Mitch nodded slowly. ‘So Daniel’s loss was my gain. That’s why you were available to do this job.’
Her eyes met his. Was he being sceptical? Or just matter-of-fact? She wasn’t entirely sure. It was almost as if he was trying to weigh things up in his mind, and for some strange reason she felt as though he was finding her wanting.
It was the oddest feeling. And this was nothing to do with her nursing skills. This was about her, and her methods. Her, as a person. Her goals. Her values.
She’d never felt like this before. Never been so much on the spot. But the bottom line was, yes, she was here for the money.
Would she really leave her mum at Christmas for any other reason?
Her Christmas agency shifts were the only reason she’d managed to keep her head above water these last few years. This way she paid her mortgage, paid her mother’s mortgage and paid the nursing-home fees. They’d tried selling her mother’s house to help with finances. But the market was dead right now and homes just weren’t selling, and, the idea of selling her mum’s house didn’t sit well with her anyway.
This was the answer. This was the thing that she could manage to do.
So why did it suddenly feel so wrong?
The food in front of her had lost its appetising aroma. Her stomach was still empty but churning. She couldn’t even force a sip of her wine.
With a simple few sentences he’d made her mind spin. This was all because she’d crossed a line. Without even meaning to, she’d mixed business with pleasure.
Sometimes it felt as if he was looking at her, really looking at her with something special in his eyes. More than just a friend. More than just a colleague. As for the kiss?
Who was she kidding? Half the females in the world probably wanted to be kissed by Mitchell Brody, and she was a fool if she thought she’d managed that through anything but default.
Sure, there was sometimes a twinkle in his eye when he talked to her. On occasion it did feel like he was flirting with her. But maybe that was just Mitch? Maybe she’d misread everything. Including the fact he’d murmured he didn’t think it had been a mistake.
Her warped brain was letting her imagination run wild and she’d actually believed that Mitchell Brody could be interested in her.
It was time for a reality check.
Then something else struck her. If this tour was really so important to Mitchell, could there be a chance that he was playing her?
Trying to get her to say that he was fit to do something he might actually not be? Now, that worried her all the more.
That compromised her professional integrity. Something she really didn’t want to happen.
This night had started out so perfectly, with so much promise.
But the course of one conversation just seemed to have killed it, and all the friendly tones, stone dead.
So much for the festive spirit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT WAS WRONG with him?
Samantha had spent the last few days tiptoeing around him. And no wonder. He was acting like a bear with a sore head.
Every day she met him halfway up the slopes, their coffee drunk in silence as she watched him check his blood-sugar level and administer insulin.
Afternoons were spent avoiding each other at the children’s hospital. She still seemed happy to go there—in fact, it was the only part of the day she seemed to enjoy. She’d developed an even better rapport with Lisa, the rest of the staff and the kids, which made him seem even more unreasonable.
But he just couldn’t get things out of his head.
And it was all his own fault anyway.
For the first time in his life money was keeping him awake at night.
Samantha was here because she wanted to get paid. She had no loyalty to him, or interest in him personally.
After she’d spoken about the other family she normally spent Christmas with—for a price, of course—he’d felt a lousy second choice. Something else that he wasn’t used to.
First there had been the comments from Lisa about finally picking ‘a good one’, then there had been the implication that Sam was desperate for money. Almost as desperate as he was.
But it was worse that that. Much worse.
Because her lips, her skin, her curls were haunting his dreams. It was like having an impossibly ripe peach sitting in front of him that he couldn’t touch. Even though he tried to forget about her, he couldn’t.
Samantha Lewis had burrowed her way under his skin.
He was trying to stay focused. He was trying to think of a way to make sure he could keep on top of the diabetes long enough to get through this tour. Once he was at the end of the tour he could take as much time as possible to look after himself.
The worst thing was he wasn’t in control. No matter what it looked like from the outside. He was trying his best, he really was. But last night he’d woken up shaking, with the bed drenched in sweat.
Thankfully, Sam had already warned him about night-time hypos and there had been an easily accessible bar of chocolate next to the bed. He hadn’t even waited to check his blood-sugar level. And, yes, he knew it was wrong. But he’d been gripped by an unholy terror. Usually, he was in his house alone. What if he hadn’t woken up? What if he’d slept right through? Would he have been dead in the morning?
He couldn’t face going through in the middle of the night and waking her up to tell her, because if he did, he might see her in that short satin nightdress again and start to imagine unthinkable things. He’d just slammed the chocolate down his throat and waited until he’d eventually stopped shaking. Then he’d stumbled through to the kitchen and made himself some toast. It was becoming his staple go-to food.
By the time he’d eventually got around to checking his blood sugar it had come up to six. He could only imagine what it had been before. And that scared him. That really scared him. The whole out-of-his-control element was unbearable.
But he just didn’t feel he could talk to her about it. Would she understand? Would she care?
This whole thing had him tied up in knots.
