The Nurse's Reunion Wish (HQR Medical Romancel)

by Carol Marinelli

  For once she was actually startled—and not because of what he’d said, more because she had been thinking the same thing.

  ‘Neither can I,’ she admitted.

  Their sex life had died with their baby. It hadn’t felt right to reach out for comfort. For solace. For the moment of peace their lovemaking gave. She hadn’t known how. And on top of all that for Rachel there had been a sense of impending doom that their marriage was about to end.

  But she also hated it that she couldn’t remember their last time.

  She’d tried to think back, but they’d been at it all the time. If she’d known that it was the last time she’d have treated the moment, the memory, with infinite care.

  ‘It might complicate things,’ she said now.

  ‘Or it might clear the air,’ Dominic said. ‘I want to remember our last time.’

  There was a warning there—that it would be a one-off—even as he invited her to play this dangerous game.

  She could have chosen to take offence, but she didn’t, for if she decided to give in to her perpetual desire for him, then it most certainly would be for the last time.

  She gave him a smile, but no answer, collecting her mug and returning to work.

  Rachel had made her decision.

  Richard knew about them, his wife probably knew, and Jordan knew. Very soon everyone would know...

  She simply could not work in a goldfish bowl where their failed marriage was gossiped about.

  And she could not move on with her life alongside him.

  She was leaving The Primary.

  * * *

  Heather arrived at just after seven in the morning, and Rachel walked her up to the ward to which Jordan had been transferred.

  ‘Of all the irresponsible things to do!’ Heather said as they took the lift. ‘What on earth was he doing, dancing on a table?’

  ‘Letting off steam?’ Rachel ventured.

  ‘Killing himself, more like,’ Heather said, letting off a little steam of her own.

  She was clearly frantic and scared as the ward nurse pointed them in the direction of his bed, in a four-bed pod near the nurses’ station.

  Dominic was sitting in a chair beside him, but jumped up when he saw Heather and gave her a hug.

  ‘He’s going to be fine,’ Dominic said.

  And Heather stopped being cross as soon as she saw her husband, groggy from medication and with tubes and drips everywhere.

  ‘Oh, Jordan,’ she sobbed. ‘Look at you!’

  ‘Heather...’ Jordan said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Stop that now,’ Heather said as she hugged him. ‘It’s just rotten luck.’

  It made Rachel feel teary, and she wasn’t quite sure why. Their intimacy and obvious affection and love had brought a rare lump to her throat, but she swallowed it down as she heard someone call out to her.

  ‘Staff Nurse Walker?’

  She turned at the sound of her name and there, sitting up in bed, smiling at her in the semi-darkness, was a wonderfully familiar face.

  ‘Miss Tate!’

  She went over to the bed, delighted to see her elderly patient from the other day. Her arm was in a sling attached to an IV pole, and she wore a white theatre gown.

  ‘How’s your hand doing?’ Rachel asked, assuming she had had it repaired.

  ‘The same as when you last saw it.’ Miss Tate rolled her eyes. ‘My surgery has been cancelled three times. There have been a lot of emergencies. Still, hopefully I’ll be sorted this morning. I’ve been put on “Nil by Mouth” again. It’s a good way to go on a diet, let me tell you.’

  ‘You poor thing.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m quite enjoying watching the world go by. What did he do?’ She nodded in the direction of Jordan’s bed.

  ‘I can’t tell you that!’ Rachel smiled.

  ‘Well, I heard he was dancing on a table.’ Miss Tate laughed. ‘Good for him, I say. I danced on a few tables in my day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Miss Tate nodded. ‘And I’d dance on them again, given half a chance.’

  So would Rachel.

  Well, not so much dance on a table, but she felt a growing need to be with Dominic again.

  And later, as she came out of Emergency at the end of a very long night shift, Dominic was standing at the entrance.

  ‘Do you want a lift home?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Rachel said.

  She went to walk off, but desire was coursing through her, and she could almost taste the lonely regret she would feel if she climbed into her bed alone and missed out on just one more time with him.

  Dominic Hadley was her eternal Achilles’ heel.

  Maybe sleeping with him once more might just clear her head after all—because she was going crazy.

  Perhaps in going to bed with him she could finally put them to bed and then move on with her life...?

  She knew the arguments were flimsy, but she was too weak to care. She simply wanted to be with him.

  And so, instead of walking away, she met his eyes. ‘We can go to yours.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS RAINING in London.

  Just as it had been raining in Sheffield, the sublime second time that they had made love.

  ‘Wait there,’ Dominic said. ‘I’ll bring the car round.’

  Rachel stood in the ambulance bay while he dashed through the rain. He had always taken care of those details, Rachel thought. His silver sports car didn’t impress her a jot, but the driver certainly did.

  He was soaking from his run in the rain. Just as he’d been that time with the stupid golf umbrella when he’d thrown off his parents’ warnings about her and made his way to her father’s house, Rachel thought as she climbed in.

