by Amy Andrews
‘Okay, sure. There was an industrial fire with several burn victims, we’re down a couple of nurses and Evie’s attending an arrest on one of the wards. It’s bedlam.’
He nodded. ‘Okay.’
She waited for him to move on, brush past her, leap into action, but he didn’t. He just stood looking at her, weary and subdued. ‘How…how was it?’
Not that she cared. Not that she wanted to know.
Luca rubbed at his stubble. ‘Bad.’ A nurse bustled past them.
Mia heard the low accented rumble right down to her toes. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
What the hell?
She didn’t want him to talk about it. She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to know. The only thing she was interested in was the magic he could wreak on her body.
And even that was now off limits.
His life was none of her damn business and she liked it that way!
Luca shook his head. He didn’t. He really, really didn’t. Three days of dealing with family history had been enough to bear, without rehashing it. What he wanted was to forget it. Lay her down and let their magic take him somewhere else.
A place where he wasn’t a hormone-driven, starry-eyed sixteen-year-old. Where he hadn’t got his brother’s girlfriend—now wife—pregnant. A place where there were no toxic family relationships, where he hadn’t let anyone down, where no one disapproved.
And Mia was the perfect woman for that. Gorgeous, sexually uninhibited and emotionally unavailable.
That’s what he needed. Talking—not so much.
‘I just need to work.’
Mia nodded. ‘Cubicle two.’ And held her breath as Luca brushed past her.
* * *
Two hours later the department had quietened down. The minor burn victims had been triaged, assessed and transferred to the burns unit. Of the two more serious burns, one had gone to Theatre, the other to ICU.
Mia was able to breathe again. To think of something other than ABCs and burns percentages and fluid requirements. She glanced at Luca, who was writing in a chart. He glanced up at the same time and the heat flaring between them could have lit the Sydney Harbour Bridge for all eternity.
Okay. Enough. They’d been lovers—briefly. That was all and now it was over. They’d agreed. This…sexual ESP stuff couldn’t go on.
It just couldn’t.
She stood. ‘Can I speak with you please, Dr di Angelo?’ she asked quietly, looking around her at the completely disinterested staff going about their own business.
Luca looked up at her, the quiet steel in her voice at odds with the heat in her eyes. ‘On-call room?’
Mia felt the kick in her pulse. The things they’d done in that on-call room… But the fact was that their privacy was absolute there—the perfect place to tell him this couldn’t go on.
‘Sure.’
Mia turned and led the way on very shaky legs, hyper-aware of his gaze glued to her back. When she finally reached her destination she headed straight for the kitchenette and grabbed two mugs, absently going about the business of fixing them coffee. She heard the door shut behind her. Then lock. She was conscious of Luca leaning against it, watching her.
Mia turned to face him, her butt resting against the sink. He looked dark and wild and every fibre of her being wanted to melt into his arms. ‘We agreed not to do this any more.’
Luca hung onto the doorknob. She was right. They had. But he’d thought of nothing else for the last few hours. Since returning home. Hell, since leaving. And he’d happily walk away. But he needed tonight.
He didn’t know why. He just knew he did.
‘I know.’
Mia shook her head emphatically. ‘I don’t do this, Luca. We,’ she wagged her finger back and forth between the two of them. ‘We don’t do this.’
Luca pushed away from the door and prowled over, halting in front of her. Close enough to see the frantic flicker of the pulse at the base of her throat, the flare of her nostrils, the dilation of her pupils.
‘I know.’
Mia felt the rumble of his voice curl her toes. Lust, full and throaty and undisguised, thickened his accent. He crowded her against the sink and her fingers automatically curled into the sleeves of his shirt. Their bodies touched from hip to shoulder and it felt so good she almost whimpered.
Mia swallowed and clawed desperately for some self-control. ‘We’re alike, you and I, Luca. We have scars…trust issues. We guard our hearts. We don’t get involved. It’s why we’re emergency doctors—patch ’em up and ship ’em out, right? No time to get involved. It’s who we are.’
