Oh, this kiss... It was something he’d never felt before. The heat from her body...the sweet, aching desire...the need he could feel reciprocated straight back to him.
This woman.
His heart.
How corny was that? He was a cardiologist. The heart was a mass of tissues, muscles, blood vessels. It could even be transplanted. But he wasn’t being a cardiologist right now, he thought. He was a man claiming a woman.
Or letting a woman claim him.
‘You...you want to come in?’ she managed when finally, finally she could get a word out, and he set her back at arm’s length and looked at her, really looked at her. He knew what she was asking. He knew what she was offering, and it twisted his heart.
Yeah, that dumb bunch of tissue, muscle, blood vessels was being twisted and it made not the tiniest bit of clinical sense but, dammit, it was twisting anyway and he wasn’t asking questions.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If you’ll have me.’
‘Bonnie’s on my bed.’
‘Bonnie’s been an invalid for long enough,’ he told her, tugging her close and kissing her hair. ‘Medical protocols says urgent cases get the most suitable beds. Are we an urgent case?’
She chuckled, a lovely, low chuckle that made that mass of internal tissue twist all over again.
‘Why yes, Dr Webster,’ she said demurely. ‘Why, yes, I believe we are.’
* * *
He woke and there was a woman cocooned against his body. She was curved against him, spooned against his chest. He’d gone to sleep holding her and it seemed that during the night they’d only grown closer.
He’d never felt like this.
Lovemaking with Emily had been good, excellent even, but afterwards she’d always shifted firmly to her side of the bed, setting boundaries. He’d never been able to cross those boundaries. She’d resented the least interference with her independence, and she’d died because of it.
If he hadn’t said the waves were too dangerous, would she have gone out? The question haunted him, because he knew there was a strong possibility that the answer was no.
He hadn’t been able to protect her. She’d reacted with fury every time he’d tried to restrain the craziest of her impulses, and tragedy had been the result.
Yet here magically was her antithesis. Here was a woman who invited him into her bed, who gave herself to him with joyful, laughing abandon, and who in her sleep was giving still.
Zoe.
He held her close, he felt her breath, her chest rising and falling, he felt her warmth and her loveliness, and he felt as if here was a gift without price.
A woman to love.
A woman he could protect and cherish for ever.
* * *
She didn’t want to wake up.
From the time Zoe had first been diagnosed with kidney disease she’d schooled herself not to want. Not to want the health that other kids took for granted. Not to want their freedom. Not to want their futures.
But now...
Now she had health and freedom and future, and somehow, in the space of a few short weeks, they’d become totally centred on one gorgeous man.
Sam.
He had ghosts, she thought as she lay cocooned against him, savouring the spine-tingling sensation of skin against skin, of the warmth of passion spent, of love.
For it was love. She knew it. Every fibre of her body knew it, but she saw it with clear eyes.
Sam was hero material. He was a gorgeous, sun-bronzed surfer. He was a cardiologist at the top of his game. He was a guy most women would die to get close to—and she’d heard from the hospital gossip that there were many women in this hospital who’d tried.
But he’d lost his Emily, and in a weird way it made him the same as her. Human.
Most medics faced life and death every day but it still didn’t teach them what she’d learned the hard way—that there was no personal promise of life. That your own life could be snatched away. That life was for living, here, now.
Losing your fiancée would do that to you, too, she thought, and maybe it explained this instant connection.
Or maybe nothing explained it. Maybe it was magic, and if it was...she was content to take it.
Just for now?
Maybe not. Lying here in the soft dawn light, with Sam’s arms around her, feeling his naked body holding her, she let herself dream.
What if his dreams became her dreams?
This was just the start. All those dreams she’d had while she’d waited for a transplant, while she’d watched from the other side while her friends and family had got on with their lives...
She wanted to do stuff. The first step had been to escape the cloying care of her family, not in a way that would hurt them but in a way that would make it clear she was well and independent and free.
The next step was to earn enough money to travel.
She wanted to climb a Himalaya.
Not a very big one, she conceded. She didn’t plan on making climbing her life’s work, but already she was researching Nepal and looking at the easier treks and making plans.
She also had other things on her wish list. When she’d talked to Sam about them she’d been deadly serious.
She was learning to surf. She wanted to learn to scuba dive.
She wanted to learn to tango as well as jive.
She felt Sam stir and she wriggled deliciously against him and thought...and thought...
‘Can you tango?’ she asked.
‘Um...right now?’ He tugged her close and she smiled and wriggled round so she was facing him.
‘I forgot the rose to put between my teeth,’ she said. ‘But hypothetically...’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Would you be brave enough to learn?’
‘I might,’ he said, cautious, and she smiled a cat-got-the-cream smile and snuggled closer.
Sam Webster...
He had no ties, she thought. Unlike Dean, who’d wanted to stay in their home town for the rest of their days, paying off their mortgage, tending their garden and raising their two point five children—or actually, no, because he wasn’t sure she should have children, there was an increased risk because of the transplant, and she wasn’t supposed to dig in the garden because of germs, but if she wore gloves and was very careful...