But one thing did make sense. Whether she was only here for the money or not, she’d told him that they needed to assess how his time on stage affected his diabetes. At some point he was going to have to do a mock gig—probably more than one. Three hours of full-on stage performance, checking his blood sugar before, during and after.
The thought of it made him cringe. Why had this happened to him? The very last thing he wanted to do was collapse on stage in front of thousands of fans and be unable to perform. He could only imagine what the press would speculate about then.
That hypo last night was really playing on his mind. It had been his first experience of dealing with a hypo himself. Granted, Sam had only been down the corridor and had disaster struck she would have checked on him in the morning and intervened. But he couldn’t rely on that. He didn’t want to rely on that.
He wanted to be able to look after himself. He didn’t want to be second-guessing himself every minute of the day—or minute of the night.
How on earth was he going to get through a tour if he didn’t have things under control?
He sighed, leaning forward and running his fingers through his hair. He had to find a way through this.
He sat upright. Money. Maybe if he offered her enough money she would stay for the tour. It was four months, but she could travel with him, stay in luxury hotels and make sure his diabetes stayed on track.
But no. She had a permanent job back home. This was her holiday time. And it was unlikely she’d want to give up her permanent job and travel the world for four months when her mum was in a nursing home back in England.
He let out a long stream of air from his lungs. What else was there? He could always find another nurs
e. But that thought appeared like a big black smoking cloud. Another nurse wouldn’t have Sam’s blue eyes, cute curls or even cuter bum.
She’d said that money was her motivating factor and he believed her. But he’d also heard how she’d spoken about her mum. Somehow he knew he could offer Samantha a big wad of cash and she still wouldn’t want to be separated from her mum for too long.
Then there was the other stuff. The crossing-the-line, I kissed her and wanted to do a whole lot more kind of stuff. He groaned. What was wrong with him?
Mitchell Brody. See a girl, like her, ask her out. That’s the way he’d always been. And for the most part it had served him well.
But this time was more than odd. For a start, he was sharing a house with said girl. He wasn’t seeing her at gigs or occasional parties. For another, he wasn’t entirely sure he was reading things correctly. They’d kissed. They’d flirted. They’d said things to annoy each other. So why was this different from any other time?
The diabetes was like a floating elephant in the room. He wasn’t sure he could handle this on his own. In fact, he was quite sure that in these early stages he couldn’t.
But he didn’t want Sam here because of his diabetes. He wanted her here for him.
Ugh. His brain wasn’t helping. Nothing made sense to him any more.
He walked over to the window and looked out at his precious mountains. It was only a few days until Christmas. Maybe he’d been harsh the other night? She must be missing her family. And maybe he’d taken her comment too personally about how special Christmas was with the other family. Of course Christmas was special for kids. That’s exactly the way it should be.
Something pricked in his brain, sending a smile across his face. That’s it. That’s what he’d do. He already had plans at the hospital for Christmas. But maybe if he could make her see that Christmas was special here too, she might just start to come round. She might want to be around him, rather than feel obliged to be.
He couldn’t rationalise why that was important to him. He just knew it was.
She hadn’t seen the outdoor ice skating rink yet in Innsbruck. That’s where he’d take her tonight. She’d already been impressed by the Christmas market, golden roof and cathedral. It was time to show her what the rest of Innsbruck had to offer. That’s what he’d do.
Enough of the awkward silences. It didn’t matter that they’d mainly been his fault. He needed Sam onside badly. And if charm was the way to do it, then Mitchell Brody could certainly oblige. Charm was easy. Charm was slick. He could do that.
He would play nice. He would do everything she wanted. Then, when the time was right, he’d suggest to her that she might want to work with him a little longer.
Of course he would pay her. He would never let her be out of pocket. But it was more important that she wanted to do it rather than had to do it. The money should be a nice bonus, not the deciding factor.
He could even offer to fly her home every other week to see her mum.
He made a quick call. Done. A large hangar booked for between Christmas and New Year to practise his set for the tour. That would give them a guide to how much energy he used during a performance. Hopefully it would be enough to tailor his food intake and insulin. It was so important that Sam said he was fit to continue the tour. Anything else would be a disaster.
In the meantime, he would do everything possible to keep her sweet. It wasn’t as if that would be a struggle. Samantha was a honey. If he could just get her to leave her nurse’s hat at the door, she could be a whole lot more.
There. Much better. He started to pull some clothes from the cupboard. It was time for him to pick himself up and start putting his plans into effect.
His gaze swept across the distant roof of St Jude’s. He was doing this for the right reasons. Of course he was.
So why did he still have an uncomfortable feeling churning in his stomach?
* * *
She was living the dream. And ultimately it was her nightmare.
She was the invisible presence in his home. It was like being a ghost. Or, even worse, an unnoticed servant, which, in fact, she was.
He probably wouldn’t even acknowledge her if she ran screaming through the house naked. The thought had crossed her mind.
