by Amy Andrews
Miranda swallowed at the way he said ‘sex’. One part grim determination, nine parts yearning. She twisted in her seat a little. ‘Do you think we should clarify the...physical boundaries?’
Patrick frowned as he too turned a little to face her. ‘Miranda.’
Miranda liked the way he said her name like that. With a tiny note of warning. Arousal flushed through her like an injection of vodka directly into her veins. ‘No. I mean, no sex is fairly broad...right?’
Patrick nodded, starting to feel really, really hot as Miranda seemed to loom a little closer. ‘It means no kissing,’ he murmured, as he thought about doing just that and her mouth drew his gaze. ‘No fondling.’ He could hear the loudness of his breath as he thought about that too. ‘Absolutely no fondling...’
Miranda nodded, her gaze drawn to his mouth. ‘What about just touching, though?’ she asked, and her hand trembled as she slid it onto his thigh.
Patrick’s flesh leapt at her touch, his pulse hammered at his temples. ‘Stop, Miranda,’ he warned, his gaze still on her mouth, which seemed closer now. Had she moved or had he?
Miranda couldn’t stop. All she could think about was his taste, all she could hear was the demanding whisper in her head to relive it. She inched her mouth closer, her hand higher on his thigh. It was dark and cosy in the fogged-up car—like their own little bubble.
‘Too intimate?’ she whispered, her gaze zeroing in on his lips, her mouth watering as she felt his breath on hers.
‘Miranda,’ he groaned, slipping his hand onto her cheek, pushing his fingers into her hair.
His mouth whispered against hers just as the car filled with blinding white light and they leapt apart at the startling intrusion.
Patrick ran a hand through his hair, his chest pounding with a mix of desire and adrenaline. ‘I think Helen is sending a message,’ he said, breathing hard.
Miranda blinked, appalled at her lack of control as she too tried to pull herself back from the edge and master her frantic pulse and heavy breathing. ‘I’d better go...’ She fumbled for the door handle with one hand, grabbing for her bag with the other.
Patrick didn’t stop her. The fact they could so easily have been making out in his car right now like randy teenagers shook him to the core. For crying out loud—he was parked in a car outside his house while his five-year-old daughter was asleep inside!
Hardly father of the year material.
Moments later Miranda backed out of his driveway and took off like a bat out of hell. Patrick placed his head on the steering-wheel and banged his forehead against it several times for good measure.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AND THEY WERE good. So good. For four weeks. Four long weeks where, thanks to Helen and Dot, they went on clandestine dates and behaved impeccably. Patrick chose crowded places and they took two cars. They didn’t so much as hold hands. They just enjoyed each other’s company. Laughed and talked and relaxed.
As much as two people who wanted to rip each other’s clothes off could relax.
They also kept it strictly professional at work despite the gossip swirling around them and Lilly’s best efforts to ascertain the status of their relationship. Even in front of the girls they kept up a polite and friendly veneer.
Lola and Ruby were becoming inseparable and as heartening as it was to see their girls getting on so well together, it also served as a reminder to Patrick and Miranda to keep their priorities straight. If they stuffed the relationship up, they wouldn’t be the only casualties. Two little girls would also suffer.
On their one-month anniversary Patrick picked Miranda up in a limo after decreeing earlier that day she wear a pretty dress and her dancing shoes. Miranda gaped at the sleek white machine that beckoned from the kerb.
‘Are you sure?’ she said, already swooning over the tux that clung to his broad shoulders and thinking about what they could accomplish in the back of such a decadent ride. ‘It looks like it might be hard to stick to the whole no-sex thing inside that.’
Patrick looked at her with a faux horrified expression. ‘I can assure you, as your prom date, my intentions are completely honourable.’
Miranda couldn’t quite believe what she’d heard. ‘Prom date?’ she said, trying to keep the tremor of excitement out of her voice.
He grinned. ‘Dot told me you never got to yours.’
She shook her head as a surge of something big and hot welled in her chest. ‘No, I didn’t.’
He opened the door for her. ‘Then your carriage awaits.’
Once inside Patrick produced a corsage of tiny white roses and placed it on her wrist. Miranda stroked the delicate petals. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, looking into his eyes.
Patrick shook his head. ‘You’re beautiful.’
They stared at each other for long moments until a voice from the front said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to put the partition up, sir?’
Patrick dragged his gaze from Miranda’s delectable face. ‘Positive, thanks, Larry. We’re going to need a chaperon.’
The chauffeur laughed and said, ‘Right you are, sir.’
The limo pulled away from the kerb and Miranda said, ‘Where are we going?’
Patrick just smiled. ‘Patience, prom queen, patience.’
Three quarters of an hour later they rolled to a stop in a hilly wooded area. Larry waited with the parked limo while Patrick led Miranda through some trees to a small clearing already set out with a picnic blanket and lit on the perimeter by hanging paper lanterns. A gentle breeze caressed her skin and the city lights twinkled in the distance.
Miranda gasped. ‘Patrick, this is amazing.’
He smiled as he leaned down and pushed a button on the portable CD player that sat beside the champagne bucket. A nineties rock ballad rose around them. ‘Shall we dance?’