‘Zoe, there’s a wedding on this Saturday,’ Sam said, and she stilled because her thoughts had been flying ahead, to climbing mountains, ignoring germs, taking risks, all the things she’d dreamed of since her transplant had worked, but now there was this delicious extra dimension, a dimension called Sam...
A wedding this Saturday. Surely it was a bit soon for Sam’s thoughts to be going in that direction.
‘A wedding,’ she said, in the same cautious tone that he’d used when they’d discussed the tango. Only possibly more cautious.
‘Our nurse manager of Cardiac Care, Alice, is getting married. I’m invited.’
And he said that in the same voice he might have said, ‘There’s a loaded gun pointed at my head.’
She giggled. She was totally, gloriously happy. Her body was wide awake now and so was his. His hands were starting to do delicious things to her. She felt...sated, she thought, and yet not sated. She wanted more.
‘So I need to go,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come with me?’
‘Will there be tango?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ He was still using the loaded-gun voice.
‘Excellent.’ There was a couple of minutes’ silence after that, a necessary silence because his fingers were doing something to her that took her entire concentration. A girl could explode at the feel of those fingers, she thought. She felt like she could explode. Maybe she already had.
‘Wedding?’ he said.
‘Y-you’re catching me at a weak moment.’
‘I’m feeling pretty weak myself.’
‘You could have fooled me.’ She took a couple of deep breaths and forced herself to think. ‘Sam, if we go to this wedding...the hospital will—’
‘Talk,’ he said. ‘But do you think every single person from neurologist to ward clerk doesn’t already know we’re in bed together right this minute? The walls in this hospital have ears, and not only do they have ears, they have great gossipy mouths.’ He gathered her further into his arms then rolled and pushed himself up so he was smiling down at her with that gorgeous, wicked grin that made her melt...
But how could she melt? She had already melted.
‘Do you mind that they’ll talk?’ he asked, and she struggled to find the strength to speak.
‘How could I mind?’ she managed. ‘Unless you don’t intend to make love to me again, right this minute, and then I mind very much indeed... Oh...’
And then she stopped speaking. She stopped minding. There was nothing in the world but this man. He was the centre of her universe, and Zoe Elizabeth Payne didn’t mind anything else at all.
* * *
‘That was fast.’
He’d taken Bonnie for a brief walk downstairs. Zoe was in the shower. He’d have liked to shower with her—he’d have liked that more than just about anything—but it was Monday morning. Zoe started day shift today, he had patients booked, a ward round to do, things he had to organise for Reg—that stent needed to go in this morning...
How soon before he could take a holiday and spend a couple of weeks making love to Zoe?
‘Hey,’ Callie said, hauling him back to earth with a jolt as he carried Bonnie down the front steps from the apartment building. Bonnie could walk but stairs were still forbidden. Callie was heading home from the beach. She looked like she’d just been on a beach walk—clean and fresh and windblown. ‘I said something,’ she retorted.
So she had. He’d been thinking about...other things. He replayed Callie’s words in his head, this time focussing. That was fast.
‘Bonnie’s recovery?’ he tried, and Callie grinned.
‘Nice try, wise guy, but you know very well what I’m talking about. Our Zoe.’
How fast had she become our Zoe?
Callie was eyeing him with interest as he set Bonnie onto the grass—but also with a certain degree of scepticism. She was moving into mother-hen mode? With Zoe?
‘I’m not messing with your new best nurse,’ he growled.
‘You’d better not be.’
‘So you warned Cade, and now you’re warning me?’
‘You got it.’
‘I’m not messing,’ he said, and her eyes widened.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
There was a moment’s silence and then she reached out and hugged him. ‘Oh, Sam, that’s awesome. Though...’ She hesitated. ‘It is pretty fast.’
‘Emily and I were together for eight years and we didn’t get it right. Maybe fast’s the way to go,’ Bonnie was sniffing round the grass, taking time to find the perfect spot. Usually Callie greeted Sam with curt friendliness and moved on, but she’d stopped. They were both watching Bonnie, but there were undercurrents.
‘So what about you and Cade?’ Sam asked, and he was right—there were definitely undercurrents. Callie bristled like a cat who’d just spotted an intruder in her garden.
‘What about me and Cade?’
‘The grapevine says you’re sparking off each other like lightning rods.’
‘He’s pretty much insufferable.’
‘He’s a fine doctor.’
‘And he’s insufferable.’ She sighed. ‘You realise Alice has invited him to her wedding—and he’s accepted. If you take your Zoe...’
His Zoe. Two weeks ago those words would have made him run a mile. Now they had him thinking of what Zoe was doing right now, standing naked in the shower while he stood out here and...
‘You are taking her, right?’
‘Um...yes.’
‘I had you and me as a nice handy pair,’ she said, and sighed. ‘Now it’s you and Zoe, and me and—’
‘Cade. Are you going to toss sparks all through the wedding?’
