Page 15 of Dr. Baby Daddy

“I’m sorry for that.” I drape my arm over the back of the tan suede couch. “Work is hard.”

“What do you do?”

“Trauma surgeon at St. Xavier’s.”

Understanding shines on her face as she turns to face me and shuffles a little closer. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine the things you have to see every day.”

I shrug. “Most days, it isn’t that bad. Other days, it’s horrible. We do what we can, and then we move onto the next person.”

Izzy picks at the hem of my shirt. “Well, I hope that things won’t be as tense between us now. I know that you don’t like me, but I don’t want you to hate me either.”

“As annoying as you are, I find it hard to believe that anyone could hate you.” Bright white numbers glare at me from the stove. It’s creeping close to two in the morning. “I should let you get some sleep.”

I stand up, but she takes my hand and pulls me back down. Izzy smiles and grabs the blanket off the armchair, draping it over her lap.

“There’s no way that you’re taking off now when you’re just starting to talk to me like a normal person. Come on, I’m not tired. Tell me something else. If I have to spend the night in your apartment, I need to know that you’re not some crazy murderer.”

My eyebrows rise as I shift away from her on the couch, trying to keep distance between us. “I save lives for a living.”

The corner of her mouth curls upward. “And that’s a great cover story. It’s the one I would want to use if I was going around and kidnapping half-naked people who wandered out onto my fire escape.”

Despite my determination to keep a distance between us, I laugh. The smile she gives me as a reward is enough to send my heart racing. The careful control I’ve kept over my life for so long is slipping.

If I don’t get out of this room now, Izzy is going to worm her way into my life entirely. I can feel it now. There’s no resisting that smile of hers.

“If I was going to kill you, I wouldn’t have let you set foot in my apartment. That seems like it’s asking to get caught.”

She steeples her fingers together and nods. “You do make an excellent point. All right, so you’re not a killer. But there could still be nearly two dozen other red flags. For one, you have dusty guitars, but you act like you hate music. What’s that about?”

“Used to play.” I rub the back of my neck. The room shrinks around me, growing warmer as her entire face lights up.

“You have to play something for me. I always tried to pick up the guitar, but it never came as easily as the piano.”

I shake my head, wishing that I had left the window open so there was some cool air flowing through the room. “I don’t play anymore. I don’t have time for it.”

She gives me a flat look. “You have plenty of time for it right now. Please? Play something for me?”

“I don’t like playing for other people. I’ve had awful stage fright since I was a kid. And I’m going to be rusty. It’s not going to sound good.”

Izzy tosses the blanket to the side and gets up. As she heads into my bedroom, my gaze drops down to the sway of her hips. She comes back into the living room a moment later with my acoustic guitar in her hand.

“You can be as rusty as you like. Play something for me.”

How many of my ex-girlfriends have asked for a song and I’ve refused?

It was easy to tell those women no. I said that I didn’t play anymore, and they left it at that. Not Izzy.

No, she barges her way past boundaries with an optimism that I should find sickening. Instead, it’s addicting. I pull away, and she pushes right back.

Izzy takes my hand, sparks flying where she touches me. It takes everything in me not to flip my hand over and drag her into my lap. I want to see if that push and pull is still there when there’s nothing separating us.

Instead, she puts the neck of the guitar in my hand and sits back down. My stomach twists as I take a moment to tune the guitar the best that I can. I twist on the couch, propping one leg up on the cushion.

My knee brushes against hers, sending fire through my body as she reaches out and pats my thigh. As I strum the first notes of the song, my cock twitches.

She needs to keep that hand off me if we’re going to make it through the night with our clothes on.

Izzy tilts her head, her blond hair falling forward as she listens to me play. The soft smile on her face has me strumming one of my favorite songs. It’s quiet and slow, the melody haunting and beautiful.

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