned his forehead into hers. “Like I told you, probably in some drunken stupor last Saturday night, I come from a family of overachievers,” he said. “My mom is one of the best cardiologists in the state. She’s been in charge of so many committees and organizations I can’t keep track. Rachel, she’s always been the best at everything she takes on. Emergency medicine is no exception. She’s like a steamroller, barreling over every goal she sets. Even Noelle…” He hesitated at the name of his sister who’d died three years ago. “She was a social girl, but in her own way, she owned that. She had a billion friends. Everyone knew they could go to her with anything. She’d be there for them.”
“I remember,” Mariah said quietly. Before Rachel and Cale had gotten together, her brother had loved Noelle.
“So here’s me, this eternal underachiever, I guess.”
“You are not! You’re a freaking surgeon, Sawyer. Last I checked, that’s no small undertaking.”
He pressed his lips together, considering. “Maybe. In normal families.”
“I see where you’re going with this. Your family isn’t normal — not that there is such a thing — but it’s tough to be surrounded by people like them.”
“Yes. Without starting to feel like you need to be more yourself. Which is where the medical director of surgery job at St. Mary’s comes in. I thought that’s what I should want. That and dedicating myself to being a focused, responsible ‘grown-up.’ You know, someone who doesn’t wake up naked in some gorgeous woman’s bed.”
“Gorgeous?”
“Understatement,” he said, his voice turning gravelly.
“Truth? I kind of liked having you wake up in my bed naked.”
“I more than kind of liked it … or would have if I’d let myself. I’m still embarrassed about it.”
“Well, don’t be.” Mariah let her face drift closer to his. “So, go on.”
Sawyer shrugged. “That’s what I was wrong about. I don’t want any of that. I love my ‘lowly’ general surgeon job. I’d be happy to retire from it in thirty years. I want to be a part of the community, keep running into my patients when I’m out, and…”
“And?”
“I want to date whoever the hell I want to, whenever I want to, and spend as much time with a particular redhead as is humanly possible.Ifshe feels the same. So here I am … in the women’s restroom at the airport groveling.”
“It’s a little lacking in ambience, but I have to admit, it’s kind offlatteringthat you hunted me down in here.”
“Kind of?”
“Stupendously flattering,” she whispered as she closed the remaining space between their mouths.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice said as she rounded the corner into the restroom.
“Don’t mind us,” Sawyer said before returning to Mariah’s lips.
“Don’t mind me,” the woman said, barreling into the first stall. “I gotta go.”
