You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll (best fiction novels .TXT) 📕

men exchanged a long, speaking look above her head and seemed to come to a decision. After a moment, they shifted slightly away from her, still crowding her personal space uncomfortably, but not quite as uncomfortably as before.

She dragged in a shaky breath, not realizing until that moment just how unnerved she’d been.

Not that she wasn’t still more than a little unnerved.

She felt overly warm, too.

Actually, now that she thought about it, she felt almost … dizzy, definitely jittery. Distracted by that realization, she fell to analyzing her reaction. It dawned on her after a very few moments that her chaotic response was on a purely feminine level and had very little, if anything, to do with any primal sense of threat. Pheromones, she realized dimly as she inhaled and felt her body react to the chemical even though she wasn’t actually aware of the scent. The combined testosterone of the two overpoweringly male strangers was enough to bring any self-respecting, red blooded female instantly into heat.

Rather pleased by the discovery that, despite her preoccupation with the sciences, she could indeed react like any other woman, Bronte flicked a tentative smile at the newcomer, who glanced down at her as the lift, at last, stopped at her level and the doors began to open. She’d already tensed to step off when the opening doors revealed yet another man, dressed as the first two.

This one, however, was fair … and carrying a rather large piece of equipment that was heavy enough it made every considerable muscle in his upper body and arms bulge with effort. Bronte was so mesmerized by the powerful display that she wasn’t aware that the man had crowded her into the back corner as he stepped into the lift with his load until she stepped on the feet of the man behind her and fell against him. An arm came around her waist, molding her to every deliciously hard, sculpted inch of his body. Embarrassed at her clumsiness but grateful that he hadn’t allowed her to fall when she’d lost her balance and fell against him, Bronte tipped her head back to smile at him apologetically. “I am so sorry! Excuse me!”

He met her gaze, his arm tightening around her. A shiver chased down her spine, but she wasn’t certain if it was because the icy color of his eyes made him appear so cool and detached, or if there really was no warmth in his gaze. Something long and hard rose against her buttocks, however, that completely disordered her mind. “No problem,” he responded after a long moment of hesitation, his voice as cool and as lacking in inflection as his gaze.

He didn’t let go of her at once. In fact, he didn’t let go of her at all. Bronte looked down at the arm clamped around her waist and then toward the doors of the lift just as they closed. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “This was my floor!”

The blond man, she discovered, was looking her over with the same detached interest the other two men had. Groping for the glasses she’d shoved on top of her head, she winced as strands of her hair, tangled in the piece, parted company with her scalp as she dragged the glasses down to help her see him more clearly. The face that came into view sent a jolt through her.

It was hard and angular, purely masculine and yet so classically formed and appealing ‘beautiful’ was the first thought that popped in her mind. Framed by long, beautiful blond hair that hung loosely well past his shoulders, ending just past the hard male breasts that still bulged from the thing he held, she was dimly aware that hair that luxuriant should have looked completely out of place on a man who looked so very, very … male, and yet it didn’t. The glossy, wavy hair only seemed to emphasize his masculinity, to set off his god-like perfection to greatest advantage.

What were the odds, she thought distractedly, of finding herself in a lift with three such exceptional specimens? Astronomical, she decided, even though she couldn’t seem to focus her mind on running the calculations, because she hadn’t seen a single man in all her years that came close to even one of them.

“This is Dr. Nichols,” said the man behind her at just about the time Bronte managed to free her gaze from the sapphire-eyed blond god before her and glanced down at what he held.

She frowned as she stared at the filing unit he held and a flicker of recognition dawned. Instantly diverted, she looked the piece over more carefully. It didn’t just look familiar. It was familiar! It was hers!

Doubt instantly swept over her, though, as it occurred to her to wonder why in the world anyone would take her files from her office—the whole filing unit! She frowned, wondering if she’d forgotten to pay her office rent and was being evicted … or if they’d simply decided to move her. Indignation filled her at that thought.

“This is B. A. Nichols?” the blond man questioned, tilting his head to study her curiously. “The data banks listed a male.”

“Obviously not current,” the black haired man holding her commented. He almost seemed to shrug. “They are … inefficient.”

Bronte craned her neck to look up at the man. “They?” she echoed, feeling the sting as a personal insult even though she had nothing to do with updating the data bank herself.

He caught her face in the crook between his thumb and forefinger before she could look away, studying her face with that same unnerving intensity of before. “She is obviously qualified, however, in her field else she would not be practicing medicine.”

Bronte stared up at him, fighting the mesmerizing effect he had upon her, realizing dimly that although his words seemed no more than a dispassionate appraisal of her skills as a physician, the look in his eyes, to say nothing of the brick hard erection digging into her backside, seemed to