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Even as her body clenched rhythmically around him she felt him follow her into the maelstrom, and he gave a wordless shout of ecstasy as his release exploded into her secret depths.
For several moments it seemed as if neither of them could have moved if they’d wanted to, their arms wrapped tightly around each other as they panted for breath. Maggie was absolutely certain that if Jake hadn’t been pressing her against the tiled wall she would have slid bonelessly down its slick surface into the puddle in the bottom of the bath.
She was totally stunned. Was this what she’d been missing all these years? Or was it something special, just between the two of them? She chuckled when she realised that there was only one way to find out.
‘Wow! What do you do for an encore?’
‘Encore?’ Was that disbelief in his voice? It was hard to tell when his face was buried in the curve between her neck and shoulder. ‘I’m still waiting to find out if I’ve survived the overture.’
She gripped her legs around his waist then squeezed the muscles that surrounded him where he was still buried deep inside her. She laughed again, a throaty, husky sound that she’d never heard herself make before, when she felt the burgeoning proof of his returning arousal.
‘Take it from me,’ she whispered, ‘you’ve definitely survived. I’ve got the evidence to prove it.’ And she deliberately tightened her internal muscles around him again.
He groaned, apparently helpless to stop himself thrusting in response, and she felt a surge of feminine power.
‘You say you’ve got evidence?’ he demanded hoarsely, finally straightening up enough to meet her eyes. ‘Well, how about taking this somewhere warmer and drier to explore that evidence?’
CHAPTER TWO (#u6ec92c4b-2f80-59b7-8243-367a0c0c1958)
WHAT had he done? What on earth had he been thinking about? his brain screamed at him the next morning when Jake woke up to find Maggie still spread-eagled limply across his body.
‘Down, boy!’ he muttered when his body reacted all too eagerly to her soft curves. It knew exactly what had happened during the night and was only too willing for it to happen again. The fact that it was something he’d wanted for the last two years had nothing to do with it. He’d known right from the first that he and Maggie could never be more than friends.
It was precisely because she was a friend that he’d come to try to talk to her. He’d been worried about her. Worried about the fact that, at a time he would expect a woman to need the support of a female friend, she was refusing to answer her door to Karen. Worried about her state of mind, knowing how much she’d been looking forward to being a mother to Liam’s two children and concerned about her reaction to the destruction of her dream of having a houseful of her own.
Not that he’d thought for a moment that she would do anything stupid or life-threatening—she had her feet far too firmly on the ground for that. And besides, he knew from working with her in the A and E department that she valued human life too highly to contemplate taking her own.
Still, he’d been concerned enough to make the trek to her door, utilising the spare key he’d forgotten to hand over to his successor when he’d moved out…
He gave a silent snort of derision when he realised that he wasn’t fooling himself with that tale. He hadn’t forgotten to hand over the key at all. Something inside him had wanted to hang onto it as the last tangible evidence that he’d once lived next to Maggie ffrench, had slept just inches away from her on the other side of a wall that was so poorly soundproofed that he’d been convinced he could hear her every time she turned over in her sleep. And if that wasn’t a pathetic admission for a rational adult man, then nothing was.
If he hadn’t been so concerned about her, then the way she’d greeted him at the door last night—spitting like an angry cat—would have made him laugh.
She wasn’t a big woman by any means—at least a head shorter than he was in her stockinged feet—and she was slender and willowy, too, but she obviously didn’t see that as a reason to back down in an argument. There had been more than one obstreperous patient who had discovered that about the petite A and E doctor to his cost, drunkard or bully or both.
The fact that she’d stood her ground last night had relieved him on one score—she wasn’t going to allow her aborted marriage to defeat her spirit, even though it seemed to have dented her belief in their friendship.
But when he’d stripped her coffee-soaked dressing-gown off her last night and seen her standing in the shower, every slender inch of her naked, every curve gleaming with rivulets of water while she’d struggled with his shirt buttons…
It had been every erotic dream he’d had over the last two years come to life in front of him…everything he’d ever wanted since the day he’d first met her…everything he knew he couldn’t have…
It would have been all right if she hadn’t still been trembling so much, her eyes wide with shock. A scalding cup of coffee tipped over her had obviously been one trauma too many after the evening’s revelations.
He’d recognised the combination of hurt and vulnerability in those fascinating blue-green eyes, but it had been the unexpected desire he’d seen blossoming in their widely dilated pupils that had sent his common sense scattering to the winds.