  The wipers swished a little more smoothly than the thump, thump of her heart. At a set of traffic lights she turned to look at him, and Dominic turned at the same time, and they smiled their private smile for the first time since they’d met again.

  Dominic lived a fifteen-minute drive from the hospital, she found, as the gates opened to a very plush apartment block where they parked in the basement.

  They took a lift up to his apartment, but she noticed little about it as she stepped in—just that it was neat and rather large. Because she cared not for the view from the windows...only for the man who took her straight to his bedroom.

  He didn’t kiss her, and he didn’t bother with any preamble. Dominic simply went for the hem of her top and she lifted her arms, compliant and willing.

  She wore a rather tired white bra that he deftly removed, and her skin was so pale that you might almost miss the pale pink of her areolae, already gathered and taut at the prospect of his return...

  * * *

  Dominic did not miss them.

  Her nipples were awake, and he stroked them with unending fascination, but there was more he wanted to see.

  He drew down her trousers and was pleasantly surprised by the tiny silver knickers and the jut of gold beneath.

  ‘God, Rachel,’ Dominic said, and paused in the undressing just to stroke and admire.

  He slipped his fingers in and felt her for a moment, before stripping off himself. And there, in his bedroom, her mask slipped too.

  It always had.

  So much so that when he retrieved some condoms from his jacket her nose did that pinched thing, and this time her eyes narrowed too.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘I bought these with you in mind.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘I lied to myself, but I was always hoping to have you last night—if you’d deigned to show up to the staff do.’

  * * *

  She peeled a condom off with a reluctant smile, for here in his bedroom they could admit to their jealous na
tures where each other were concerned.

  Here, standing naked before him, Rachel could forget her own rules and drop her guard. There was so much desire between them, so much want blazing in their eyes, that she felt safe.

  She reached out to touch his body. The strong arms, the broad chest, the toned stomach and the swell of his erection had her trembling with want.

  ‘What’s this?’ She ran a slender finger over an old white scar, low on his stomach, and watched his muscles jerk tight at her touch.

  ‘I had my appendix out a few—’ Dominic started, and then stopped explaining as that same slender finger ran up his thick length.

  For Rachel it was like the dessert trolley coming round and having to choose. It was either sink to her knees and taste him, or step towards him and have him inside her.

  But he made the choice for her and pulled her in.

  Their naked bodies met again, and with the feel of his hard, taut skin against hers, his soft mouth was an exciting contrast. Unlike their kiss in the car park, which had been desperate and urgent, now his mouth was gentle on hers, savouring this reunion.

  He had a scent, and a taste, and it was like coming home after a long time away.

  His hands were warm on her skin, holding her waist and then moving down and cupping her buttocks, pressing her against him.

  Her hand was between them, and he moaned into her mouth as Rachel held him again, strong and velvet beneath her fingers. His kiss roughened as tears stung her eyes at the delight of again being naked and close and intimate with Dominic.

  She paused only to slide on the condom, the way they had taught each other so many years ago. Except her hands were shaking even more now than then, as a lick of desire stroked low in her stomach. She thought she might come just from touching him...

  His kisses became more demanding, guiding her towards the bed, and they toppled onto it together.

  His hand reached between her legs, impatiently parting her willing thighs, both of them desperate for him to be inside her. She guided him greedily, crying out as Dominic seared into her tight oiled space.

  They were a knot of limbs and hungry, desperate kisses. He held her face and kissed her cheeks, her lashes, then released her and moved up onto his forearms. It was not a gentle coupling for either of them after all this time, and her legs wrapped tightly around him as he thrust into her.

  They had been toying with each other all night—the looks, the food, the pauses, the laughs, the warnings, the nudge of memories... All of it had led them here.

  He made the air in the room impossible to breathe. He made the thoughts in her head turn off. He consumed her completely.

  And then, when she shattered, when she felt the utter relief of crying out his name as she came, he gave that breathless shout she would crave for ever and released himself into her, collapsing on her in the giddy space they’d made.

  Here she was, Rachel thought. The woman she’d lost.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CERTAINLY IT HAD been a mistake, Rachel thought as she awoke in his arms. A glorious, wonderful mistake that she would remember fondly and never regret. But, yes, it had been a mistake—because now she was right back where she didn’t want to be: at the start of the long and painful process of getting over him.

  Back to being in love with a man who didn’t love her back.

  ‘Hey...’ Dominic said as she lifted her head.

  ‘Did it help?’ Rachel smiled. ‘Did we clear the air?’

  ‘We did,’ Dominic said. ‘Temporarily at least.’

  Because she could tell he already wanted her again, and that he’d been lying there thinking about how right they’d felt. And what that meant.

  Rachel was thinking the same.

  Here, in his lovely warm bed, their limbs lazy and entwined, it would be so easy to give in to the impossible dream of them.

  But this had been about sex, Rachel reminded herself.

  Although it had always been far more than just that for her.

