Kathleen O'Reilly - Just Surrender...

“Can you check? Please?” he pleaded, needing to have her and her tightly packed body out of his sights.

Happily she disappeared, but then returned in a too-short two seconds with a flashlight. Of course. Trying to help, she directed the light beam in the direction of the rear wheel. “I remembered I had one in my bag. It was a giveaway at this Hudson River wildlife and fisheries symposium. It was a few months back, so I’d forgotten.”

“Lucky me,” he murmured, setting the jack under the axle, and starting to twist off the lug nuts. Twisting tight. Painfully hard. Until he felt something give. Principles. Dogma. Ironlike restraint.

“I’m Edie,” she told him, because apparently now was the perfect time for introductions.

Edie. A cute, perky name. With cute, perky breasts. And gamine brown eyes that sparkled in the rain. Sparkled. Tyler gave the nut another vicious twist.

“What’s your name?” she asked. Her conversation wasn’t what he was used to. Tyler liked coldly impersonal, eight-syllable words that didn’t involve sex, emotion, or—god-forbid—nipples.

Instead of replying, he pulled even tighter.

“Don’t be mad. You know rain is very good for the planet. It’s cleansing and nourishing, feeding the parched earth.”

“Not in New York,” he said, wiping at his face, feeling the moisture cling to his skin. Dirt was unsanitary, a breeding ground for flesh-eating bacteria and flesh-licking sex. Quietly, he groaned.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. Obviously she was finally feeling the guilt that she should have felt several thousand hours ago.

Fully intending to give her a well-deserved lecture, Tyler glanced up, but she looked so…so needy. “I’m Tyler.”

“Tyler. Pleased to meet you. You got that?” she asked, just after he finished with the nuts, and was prying off the hubcap.

“Yeah. Doing great,” he answered, flinching when a city bus cruised by to splash him from head to toe.

He tried wiping the muddy residue away, not happy when he saw her expression. If she were a nice person, she wouldn’t be laughing at him. She would be grateful. Deeply grateful.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, polite, thoughtful, trying to set an example. Although on the plus side, the situation did keep him from staring at her nipples.

“Nope. No problem,” she answered, stifling another laugh. Then, of course, she had to cross her arms over her chest. The nipples were back.

“Good,” Tyler agreed. However, he had a painful problem in his pants, and he wondered if this two-month interventional cardiology fellowship in New York was really a great idea. Of course it was a great idea. Working with Dr. Abe Keating, competing for the ACT/Keating Endowment Award. The cardiology fellowship was a chance to showcase his talents, and most of all, give him a shot at Keating’s endowment, a chance to work side by side with the surgeon for another three years, doing the research that would change the way cardio-vascular surgery was done forever.

Spurred on by the drenching rain, the occasional honking car and his barely restrained sexual frustration, Tyler changed the tire in record time. He twisted hard on the wrench, tightening the nuts on the doughnut, feeling his nuts tighten with each miserable twist.

Just as he was putting the flat in the trunk, a cop car slid to a halt beside them. The officer rolled down the window.

“Need any help?” asked the officer, his eyes straying to Edie’s chest.

“All done, Officer,” Edie replied agreeably, possibly with a newfound respect for the law. Probably because she was driving without a proper taxi license.

“You need any help, miss?” the cop asked the criminal cabbie, because apparently the dripping, greasy-handed cardiothoracic surgeon now looked the part of the perp.

Tyler scowled and then stepped in front of her chest. “She doesn’t need anything,” he told the officer, because the last thing he needed was for her to get thrown in jail. If that happened, then he’d never get to the hotel. He’d never get sex…. Sleep. Sleep was what he desperately needed.

The cop, sensing there was no criminal activity afoot, drove away, and Tyler and Edie climbed back in the cab. This time when she drove, Edie took the corners as slow as a grandmother, humming happily.

Tyler examined his ruined shirt, pulling it free from his pants, ready to burn the filthy thing. He looked up into the rearview mirror and met her eyes. “Why are you smiling?”

“You look good in dirt,” she told him, and he noticed the dimple on the right cheek, which was completely free of both dirt and guilt.

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m trying to cheer you up.” She sounded sincere and completely comfortable. Not painfully aroused. Not wondering what he would be like naked.

“Get me to my hotel,” he growled, too tired to use his clinical voice. “That’ll cheer me up.”

“Why don’t you like me?”

“Because you feed on people’s pain.”

“I do not,” she insisted.

“Then why are you so intrigued by the fact that I got dumped?” It stung. Yes. Stung. Tyler wasn’t used to pain. He cured pain. He prescribed meds for pain. He analyzed pain, and monitored pain, but damn it, he did not feel it. It wasn’t even Cynthia so much as the idea that he wasn’t good enough. It was a pain he’d stopped feeling a long time ago. Or so he thought.

“Aha, I knew I was right,” Edie chirped, rubbing salt into the wound. “Not that I’m happy you got dumped. Satisfied, yes? I mean, I do like to be right, especially about reading people. Don’t you like adventures?”

Adventures were the nation’s number one cause of death.

He blamed Cynthia for his foul mood. She had forced him into this embarrassing juvenile behavior. Edie had merely pummeled him until he had no choice but to regress even further.

“Sorry,” he apologized politely.

“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?” she asked, apparently not sensing his still painful sexual arousal.

“Why?” he asked, stalling for time, because the first answer that leaped to mind was yes.

“I owe you. You’re doing a nice thing, and you didn’t say a word when I tooled all over the five boroughs. Tonight you’ve changed a flat and your girlfriend of some indeterminate amount of time dumped you, all of which happened when you should be getting well laid at the hotel. If there’s anybody in the world that needs a drink, it’s you. Maybe a shot of tequila, or ouzo. I know this Greek bar….”

“I don’t want to go to a Greek bar,” he told her, shifting uncomfortably, finding an exposed spring in the seat, feeling it cut into his thigh. Probably severing the femoral artery, thereby letting him bleed out a quick and painless death. In which case, Cynthia would have to feel bad since she had dumped him in a text message.

“How about an American bar?” Edie suggested, as if all his immediate pains could be solved with alcohol.

A bar was a recipe for disaster, but since Tyler had apparently not severed his femoral artery and was going to live, alcohol now seemed like a good idea.

“If I let you buy me a drink, one drink—will you drive me directly to the hotel?” There was a roughness in his voice that worried him. This wasn’t about a drink. He should’ve been fantasizing about a shower, a bed. No, there were darker forces at work. Darker forces that were visualizing her. Naked in his shower. In his bed. Even naked proudly offering him one drink.

“I’ll drive you straight back to the hotel. I swear,” she promised, but Tyler knew when disaster lurked around the corner. He didn’t like to think it was a premonition because that implied his subconscious was guiding his decision—or worse, his penis.