He knew there could never be a permanent relationship between the two of them, had known ever since the first time he’d seen the eagerness in her face when she’d spoken about the family she wanted to have one day. The trouble was, in spite of the attraction between them, he knew he could never be what she wanted…what she needed.
The fact that she was everything that he’d ever wanted and needed just didn’t come into it. He’d known for years that his career was going to be the most important part of his life and there was nothing he could do to change that. It was far too late.
When she woke up he was going to have to find the words to tell her that this was all there could be between them.
Find the words? Ha! As if there were words to put a pretty face on the fact that this was going to have to be a one-night stand. A totally out-of-this-world, mind-blowing, one-of-a-kind one-night stand that, no matter how utterly perfect it had been, was going to leave him laden with guilt for the rest of his life.
What sort of man was he? How could he have given in to temptation when he’d known how vulnerable she was? It didn’t matter that he’d desired her for two long years—she didn’t know that. He’d made very certain that she understood that he could only offer friendship.
Oh, but it was so tempting to pretend for just a little bit longer that there could be a more intimate relationship between them. It was just too easy to lift his head a little bit to look all the way down Maggie’s slender back to the perfect twin curves of her bottom.
He knew, now, how well those curves fitted his hands, and would remember for ever the husky purring sound she made in her throat when he tightened his grip on them to brace her for his possession.
He stifled a groan of his own when he felt his body responding anew to the graphic thought. She was still asleep, for heaven’s sake! She was going to think he was a sex maniac on some sort of hormonal overload if he carried on like this, certainly not a mature thirty-three-year-old who should know better. And the fact that this was the first time he’d been to bed with a woman since he’d met Maggie was no excuse either.
As if she was picking up the intensity of his thoughts, Maggie began to stir, her silky flesh sliding over his rougher planes with a thoroughly arousing friction as she woke.
‘Mmm, nice,’ she murmured huskily against his throat as she angled her hips against him, clearly only too willing to continue where they’d left off when she’d finally fallen asleep.
His soul-searching ground to an instant halt. Gone were all thoughts of telling her that this couldn’t happen again when it obviously was.
Without him even having to think about it, his hands were already cupping her, stroking her, positioning her for his—
‘Jake?’ Suddenly, she was stiffening against him. ‘Is that your pager?’
He’d been totally deaf to anything but her soft murmurs and the blood pounding through his veins, but now he could hear the wretched thing, too.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he groaned as he dropped his head back on the pillow, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the enticing view.
‘It can’t be mine,’ she reasoned. ‘I didn’t bring one home with me because I’m not on duty for two weeks.’
‘Well, I’m not due on for hours yet,’ he growled in frustration. If this was all he was ever going to have of Maggie, he really didn’t want anyone or anything interrupting…
The ringing of Maggie’s phone halted his unhappy thoughts.
‘We’ll just have to remember where we were, so we can take up where we left off,’ she suggested with a fascinating blush—a blush that amazed him when he remembered all the things the two of them had done since he’d joined her in the shower last night. He’d never had such a generous lover before, or such an eager one, and if he allowed himself to think about all he would be missing for the rest of his life without Maggie in it, he would probably want to slit his throat.
He would just have to settle for slitting the throat of whoever had misread the on-duty roster and dialled his number instead.
He padded across the room to retrieve the insistent thing from his trouser pocket.
‘Whoever this is, I’ll get them off the line as soon as possible so you can make your call,’ Maggie said, modestly tugging the duvet over herself with one hand as she reached for the phone with the other.
When he saw her disappear behind thoroughly rumpled cotton Jake stifled another groan. The mood had been well and truly broken now, and that dreaded ‘this shouldn’t have happened’ conversation was suddenly imminent.
‘Hi, Karen!’ Maggie said, and he grimaced at the thought that he was probably going to have to work out what to say to Maggie’s friend, too. After all, Karen knew that he’d intended speaking to Maggie last night, and if she found out that he’d spent the night…
‘No, you didn’t wake me. What can I do for—? Oh, no!’ she exclaimed suddenly, dragging him out of his tangled thoughts. ‘Of course I’ll come in—I’m not doing anything important today after all. I should be there in twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.’
‘What’s going on?’ Jake demanded as she cut the call and handed the phone to him, apparently unaware that she’d let the bedclothes fall to her lap during her phone call. He was so busy admiring her sweet curves that he almost missed what she was saying.
‘Major incident—traffic pile-up on the motorway. Multiple traumas on their way in so they’re rounding up all the staff they can reach,’ she added with a nod towards his pager.
