by Sarah Morgan
‘Don’t hesitate to wake me up if you need to.’ She walked briskly across the room to close the blinds.
‘Leave them—I prefer to keep the doors open.’
‘You won’t be able to sleep.’
He didn’t tell her that he rarely slept. ‘I’ll be fine. I like the fresh air.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, just shout out.’ Her hips swayed as she walked from window to door. She held a stethoscope in her hand but she walked like a seductress. ‘I hope you have a really good night’s sleep. I’ve chosen the bedroom right across the hall and I’ll leave the door open so I’ll hear you if you shout.’
Great. There were three guest bedrooms, the other two at the far end of the house. Couldn’t she have chosen one of those?
After she left, Alessandro spent a frustrating and agonising fifteen minutes removing his shorts. Exhausted, he didn’t bother replacing them with the pyjamas. Instead he flopped back against the pillows, drained of energy.
He lay without moving until a noise from across the corridor made him look up.
Tasha was walking across the guest room towards the en suite bathroom, undressing as she walked. First she pulled off the scarlet jumper and dropped it in a heap. Her full breasts pushed against a silken wisp of a bra. When her hands moved to the snap of her jeans, Alessandro wanted to groan out a request that she stop, but he couldn’t make a sound and the jeans went the way of the jumper and this time the lace was so brief it was almost irrelevant.
His muscles tensed, sending spasms of pain shooting down his bruised body.
Finding it impossible to breathe, Alessandro wondered if one of his broken ribs had suddenly punctured his lung. There was no air in the room. He was suffocating. He lifted his hand to undo his collar and then remembered that he was naked.
As he watched, she stretched upwards to clip her hair on top of her head, the movement accentuating her lean, flat stomach and her long, slim legs. He felt like a voyeur at an erotic floor show. Clearly she’d forgotten that she had both doors open. Either that or she was just assuming he was asleep.
If he called out, he’d embarrass her, and he couldn’t look away because his head refused to move.
Telling himself that any moment now she was going to lock the bathroom door, Alessandro kept watching. And he was still watching when she turned her back to him, unfastened her bra and stepped out of her knickers.
CHAPTER FOUR
MEGAN’S hand shook as she opened the door that led to the neonatal intensive care unit.
All day she’d been in a daze of happiness. A daze of happiness that nothing could blunt—not even the knowledge that technically she’d slept with a married man.
Married, but not together, she told herself, wondering why the fact that Josh and Rebecca were almost divorced didn’t make her feel any better.
Her head was in a spin and she’d found it almost impossible to concentrate.
She’d thought of nothing else all day, ever since that knock on the door that had sent Josh springing from the bed before they’d had the opportunity to talk about what they’d shared. She had no idea who had been at the door, but whoever it was had been important enough to make sure that Josh didn’t return.
Megan had waited for twenty minutes then dressed quickly and exited the on-call room quietly. Her heart had been working double time all the way back to the paediatric ward but she was fairly confident that no one had seen her.
She’d spent the rest of her day stopping herself from checking her phone every two minutes to see if Josh had called. It was like being a teenager all over again.
The extended silence made her jittery and sent her imagination into overdrive.
Was he embarrassed? Did he regret what they’d done?
Reminding herself that Josh was a senior doctor whose working day was ridiculously intense and demanding, she tried to rationalise the fact that he hadn’t called. She told herself that it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t want to publicise their relationship. They were colleagues after all, and affairs between colleagues could so easily become messy.
Having convinced herself that she wasn’t likely to see him that day, it came as a shock to see Josh sitting at the computer at the nurses’ station.
Megan felt a tiny thrill of excitement bloom inside her.
He wasn’t avoiding her. He was here, on her ward.
Her heart pounded against her chest and she was relieved that the other staff appeared to be occupied elsewhere.
Just for this first encounter she wanted to be alone with him. She didn’t want to share the memories of the night with anyone but Josh.
Remembering the look he’d given her just before he’d left the on-call room, she gave a little smile and her stomach fluttered with anticipation.
‘Hello, Josh.’
‘Ah, Megan, I’m glad you’re here. We had an emergency delivery in the department. Thirty-four-weeker.’ He turned to her, his tone crisp and professional. ‘Showing signs of respiratory distress, so we’ve transferred him to you.’
There was nothing intimate in his gaze—nothing to hint that they’d spent the night together.
Taken aback, Megan glanced behind her but there was no one within earshot.
The baby was ill, she reasoned, and he was an exceptional doctor. Josh would never put his personal life before the wellbeing of a patient.
Slowly, she put her bag on the floor, controlling her disappointment. ‘Was it a normal delivery?’
As he told her, she found herself looking at his hands and the dark hairs dusting his forearms. Those same hands had touched her. Everywhere. Held her. It had been genuine, she had no doubt about that. She still remembered the look in his eyes as he’d driven her wild.
That knowledge gave her confidence. ‘Josh—’
‘I need to get back.’ He rose quickly to his feet, interrupting her before she could finish her sentence. ‘You might want to spend some time with the mother. She’s very upset. The whole thing took about twenty minutes from start to finish. Precipitate doesn’t begin to describe it.’
