by Annie O'Neil
Way to make an impression, Lockhart.
She was surprised to see Aidan smirk his approval at her reaction to Chris. She guessed he wanted to make sure the new girly doc could play gross with the rest of the boys.
She glanced at Aidan again, and he nodded for her to proceed. She couldn’t help but feel whatever she said was going to be under microscopic examination. Which was fair enough. If she’d found out the man she’d had a sizzling one-night stand with was her shiny new employee she would probably have held him to a higher standard.
“The cut doesn’t look too deep. Let’s do the spine and concussion drills and then get you to the sidelines for a couple of stitches.” Then for good measure she added, “And maybe give your specs a bit of a bath.”
Ali trained her eyes on Chris and deftly carried out a thorough inspection of his neck and upper spine to make sure it was safe to move him.
“Any tingling sensations in your arms? Burning? Stinging?” She rattled through the checklist, all too aware of Aidan’s eyes on her.
“Nah,” Chris answered.
“Shortness of breath?” She tapped along his lungs. A pneumothorax would be an unwelcome complication.
Chris heaved in a deep breath of air and exhaled with a lion noise. His lungs were fine. “Nope.”
“Guess you’ve kept everything intact except your brainbox—lucky boy. Wiggle your toes.”
“I’m fine, Harty! We’re a breed apart from all your fluffy ballerinas. Made of tougher stuff, we are.”
“Oh, really? And here was me thinking you were only human.” She signaled to the stretcher lads. He was safe to move off the field for a more thorough consultation.
“No way!” Chris pushed himself up. “I’m walking off on my own two feet, thank you very much.”
He stood up between them—weaving ever so slightly—then raised his arms in a victory move and swaggered off the field to the roar of the crowd.
Which left her face-to-face with Dr. Aidan Tate.
Her stomach gave a life-affirming heave and she almost lost her balance, which—considering she was still kneeling—was quite a feat. The man took her breath away. There was no getting away from that. Salt and pepper hair she’d run her fingers through on their way to naughtier climes, coffee-black eyes and a perfect set of cheekbones. Oh—and had she mentioned his lips? They were very, very nice lips.
“Go on.” He pointed toward the sidelines, pushing up to a standing position. “You’ve got work to do.”
She rose and looked into his eyes—hoping for some answers to the thousands of questions whirling round her head, well aware that every part of her body was responding to seeing him again. Hearing him. Being close enough to touch him.
“You need to leave the pitch so all that stops.”
“What?” She looked around.
He lifted his chin in the direction of the stands, from where a flow of catcalls was pealing out. They were obviously aimed at Ali.
“You’re fine with that?” Aidan’s dark eyes crackled—the energy between them was as potent as it had been the first time they’d met.
“The shouting?”
“Yes.” His face was grim.
“I can barely hear them.” And it was the truth. All her senses were triangulating in one very specific direction.
“I’m not fine with it.” Aidan took her by the elbow, turned her around and began to walk her off the field.
“Hey! I can walk on my own, thank you very much!” Ali protested.
“You don’t need to make a bigger show of things than you already have,” Aidan bit out.
“I’m sorry?” Ali bridled. “I think the only ‘show’ was Chris’s head-bleed. Frog-marching me off the field is a pretty bad idea.”
And it was. Aidan dropped her elbow instantly and strode off the field. She could make her own way.
Dr. A. Lockhart. Dance injury specialist, sports medicine MD, and surgeon, brought in for a locum position. When he’d hired her he’d thought her ream of credentials made her perfect for fine-tuning the team’s training in the build-up to the final.
And now he knew she was very same woman who had slowly but surely been consuming every sane brain cell he had left since their night at the airport?
Miss Cosmopolitan.
She had actually rocked his world. Never before had a woman made such an impression on him. From the very moment he’d laid eyes on her.
She’d been sitting at the hotel bar, her eyes on the television weather report, lazily tracing a swizzle stick along her lips. He had become mesmerized by the movement as her mouth had responded to the touch of the little black straw. It had been just about the sexiest thing he’d thought he’d ever seen. Before he could give himself time to think better of it he’d sent her a drink. Ten...fifteen minutes couldn’t have passed before they’d been in the elevator and he’d been tracing a finger along her lips, hungry for more. Much more.
No names...no attachments. It wasn’t how he normally operated—had ever operated—but by the time they had been finished she had been worth every single nail scratch on his back.
He narrowed his eyes as he watched her disappear down the tunnel toward the changing rooms. Glossy black hair streaming in a thick swatch from beneath her team cap, crystal-clear blue eyes so bright they seemed lit from within, and a pair of raspberry-red lips which he could all too easily remember—
No you don’t! Stop.
“Doc! Watch it!”
Aidan nearly collided with Chris, who was trying to give his face a scrub with his filthy jersey.
“Sorry, mate. Away with the fairies.”
“Where’s Harty?” Chris looked around the sidelines.
“Who?”
“Dr. Lockhart,” Chris bit out, his tone abruptly changing.
“Chris, are you all right?” Aidan walked him over to a bench.
