To feel anything. She’d been numb for so long she’d hardly known what to do with herself.
Matthew Chase had been the first person to remind her of the spark buried so deep in her heart she’d all but forgotten it had ever existed.
Amanda could feel Deena’s curious gaze on her now. And Dr. Menzies’s. But she still couldn’t move. She was a deer caught in the headlights of the one powerhouse of energy and seduction she had never expected to lay eyes on again.
Matthew’s scent—aura, more like—was another thing altogether. And when he took a step toward her there was a swirl of... How on earth did he smell like a Nordic woodsman peeling a blood orange in the center of London? In a hospital, no less?
It was all she could do to keep her knees doing their job.
The heat blazing from his bright blue eyes struck her like bolts of lightning. This meeting was obviously as unexpected to him as it was to her.
A one-night stand.
That was all it was ever meant to have been.
It was all it had been for him.
But...
If she closed her eyes Amanda knew flashes of that night would come back to her so vividly it would be like living it all over again.
He’d seen her first. She’d known that because she’d felt his gaze on her from across the room as intensely as she was feeling it now. He hadn’t just looked. His gaze had felt...tactile. As if he had already been undressing her. And when their eyes had met...
Fireworks.
One of those hits of recognition some people waited a lifetime for and never had. She had known that having it that night was a lifeline. A sign from above—or wherever signs come from—that she shouldn’t give up. Not just yet.
She cleared her throat as Matthew closed the distance between them with another long-legged step. The whorls of heat in her chest turned into protective bars of steel. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—know about what had also happened that night.
She’d overheard enough of his cocktail party chitchat to know he was a tried and true bachelor. A determined playboy, if his one-liners were anything to go by. A committed army doctor if the newspaper headlines were to be believed. Or had he recently been decommissioned? Given himself over to the finer things in life?
She gave herself a sharp shake. Playboy or not, if he was the one threatening to take the job she rightfully deserved she was going to have play her A-game.
This was her job. She hadn’t sat through countless interviews and buttoned herself into this ridiculous suit heaven knew how many times just to let it go without a fight.
“You two have met?” Dr. Menzies stepped between the pair of them, throwing anxious looks first at Amanda and then at Matthew.
Amanda realized that both she and Matthew had slowly been advancing on each other—as natural predators would. Cheetah vs panther? Or tiger vs lion? She’d like to think of herself as the lioness in this scenario. Ready with a killer hairdo and a roar that would knock anyone for six if they were brave enough to stick around and listen.
“Not formally,” Amanda answered, quirking an eyebrow in Matthew’s direction but turning on a hundred-watt smile and reaching out a hand to Dr. Menzies. “You must be Donald Menzies?”
Copyright © 2017 by Annie O’Neil
ISBN-13: 9781488020902
Christmas Bride for the Sheikh
Copyright © 2017 by Carol Marinelli
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