Luca looked deep into her eyes. ‘Who are you trying to convince Mia—me or yourself?’
Mia glared at him. Damn it, she was trying to walk this thing back. Why wasn’t he meeting her halfway? Why was he trying to change the boundaries he’d set before he’d left? Damn it all, the boundaries he lived by.
They both lived by.
‘Am I wrong?’ she challenged.
Luca shook his head. ‘No.’ In fact, she was one hundred per cent accurate. But that didn’t stop the primal beat of a jungle drum thrumming through his blood. His gaze brushed her mouth. ‘But I need this. I wish I didn’t. But I do.’
He placed a hand on the cold stainless-steel of the sink either side of her and dropped his head, claiming her mouth on a muffled groan. She opened for him instantly, her tongue seeking his, and his barely leashed desire blazed to life with all the heat and intensity of a solar flare.
His hands skimmed up her body and buried themselves in her hair, pulling at the band tying it back, releasing it in a tumble of blonde, his fingers seeking the spot where nape met scalp. Her corresponding moan went straight to his groin.
Yes, yes, yes. This was what he needed. A place to feel good, to feel like a successful, virile man again instead of a home-wrecking boy. A place to forget.
He pulled away from the softness of her mouth to explore the delights of her neck. ‘I missed you,’ he murmured against the pulse fluttering in her throat.
Because he had. Thoughts of her had been his constant companion while he’d been away. Had often been his only relief from what had been a tense and stilted time.
His hands left her hair, travelled to her hips, gripping them hard as he lifted her onto the narrow edge of the sink, stepped between her legs, forcing them apart, grinding his monster erection against the place where he knew it fitted perfectly.
Mia gasped as her hips responded to the blatant invitation. She wanted him inside her so badly she could practically feel his hardness stretching her.
Here on the sink. In the on-call room. With the bustle of an entire emergency department just outside the door.
This was madness!
‘Luca, stop, no, please, stop.’
She pushed at his shoulders as his tongue laved a wet track from her ear to her collarbone. Her heart pounded in her ears and for an insane moment she thought it was someone pounding against the door. ‘We really need to stop this.’
Luca pulled away, his chest heaving. ‘If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.’ His breath sawed in and out of his chest as he stared into blue eyes that were hazy with lust. He pulled her in tight to his hips. ‘But I don’t think you really want me to.’
Mia’s head was spinning, her chest was bursting, her belly was clenched in a tight knot. Common sense warred with primal craving. He rotated his hips against hers and she bit down a moan.
To hell with it. She wanted it, needed it—needed him—too much to deny it.
‘This is it, Luca. After this, there is no more.’
The words were barely out before Luca was whispering, ‘Done,’ and reclaiming her mouth.
Mia welcomed the sweep of his tongue and the triumphant noise at the back of his throat when she opened to his long, deep, hot kiss. She especially welcomed his harsh intake of breath as her hands found his zipper and tugged it down.
‘Wrap your legs around me,’ he murmured, sco
oping her hips off the edge and grasping her buttocks firmly in his hands as he hauled her off the sink and headed for one of the rooms. Her ankles locked around his waist and he almost stumbled as her hands continued their quest to get behind his zip while her tongue flicked at the pulse thudding at the base of his throat.
He kicked the door shut behind them and tumbled them onto the couch her legs wide, her knees bent, his hips perfectly aligned with hers. His shirt was off in five seconds. Hers followed closely after.
And then a pager beeped.
Mia froze. Luca cursed in his mother tongue.
They both lay there for a few seconds, not moving, their frantic breath and the trilling of a pager the only sound in the room.
Mia pushed against Luca’s shoulders. ‘Let me up,’ she requested, hating how husky her voice sounded.
Luca pushed off her, sitting back on the couch, his chest naked, his fly gaping open. He raked a hand through his hair while Mia ripped the pager off her waistband and read the liquid crystal display. ‘Chopper retrieval,’ she relayed. ‘MVA near the Blue Mountains.’
