Fixed up in February (Spring River Valley Book 2) by Clarice Wynter

bit cloudy from welling tears, she couldn’t read a thing. She dumped her purse on the couch and fished her cell phone out of the flotsam. “Oh, come on…” Her fingers shook as she scrolled through her call list to find his number since she’d deliberately not put it into her contact list. “Come on…there!” She hit dial and waited. And waited. Damn him, was he playing hard to get now?
    “Hello?” The sound of his voice sent a wave of something through her. She had to sit down.
    “Finally! I thought you’d never answer.”
    “Sorry. I’m in my car.”
    “Oh. Call me back if you’re driving.”
    “Okay.” He hung up, and Audrey just stared at the phone. “What the hell? What am I doing?” A second later her phone rang. “Hello?”
    “I parked. What’s up?”
    “What’s up? I got your…note.”
    “What note?”
    “The newspaper! It’s…ah…pretty damn amazing.”
    “Oh…well. Chad said he owed me a favor. He’s pretty good with words, don’t you think?”
    “Yes…I do.”
    “Well. I gotta go. I’m meeting someone. I’ll call you later.”
    “What…oh…uh…”
    “Bye.” He hung up again. Audrey let out a very long, slow breath. The slow simmer had begun. This was all a joke to him, wasn’t it? He was putting her on once again. Just as she wound up to throw her phone across the room, her door bell rang. She flung the door open, and there stood Max with the same bouquet of flowers he was holding in the picture on the paper.
    “Sorry, I’m late,” he said. “I was on the phone.”
    She gaped at him. He was insane. Completely out of his mind. “Get in here.” She grabbed the front of his coat and yanked him over the threshold into her arms, crushing the flowers in between them as she kissed him.
    “Hey, easy there…some of these roses have thorns.” He broke the kiss for a second and eased the now crushed flowers out from between them, then he tossed them on the couch. “That’s better—”
    Audrey kissed him again, her pulse pounding and her heart doing somersaults. Why was it every time she laid eyes on this man she couldn’t think straight? “This was the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me,” she said, working at the zipper of his coat. She had him out of it in a second and slid her fingers under the hem of his shirt.
    He moaned and kissed her lips, her nose, her jaw while he muttered, “Chad’s a pretty romantic guy.”
    Audrey pulled back. “Should I be kissing him then?”
    “Never.” He lowered his hands to her backside and squeezed.
    Audrey’s knees almost buckled. If she didn’t have him soon, she’d go insane. “You’re pretty lucky this worked. I might have thought it was creepy. Were you waiting outside for me to get home?”
    “I called the hospital earlier and asked when your shift ended…ah…oh…do that again.” She’d tucked her fingers into his waistband and tugged on the edge of his briefs. He wrapped his arms around her and guided her toward the couch, which was full of the contents of her purse and broken flowers.
    “Bedroom. This way. I hope you’re up for some very physically demanding activity.”
    “I am up. I am definitely up.”
    “Wait a minute, the hospital told you what time my shift ended?”
    “No.”
    “But you just said…”
    “They told me they didn’t give out that information, so I called Taverna Fiora and talked to Grant who gave me Harper’s number, and I called her and she told me when your shift ended.”
    “Wow.” Audrey’s swirling thoughts suspended for a second as she pulled Max over the threshold of her bedroom. She paused to pull the top of her scrubs over her head . Oh, God, I’m wearing scrubs! I haven’t showered in sixteen hours! “I smell like a hospital,” she whispered while she helped him open his belt.
    “You smell like crushed roses.”
    He pulled his own shirt off, and she nearly swooned. The perfect abs led up to perfect pecs and those edible biceps of his. She