It was a verbal dismissal but it may as well have been a physical slap for the pain it caused.
‘Of course.’ Megan pushed the words through stiff lips and stood frozen to the spot as he walked past her, careful not to touch. He was as cold as he’d been eight years before. It was as if their night together hadn’t happened.
She wanted to say something. She wanted to grab his arm and demand to know what was going on in his head. She wanted to know why he was hurting her like this.
But his face was a frozen mask and her pride kept her hands by her sides as she let him walk away.
Tasha took her time strolling towards the shower.
He was watching her. She could almost feel the heat of his eyes on her back.
Get a load of that, she thought happily as she stepped into the shower. Flat-chested? I don’t think so.
From the moment she’d decided to do her striptease, her heart had been hammering. First she’d checked he was awake through the crack in the door, then she’d choreographed her walk across the room to ensure that he witnessed every move.
After that all she’d had to do was not give in to temptation and look round. She’d done everything in her power to push up his blood pressure. What she hadn’t done was ask herself why she would want to.
Until now.
Muttering to herself, she turned the shower to cold.
Ten years hadn’t done anything to make him less attractive. Unfortunately. In fact, he’d filled out in places where it counted. His shoulders were wider, his chest stronger and his arms thickened with muscle. Less of the boy and more of the man. Too much more of the man.
Despite the cold water, her body felt scorching hot again and she wondered why on earth she’d agreed to this.
Another one of her stupid ideas.
She’d thought her feelings for him had been no more than a childish crush. She’d thought the pain he’d ca
used would have inoculated her against his lethal charm. She’d thought she was immune. If you’d been infected with something once, you shouldn’t catch it again, should you?
So why the explosion of chemistry?
Tasha gave a groan of frustration and turned off the shower.
Her brother was right. She needed to get out more.
Wrapping herself in a huge towel, she opened the bathroom door and risked a glance towards his bedroom. It was in darkness. The feeling of superiority drained out of her. If he’d been watching her, he wasn’t now. He wasn’t lying there tortured with unfulfilled desire after seeing her in her underwear.
He was asleep.
Which said it all. You couldn’t torment a man who didn’t even bother looking.
Feeling cross and hot and all sorts of things she didn’t want to feel, Tasha flopped onto the bed and rolled onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was supposed to have taken one look at him and wondered what she’d seen in him. She wasn’t supposed to be having the thoughts she was having now. Why couldn’t he be a total wimp like all the other men she met on a daily basis? Her last relationship had floundered after less than a week when the doctor in question had taken to his bed with a dose of man-flu. Tasha, who had endless patience with sick children, had been exasperated by his dying-duck impression but she’d dutifully made hot drinks, dished out tablets and made sympathetic noises until finally calling a halt, reasoning that there was no future in a relationship where one of the partners wanted to strangle the other.
Why couldn’t Alessandro provoke the same feelings of irritation?
Why didn’t she want to strangle him?
‘Ugh.’ Blocking out images of his broad shoulders, she burrowed under the pillow. The man had to be in agony. The bruises on his chest were the worst she’d ever seen. But had he uttered a murmur of complaint? No. In fact, he’d been so stoical about the whole thing it had been a struggle to persuade him to take painkillers. She wanted him to be a wimp, but he was anything but. And as for the chilli …
Clearly he liked his food hot.
Tasha thumped the pillow angrily and rolled onto her back. So he was tough. So what? That just proved the man had no nerve-endings and she already knew that. A man with the slightest sensitivity wouldn’t have treated her the way Alessandro had treated her.
Had she seen a flicker of remorse?
Had he apologised?
No. And she hadn’t exactly progressed in her plan to make him suffer. In fact, so far her plan had totally failed to get off the ground.
Wishing she hadn’t wasted her limited finances on sexy underwear, Tasha rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
So far she’d failed spectacularly to make him feel remotely guilty for the way he’d treated her, but she couldn’t very well back out now without exposing herself to relentless questioning and teasing by her insensitive brother. Which meant she was stuck here.
She lay in the dark, unable to sleep, wondering how someone with a chest that bruised had somehow managed to get himself to and from the bathroom without help. It hadn’t just been the physical strength that had impressed her, it was the mental strength. Somehow he’d pushed through the pain.
He didn’t just look like a warrior, he had warrior mentality.
There was a hardness to him that hadn’t been there ten years before. He wasn’t the same person.
And neither was she.
Tasha was pondering on that when a loud crash echoed around the house.
She was out of bed in a flash, her mind already working through various scenarios. If he’d fallen out of bed, it could have seriously aggravated his injuries. They’d need an ambulance. Paramedics … ‘Alessandro?’ Sprinting into his bedroom, she saw a lamp lying on the floor where he’d knocked it off the bedside table. On the wall in front of him a football match was being played out on the wide-screen TV and he was watching avidly, his hand locked around the remote control.
‘Tash, you’re standing in front of the screen!’