She swung herself into a sitting position, her scrambled thoughts sluggish as she tried to switch into medical mode. Luca handed over her shirt and she looked at it absently for a moment before realising she was sitting there in her bra and a pair of jeans.
Too close to Luca for comfort, she stood and fixed her clothing. She straightened her shoulders, pulled her hair back, cleared her throat. She headed for the door and paused with her hand on the knob. ‘I’d better go.’
Luca watched her from the sofa. ‘This isn’t over, Mia.’
Mia knew they couldn’t keep doing this. Whatever the two of them were doing had overstepped both their boundaries and all this sexual gratification was doing was prolonging the inevitable. If they’d been meant to be together one last time, they wouldn’t have been interrupted.
The pager was a sign from the universe.
‘Yes, it is,’ she said without looking back, and then swept from the room.
Luca watched her disappear and knew in his bones that there would be no changing her mind. It shouldn’t have mattered. He’d done this dozens of times with dozens of women. Had had a good time for a while then walked away without looking back.
No harm, no foul.
Except it did matter. Somehow these past weeks with Mia had come to mean more than a sexual pressure valve.
Mia mattered.
CHAPTER NINE
TWENTY minutes later Mia and Luca were sitting opposite each other strapped into the rescue helicopter, watching the rooftop helipad lights bend and twist as they refracted through the raindrops clinging to the chopper’s windows. Luca had volunteered to go with her due to the shortage of nurses in the department and the ICU retrieval team also being out on a call.
‘Okay, folks, welcome to Brian Air. Please ensure your tray tables are in an upright position and your seat belts are fastened low and tight. It’s going to be an interesting ride.’
Mia grinned at the amplified patter in her earphones despite the tension she felt at sitting opposite a man she’d been mere minutes away from feeling deep inside her. Brian was one of the pilots who had been flying rescue choppers for ever and his skill and experience were much appreciated on a stormy night.
Even his sense of humour.
‘Please don’t tell me we’re heading into a storm, Brian.’
‘Would I do that to you, Mia, my lovely?’
Luca gritted his teeth at the easy banter. He had a sudden urge to break something of Brian’s. Something non-essential, of course. He still had to be able to fly the damn chopper.
‘There is some storm activity but I’ll be skirting around it. Safe as houses. Cross my heart. Would I lie to you?’
Mia laughed. ‘You? Never.’
Brian laughed back. ‘Got yourself a man yet?’
Mia’s smile died, her gaze locking with Luca’s. ‘I’m too busy for a man.’
Brian tsked into his headset. ‘Now, if only I was twenty years younger. What’s wrong with men these days, Luca? Are they blind?’
Mia tried to look away from him but Luca’s brooding gaze held her captive.
‘Not all of us,’ Luca murmured.
Mia pursed her lips. ‘You know me, Brian—don’t like to be tied down.’
Luca had no doubt the words were for his benefit and he switched off to the patter as he shifted his gaze from Mia to the now far-away lights of Sydney. The steady beat of the rotors above him echoed the thud of his heart beat as he tried to catalogue the swirl of alien feelings churning in his gut.
In less than two months Dr Mia McKenzie had taken over his life. And he wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened. All he knew for sure was that the thought of never being with her again was not one he relished.
She’d been the one he’d thought of while he’d been away. Not the air hostess in business class who’d slipped him her card. Not the many beautiful Sicilian women who had smiled at him with frank interest on the streets of Marsala. Not even Marissa, his brother’s wife, the woman he’d foolishly thought himself in love with all those years ago.
Mia. It had been Mia who he’d thought of. Mia he’d picked up the phone to ring after his brother had paid him a visit at his hotel and told him to go home. And then put down again. Mia who he’d credited as he’d talked to his grandmother standing by her fresh grave after the other mourners had left. Mia who had got him through a killer flight as he’d fantasised about their reunion.
He stole a glance at her as she flicked through the retrieval paperwork balanced on a clipboard on her lap. She was gorgeous even in a big yellow helmet that made her look as if she was trapped inside a giant insect eye and flight overalls that seemed two sizes too big for her.