Miranda took his hand, her heart overflowing. ‘I feel like I’m seventeen again,’ she said.
Patrick pulled her close. ‘Good.’
* * *
Three hours later they’d eaten a feast of gourmet finger food, boogied until their feet hurt, laughed and talked and were on their way back to reality.
‘Thank you, Patrick,’ Miranda said as he saw her to her door and they were standing like teenagers before it. The temptation to yank him inside and check out what she knew to be pretty magnificent man-flesh beneath his tuxedo was overwhelming. ‘That was so much fun.’
Patrick’s breath caught at the sheen of excitement he could still see in her eyes and felt an answering thrill inside him to know that he’d been the man to put it there. To give her an experience she’d never had before. It had been fun. He never really got the chance to let his hair down any more. But he had tonight.
‘My pleasure,’ he murmured resolutely.
Miranda smiled at him as her pleasure detector soared off the charts. She took a step closer to him, her breath rough in her lungs. ‘I know we’re keeping our hands off each other but I do believe that a prom date is not complete without a goodnight kiss?’
Patrick swallowed. He knew that look. God knew, he wanted to push her against the door and give her more than a kiss. But he was determined to give her the entire prom experience so instead he delivered a chaste kiss to her cheek and ignored her tiny mew as he pulled back slowly.
‘Goodnight,’ he whispered, then turned away, heading down the stairs to home and yet another cold shower.
* * *
Two days later a lift Miranda had been waiting for opened. It was groaning with people who stood looking at her and waiting for her to get in, and the only spot available was next to one Patrick Costello. He winked at her as he leant nonchalantly back against the wall.
‘Room for you here,’ he said, as he shuffled over as far as the cramped conditions allowed.
Mira
nda felt sure every occupant of the lift must have been able to hear the rapid rat-a-tat of her heart as she squeezed in beside him. She felt the instant sweep of his little finger against hers, as deceptively innocent as their prom-night kiss and a slow burn flared in her belly.
She concentrated nervously on the other occupants of the lift. There was a man in pyjamas sporting an IV pole and a packet of cigarettes. An orderly in charge of a wheelchair carrying an elderly woman and beside him a nurse with a chart tucked against her side. Miranda smiled absently at the nurse.
There were two women she assumed to be sisters talking in muted undertones about a nursing-home placement for their father. Several other people appeared to be at St Bennie’s by themselves, staring silently at the numbered display as the lift counted down the floors.
Slowly the lift emptied. The orderly and the nurse accompanying the wheelchair got out at X-Ray, along with two others. The smoker and another two got out at level five, which led out to an area of garden where people still smoked despite hospital policy.
By the time the lift doors slid shut with two floors to go until the OR level, they were finally alone. They didn’t separate. Patrick smiled down at her. ‘And then there were two.’
He reached across the front of her and punched the emergency button. The lift jerked to a halt, the bell clanging urgently.
Miranda swallowed at his predatory look, the noise fading from her mind. He had hat hair and a still visible red mark across the bridge of his nose from his mask. But she wanted him.
‘What are you doing?’
Patrick swung round, trapping her body against him and the lift wall. One hand cupped her cheek, the other slid onto her hip and pulled her close. ‘I can’t stand it a second longer. I haven’t been able to think about anything else since the prom.’
He exhaled on a rush of lust, his head swooping, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue stroking along her bottom lip, his pulse roaring through his ears.
He groaned as she let him in on a whimpery inhalation, her hand reaching for his tie and yanking him closer, urging him to go deeper. He obliged, and her perfume filled his senses, her head bumping against the wall as he allowed his lust full reign.
The bell rang and rang and rang and they were oblivious.
It was a different ring, the urgent burst of the emergency telephone, that finally cut through their raging passion.
Patrick stepped back, hands on hips, his chest heaving as he stared at her, her mouth swollen and wet from his kisses. Her smoky gaze was dazed, her breasts stretching her T-shirt as she gasped to grapple back control of her breathing.
‘I think we need to revise the no-touching policy,’ he said, clearing his throat and ignoring the phone.
Miranda nodded dumbly, her brain still short-circuiting. After that kiss she wondered if they should just scrap it altogether. ‘Yes.’
Patrick nodded. ‘Good.’
Their gazes locked as he reached for the phone. He snatched it up without taking his eyes off her and Miranda watched him watching her as he talked to the person on the other end.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, although his eyes told her he wasn’t sorry at all. ‘We’re fine...’ He smiled at her and her stomach flopped. ‘Something came up. I’m releasing the emergency stop button now.’
Still holding her gaze, he hung up the phone and hit the red button. The lift lurched obediently into action and he used the movement to bring them closer again, swooping in again for a quick, hard, kiss to her mouth, pulling away slightly as the lift dinged.
‘Until tomorrow night,’ he murmured against her mouth, then turned away from her in time to be standing neutrally, as if they hadn’t just been necking in a lift, when the doors opened.
Miranda let out a husky breath as the doors closed, completely missing her stop.
Tomorrow night. Their date tomorrow night. Her belly went into free-fall.
* * *
As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait that long.
Her phone rang at eleven that night, calling her back to work for a craniotomy coming from ICU.
