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Billie blinked at his testy comeback. She looked down at her hands. They were clenched hard at her sides and the unreasonable urge to pummel them against his chest beat like insects wings inside her head.
She shook her head. What was she doing? She was acting like a shrew. She took a deep breath and slowly unclenched her hands.
‘I can put in an IV,’ she sighed. ‘I can draw blood, watch it flow into a tube, no problems. It’s not blood that makes me squeamish, it’s blood pouring out where it shouldn’t be. It’s the gore. The messy rawness. The missing bits and the … jagged edges. The … gaping wounds. That’s what I find hard to handle. That’s when it gets to me.’
Gareth nodded, pleased for the clarification. The ER was going to be a rough rotation for her. He took a couple of paces towards her, stopping an arm’s length away.
‘There’s a lot of messy rawness here,’ he said gently.
‘I know,’ Billie said. Boy, did she know. ‘But that’s the way it is and I don’t want you protecting me from all of it, Gareth. I’m training to be an emergency physician. I’m just going to have to get used to it.’
She watched as his brow crinkled and the lines around his eyes followed suit. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Surely this isn’t the right speciality for you?’
Billie gave a half snort, half laugh. That was the milliondollar question. But despite feeling remarkably at ease with him, there were some things she wasn’t prepared to admit to anybody.
‘Well, yes … and there’s a very long, very complicated answer to that question, which I do not have time to tell you right now.’ Or ever. ‘Not with Mrs Gordon waiting.’
Gareth nodded. He knew when he was being fobbed off but, given that she barely knew him, she certainly didn’t owe him any explanations. And probably the less involved he was in her stuff the better.
He was a forty-year-old man who didn’t need any more complicated in his life.
No matter what package it came wrapped in.
He’d had enough of it to last a lifetime.
‘Okay, then,’ he said, turning to go. ‘Just yell if I can help you with anything.’
He had his hand on the doorknob when her tentative enquiry stopped him dead in his tracks.
‘You didn’t … you haven’t told anyone about the other night, about what I…?’ He caught her nervous swallow as he faced her. ‘About how I reacted? Please … don’t …’
Gareth regarded her seriously. If she’d known him better he would have given her a what-do-you-think? look. But she didn’t, he reminded himself. It just felt like they’d known each other longer because of the connection they’d made less than a week ago.
It was hard to think of her as a stranger even though the reality was they barely knew each other.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t tell tales out of school, Billie,’ he said.
He didn’t kiss and tell either.
The sudden unwarranted thought slapped him in the face, resulting in temporary brain malfunction.
What the hell?
Pull it together, man. Totally inappropriate. Totally not cool.
But the truth was, as he busied himself with opening the door and getting as far away from her as possible, he’d thought about kissing Billie a lot these last few days.
And it had been a very long time since he’d wanted to kiss anyone.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f14d4c39-3853-50c1-9c02-fbd8847a3e42)
FIVE HOURS LATER, Gareth knew he was going to have to put Billie’s I-don’t-want-you-protecting-me convictions to the test. He had a head laceration that needed suturing and everyone else was busy. He could leave it until Barry was free but, with the Royal Brisbane going on diversion, a lot of their cases were coming to St Luke’s and things had suddenly gone a little crazy.
They needed the bed asap.
If he’d still been in the army he would have just done the stupid thing himself. But civilian nursing placed certain restrictions on his practice.
Earlier Billie had demanded to know if he’d have given another doctor the kid-glove treatment he’d afforded her over the IV and had insisted that he not do the same to her.
Would he given any other doctor a pass on the head lac?
No. He would not.
Gareth took a deep breath and twitched the curtains to cubicle eight open. Billie looked up from the patient she was talking to. ‘I need a head lac sutured in cubicle two,’ he said, his tone brisk and businesslike. ‘You just about done here?’
She looked startled at his announcement but he admired her quick affirmative response. ‘Five minutes?’ she said, only the bob of her throat betraying her nervousness.
He nodded. ‘I’ll set up.’
But then Brett, the triage admin officer, distracted him with a charting issue and it was ten minutes before he headed back to the drunk teenager with the banged-up forehead. He noticed Billie disappearing behind the curtain and cursed under his breath, hurrying to catch her up.
He hadn’t cleaned the wound yet and the patient looked pretty gruesome.
When he joined her behind the curtain seconds later, Billie was staring down at the matted mess of clotted blood and hair that he’d left covered temporarily with a green surgical towel. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.’
She dragged her eyes away from the messy laceration and looked at him, her freckles suddenly emphasised by her pallor, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. ‘I’ll be … right back,’ she said.
She brushed past him on her way out and Gareth shut his eyes briefly. Great. He glanced at the sleeping patient, snoring drunkenly and oblivious to the turmoil his stupid split head had just caused.
Gareth followed her, taking a guess that she’d headed for the staffroom again. The door was shut when he reached it. He turned the handle but it was locked. ‘Billie,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘it’s me, open up.’
The lock turned and the door opened a crack and Gareth slipped into the room. She was just on the other side and her back pushed the door shut again as she leaned against it.
Billie looked up at him, the swimmy sensation in her head and the nausea clearing. ‘I’m fine,’ she dismissed, taking deep, even steady breaths.
‘I’m sorry. I had every intention of cleaning it up … so it looked better.’
Billie nodded. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘I just need a moment.’
Gareth nodded as he watched her suck air in and out through pursed lips. She lifted her hand to smooth her hair and he couldn’t help but notice how alarmingly it shook.
She didn’t look okay to him.
‘You look kind of freaked out,’ he said. ‘Do you need a paper bag to blow into? Are your fingers tingly?’
