The Greatest Risk Read Free Page B

a modicum of her normal dignity.
    â€œThere’s Billy,” the hazard said.
    Maggie turned to see a young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, his head covered in a baseball cap, doing wheelchair wheelies past the nurses’ station. Giving Mr. August one more killing look, Hillary turned and dashed after Billy.
    â€œMaggie, I’m Luke August.”
    Maggie found her hand enveloped in one that was large and strong and warm. She looked up into eyes that were glinting with the devil.
    She snatched her hand away from his, recognizing the clear and present danger of his touch.
    â€œYou were racing wheelchairs?” she asked, brushing at an imaginary speck on her hopelessly creased skirt. “With a sick child?”
    â€œHe’s not really a child. Seventeen, I think.”
    â€œAnd the sick part?”
    â€œCareful, when you purse your lips like that you look just like Nurse Nightmare over there.”
    â€œI happen to be an advocate for children,” she said primly.
    â€œYou would have approved, then. The kid’s sick. He’s not dead. He needs people to quit acting like he is. Besides, I was bored.”
    She stared at him and knew that he would be one of those men who was easily bored, full of restless energy, always looking for the adrenaline rush. He was the type of man who jumped out of airplanes and rode pitching bulls, in short, the kind of man who would worry his woman to death.
    â€œWhat brings you to Portland General, Mr. August?” she asked, seeking confirmation of what she already knew.
    â€œLuke. Motorcycle incident. Broke my back. Not as serious as it sounds. Lower vertebrae.”
    â€œNot the first time you’ve been a guest here?” she guessed.
    He smiled. “Nope. They have my own personal box of plaster of paris put away for me in the E.R. I’ve broken my right leg twice, and my wrist. Of course, then there are the injuries they don’t cast—a concussion, a separation and a dislocation. And the cuts that required stitches. That’s what happened to my nose.”
    She suspected he knew exactly how darn sexy that ragged scar across his nose was, so she tried not to look. And failed.
    He smiled at her failure, and that smile was devastating, warm and sexy. Of course, he was exactly the kind of man who knew it, and whom a woman with an ounce of sense walked away from. No, ran away from. He had mentioned seven injuries in the span of seven seconds!
    Besides, he was exactly the kind of man who could have you breaking all the rules—kissing on the front steps of a public place and loving it—before you even knew what had hit you.
    â€œLook, Maggie, it was nice running into you.”
    A different person might have known how to play with that, but she just looked at him with consternation.
    â€œI’m trying to say I’m sorry I ran you down. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you,” he said. He was dismissing her.
    It was a carelessly tossed-out offer. He didn’t mean it, and of course there wasn’t anything he could do to erase the fact that she had been wagging her upper thighs at everyone who had come in the main entrance in the last few minutes.
    But for some reason, looking into the jewel-like sparkle of those green eyes, feeling the wattage of that devilish grin, Dr. Strong’s homework assignment came to mind.
    Be bold. Do something totally out of character.
    It would be absolute insanity for Maggie to actually say the words that formed in her brain. She thought of that couple kissing on the steps and was filled with a sudden, heady warmth.
    â€œYou could go out with me,” she said, and then at the look of stunned surprise on his face, she stammered, “You know, to make it up to me.”
    His eyes widened, and then narrowed. He was looking at her in a brand-new way, and she suddenly had the awful feeling she was coming up short.
    She was not the kind of woman a man