  How did men do it? she wondered. Or rather, how did Dominic separate love from sex so easily?

  She didn’t seek out gossip, but certainly in the weeks since she’d started at The Primary she’d heard enough to know that Dominic hadn’t been lying when he’d said he dated. A lot.

  It had taken her years to move on and try another relationship—Gordon had seemed ideal, for he had never pushed her out of her comfort zone the way Dominic did. He’d accepted that there were things she simply didn’t want to speak about and had left it there—and Rachel had honestly thought she wanted that.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  Rachel laughed to hide her embarrassment—because she could hardly tell him that she’d just been thinking about Gordon!

  ‘It’s rude to compare,’ Dominic said.

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘I should hope not.’ He smiled. ‘Do you want to know what I was thinking?’ he asked.

  Rachel wasn’t sure that she did.

  ‘I was just thinking about us,’ Dominic said as they lay there in the dark. ‘If we didn’t have a past, and you hadn’t been engaged, if we’d met for the first time that morning in Resus, would we be in bed together now?’

  ‘No.’ Immediately Rachel shook her head.

  ‘No?’ Dominic checked.

  ‘I’d have steered well clear of you,’ Rachel said. ‘I was warned about you from several sources.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  But Rachel was insistent. ‘If we hadn’t already slept together, then I wouldn’t be here now. I mean it, Dominic. You’re not my type.’

  ‘In what way?’

  She lifted one hand from his warm chest and started listing the many ways he did not tick her boxes. ‘The reputation, the attitude, the sports car, the vasectomy so you can screw at whim...’

  He caught her hand and buried his lips in her palm in a slow, long kiss that she felt all the way down low to her stomach, and when he had made her want him all over again, he refuted what she had said earlier.

  ‘I think we’d be exactly here. In fact, I think we’d have been in bed your first week—possibly even the first night.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I take for ever to get into bed.’

  ‘Then you’re the one who’s changed.’

  She laughed, a deep low laugh, and it was a forgotten sound that startled her.

  Of course there had been laughter in her life since him, but that low belly laugh was one only he had ever elicited—that laugh was private and seductive and it had only ever been heard by Dominic. It was a laugh that provoked, a laugh that begged him to continue this game which always ended in sex.

  ‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said.

  ‘Suppose we had just met,’ Dominic said.

  She wriggled out of his arms and tried to sit up. But he pulled her back down and pinned her to his chest. Clearly he wanted this conversation and would not let her wriggle out of it.

  ‘Suppose you’d come out for the staff do last night and you’d suspended your morals and we had ended up in bed. We’d be getting to know each other now...’

  Rachel was rather sure that she wouldn’t like whatever he was scheming, but feigned nonchalance. ‘By all accounts, I’d have long since been in a taxi on my way home.’

  ‘I’m not that much of a bastard, Rachel.’

  His chest hair was tickling the side of her face and she was focusing on her breathing as she braced herself for his questions.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘I would probably be asking are you seeing anyone?’

  ‘Well, I would hope not, given that I’m here...’ She cut the rancour and decided to try to play his annoying game. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve just come out of a long-term relationship.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dominic said. ‘Do you miss him?’ he ask
ed. ‘Or her...?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Rachel laughed.

  ‘I’m being politically correct, given we don’t know each other at all. So,’ he asked again, ‘do you miss your ex?’

  Not as much as I should, Rachel thought as she lay in Dominic’s arms. Not as much as I missed you.

  She settled for, ‘It’s early days,’ and then asked him, ‘What about you? Are you seeing anyone?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What sort of answer is that?’

  ‘Okay, no, I’m not seeing anyone seriously.’

  ‘Have you, though?’ she asked. ‘Have you ever been in a long-term relationship?’

  She wanted to fill in the missing years. She loathed that appendix scar—couldn’t bear it that he must have lain on an operating table as she went about her day. Her hand moved involuntarily down to cover it.

  ‘No. Well, apart from—’

  * * *

  But Dominic stopped himself from saying you, because they weren’t supposed to be admitting to the fact that they’d once been married.

  He also stopped because her hand was creeping down his body, so he removed it from the danger zone and caught it again. He was doing his best to tread carefully as he coaxed her out of her shell.

  ‘I think I might need to mend my ways,’ he admitted, and was relieved when she gave that low laugh. The one that signalled him to go on.

  He didn’t quite know what to ask next, because every question led back to them, and so, while he had her warm in his bed, he tried to imagine not knowing the little she’d told him.

  He picked up a coil of her thick red hair. ‘I love your hair,’ he told her. ‘Where does it come from?’

  He felt her tense even at that simple question.

  ‘My mum,’ Rachel said.

  ‘So she’s got red hair?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘And green eyes like me. She’s Irish.’ She looked up at him, as if to explain why she was keeping it in the present tense. ‘I don’t tell all on first dates, Dominic.’

  You don’t tell all ever, he wanted to bite back, but he did not want to send her hurtling from his bed.