Dr. Irresistible. Elizabeth Bevarly

clothed.

      But honestly. A more philandering, womanizing playboy she had never met. Ever since his arrival at Seton General, Seth Mahoney had left a string of broken hearts, of both the RN and MD variety, in his glorious, blond, blue-eyed wake. He was everything she didn’t want or need in a man. Succumbing to him would be…would be…

      Well, it would be totally irresponsible.

      And irresponsible was the one thing that Pru Holloway totally, absolutely, definitely, unequivocally, at all costs, avoided being. These days, at least. No way would she tolerate being called irresponsible. So no way was she going to take up with Seth Mahoney.

      He was in no way husband-and-father material, and these days that was exactly what Pru wanted and needed—and deserved—in a man. Someone who was upright, forthright, do right. Someone who wanted to build a family, not abandon one. Seth Mahoney had way too much in common with Tanner’s father, she recalled, not for the first time. Both were golden-haired, ocean-eyed charmers. Both had a way of making a woman—any woman—feel as if she were their one-and-only, forever-after kind of love. Both were totally irresistible.

      And both had the emotional maturity of thirteen-year-olds.

      A year and a half ago, the day Pru had realized she was pregnant, she had hesitated before telling her boyfriend, Kevin, the news. She’d been stunned at first by the knowledge of her impending motherhood—the two of them had been using birth control but had become part of that slight percentage of failure. Yet after giving her condition some serious thought, Pru had been surprised to discover, even then, that she wasn’t all that upset to find herself pregnant.

      In the long run—once the shock had worn off, anyway—she’d come to understand that it wasn’t the idea of impending motherhood that had really bothered her then. No, what had really bothered her had been the idea of marrying Kevin. As much as she’d told herself she loved the guy, Pru just hadn’t been able to quite visualize living with him…day after day after day…week after week after week…month after month after month…for the rest of her natural life. Deep down she’d known, even then, that he wasn’t a forever-after kind of guy.

      But she had wanted to behave responsibly, and that meant telling Kevin he would be a father and then marrying Kevin so that their baby would benefit from the presence of two loving parents. Unfortunately, she discovered right away that there were a couple of unforeseen factors she hadn’t fully considered where their relationship was concerned. One of those factors was that Kevin was a complete jerk. The other factor was that said jerk took off for Jerkland the day after Pru broke the news to him, and he was never heard from again.

      They had made a date to meet for dinner, to talk about their situation once Kevin had had twenty-four hours to get used to the idea of his impending fatherhood. But Kevin had evidently decided what he wanted to do in about twenty-four seconds. Because he never showed up at the restaurant. And when Pru went to his apartment, she discovered that it had been cleaned out. Completely. When she went to the Chevron station where he worked, she was told he had quit his job that morning and had left no forwarding address where he could be contacted. According to his boss, he’d cited “family problems” as the reason for his abrupt departure.

      Yeah, right. Family problems, Pru repeated to herself now. His problem was that he hadn’t wanted a family.

      She sighed with heartfelt frustration, pushed the sad memories away and sat down in her chair at the nurses’ station. She knew she was better off this way, that any life she might have tried to build with Kevin would have come tumbling down around her feet in no time flat. Better that she had discovered what kind of man he was before Tanner’s birth, than to risk having Tanner grow attached to his father and suffer the grief of his loss.

      A baby needed to be loved and wanted. Kevin had obviously felt neither emotion for his son, and Tanner would have eventually figured that out. But Pru had enough love and want in her heart for two people and then some, and she gave it all to her child. Someday, she was confident, she would meet a man with whom she could share those feelings, too, a man who would be both perfect husband and perfect father material. For now, however, she was truly content to be alone.

      Well, pretty content to be alone, at any rate. Kind of content. In a way. Being alone was certainly better than being with someone who didn’t love her. Of that much she was absolutely sure.

      “Why, Prudence Holloway, as I live and breathe!”

      Pru’s head snapped up at the summons, and her gaze fell on a woman who appeared to have exited from one of the patient rooms that surrounded the nurses’ station. She studied the woman intently in silence for a moment, and although she looked a bit familiar, Pru couldn’t quite place where she might have met her.

      “Yes?” she said, not quite able to hide her confusion. “I’m Pru Holloway. Can I help you?”

      The woman drew nearer and frowned at her, but the gesture seemed playful somehow. She wore a pale-lavender dress that shimmered beneath the fluorescent lighting overhead in a way that only pure silk can. Elegant pearls circled her neck and were fastened in her ears, and a good half dozen rings—all quite sparkly in a rainbow of hues—decorated the fingers of both hands. Her cosmetics were artfully applied, her strawberry-blond hair swept back from her face by an expert hand.

      In no way was she the kind of woman who traveled in Pru’s social circle. This woman was obviously wealthy and refined, and used to the finer things in life.

      “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me,” she said. “Easton High School? Class of ’90?”

      Pru studied the woman harder. If this woman was, as she seemed to be claiming, a member of Pru’s senior class, then Pru should definitely remember her. No way would she forget anyone at Easton High in her native Pittsburgh, in spite of there having been 240 members of her graduating class, and in spite of the fact that she had gone out of her way to avoid every last one of them for the past ten years.

      No way would she forget the people who had dubbed her, in the year book’s senior class superlatives, “Most Irresponsible.”

      The dubious distinction had only crowned what had been four years of taunting from her classmates, and it had brought with it many chuckles throughout her senior year. Pru, however, had never been the one laughing. No, that particular pleasure had fallen to all her classmates, who had delighted in replaying, time and time again, all the instances when she had behaved a bit…oh…irresponsibly.

      Pru herself had never understood the humor everyone else had found in having awarded her such a label. Even if she had been a tad, oh…irresponsible…over the years, that was no reason for her high school class to have voted her such.

      And then to have printed the distinction in the senior yearbook.

      Beside a photograph of her dangling upside down over the side of a cliff, with a rappelling line wrapped around her ankle after she had…irresponsibly…tried to climb it without the benefit of lessons.

      And above a list of other activities—at least a dozen of them—that had been a trifle, oh…irresponsible.

      For everyone to see. For everyone to laugh about. For all eternity.

      It really wasn’t so much that Pru had been irresponsible, she tried to reassure herself now, as she had for so many years. No, it had just been that she just didn’t like to be bothered with taking the extra time out to learn to do things or read the instructions or follow rules.

      These days, of course, she was nothing like she had been in high school. Nothing at all. No way. Motherhood had brought with it an enormous amount of responsibility. And Pru was proud of herself for having risen to the occasion so nicely. She took good care of her son, provided a life for him that was, if not luxurious, certainly more than adequate. And these days, those rash impulses that had been the bane of her youth were nowhere to be found.

      At least, she was pretty sure they were nowhere to be found. It had been quite some time since she’d behaved rashly or impulsively. And she tried very hard to keep it that way. Of course, one could argue that her incessant preoccupation