Dare Me: Red Hot Weekend Read online

  She had a wedding reception to attend and a stubborn man to seduce.

  She couldn’t waste time standing on the sidewalk.

  Rob wriggled his eyebrows at Penny Johnston, stowing her with a wide smile as he swung her in his arms. She giggled, her arms slinking around his shoulders, her body pressing to his with excited joy. Around them on the dance floor, other guests shuffled aside, giving them the room to really move their stuff.

  Rob rubbed his forehead against hers, the sound of her laughter bubbling his own up through his chest. “I think you’ve stolen my heart, Miss Johnston.”

  She clung to him with fierce pressure, her blue eyes twinkling—yes, twinkling—behind eyelashes longer and blacker than eyelashes had a right to be. “You’re silly, Uncle Rob.”

  Rob affected a wounded expression, twirling Joseph’s youngest cousin across the dance floor to the live band’s frenetic rendition of something sounding a lot like Lady Gaga on speed. His head ached a little, but not enough to bloody well stop him dancing with Penny. “Silly?” He spun her once more, barely able to control his grin when she squealed with delight and clung to him tighter. He grinned. Headaches and pain and giddiness could all go jump if it meant he was responsible for such innocent joy. “Silly? Right, that’s it. I’m afraid I can’t ask you to marry me now.”

  Penny, all of about eight if he remembered rightly, giggled again. “Marry you? Eew. Then I’d get boy germs.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, rubbing his forehead on hers again. “You’ve been dancing with me all night, Penny Johnston,” he intoned with mock severity, “you’ve already got boy germs.”

  “Eew!” Penny pulled a face, wriggling in his arms as she laughed. “Gross.”

  He spun her one last time, an elaborate turn that made the girl squeal so loudly with joy a lull fell over Joe and Anna’s guests for a moment before more than one person chuckled.

  Rob lowered Penny to the floor, a warm ache filling his cheeks. This was what it was about. Smiling, laughing until it hurt. Loving every moment lived. Living every moment to its fullest.

  Spying the site of Anna approaching from his right, he bent at the waist and bestowed Penny a quick kiss on her forehead. “If I dance with the bride for a bit, promise not to get too jealous?”

  Penny giggled, swiping at her forehead with the back of her hand. “Only if you promise to spin her like you did me.”

  He grinned. “Is that a dare?”

  Blue eyes twinkled again. “Yes.”

  “Deal.”

  With a wink, Rob swooped around and snared Anna around the waist, catching her completely unaware. Another wave of lightheadedness washed over him, but he ignored it. He twirled her upward, lifting her feet off the floor in a graceful arc, the sound of her laughter as wonderful as Penny’s. “Awesome, Uncle Rob,” he heard Penny cry.

  “Awesome, Mr. Thorton,” Anna laughed, sliding her arms around Rob’s neck as her feet returned to the floor. She smiled up at him, cheeks flushed, lips parted. “And yet, why do I feel like I should be giving you a lecture?”

  He grinned again. “Because I’ve just stared death in the face and you’re worried about me?”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I forgot about your ego.”

  Rob laughed, capturing her hands as she gave his chest a slight shove. He tugged her against his body. “No you didn’t,” he said, moving them both in time to the music—now a somewhat subdued rendition of U2’s “Desire”. “Nice band, by the way.”

  Anna raised an eyebrow. “Don’t change the subject. I know you’re high on life at the moment, but I don’t want to be rushing back from my honeymoon because you’ve decided to ignore doctor’s orders.” She pulled away a little and gave him a stern frown. “I’m sure she’d be less than impressed if she knew you were flinging females around a dance floor.”

  The pit of Rob’s stomach tightened at Anna’s offhanded mention of his ex-doctor. That he was still a tad weak, and more than a tad inclined to suffer headaches was something he wasn’t sharing with anyone, let alone Anna. It was a good bloody thing the only person he would consider telling was on the other side of the world. Actually, he wouldn’t tell her either. She’d just try and take his blood pressure and order him to bed, the last place he wanted to be. Unless it was with—

  He killed the thought. But not before an image of Emily filled his head—tall, slim and gorgeous, her eyes studying him with a guarded compassion he’d grown to both ache for and despise, her rosebud lips curled in a small smile equally as unreadable.