It didn’t take long for Jake to confirm that he too would get to the hospital as soon as he could. If the estimates for the number of casualties were right, this was going to be a day in hell.
He reached for his clothes, sparing a longing thought for the luxury of a long hot shower. Unfortunately, there was going to be no time for that, and certainly no time for that serious discussion he’d been going to have with Maggie.
‘Did you walk or drive last night?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Walked,’ he called back as he scrabbled around in the bathroom, trying to find his other shoe. Thank goodness he would be able to change out of his wrinkled clothes as soon as he reached the hospital. A night on a damp bathroom floor hadn’t done them any favours. ‘Liam insisted he was going to buy me a drink.’
‘And you never drive after you’ve had alcohol,’ she finished for him, something they’d long ago discovered they both believed in. ‘Drat! I forgot that. I was hoping you could give me a lift, for speed.’
‘We’ll just have to run to save time,’ he said distractedly, wondering how his second shoe had ended up by the fridge. He was certain he’d been wearing both of them when he’d walked into the bathroom last night, and he definitely hadn’t bothered walking around her flat with a shoe in his hand since then. He’d had far more interesting things to—
That was enough!
The night was well and truly over now, all bar the post-mortem. There was no point in tormenting himself with full-colour replays when he was going to need every scrap of concentration to help his patients.
‘Ready to go?’ he called, checking that he’d put his pager back in his pocket just as Maggie emerged from the bathroom fully clothed and obviously set for action.
At the last moment Maggie suddenly worried that it might not be a good idea for people to see her arriving for work with Jake. The last thing she needed was to give the hospital grapevine something else to get their teeth into. At least Jake could blame the state of his clothes on the downpour outside.
In the event, the whole department was already working to such a pitch that the only notice anyone took of the two of them was to set them to work the moment they arrived.
‘Thank God you’re both here!’ Senior Sister Lina Mackey said when she caught sight of them. ‘Can you go to Resus Two? We’ve already got three beds going in One and another ambulance due any second with a tension pneumothorax on board.’
‘Can you give us thirty seconds to change into scrubs?’ Jake asked, his long legs already taking him towards the locker room at a rapid clip.
If she’d had her way, Maggie thought as she pulled the faded green cotton top over her head and tightened the baggy drawstring waist on the matching trousers, she wouldn’t have been working in the same room as Jake. She’d barely had time to draw breath since she’d woken up this morning and it didn’t look as if it was going to get any better. Even so, working in the close proximity that such a multiple trauma scenario demanded wouldn’t give her the space to put her thoughts and feelings into order.
What on earth had possessed her last night? She’d never been so brazen in her life. Even now, remembering the way she’d given up on taking his coffee-soaked clothes off his body and had dragged him fully clothed to join her in the shower cubicle made her whole body grow hot.
And this definitely wasn’t the time or the place for such thoughts, not when their patients were going to be fighting for their very lives.
The fact that she and Jake had spent the night together mustn’t be allowed to interfere with the way the two of them worked together.
Both of them reached Resus Two before their first patient, but only just.
Swiftly, she grabbed two disposable plastic aprons and thrust one in his direction before pulling hers over her head and wrapping the ties around her waist. She reached for the box of small disposable gloves, her hand colliding with Jake’s as he reached across her for the larger size.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, horrified to feel a sudden wash of heat surge into her cheeks. For heaven’s sake! What was the matter with her? They’d been brushing against each other over and over again for the last two years without a problem. Was she going to blush every time now?
Concentrate! she reminded herself, grateful to find the paramedic’s report far more urgent than her own petty worries.
‘ABCs were relatively normal when we reached him,’ the young woman reported briskly, referring to the notes on her clipboard. ‘But he’d been trapped in his seat by the steering-wheel when the whole front of his vehicle collapsed towards him. While he was being cut out of the vehicle we put him on oxygen and got an IV in, but as soon as we removed him he started to crash.’
‘Hypovolaemic shock,’ Maggie heard Jake mutter as she stepped aside while the patient was transferred with the backboard and cervical collar still in place. The young man was certainly showing all the classic signs of severe blood loss.
‘Also increasing difficulty in breathing,’ the paramedic continued seamlessly. ‘There was no sign of a penetrating wound into the chest, so I went with the probability that his lung had been pierced by a broken rib.’
The needle protruding from the midaxillary line of the fourth intercostal space looked surreal under the stark white lighting, especially with a flaccid condom taped to it as a makeshift flutter valve.