What on earth was wrong with him?
She may have asked him a few difficult questions, and made a few suggestions he didn’t like. But that didn’t mean he could completely ignore her.
She was here to do a job—and she couldn’t do it if he wouldn’t communicate with her.
But it was more than that. Even if she didn’t want to acknowledge it.
It annoyed her—embarrassed her even—that she still felt a little starstruck around him. She shouldn’t, of course she shouldn’t.
She was dealing with Mitchell Brody, patient, not Mitchell Brody, rock star. She’d already learned that most of the assumptions and gossip about him in the press was just a smokescreen.
But what really annoyed her was the kiss.
The way it had made her skin tingle. The way it had conjured up a whole host of fantasies in her mind about how it could have continued. And how it had ruined practically every night’s sleep since.
There were moments she spent with Mitch when she felt they really connected. When she felt he might actually be interested in her, Samantha Lewis. She wasn’t just the convenient female presence in the house. She wasn’t just the hired help.
And it was those little moments, those knowing smiles and locked gazes that made her stomach flip flop.
She kept telling herself this was crazy. Her mixed-up head was reading things that weren’t really there at all. It had been one kiss. Just one completely perfect kiss.
But right now it felt like in fifty years she would still remember it. Still remember the feel of his skin against hers, the brush of his hair tickling her cheeks, the intensity of the look in his eyes. How many other women had lived out their fantasies in the Mitchell Brody experience?
She shook her head. No. She didn’t even want to think about that.
That was horrid. That was painful. That was...
‘Sam?’
He was standing in the doorway, dressed in a black leather jacket, jeans and boots. She scrambled to sit up on the bed, pushing away the pillow she’d been lying against and pulling up the wide-necked T-shirt that had fallen down one shoulder.
‘Do you want to go to the hospital?’
It seemed the safest assumption. He certainly didn’t seem to want to spend any time around her.
He shook his head and walked into the room. The indignant part in her chest wanted him to ask her permission to enter her room. The self-conscious part was running her tongue across her teeth and trying to remember if she’d actually put any make-up on today.
How did he make a pair of jeans look so sexy?
He sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at her red-painted toenails. ‘I think our differences in opinion might have affected my manners the other night.’
You don’t say. Was he about to make an apology? Because he just didn’t seem the type.
This was probably the time to bite her tongue and stay quiet. But that had never been in Sam’s nature. ‘I’m your nurse, Mitch. You don’t have to like what I say, but that won’t stop me saying it.’
‘Yeah, you’re my nurse.’ He stared out of the window towards the perfect white snow. If he mentioned he wanted to go skiing she might pick up her nearest shoe and throw it at him. Climbing up a freezing mountain was so not what she wanted to do right now.
His hand reached over and touched her foot. Her first instinct was to flinch and pull it away, but he was holding on, not tightly, just enough to keep it in place. ‘It’s Christmas in a few days, Sam. I feel as if I haven’t been very hospitable. You asked me t
o take you down to Innsbruck shopping—I haven’t even done that.’ He shook his head and let out a laugh. ‘Have you any idea how much trouble I’d be in with my mother and Granny Kirk if they knew?’
She smiled. She couldn’t help it. ‘You make it sound as if you do what your mum and gran tell you.’
He rested his elbow on the bed, his chin near her knee. ‘Disobeying Granny Kirk could result in a fate worse than death. No one, but no one ever argued with that woman. As for my mother, she has the best disapproving stare in the world. Award-winning. She’s also the master of the tut.’
‘The tut?’
He nodded, his face deadly solemn. ‘Oh, yeah.’ He made the noise with his tongue and shook his head along with it. ‘That tut is actually about five hundred disapproving words all rolled into one.’
He smiled at her. Really smiled. She was being whitewashed with his teeth. His whole face could light up with that smile. How many other women in the world would love to be on a bed with a smiling Mitchell Brody at their feet?
The thing was she didn’t really care about any other women. She just cared about herself.
Oh, for a pair of stiletto heels, a perfect fake tan, a designer figure-hugging dress and sultry red lips. Wasn’t that the kind of woman he was used to? Darn it. She’d forgotten the thirty-two double-Ds.
Nope. She was Samantha Lewis. Unruly blonde hair. A bit of tinted moisturiser if she was lucky and some cherry lip balm. Her current jeans were from the supermarket, along with her push-up bra.
But Mitchell didn’t look as if he cared. He was crawling up the bed towards her.
‘What do you say you let me be the host with the most?’
‘Most what?’ Her voice came out in an embarrassing squeak. Her brain was in places it shouldn’t be. But then again, she was on a bed with Mitchell Brody, so maybe her current fantasies weren’t as far-fetched as she suspected.
He reached the top of the bed. Planting one hand on either side of her, positioning himself directly above her. She was having flashbacks to that night on the sofa. It was all she could do not to let out an involuntary moan.
Christmas with the Maverick Millionaire Page 13