She glared at him. ‘I’m not having a panic attack. I just wasn’t expecting … that. I’m better if I’m mentally prepared. But I’ll be fine.’ She turned those big brown eyes on him. ‘Just give me a moment, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She nodded again and he noticed tears swim in her eyes. Clearly she was disappointed in herself, in not being able to master her affliction.
Gareth shoved a hand through his hair, feeling helpless as she struggled for control. ‘Try not to think about it like it is,’ he said. ‘Next time you go out there it’ll be all cleaned up. No blood. No gore.’
She nodded. ‘Okay.’
But her wide eyes told him she was still picturing it. ‘You’re still thinking about it,’ he said.
‘I’m not,’ she denied, chewing on her bottom lip.
Gareth took a step closer to her, wanting to reach for her but clenching his hands at his sides. ‘Yes, you are.’
She gnawed on her lip some more and he noticed she’d chewed all her gloss off.
‘Look. I’m trying, okay?’ she said, placing her palm flat against his chest. ‘Just back off for a moment.’
Her hand felt warm against his chest and he waited for her to push against him but her fingers curled into the fabric of his scrub top instead and Gareth felt a jolt much further south. As if she’d put her hand down his scrubs bottoms.
Oh, hell. Just hell.
Now he was thinking very bad things. Very bad ways to calm her down, to take her mind off it.
For crying out loud, she was a freaked-out second-year resident who needed to get back to the lac and get the stupid thing sutured so he could free up a bed. Gareth had dealt with a lot of freaked-out people in his life—the wounded, the addled, the grieving.
He was good with the freaked out.
But not like this. Not the way he was thinking.
Hell.
And that’s exactly where he was going—do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect any money—because all he could think about now was her mouth.
Kissing it. Giving her a way to really forget what was beyond the door.
It was wildly inappropriate.
They were at work, for crying out loud. But her husky ‘Gareth?’ reflected the confusion and turmoil stirring unrest inside him.
The look changed on her face as her gaze fixed on his mouth. Her fingers in his shirt seemed to pull him nearer and those freckles were so damn irresistible.
‘Oh, screw it,’ he muttered, caution falling away like confetti around him as he stepped forward, crowding her back against the door, his body aligning with hers, his palms sliding onto her cheeks as he dropped his head.
Billie whimpered as Gareth’s lips made contact with hers. She couldn’t have stopped it had her life depended on it. Her pulse fluttered madly at the base of her throat and at her temples. Everything was forgotten in those lingering moments as his mouth opened and his tongue brushed along her bottom lip.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Again and again.
Maddening. Hypnotic. Perfect.
The kiss sucking away her breath and her thoughts and her sense. Transporting her to a place where only he and his lips and his heat existed. The press of his thighs against hers was heady, her breasts ached to be touched and her belly twisted hard, tensing in anticipation.
She didn’t think she’d ever been kissed like this. And she never wanted it to stop.
She slid her hands onto his waist, anchoring them against his hips bones, feeling the broad bony crests in her palms, using them to pull him in closer, revel in the power of his thighs hard against her, fitting their bodies together more intimately.
A groan escaped his mouth, deep and tortured, as if it was torn from his throat and then Gareth pulled away, breathing hard as he placed his forehead against hers, staying close, keeping their intimate connection, not saying anything, just catching his breath as she caught hers.
‘You okay now?’ he asked after a moment, looking down into her face.
Billie blinked as she struggled to recall what had happened before the kiss. To recall if there had been anything at all—ever—in her life before this kiss.
He groaned again, his thumb stroking over her bottom lip, and it sounded as needy and hungry as the desire burning in her belly. ‘We can’t … do this here,’ he muttered. ‘We have to get back.’
She nodded. She knew. On some level she knew that. But her head was still spinning from the kiss—it was hard to think about anything else. And if that had been his plan, she couldn’t fault it.
But it was hardly a good long-term strategy.
He took a step back, clearing his throat. ‘You all right to do the lac now?’ he asked.
The laceration. Right. That’s what had happened before the kiss. She tried to picture it but her brain was still stuck back in the delicious quagmire of the kiss.
‘Give me five minutes and then come to the cubicle. I promise it’ll be a different sight altogether.’
Billie nodded. ‘Okay.’ She shifted off the door so he could open it.
And then he was gone and she was alone in the staffroom, her back against the door, pressing her fingers to her tingling mouth.
Billie took a few minutes to review the chart of her head lac patient. His blood alcohol was way over the limit. He’d gone through a glass window. The X-ray report was clear—no fractures, no retained glass—but she pulled it up on the computer to satisfy herself nonetheless.
The laceration wasn’t deep but it was too large for glue.
Ten minutes later she pulled back the curtains of the cubicle. Gareth faltered for a moment as he looked at her and she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know what he was thinking.
The way his eyes dipped to her mouth said it all.
‘All ready,’ he said briskly, as he indicated the suture kit laid out and the dramatically changed wound. The blood was gone, leaving an uneven laceration, its edges stark white. It followed the still-sleeping patient’s hairline before cutting across his forehead.
Billie swallowed as she took in the extent of it. It wasn’t going to be some quick five-stitch job.
‘Size six gloves?’
She nodded as she dragged her gaze back to Gareth, thankful for his brisk professionalism.
‘Go and scrub,’ he said. ‘I’ll open a pair up.’
Billie stepped outside the curtain and performed a basic scrub at the nearby basin. When she was done she waited for the water to finish dripping off her elbows before entering the cubicle again. She reached for the surgical towel already laid out and dried her hands and arms then slipped into her gloves, hyper-aware of Gareth watching her.
She took a deep breath as she arranged the instruments on her tray to her liking and applied the needle to the syringe filled with local anaesthetic.
She could do this.
