M.J. Rodgers - Beauty Vs. The Beast

Ruggedly individual? Intellectual? What a joke. It seemed as if lately, all he’d been doing was marching straight into the sea of professional and personal suicide like some brainless lemming. What else could possibly go wrong?

Damian dug into his pants pocket for his key as he approached his car. He opened the driver’s side and carefully set the last box of patient records in the back seat. As he straightened up, he noticed a blue envelope beneath the windshield wiper.

He snatched it, expecting it to be yet another announcement for yet another new espresso shop. No wonder everyone was sleepless in Seattle. He was just about to throw the blue envelope into a nearby waste bin, when his eyes caught sight of the business card taped to its front.

His business card.

His eyebrows met in a dark frown. This was no casual advertisement. This was from someone who knew him. Damian slit open the sealed envelope and slipped out the single sheet of pale blue paper from inside.

The words on the page were large, blunt and perfectly even. They looked as if they had been formed by someone passing a thick black felt-tip pen over a stencil. He sensed a careful, composed and calm hand had modeled them. The meaning in the words themselves, however, gave him a sense of something quite different.

You are going to pay. I’m going to make sure of it.

“Dr. Steele, is something wrong?” Kay asked. Over the last week of working closely together, she couldn’t remember ever seeing Damian with a frown. “Are you worried about how things will go this morning?”

He was sitting next to her at the defense table in the courtroom, smelling like a hint of spicy after-shave on clean-shaven skin, looking far too good in a single-breasted, Italian cut navy suit, a French-cuffed white shirt and a tie with a subtle geometric pattern. His quick smile showed bright against his summer tan.

“I’m not worried about the suit. I have a good lawyer.”

The compliment slipped beneath Kay’s careful professional guard. She let out a deep, internal sigh. If he had told her she was attractive, she could have ignored it. But this compliment to her competence managed to find her Achilles’ heel.

Maybe it was because so few men had ever really made the effort to see past her outward packaging, and those few who did had not been that complimentary about what they found.

Her eyebrows dived together in a frown. She reminded herself for the millionth time that it did not matter that so many men ended up uncomfortable with her. All that mattered was that she was comfortable with herself.

She was beginning to feel comfortable with this client of hers, too. All week long as they prepared for the preliminary hearing, he had treated her with charming deference and respect, never once getting out of line. That first day in her office, he had said he could control his impulses, and he had certainly proved it this week.

Unless he no longer had those impulses. Well, he wouldn’t be the first to be turned off by her once he got to know her.

Now, why did that thought suddenly depress her? Theirs could only be a professional relationship. If he was turned off by her, so much the better.

“I do have a request, however,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve suffered all week with this Dr. Steele label. Go back to calling me Damian. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean I’m getting carried away by your ability and beauty, or that you’ll soon be having to fight me off. I promise that as difficult as it is, I’ll do my best to be a gentleman.”

His smile was dazzling and dynamite. Kay could feel it lighting a fuse at the base of her spine. And she could also feel his attraction for her registering happily—very happily—in every female cell in her body.

She let out another internal sigh. Why did it feel so good to know he was still attracted to her? Damn. This was totally illogical.

She took a deep breath and tried to keep her tone as even and professional as possible as she looked at his ruggedly handsome face.

“Sure, Damian. Not a problem.”

But, once again, the sound of his first name passing her lips set off a warm hum inside her mouth that made her self-conscious. She dropped her eyes to the papers on the table in front of her.

Damian smiled as Kay turned away. Always the careful lawyer. She assiduously kept her position on the professional side of the line.

If Damian hadn’t been trained to observe and interpret unconscious movements so well, he never would have noted her tugging at her right earlobe whenever he prolonged eye contact, or the way she crossed her legs three different times in succession whenever they sat in proximity to each other.

He knew he disturbed her on a subconscious level and the knowledge excited him. Still, he was content to leave it alone.

No, content was the wrong word. Reconciled was definitely a more appropriate choice. If he had needed an additional reminder as to why professional relationships had to remain professional, he’d gotten just that on Wednesday in that final confrontation with Dr. Priscilla Payton.

What a mess. Still, as angry as Priscilla was with him, he had a hard time believing she was behind that note he’d found on his car and the second note he’d found in the mail this morning. Surely a psychologist couldn’t be that petty and unstable? But if Priscilla wasn’t behind it, who was? And why?

“You do seem to be concerned about something,” Kay said as her eyes swept his face.

Damian deliberately unfurrowed his forehead and unclenched his jaw. He had no intention of burdening Kay with this. Still, he would have to watch his every facial expression around his attorney. She didn’t miss much.

“I’m not fond of waiting,” he said to mislead her.

She nodded, accepting his evasion. She’d been perusing the preliminary motion she’d forwarded to the judge earlier that week. She went back to her reading.

She was sitting to his right, looking cool and collected in a blue-mint linen suit. He was close enough to feel her warmth and inhale the light, sweet scent of her skin and hair. She was very alluring. A lot of men must make a play for her. Still, he doubted she had very satisfying or enduring love affairs.

If he had to guess, he’d say that the kind of men who pursued her soft and beckoning femininity soon found themselves unexpectedly coming face-to-face with the strong woman beneath. He also guessed it wouldn’t be a happy surprise.

There was just something about a man’s short, stubby Y chromosome that had a habit of short-circuiting his brain cells every time he found himself in the presence of such a delectable female. Made it hard for a male to think at all, much less think straight about the fact that the female could be appreciated in ways other than the physical.

Damian found himself staring at the honey-gold strands at the back of her slim white neck. Images of those glistening strands falling long and loose and free across bare, milk-white shoulders stole into his mind. She was so deliciously feminine, so tantalizingly close. He could feel his circuits overloading.

Damn that stubby Y chromosome. He rubbed his suddenly moist palms across his slacks beneath the table. He hoped they’d be able to put this legal suit to bed in the next few minutes.

To bed. Unfortunate phraseology. Freud would have been delighted with the slip and the immediate x-rated images it brought to mind.

Damian tore his eyes from Kay and let them sweep over the large lady clerk and thin lady court reporter, both of whom waited at their positions. Behind the court reporter stood a burly biceped bailiff with a stiff black smudge of a mustache and a grim look. The clerk, court reporter and the bailiff were the only others present in the courtroom.