Dr. Daddy by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

from what might be a second, more damaging, blow.
    “You’re lucky you’re still standing,” Zoey told him, her own breathing decidedly ragged. She lifted the back of her hand to her lips, as if trying to wipe away the sensation of his mouth covering hers. “I could have made sure that you’d never sing baritone again.”
    “But why did you do it?” he repeated. He threw his shoulders back, regaining his manly composure, then took a step forward.
    “Don’t,” she cautioned him, raising her hands in front of herself in what was an obviously defensive pose. “Don’t come near me.”
    “Why, Zoey?” he demanded again. He ignored her warning and took two more steps toward her. “What’s with you and the knee treatment? Why did you do it?”
    She hesitated for a moment, watching Jonas as if she were carefully studying him. “Why...why did you?” she finally asked, her voice suddenly sounding as haunted and fearful as her eyes looked. “Why did you...kiss me?”
    That was what made Jonas stop dead in his tracks—the look in her eyes. She was scared, he acknowledged. Really, truly scared. Of him. The realization hit him square in the gut, as if that’s where she had landed her knee instead. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall a single time in his life when he had caused a woman to be scared of him. Certainly not by kissing her, he thought. Hell, the way he’d kissed Zoey hadn’t even been one of his better efforts.
    “Zoey, there’s no reason to be frightened,” he told her in the most reassuring voice he could muster.
    “I’m not frightened.”
    “The hell you’re not.”
    “I’m not frightened,” she repeated adamantly.
    “Okay, you’re not frightened,” he conceded in a dubious voice. “Then why did you just try to turn me into a eunuch?”
    She relaxed a little—but only a little, he noted—and sighed. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard. Now you answer my question. Why did you kiss me?”
    He opened his mouth to toss off some casual remark, but all that emerged was the truth. “Because I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first day I met you.”
    Well, that certainly seemed to do the trick. Immediately, Zoey’s posture changed. She relaxed her body completely, dropped her hands to her sides, inclined her head forward and said, “What?”
    Jonas frowned. “You heard me. I said I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first day I met you.”
    She gaped at him incredulously. “The first day you met me, you chewed my butt off for clocking in three minutes late because Dr. Michaelson had waylaid me in pediatrics.”
    “It was a defense mechanism,” Jonas said. “I wanted to kiss you, so I chewed your butt off instead.”
    “Oh, that really makes sense. It’s all so clear to me now.”
    “Don’t be so sarcastic.”
    “Then don’t tell me things that aren’t true.”
    “I am telling you the truth.” He bunched two fistfuls of hair in his hands and sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, Zoey, the reason I couldn’t sleep tonight was because I kept thinking about you. About you sleeping in my spare room. About—” He stopped abruptly, deciding it probably wasn’t in his best interest to reveal that he had been wondering what she looked like naked.
    Zoey shook her head slowly and tried to pretend she wasn’t hearing what she was hearing. Mostly because what Jonas was saying about her mirrored her own thoughts about him. The reason she had forgotten about Keanu Reeves on ‘Letterman’ was because she had been too preoccupied by visions of Jonas Tate dancing in her head. Much to her horror, she had been drifting off to sleep wondering what it would be like to be nuzzled up to him in his bed instead of trying to warm up her own sheets alone. That was when she had decided she needed a little diversion before hitting the hay. And Keanu Reeves had always been a surefire distraction for her before.
    Before she had been thrust into such close quarters with Jonas, anyway. Now even Keanu