‘I’ll be good,’ Callie said. ‘But he really is insufferable. At least you’re not any more,’ she said as Bonnie finished what she needed to do and limped back to join them. ‘Aloof and alone... How insufferable was that? But now our Zoe has made you rejoin the human race, and speaking for the whole hospital we couldn’t be more delighted.’
* * *
He went surfing that evening and Zoe was there. Zoe and Luke. They were building the world’s biggest sandcastle.
Why hadn’t she taken Luke to the beach near the hospital? he wondered. But then he thought, no, the Spit was closer to where Luke’s grandma lived. Then he thought maybe Zoe had guessed he’d be surfing here tonight. That was a good thought, and then Luke beamed and bounced up to him and there were no regrets at all.
He put his board down as Luke ran to meet him. He picked him up and swung him round and round until the little boy squealed his delight and then demanded to have a turn on the board as well.
‘Where’s Bonnie?’ Zoe asked, standing and brushing sand from her shorts. He looked at her gorgeous, sandy legs. He looked at the huge sandcastle she and Luke had built, and how happy and relaxed Luke was, and the feeling grew in his heart that this was right, the cards had fallen and he had a stack of aces, or maybe just one ace, but if that ace was Zoe then it was fine by him.
‘She’s in the Jeep.’
‘Bring her down on the sand,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll take care of her while you teach Luke to surf.’
He hadn’t intended to teach Luke. Three weeks ago he hadn’t intended to teach anyone. But Luke and Zoe were both bright-eyed and expectant and he felt more of his armour shift. What armour? he thought hopelessly. It was all gone.
‘Don’t you want to swim yourself?’ he asked, and she shook her head.
‘I’ve done a full day on the wards, we had drama after drama and I’m tired. It’ll suit me to lie on the sand with Bonnie and watch my...watch the men do manly stuff on surfboards.’
He smiled but instead of picking up her slip of the tongue he was suddenly worried. She did look tired.
‘It’s not too much for you?’ he asked.
‘No.’
But his concern was still there. ‘Zoe, should you be working full time? If it makes you tired...you might be better doing half-shifts.’
She froze. Something on her face said he’d made a major mistake.
‘I’ve had a big day,’ she said, carefully and slowly. ‘That’s all. Every nurse on our ward was tired today.’
‘But—’
‘There are no buts.’
‘Zoe, it’s natural to—’
But her irritation was growing. ‘Worry? No, it’s not,’ she snapped. ‘One hint that I’m tired and you’re worrying whether I should be working full time?’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is because of the transplant, isn’t it? Don’t do that to me, Sam.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did. If you hadn’t known...’
And she was right, he conceded. Gold Coast City was an acute-care hospital catering for a massive population. There were times when they were run off their feet. He was accustomed to colleagues looking tired.
But Zoe was different.
Because of the transplant?
‘Will Ryan still get sick after he gets a transplant?’ Luke asked in a small voice, and he hauled himself together, but Zoe got there faster.
‘Of course he will,’ she said, glaring at Sam like he’d committed murder
. ‘Just like you get sick. You get colds, you stub your toes on rocks and you fall over and hurt yourself playing footy. Ryan will do those things, too. Right now everyone’s being very careful of him, and they’ll need to do that until he gets a transplant and for a little while afterwards until he’s fully recovered.
‘But then he’ll be like you and me and all of us. He won’t need to be wrapped in cotton wool and he won’t have to resign from a full-time job because one day he gets tired. What nonsense. Off you go, the pair of you. Go play in the surf while Bonnie and I have a wee nap because we choose to. Not because we must. Invalids—huh! Off you go, shoo, and don’t you dare do that to me again, Sam Webster, ever.’
* * *
She lay on the sun-warmed sand with Bonnie and watched Sam teach an eight-year-old to surf.
Luke was a faster learner than she was, but she wasn’t envious. She loved watching them. Sam had Luke waist deep in the waves, lying on the board, pushing it into every likely wave and then whooping with Luke as the little boy managed to wobble to his feet and waver the few feet to the shore.
She’d kind of like to be with them but it was nice to lie here and watch them, too, and hug Bonnie and let herself dream. As she’d been dreaming ever since she’d met Sam.
Only now there was a tiny niggle imposing itself on her dream.
‘Zoe, should you be working full time?’
The question had slammed her straight back to Adelaide, straight back to Dean.
Zoe, let me carry that. Zoe, it’s too cold for you. Zoe, I don’t want you staying up late. This job is far too demanding—remember you have to protect yourself.
Only she hadn’t been allowed to protect herself. Dean had done it for her.
If Sam started that nonsense...
He wouldn’t.
He might. The way he’d said it...
‘If I want to climb Everest, he might try and stop me,’ she told Bonnie, and Bonnie looked at her, puzzled.
‘Yeah, okay, you have a broken leg and the last thing you want to think about is climbing Everest,’ she told Bonnie. ‘But how about when your leg is healed and you want to run again, really run, and all your dog friends say, no, don’t run because you might hurt your leg again. What’s the point of a beautifully-healed leg if you’re never allowed to be normal again?’
Gold Coast Angels: A Doctor's Redemption Page 11