  More than once in the eight months he’d spent in her care he’d wanted to kiss those lips. Feel them against his own to see if they really did taste as sweet as he suspected they would. But he was the patient and she was his doctor. She’d taken the Hippocratic oath. What she felt for him had nothing to do with her heart and everything to do with the chart that hung at the end of his bed.

  Nothing had ever happened to make him believe otherwise. Until the night before he signed himself out, that was.

  His lips tingled with the sudden memory of their kiss as they lay on his narrow hospital cot together, their hearts beating in rapid harmony, the soft glow from his side lamp throwing their bodies in muted shadows. His cock twitched with the memory of her fingers wrapped around its rigid length, exploring it with feverish heat as her thigh slid over his leg and her tongue—

  He spun Anna away in a flamboyant twirl, not wanting her to feel his rather inappropriately timed semi.

  Damn it, why couldn’t he get the bloody doctor out of his head?

  “Mind if I cut in?” Joseph’s deep voice sounded behind him and Rob started, watching his best mate step around him. “Or do you plan to hog all the beautiful women this evening, Thorton?”

  Rob took a step backward, holding out his hand with a grin on his face, watching Joseph snare Anna in rough embrace and jerk her to his body. “Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” he murmured.

  “Hello, Mr. Hudson,” she murmured back, snaking her arms around Joseph’s shoulders before rising up on tiptoe and brushing her lips over his.

  Rob took another step away from the couple. “Think that’s my cue to go find the bridesmaid.”

  With one last smile at the two most important people in his life, Rob turned away from them, ready to seek out Anna’s stunning redheaded friend from the U.S.

  And found himself staring straight into the smoke-grey eyes of Dr. Emily Knox, PhD, MBBS, MSc and about a billion other medical initials.

  “What the—?”

  The question died on his lips. Or rather, it was replaced by a drawn-out breath as he stared at the woman who had cured him. A woman he’d thought over eighteen thousand kilometers away. The ache in his head gave a little throb. His heart jumped in his chest.

  She’s here.

  Catching himself staring, he gave her a lopsided grin—the sardonic kind he knew exasperated her. “Care to dance?”

  He saw the edges of her eyes tighten, a sure sign she wanted to say something sharp and altogether clipped. He knew this woman well. Better than he’d known any woman before. Hell, he should. He’d spent every day of the last eight months with her. He braced himself for what was to come—a distant part of his mind making a note to give Joseph a bloody smack in the jaw (who else would have invited Emily to the wedding than his best mate?)—another part wondering what she would do if he told her about his headache, and almost fell over with shock when she stepped toward him, pressed her tall, slim body to his and slid her left hand up his arm to rest it on his right shoulder. “Yes,” she said, closing the fingers of her right hand around his left. “I would.”

  Her soft voice played over his senses like it always had, her English accent more pronounced than ever. Or was that because his ears had become acclimatized to the Australian accents around him again?

  He didn’t know.

  He pulled in a slow breath, headache forgotten, the subtle scent of Emily’s perfume filtering into his body. His stomach knotted, his balls grew harde
r, that delicate fragrance flooding him with memories too haunting to bear. She’d cured him of anaplastic astrocytoma, and in the process inflicted him with something else. Something powerful and—he was discovering all too quickly—inescapable.

  Desire.

  You desired her from day one, Thorton. When she walked up to you in the Centro de Medicinas Alternativas foyer wearing snug denim jeans, a Yoda T-shirt and a white coat so pristine it almost blinded you.

  With an ambiguous smile he’d never seen before, she began to move to the music, her thighs brushing his, her hips and belly rubbing against his in little side-to-side strokes that made his cock jerk.

  Jesus Christ, Rob. You thought you had a semi before?

  He looked into her upturned face, knowing there wasn’t a hope in hell she wouldn’t feel his now-more-than-semi-hard hard-on. “So, is this some extreme version of a house call?” he asked, the ruffles of his shirt doing nothing to stop him feeling the tips of her breasts skim against his chest as they danced. “Or did I forget to pay the bill?”

