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after a week on the road.”

    This had to be the craziest idea she had ever come up with.
    Worse, even, than the time when they were second-year med students and she and Taylor had tried to break into the anatomy lab for a little extra study time working on their cadavers.
    In the cold, pale light of a December morning, what had seemed so logical the night before seemed shortsighted and foolish when faced with the cold, hard reality of spending at least a week in intimate quarters with Hunter Bradshaw.
    Kate stood at the front window of the small second-floor apartment she had moved into the month before, watching for him to pull into the driveway below.
    A quick glance at the clock on the microwave told her that even if he was obsessively punctual, he wouldn’t arrive for at least ten minutes, but she couldn’t seem to pry herself away from the window where she stood tracing the filigreed frost collecting on the other side.
    She hadn’t slept well, with her nerves on edge and her mind racing. She had finally tired of her tossing and turning a few hours before dawn and had climbed out of bed to start preparing for the trip.
    The few things she planned to take had been packed and waiting by the door for hours and she spent the rest of the morning wrapping her few Christmas presents and scrubbing her apartment. Since she barely spent any time at all here, she could find little to clean, but at least she wouldn’t be coming home to a mess.
    With all her preparations done, she had little else to do now but stand here at the window watching for him and panicking about the sheer insanity of this situation her impulsiveness had thrust her into.
    Whatever had compelled her to insist on traipsing along with Hunter Bradshaw? In what feeble-minded moment would that ever seem like a good idea?
    How could she ever have been stupid enough to think she could travel blithely across the country with him when simply finding herself in the same room with the man left her flustered and giddy?
    He had always made her insides tremble and her heart rate accelerate. She had been friends with Taylor since their first semester of medical school, more than five years ago. She could still remember the first time she met her friend’s older brother. She and Taylor had been cramming for finals their second semester and had decided to grab a midnight snack at their favorite all-night diner, a humble little place downtown that served divine mashed potatoes with thick, creamy gravy.
    They had walked in and Kate had only a few seconds to register a gorgeous man sitting in a booth in the front window with a couple of uniformed cops when Taylor had let out a delighted laugh and dragged her over to meet the brother she often talked about.
    She could still remember her first impression—that the two of them shared an obviously close, affectionate relationship completely foreign to someone who had never had siblings of her own, except in a few foster families where she had been barely tolerated.
    Her second impression of Hunter Bradshaw had been far more elemental and astonishing—an intense physical awareness of him unlike anything she’d ever experienced. As she gazed into dark blue eyes while Taylor introduced them, her stomach did a long, slow roll and she felt as if something had just squeezed out every molecule of air in her lungs.
    The off-duty uniform cops had been flirtatious and charming to a couple of weary young med students and had insisted she and Taylor join them. To her growing dismay, Kate found herself squeezed next to Hunter in the red vinyl booth.
    Throughout the next hour she had been painfully aware of every movement he made—the way he leaned an elbow back on the seat cushion, how his mouth quirked up a little higher on one side than the other when he smiled, the way his dark hair curled just a little on the ends.
    Her sudden absorption with him had been as unexpected as it was mortifying.
    She had always considered herself rather