As part of her roster, Miranda worked three days out of the month on call, which involved three one p.m. to nine p.m. shifts in a row and going on call immediately after each one ended until six a.m. the following morning.
Luckily for Miranda, she had her grandmother to fall back on. It made things easier in the middle of the night to know that Lola was tucked up safely in Nan’s house.
Half an hour later she was back in her scrubs, setting up for the incoming extradural haematoma. The swing doors opened and Patrick sauntered in, looking sexier in pink than any man had a right to.
‘Morning,’ he murmured, sidling up beside her in the anaesthetic room, his butt resting against the hip-high bench. ‘So this is what you look like in the wee hours.’
He smiled down at her and Miranda smiled back as his eyes crinkled nicely. ‘You know damn well what I look like in the wee hours, Patrick Costello.’
‘Oh, that’s right.’ He grinned. ‘So I do. It’s been so long you might have to jog my memory.’
Miranda quirked an eyebrow. ‘We’re drastically revising the policy, then?’
Patrick watched Miranda’s mouth as it formed the words. It had tasted so good earlier today he’d been craving it ever since. ‘I thought maybe we could...move on to kissing?’
Miranda’s mouth felt on fire as his gaze zeroed in, stroking heat along it. She was aware of their arms brushing, the closeness of his hip, his thigh. ‘And you think we’ll be able to stop at just kissing?’
‘Hmm,’ he mused as his craving kicked up another notch. ‘Good point.’
The phone on the wall rang and Miranda laughed. It seemed they were forever going to be interrupted by phones. She reached over and picked it up. It was ICU.
‘They’re ready for us,’ she told him as she replaced the receiver thirty seconds later and pulled her traitorous body back into line. For now she had a job to do and it didn’t involve crushing on Patrick.
They had a life to save. Nothing else mattered at the moment.
* * *
The operating theatres connected to the ICU via a swing door and Miranda and Patrick, along with another nurse and two orderlies, entered the unit a minute later and walked down the corridor that led to the main area.
A nurse bustled past them on her way to the storeroom. ‘Bed eight,’ she said, without breaking stride.
It was the first time Miranda had been to ICU and she wasn’t prepared for it. The unit was lit up like a Christmas tree and was a hive of activity. A swarm of people already surrounded the bed and they joined them.
The ICU team launched into their handover. ‘This is seventeen-year-old Candice Halifax, who got into a fight tonight at a party and fell, hitting her head on the gutter.’
Miranda took nothing in after that. She glanced at the young woman pale and unmoving in the bed surrounded by a host of medical technology. An older woman, a relative perhaps, stood still beside the bed in the midst of all the activity, her back bent and bowed, tears streaming down her face, clutching the patient’s hand.
She chose that moment to look up and caught Miranda’s gaze. ‘She’s not a bad kid,’ she said to Miranda, her gaze beseeching. ‘She’s been going through a rough trot at home, that’s all.’
Miranda looked back at Candice and felt as if she’d been punched. The girl had an endotracheal tube in her mouth, which was connected to a ventilator, and a slight red mark on her temple. She had blonde hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She looked young and pretty. She looked...asleep.
She’d been Candice.
Confused, unhappy, rebellious. She’d consumed alcohol. She’d gone to wild parties. Been reckless. Acted like she was bulletproof.
And she’d alway
s thought she’d paid heavily for her rebellion. After all, she’d fallen pregnant.
She could still hear her mother’s scathing condemnation when she’d finally confessed the pregnancy. Looking at Candice lying still and near death, words that she’d thought were in her past blasted into her brain with all the ferocity of dynamite.
Stupid, stupid little slut! I knew this was going to happen with your drinking and your partying and your skipping school. I knew some guy was going to knock you up. Your father said you were out of control. How’s this going to look to him now? Get out. Get out and don’t ever come back.
So she’d left and gone to live with her grandmother and had had Lola and her life had been turned upside down. But looking at Candice now, she knew she’d got off easy. That there were even harsher realities. She hadn’t paid for her teenage stupidity with her life. She hadn’t ended up in Intensive Care with someone about to cut into her head. She hadn’t been on some critical list with a dangerous blood clot threatening her existence.
But she could have been.
Nausea threatened as the knowledge hit home.
They had to save Candice. They just had to.
‘Miranda?’
Miranda was dragged back to the present by Patrick’s voice. Obviously handover was finished as the orderlies started to manoeuvre the bed out of its area and get Candice to Theatre.
He frowned down at her. ‘You okay?’
She nodded, moving automatically with the bed. ‘Let’s just save her, okay?’
He gave her a grim nod. ‘I’m not losing anyone tonight.’
* * *
But they nearly did. There was extensive bleeding from Candice’s head when they opened her up, much more than anyone was expecting, and finding the arterial bleeder was difficult when the operative field was obscured by all the blood. It soaked into the sterile drapes and dripped onto the floor.
The atmosphere was tense as the team worked to pull Candice across the line and two hours later Miranda was exhausted from running back and forth for blood products, drawing up infusions, administering fluids. Not to mention the mental energy and concentration she’d expended, willing Candice to be okay.