  “Let’s call this an extension of my bedside manner, shall we?”

  He cocked an eyebrow, trying to ignore the way her body melded to his so perfectly. And the way his already rigid cock twitched at the word bed. Damn it, was he a juvenile? “I remember your bedside manner, Dr. Knox. Unless I did exactly what you said, you were prickly.”

  “And I remember you rarely doing what I told you to do. Case in point, you being here now.”

  Emily tilted her head to the side, her thick curtain of hair tumbling over her shoulder as she did so. Rob swallowed, his fingers itching to thread through those silken strands. He’d never seen it worn any other way but in a ponytail. It was gorgeous. He wanted to snare a fistful, bury his nose in its glossy weight and take a deep breath. Instead, he fixed her with a level gaze. “And that’s why you’re here now? To lecture me? You didn’t just come all this way for cake?”

  Emily’s jaw tightened at his sarcasm. She stopped dancing, her grey eyes angry. “No it isn’t, Robert. You need to come back. We need to—”

  Rob frowned at her, his chest tightening. “Come back? Why? I’m cured, remember? You cured me. You signed off as my doctor over fifteen days ago and told me I was cancer-free. I’m not going back.” He released her hand and took a step back. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her about his headache now. Or even let on he felt weak and giddy at times. “I’m going to dance the night away, see my best friend off on his honeymoon and then collapse in bed somewhere around four a.m.”

  “Robert—”

  “Then tomorrow morning,” he continued, an anger he couldn’t understand rising in his gut, “I’m going to climb the Harbour Bridge and watch the sun come up before jumping on my bike and heading up north to go scuba diving on the reef. Then after I’ve done that for a few days I’m going to jump a charter flight and spend a week in Bali, maybe hire a tuk-tuk. After that, I’m going to backpack around Vietnam, then I’m flying back home and going bush.”

  “Going bush?”

  Emily’s calm voice grated on his nerves. Always in control, was the good doctor. “Going bush. Walking out the front door, heading to the Outback and seeing where my feet—and life—take me. I can do that now, Doc. Death can’t stop me. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  She studied him, her face set in that unreadable expression he despised so much, the one that haunted his dreams every night since she walked into his bloody hospital room and declared she would cure him of brain cancer. “And you’re going to do this a whole fifteen days after I tell you you’re completely cancer-free?”

  “I’m cured,” he ground out, the knot of anger in his gut growing hot. “I have the scars to prove it.”

  Emily’s gaze flicked to the side of his head. He knew what she was thinking about. The scar running the vertical length of his scalp behind his right ear, a reminder of the first time she’d cut open his skull and went digging for gold.

  But is that the scar you were referring to, Rob? Or were you referring to the scar the annoying bloody woman left on your heart?

  He bit back a muttered curse. Damn it, why was she here?

  “So, let me get this straight,” Emily said, each word clipped by her accent, “you’re going climbing, riding, swimming, flying and walking all within a week and a half of being declared cancer-free to prove death doesn’t hold sway over you anymore, correct?”

  Rob narrowed his eyes, a lump forming in his throat. “That’s right.”

  “And you’re doing this alone?”

  He let out a sharp breath, dragging his hands through his cropped hair. “Of course I’m doing it alone. Who else would I be doing it with?”

  Emily didn’t answer for a moment and for some reason Rob realized he was holding his breath. “Well?” he snapped, uncaring of the guests around him. Fuck it, he needed to know the answer. He needed to know what Emily no-we-can’t-I’m-your-doctor Knox thought about it. He needed to know badly.

  She lifted her chin, her gaze holding his. “Me.”

