The Rebel Doc Who Stole Her Heart. Susan Carlisle

He sucked in a breath. This had been such a bad idea on so many levels. The woman was terrified and he was turned on.

      He took his hand off the handlebars long enough to pat her knee. “You’re doing great.”

      As he turned right out of the parking lot, he realized he had no idea where she lived. He’d spent so much time trying to convince her to get on the bike that he’d forgotten to ask for directions. “Which way is your house?” he called over his shoulder.

      There was no answer.

      “Point in the direction I need to go.”

      Again he heard nothing.

      “Michelle, we can’t just drive around all night. You have to tell me where you live.”

      She lifted one finger against his stomach and pointed ahead.

      “I’m going the right way?”

      She nodded against his back.

      It was far too late for word games. He needed directions and she seemed incapable of giving them. Just up the street was the bright sign of an all-night diner. He was hungry and because they had done surgery tonight they wouldn’t be required to be at the hospital until the day after tomorrow. They had time to stop.

      He pulled into the parking lot and under the glaring lights. As he eased the bike to a stop, Michelle’s grip on him slackened. He missed her warm, soft breasts pressed tightly against him. As if she realized she was still holding onto him, her arms fell away and she pushed back on the seat.

      “What’re we doing here?”

      “Getting some breakfast.”

      “I want to go home.”

      “In that case, you’re going to have to tell me how to get there. Which you couldn’t do on the bike. So while you give me directions, I’m going to get some eggs and bacon. Care to join me?”

      Once again she looked unsure. It always caught him by surprise because she was so formidable in the OR. Maybe the overconfident woman wasn’t so self-assured after all.

      “I am kind of hungry.”

      She put one foot on the ground and grabbed his shoulder as she brought the other over. He climbed off. Michelle was already in the process of removing her helmet. When she got it off he took it from her and laid it beside his on the seat.

      The diner looked like it had been around forever. It was a fifties-type place with silver siding, orange bench seats, and Formica tabletops. He loved the place already.

      He held the door open for Michelle. Her hair was mussed and she still wore green scrubs but that didn’t detract from her stately walk or good looks. She could have been a conquering queen by the way she held herself. What made her even more eye-catching was that it was a natural part of who she was, nothing conceited about it.

      There were only a handful of people in the place but all eyes turned to her. She ignored them and scooted into the first booth she came to. Ty moved in across from her.

      “I thought you might like to sit where you can see your bike.”

      “Good plan.”

      “How long have you been riding?” she asked as she picked up a plastic-covered menu.

      “Since I was about sixteen.”

      “That young?” Her eyes widened.

      “Yeah. I had to have a way to get to and from school.”

      She looked up over the menu. “Your parents let you have a motorcycle at that age?”

      “No, my grandfather did.” Whoa, she’d already gotten more personal information out of him than most people did. Usually he steered the conversation away from himself but Michelle wasn’t giving him a chance to as she shot off another question.

      “How did your parents feel about that?”

      “They didn’t care.”

      She looked down at the double-sided card in her hand and mumbled, “I sure would have.”

      “They weren’t around to care.” Bitterness filled his voice but, then, it always did when he spoke about his parents. Which he rarely did.

      Thankfully the server approached their table. She was in her mid-forties, slightly overweight and had her thin hair tied back in a ponytail. “What you have?”

      “Hi, there. I’ll have the breakfast platter. Eggs over easy.”

      When the woman looked at her, Michelle said, “And I’d like the mile-high pancakes.”

      Ty smiled up at the server. “And a large pot of fresh coffee.”

      The woman smiled. “Coming up.”

      “You’re amazing. That woman looked so sour when she came over to take our order and she leaves smiling because she has spoken to you.”

      “Why, thank you. Nothing but the power of Ty.”

      “The power of Ty, uh? Ty is a nickname, isn’t it? I’d guess your full name is Tyrone.”

      Michelle was being unusually chatty. Maybe it was the late hour, maybe she was hungry or maybe it was the fact she was stuck with him. Normally he would have complained about all the personal questions but he found he didn’t want to give her a reason to stop. It was good and bad. He liked her attention too much and she was uncovering his secrets.

      “I was named after Tyrone, Georgia.”

      “Why after a town?’

      “Because my parents were passing through it when my mother went into labor. You sure are full of questions.”

      “It’s interesting. I’ve never known anyone named after a town. So you were born in Tyrone.”

      Ty hesitated a moment before he said more. He’d told maybe three other people about his birth. “No, I was born in a stand of trees beside a cotton field.”

      “What?”

      “My parents didn’t believe in going to the hospital.” He put his fingers in the air to make quotation marks. “Birth is a natural process. You don’t need a hospital for that.”

      “In this day and age I can’t imagine that happening.”

      For Joey no doctor and no hospital, going all natural, had been a death sentence. Ty had seen to it that he was no longer associated with those ideas. “Well, it didn’t just happen yesterday. I am thirty-four years old.” Okay, now he’d said enough. For someone who had a difficult time building relationships at work, Michelle sure had him spilling his guts.

      “You know what I mean. Medicine has advanced so far. We know so much more than we used to.”

      “Yeah, science has come a long way but not everyone embraces it, neither does it have all the answers.” That statement made it sound like he was defending his parents, which he certainly was not.

      Michelle’s eyes went dark and a sheen of moisture covered them before she blinked. What had she been thinking about to bring that on?

      Her eyes rose to meet his. They held a stricken look for a second before her gaze focused downward. Had he stumbled on a secret? He didn’t want to look into anyone’s dark closet.

      To his great relief, the server returned to place Michelle’s plate down in front of her then his in front of him. Now he’d make an effort to turn the conversation to something less personal and certainly more pleasant.

      “Whoo, comfort food. I might think you’re feeding your emotions.”

      “I like pancakes. Nothing special there.”

      He was beginning to think there were a number of things special about Michelle.

      “Still an amazing amount of food for