Ali had capably gone through the concussion test, he knew—he’d kept careful watch. But sometimes a clot could appear later, with devastating effect. He hoped that wasn’t the case.
“Yeah, fine.” Chris exhaled heavily as he sat. “I just want to get back out there. When’s Harty going to stitch me up?”
“Don’t you trust my stitches anymore?” As the words came out of his mouth Aidan knew they sat wrong, but the mention of Dr. Lockhart on such comfortable, friendly terms had riled him.
She’d been here—what?—a fortnight?—and already had a nickname? He’d been with the team five years and had barely managed to get the odd “Doc” out of the players. Then again—it wasn’t exactly as if he was the easiest person to get to know. He knew if he was more open with the players they would respond in kind—but he wasn’t there yet. Maybe he never would be. Maybe “closed off” was just who he was.
Either way—he didn’t need to be behaving like a jealous doctor. Ali’s stitches...his stitches—it didn’t matter. She was a highly qualified doctor and he’d hired her for her skills. She clearly had the stomach for it. A “fluffy ballerina” type wouldn’t laugh at a face covered in blood. The best thing he could do was shake it all off. It would keep things professional. Unlike his response to Ali.
Feeling envious because the players got along with the new doctor...? Ridiculous. It was what anyone would hope for. Harmony between support staff and players.
He scraped a hand along his stubbled jawline.
Harmony?
Who was he kidding? The only way he could describe his response to Ali Lockhart was Class A caveman. And that wasn’t going to work. Not here. His reputation went hand in hand with the team’s. Work and emotions weren’t things he mixed. Ever. His annual fortnight of charity work in the Pacific Islands was an upfront-and-center reminder of that. Five years on and he still hadn’t shed a tear. Maybe he never would.
“Are
you all right for me to do the stitches?”
Ali appeared by his side with a suture kit in her hands.
“Go ahead.” He nodded in Chris’s direction without looking at her. Those blue eyes spoke volumes and he couldn’t go there. Not now. “Do the concussion tests again before you okay him for play.”
“Would you rather do it?”
“You’re getting paid to look after these boys. You go on ahead.”
He kept his eyes on the field, arms tightly crossed over his chest as he watched the players get into formation at the referee’s whistle. It might look like mayhem to some, but he liked rugby. There was a system. A playbook. Rules.
He liked order, and Ali’s presence here was bringing nothing but chaos.
* * *
Ali wished she could scrub away the crimson heat racing into her cheeks. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like an underling.
The cheek! Her hands flew to her face. Her cheeks! Aaaargh!
She huffed out a sigh and started swabbing at Chris’s mud-and blood-covered forehead.
Working with Britain’s premier sports physician was meant to be professionally rewarding. Trying was more like it! On multiple levels.
“Ouch! Easy, Harty.”
“I thought you were a roughtie-toughtie?” Ali gave Chris an apologetic grin and tried to lighten her touch.
She couldn’t let Aidan get to her. Not on a professional front, anyway. Her job was the one thing Ali knew she excelled at, and she was not about to let some perfectly gorgeous chippy doctor from up here in the hinterlands boss her about. Even if she had spent several hot and steamy, never to be repeated, perfectly delicious hours of lovemaking with him.
She rubbed a numbing agent on Chris’s forehead, quickly put in the stiches and gave him another run through the concussion exam. She wasn’t one hundred percent convinced—not enough to prove to Aidan, anyway—so told him he’d have to sit out the rest of the game, and then she’d do the tests again.
“Safety first!” she quipped with a Doris Day grin. Or at least that was the look she was going for. Chris stuck his tongue out at her in response. Child...
Maybe coming here had been a mistake. Already she was getting attached to these big old lugheads, and that hadn’t been part of the plan. Not by a long shot. Nor had sleeping with her new boss, but it seemed that had happened, too. This was all going swimmingly!
Aidan Tate was The Suit.
Who would’ve believed it?
She’d been a secret admirer of his expertise for years. He’d sounded so caring and professional in the medical journals he was regularly published in. And he’d been oh, so very tender and attentive at three, four and five in the morning, when neither of them had felt the need to sleep. Humph! Double-humph!
She grabbed her phone from her coat pocket and did what she always did when things started to get emotional. She bashed out a message to her former mentor from dance school.
What’s the protocol on breaking my contract?
Her mentor had been wise and sage, had had hair like Einstein and—also like Einstein—he had known everything. At least about her. The one person on the planet who had. He’d helped her move on. Just as she had when her mum had died. Just as she had when she had learned she would never dance again.
Then she deleted it. He was gone now—some ten years ago—and she wasn’t a quitter. Never had been. Except when life had forced her to...to alter her course. That was how she preferred to see things. Taking matters into her own hands.
She took her cap off and ran her hand through her hair. Platitudes. Handy when you needed them, trite when you didn’t.
She tried to focus on the stands, the players, the flashing billboards—anything to keep her eyes from the unmoving figure of Aidan Tate. But no matter where she looked her internal camera kept imposing Aidan everywhere. On the big screens, on the looping advertising banners encircling the pitch...even the close-ups of the players showed those flashing dark eyes and that thick black hair she’d so enjoyed running her fingers through as she—ahem—had behaved distinctly unlike her old self.