He looked away again as the insanity of it all hit him. He’d always been able to walk away. Always. None of this made sense.
And none of it made him happy.
It was official—he was having a truly hellish week.
‘So the ambulance crew on scene have the patient stabilised and ready for transport,’ Mia said, conscious of his eyes on her and desperate to get back to a professional footing after their coitus interruptus.
Their patient had suspected spinal injuries requiring rapid air evacuation for maximum treatment success and that’s what she needed to focus on.
Luca nodded. ‘Should just be able to scoop and run.’
Mia hoped so. The rain had picked up and the chopper seemed to be being buffeted by some decent wind. She could see lightning in the distance and guessed that was the storm they were skirting around. At the best of times Mia wasn’t the greatest flyer in the world and she knew that Brian wouldn’t be flying if he didn’t think it was safe but the sooner they were back at The Harbour in one piece, the better. And then there was Luca, sitting opposite her, watching her with brooding eyes and causing another kind of storm. Inside her. She’d never met a man she couldn’t handle and she hated it that she couldn’t shake him. From her thoughts. Her dreams.
Her daydreams!
‘Think I might get a bit of shut-eye,’ she said into her mike. It was, after all, nearly three in the morning and she’d long ago learned the value of power-napping.
She didn’t wait for anyone’s permission, just closed her eyes. And dreamed of Luca.
* * *
A loud bang woke her with a start fifteen minutes later. The chopper spun wildly and her head was filled with Brian swearing and putting out a mayday call. Her eyes flew to the man opposite her. ‘Luca?’
Luca saw alarm and fear in her eyes and felt his own pulse leap as the helicopter seemed to be losing altitude as it spun. ‘Brian?’ He spoke into his headphones. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Lightning took out the tail rotor,’ Brian said calmly, while desperately trying to regain control of the spiralling chopper.
‘I thought you said you were skirting around the storm?’ Mia said above the noise of her pistoning heart and t
he whine of the labouring engine. She braced one hand against the stretcher beside her and the other against the aircraft shell to steady herself in the midst of the crazy spinning.
‘I am. Mother nature can be a bitch like that sometimes.’
How was it possible that Brian could even sound upbeat during a mid-air emergency?
‘Are we going to crash?’ she asked.
‘Hell, yeah,’ Brian said matter-of-factly. ‘Brace yourselves, guys, we’re over national park and there’re a lot of trees down there.’
Mia tamped down on the rather alien urge to become hysterical. It wasn’t what she usually did in a crisis but, hell, they were going to crash. She was twenty-nine and she was going to die. She hadn’t witnessed the northern lights. She hadn’t bought herself that cute little retro convertible. She hadn’t been to the ballet.
She hadn’t been in love.
Except she had, of course.
And the man she loved was going to die with her.
Her gaze locked with Luca’s. What a really, really horrible time for such a profound revelation. No time to hug it to herself like a delicious little secret.
‘Oh, God,’ Mia whispered, her throat suddenly as dry as ash, her eyes trying to take in every detail of Luca’s face.
‘It’s going to be okay, Mia,’ Luca said.
He reached out his hand, hoping his grandmother was out there somewhere watching over them. He was damned if he was going to die before telling Mia how he felt about her.
Whatever the hell that was.
If he’d learned anything this past week it was that life was short and you couldn’t live in the past.
Mia slipped her hand into his and gripped tight. It was cold and she was trembling and he’d have given anything to erase the glimpse of mortality he could see in her eyes.
‘Just because we crash it doesn’t mean we’re going to die. Does it, Brian?’ Luca queried.
He was calm, so bloody calm. How could Luca be this calm as the helicopter spiralled out of control in a death plunge? Her brain was spinning just as wildly. Desperately trying to remember helicopter crash statistics while grappling with regret that she wasn’t closer to her parents and sorrow that her fledgling love for Luca was going to be snuffed out before she’d even had the chance to explore it.