‘You’re watching sport?’ Her heart was hammering and she felt weak at the knees. ‘You frighten the life out of me and then all you can say is “You’re standing in front of the screen”?’ Incredulous, she rescued the lamp and waited for her heartbeat to reach a normal level. ‘I thought you’d fallen out of bed. I thought you’d broken the rest of your ribs and your skull to go with it.’
‘I knocked the lamp off when I was reaching for the remote control.’
‘It’s two in the morning. What is it with men and the remote control?’
‘I wanted to watch sport. I couldn’t sleep.’
Him too?
Only she’d been lying there thinking about him while he’d been thinking about football. The knowledge scraped at her nerves and strengthened her resolve. ‘Is it the pain?’ Tasha straightened the lamp. ‘I thought you’d fallen.’ And she’d been terrified of what a fall could do to his broken ribs. Not that she cared, she told herself quickly, but she didn’t want to be stuck here nursing him any longer than she had to be.
‘It isn’t pain. Go back to bed, Tasha. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’ He didn’t shift his gaze from the screen, watching unblinking as the crowd roared its approval. He was a typical man, obsessed with sport, just like her three brothers. She could walk across the room naked and he wouldn’t look up because some feat of sporting prowess was being enacted on the giant plasma screen.
Why had she bothered buying expensive lingerie to drive him wild? she thought crossly. She may as well have worn her ancient Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
The glass doors were still open onto the terrace and a cool breeze wafted into the room. ‘Shall I close these now?’ She walked across the room. ‘You must be freezing.’
‘I like the cold air.’ Something in his tone made her look at him closely and it was only because she was trained to notice subtle clues that she realised he wasn’t actually watching the game. True, his eyes were fixed on the screen, but they were blank. Empty.
And suddenly she knew that the football was an excuse.
Tasha switched on the other lamp and for a fleeting second saw the expression on his face. The humour was gone and in its place was exhaustion and pain. She hesitated and then sat down on the chair, hating herself for not just being able to walk away. It wasn’t that she cared, she told herself quickly. It was because he was in pain. She’d never been any good at watching someone in pain. ‘You look rough.’
‘Go to bed, Tasha.’ It was a dismissal she chose to ignore.
She wondered whether he was thinking about his injury or the loss of his brother.
‘Things always seem worse at night,’ she said casually. ‘I see it on the ward with both the kids and the parents. There’s something about being in the dark. It makes you think too much.’ And she knew that sometimes it helped to talk to pass the time. She’d spent hours keeping frightened kids company at night, playing cards, chatting quietly while the rest of the ward slept. ‘What were you doing back in Cornwall anyway? I imagined you in some gilded palace, doing prince-like things.’
‘You imagined me?’ His head turned and she wanted to bite her tongue. Suddenly she was staring into those dark eyes and everything inside her melted, just as it had when she was a teenager.
‘Just a figure of speech. You’re the crown prince.’ Suddenly she felt awkward, and she wondered why she found it so much easier to talk to children than adults. ‘I was sorry to hear about your brother. That must have been very hard for all of you.’
‘It’s life.’ His voice was hard and she floundered, wondering how it was possible to want to comfort and run at the same time. ‘What are you doing here, Tasha? Why did you really volunteer to look after me?’
Her heart jumped in her chest. So he wasn’t just brave, he was as sharp as a blade.
It wouldn’t do to forget that.
‘I wanted to help.’
‘Really?’ The bleak, cold look
in his eyes had been replaced by smouldering sexuality that made it impossible to breathe or think. Time was suspended. In the background the crowd roared its approval at some amazing feat of sportsmanship but neither of them looked towards the screen. They were looking at each other, the chemistry a magnetic force between them, drawing them together.
And then he turned his head and closed his eyes. ‘Go to bed, Tasha.’
Embarrassment drove her to her feet. Another minute and she would have kissed that mouth. She would have leaned forward and—
Oh, God.
‘Right. Yes. Good. Well—try not to knock over any more lamps.’ She fled to the door, wondering what it was about this man that affected her so badly.
She was a career-woman. She was dedicating her life to her little patients. The only thing she was interested in was getting another job as fast as possible.
This time when she walked into her bedroom she closed the door firmly behind her.
The dark rage inside him mingled with frustration. The inactivity was driving him crazy. Almost as crazy as living with Tasha. Even when she wasn’t there, she was there. He smelt her perfume, spied a pair of feminine shoes discarded next to a chair.
And now she was surfing. Alessandro watched from the terrace as she carved into the wave, graceful and perfectly balanced. It was like watching a dancer. Some bolder tourists had chosen to visit the beach to take lessons on the soft sand and then try the bigger surf created by the rocks. They huddled in groups, learning to stand on the board, learning to balance, practising the ‘pop-up'. Then they ventured into the water and spent the time falling off their boards in the shallows.
Tasha had none of those problems.
Watching her was sheer poetry. He turned away from the window, envying her the opportunity to push herself physically. Before the accident he would have been out there with her. Or maybe not with her, exactly. He frowned, not sure how he felt about having her there. She was the reason he was home, and those new painkillers had certainly taken the edge off the agony. But other parts of him weren’t faring so well. The inactivity was driving him mad.