Aidan had quite obviously been behaving out of character, as well. Caring and studious? Ha! Cranky control freak was more like it. It appeared looks weren’t the only things that could be deceiving.
She tipped her head back and forth in the hope that some answers might fall out. If she’d learned anything in the past few years, it was that most situations were definitely not what they seemed to be. She needed to get out of there.
She watched as the players hurled themselves around the field.
No.
She didn’t.
She owed it to these guys to stick around.
She’d made an oath. An oath to protect and care for her patients. And there they were—all cauliflower ears, biceps bulging, thigh muscles like logs, all gussied up in their unmistakable red-and-black uniforms. The North Stars.
As the cool air swirled around her play intensified and the crowd audibly kept pace with the action. She couldn’t have felt further away from home. Not that she had one to go back to anyhow. Which was the whole point, wasn’t it? Being here. Now.
The past is where it belongs, she reminded herself. You’re safe here.
Ali couldn’t help letting a burble of giggles escape her lips. Safe here? On the sidelines of one of Britain’s most brutal games?
That’d be about right.
CHAPTER TWO
SWITCHING ON THE overhead lights to her warehouse loft flat, Ali felt the adrenaline from the day’s match drain away. The adrenaline from finding out The Suit was her new boss...? That little nugget was keeping her pulse-rate a bit high.
She kicked off her shoes. They landed one by one with a satisfying thunk-thunk on the far side of the flat. She was giving “bachelorette pad messy” a whirl, and it was fun. More fun than watching Aidan sort out the day’s steady stream of cuts, abrasions and strained muscles. She thought she’d earned some Brownie points with her treatment of Chris’s cut, but he’d hardly let her so much as swab a skinned knee after that. So much for earning her keep...
Her stores of controlled breathing, counting to ten and biting her tongue had pretty much been exhausted by the time the final whistle had blown.
Where was the amazing physician she’d heard about, who took new doctors under his wing and single-handedly teased new and seemingly unreachable skills out of them? Where was the volunteer coach lauded as a hero to a rugby squad of twelve-year-old girls? Who had stolen the doctor every medical journal in Britain couldn’t praise enough and replaced him with Generalissimo Grumpyhead? What was the point of being here if she wasn’t going to learn anything?
She leaned against the closed door, well aware that her body was virtually vibrating with all the things she had learned from him—just nothing she could use in the workplace.
But honestly! Who in their right mind would turn down a guy who looked as if he could fix your car, fend off a swath of marauding invaders and pose for one of those posters of sexy guys holding tires in a garage, wearing not much more than a scrappy old pair of jeans? Scrappy jeans just slipping off his hips...right where the little notchy muscle definition bits met...
Nooooooo! Not the way this thought process was meant to go.
She felt herself soften. A little. He couldn’t be that much of a control freak. She had just worked two weeks on her own while he’d been off swanning around in the Pacific, or wherever it was they said he’d gone. Maybe it was all part of some unknown test he set for his minions. Prove thyself—then watch and learn.
Geniuses were supposed to be arrogant, condescending, haughty and superior—but from what she’d read this guy had sounded as if he had heart. That would need some excavating. Not to mention his inability to give her a go. He should be thanking his lucky stars s
he had come up here at all! She had her own reams of kudos, accrued over a lifetime of—well, of avoiding everything one did in life but work.
Bah! None of this was helping.
She padded across the worn Oriental rug sprawled across the aged wood floors. It was the only thing she’d brought from her “old life” in London, and it matched the vintage feel of the building perfectly. The floor-to-ceiling windows were her favorite feature of the loft. A classic accent from the building’s heyday as a thread factory. If she was really honest she could very easily fall in love with the place. An enormous loft penthouse with an enviable view overlooking the River Teal versus her two-up, two-down with a view across the street? It’d be pretty easy to get used to this.
Not that the flat was her new home. It was an investment. She didn’t put down roots. She made investments. Easier to leave that way.
Ali slipped her keys into a red-lacquered bowl she’d found at a charity shop—the only decorative touch to her kitchen island—and pulled open the door to her enormous American-style refrigerator. The pickings were pretty sparse. The remains of a triangle of cheddar, an out of date ready-to-bake baguette and some just-about-to-wilt salad greens were the only inhabitants of the shelves. It was hardly the food of champions.
She had hit the ground running when she’d moved up here, and grocery shopping hadn’t made it on to her list of things to do. After such a rough day, a hot meal would go down a treat. In London she’d already be on the phone, ordering Thai noodles or a delicious eggplant parmigiana from Casa de Luna. They made it perfectly—crispy round the edges, nice and gooey in the center. Here—well, she knew they had takeaways, up here in the wilds of the North of England, but...
It wasn’t the same.
“It’s not the same—and that’s the point, you ninny,” she scolded herself out loud. Onward and upward!
She was here to push her limits, to reach new horizons and blah-dee-blah-blah-blah. How many pep talks did she have to give herself before something, somewhere, felt right again?