  Chapter Three

  He didn’t let her say anything else. Nostrils flaring, Rob curled his fingers around her biceps and walked from the dance floor. He didn’t stop at any of the beautifully decorated tables, he didn’t stop to collect his jacket, which she could only assume was the powder blue one she spied slung over the back of a chair, he didn’t stop in the foyer to return the “g’day” from someone who may or may not have been the Australian Prime Minister. He walked straight out the doors into the lush moonlit garden surrounding the building, taking her with him. It was a good thing she was tall, Emily realized, otherwise she’d have found it difficult to keep up with his strides. Something about the set in Robert’s jaw however, told her he wouldn’t have slowed down, even if she couldn’t match his pace.

  Whatever he was doing, he was doing it with the same determination she’d seen in him the day he entered the Centro de Medicinas Alternativas and declared he wasn’t going to die. Just without the wicked grin and flashing dimple.

  Without warning, he stopped, spinning her around until she faced him. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Emily stared at him, her heart thumping up into her throat. This was it. Confession time.

  But before she could open her mouth, Rob pointed his finger at her. “You told me there wasn’t a chance in hell of us—” he waved his finger back and forth between them like an insane maestro conductor, “—happening. You told me your Hippocratic bloody Oath meant we could never be.”

  She licked her lips, sucking a deep breath through her nose. “We kissed—”

  “We did more than kiss, honey,” he cut her off. “Our clothes were off, our legs were tangled. Hell, your hand was wrapped around my dick and my hand was—”

  “We kissed,” she continued, raising her voice, “and I realized what I was doing. What I shouldn’t have been doing. I…I got frightened.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. You don’t get frightened, Dr. Knox. You control. And when you realized you couldn’t control the sexual chemistry between us anymore, when you almost burnt up in it, lying in my narrow bloody bed, our bodies pressed together, when you lost yourself in it, you shoved my bloody chart in my bloody face and told me you’d made a mistake. You told me you couldn’t feel the way you did for a patient. You said it was unethical. And unless you can tell me differently this patient is staying put.”

  He glared at her, for the first time since she’d met him showing emotion other than the sardonic humor he perpetually wore as a shield. True anger. Anger at her.

  It wasn’t the emotion she’d hoped for.

  Then give him what he wants. Or you’ll lose him. Again.

  Emily’s heart hammered against her breastbone. Eight months caring for him, fighting with the high-grade gliomas in his brain to give him the rest of his life back. Trying treatments the rest of the medical world scoffed at. Investing every moment of her day in him, using him as a guinea pig. E
ight months spending just about every day and night with him and every day she’d grown more and more in love with him. Eight months growing more and more worried that love was born, not from her heart, but from her doctor’s need to heal. Fighting it. Denying it. No matter what she thought her feelings for him, he was her patient. And then the night she’d told him he was cancer-free, the night she’d told him he no longer needed treatment, he, her patient, had kissed her and she’d realised exactly what she wanted.

  Robert. Completely and forever.

  And it scared her witless.

  Tell him, Emily.

  She stared at him, her heart in her throat. “Robert…”

  “Ah, fuck it,” he growled, blue eyes piercing her in the garden’s muted light. “I can’t wait anymore.”

  He grabbed her wrist and, nostrils flaring, yanked her to his body and crushed her mouth with his.

  His tongue plunged past her lips, stroking over her tongue in a kiss that was far more forceful than the one they’d shared in his hospital room fifteen days ago. That kiss had been gentle in its molten hunger. It had filled her with aching desire. This kiss, however…there was nothing gentle about it. He took complete possession of her mouth, invading it with not just hunger but ravenous greed. Its ferocity flooded her sex with damp pressure and made her head swim.

  She groaned, letting her tongue tangle with his as she stole her free hand to his chest. Her fingers splayed over his heart, its pounding rhythm filling her with a thrill she didn’t need to analyze, and she deepened the kiss.

  The sweet trace of champagne danced over her taste buds and, for a stupidly dizzy second she almost tore her lips from his to berate him for drinking alcohol so close to the completion of his treatment. But then the woman she was at her very core told the doctor she’d trained to be to shut the hell up. She pressed her hips to his, rolling the curve of her sex up the length of his utterly unmistakable erection.

  A low moan rumbled up Rob’s chest and he pushed her backward, his tongue mating with hers even as he pinned her against the smooth trunk of some massive tree behind her.