‘What were his vital signs once his lung reinflated?’ Jake demanded as the radiographer positioned the first X-ray cassette under their patient’s neck.
‘Pulse and breathing both a little rapid, but fear of asphyxia will do that to anyone,’ the paramedic added wryly as she handed over the notes that would form part of the patient’s case history and collected her equipment. ‘My vehicle should be restocked and ready to roll by now. No doubt I’ll be seeing you again soon. It’s a mess out there.’
‘Can somebody find out if there’s space in Theatre?’ Jake asked urgently, not needing to look up from what he was doing to know that his request would receive immediate attention with a rapid phone call. ‘Maggie, get over here quick and get another line in. He needs more blood. It must be more than his lung. If there’s no room in Theatre we might have to open his chest down here.’
Almost as if he’d given the cue, several sets of monitoring equipment started sounding out their various warnings even as Maggie started manually pumping another unit of blood.
‘He’s crashing again!’ she exclaimed, reading the display charting pulse and blood pressure. ‘Where’s the anaesthetist?’ She handed over her task to the nearest pair of willing hands and grabbed the sealed tray thrust towards her. Even as she ripped off the protective cover to reveal the set of sterile equipment, the door swung open to admit the hurrying anaesthetist.
It was like a well-oiled machine. Each of the members of the team performed their part of the job, with items of equipment appearing almost before Jake could ask. With the speed of experience, the chest and upper abdomen were swiftly swabbed to minimise the risk of infection, and after a brief pause for the anaesthetist to nod that the patient was ready Jake was applying the scalpel in a midline incision.
Maggie had suction ready for the moment he opened up the body cavity, but she was horrified by the amount of blood filling the visual field.
‘Has the heart been pierced, or is it the aorta?’ she asked, her words almost hidden by the continuing sound of suction as she tried to clear enough away for Jake to see what had happened.
‘Aorta,’ he said succinctly, reaching into the cavity to find out exactly how extensive the damage was. ‘Not too bad,’ he conceded after a moment. ‘Puncture rather than dissection.’
‘But bad enough that we’re having trouble maintaining enough pressure to keep him alive,’ the anaesthetist butted in tersely.
‘In other words, get on with it?’ Jake challenged without looking away from his task, but Maggie could still see the familiar gleam of determination in his eyes that appeared every time he knew he had a fight on his hands.
Knowing that time was of the essence if the young man was to survive, she could only look on in admiration at the speed with which Jake effected a workable repair, concentrating on stabilising their patient so that he would survive the trip up to Theatre.
‘Pressure’s better!’ the anaesthetist reported. ‘Not great, but better.’
In the background, Maggie heard the phone ring.
‘That was Liam Blake,’ a female voice called a moment later. ‘There’s a table free in Theatre, if you’re ready for it.’
Maggie felt a swift jolt at the unexpected mention of her ex-fiancé’s name and a wash of heat over her cheeks at the sudden silence that told her that the rest of her colleagues had suddenly remembered that neither she nor Liam should have been at the hospital. This should have been their wedding day.
‘Is he good enough to go?’ Jake asked, deferring to the overriding expertise of the man at the head of the table. ‘I’d rather not mess about with him any more down here if I can help it, especially with a cardiothoracic surgeon available.’
‘A.s.a.p.!’ the anaesthetist said with feeling as he systematically disconnected the various leads connecting their patient to the main life-support and monitoring systems, immediately reconnecting them to the portable system that would maintain him until he reached Theatre.
Even as the doors were closing behind him, they were pushed open by the next trolley, with a second following closely behind.
‘There isn’t going to be time to breathe today,’ muttered one of the nurses as she dodged around the paramedic directing the transfer of their next patient, frantically clearing the detritus from the previous one.
‘Maggie,’ Lina Mackey called from the doorway, beckoning her over with a flustered expression on her usually calm face.
‘Problem?’ Maggie asked, puzzled to find herself drawn out into the corridor.
‘I’m so sorry!’ the woman exclaimed, almost wringing her hands. ‘I’d completely forgotten that you’re getting married today or I’d never have called you in. You should be getting ready for the ceremony…having your hair done or something.’
‘It’s not a problem,’ Maggie soothed, half of her attention on the sudden burst of staccato instructions that told her Jake had another problem patient on his hands. Everything inside her wanted to return to the room to do her part in taking care of the patients. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to explain the shambles of her private life when there were more important things to do.
‘But…what about your wedding?’ Lina demanded. ‘This could go on for hours. You could be stuck here—’
