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Her mind began to drift…How would it feel to have that firm mouth press down on hers? She had never kissed anyone but Charles. Would it feel different? How different? What would it feel like to have Jake Chandler’s strong, capable hands explore her contours? Her belly gave a little tumble-turn as she thought of his body touching hers, moving against hers…
She blinked herself out of her disturbing little daydream. ‘I—I’d best be getting back to work,’ she said. ‘My shift started ten minutes ago.’
He held her gaze for a moment longer than was necessary. Had he sensed where her mind had been? she wondered. Was that why his eyes were so dark and glittering, and his mouth tilted upwards in that almost-smile?
‘I’ll see you out there in a couple of hours,’ he said, resuming his seat and reaching for the phone on his desk. ‘I have a couple of calls to make as well as a management meeting.’
* * *
‘Why is the patient from Bay Three being sent for a CT?’ Jake asked Lei Chung on his way back on the unit.
‘Dr Cargill ordered it,’ Lei said.
‘But it’s a straight-out case of appendicitis,’ Jake said. ‘What else is she hoping to find in there? The crown jewels?’
‘She’s certainly very thorough,’ Lei said. ‘You should see the blood-work she’s ordered on Mrs Harper in Bay Nine. Pathology’s going to be backed up for hours getting through that lot.’
Jake frowned as he made his way to the main A&E office, where he could see Kitty Cargill sitting writing up patient notes. His meeting with hospital management hadn’t gone well. Patient work-up times had to go down and more beds were being cut. He had one staff member off sick and another one out on stress leave. There were times when he wondered why he had chosen A&E as a specialty. Right now dermatology was looking pretty damn good.
‘Got a minute, Dr Cargill?’ he asked.
She looked up from her notes. ‘Is it about Mr O’Brien in Bay Four?’ she asked, pushing her chair back and rising to her feet. ‘I’m waiting to hear back from MRI. They think they can squeeze him in just after lunch.’
‘Why are you sending him for an MRI?’ Jake asked.
‘He’s got symptoms of acute sciatica with muscle weakness in one leg,’ she said. ‘He also complained of bladder frequency. He’s probably got nerve compression starting to damage nerve root function, but we need to exclude a spinal tumour.’
‘But if you think he’s got cord compression why wouldn’t you just refer him straight on to neurosurgery?’ Jake asked.
Her grey eyes flickered and then hardened. ‘I thought it was important to have an exact diagnosis first,’ she said.
‘That’s not our job here. You’re wasting precious time and valuable resources doing other people’s jobs for them,’ Jake said. ‘We have a top-notch neurosurgical team at St Benedict’s, headed by Lewis Beck. His registrar is more than capable of dealing with this while you get on with assessing the next patient.’
She stood very straight and stiff before him, her chin set at a haughty height. ‘It takes time to do a proper work-up,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe in taking shortcuts and handing patients over half assessed. If my diagnosis is wrong, then it’s wasting the time of other services.’
‘Listen—our job is to efficiently assess them, not find out their star sign,’ Jake said. ‘While you’re busily documenting their favourite colour and what their neighbour’s dog’s name is, another patient is waiting in the back of an ambulance trying to get in here to one of our blocked beds.’
Her jaw worked for a moment, as if she was forcibly holding back a stinging retort. ‘Will that be all, Dr Chandler?’ she said.
Jake felt that stirring in his groin again. Something about Kitty Cargill with her feisty little eye-locks and her stubbornly upthrust chin made him want to back her into the nearest storeroom and steal a kiss from that tempting mouth of hers. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt such a powerful attraction to a woman. The betraying little movements and gestures of her face and body indicated she was just as acutely aware of him as he was of her. He could see it now, in the way her grey gaze kept slipping to his mouth as if she had no control over it. The tip of her tongue sneaked out and swept over her lips as if preparing them for the descent of his.
‘It’s not in my nature to run this department like a drill sergeant,’ he said, forcing himself to focus on her eyes, not her mouth. ‘I expect a lot from my team, but I don’t ask anything of them I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself. I realise it will take time for you to learn the ropes of how things are done here. I’m prepared to give you some leeway while you settle in. We’ll assess things in a week or two.’
A little frown appeared over her eyes. ‘Are you putting me on some type of probation?’ she asked.
‘That will be all, Dr Cargill,’ Jake said, dismissing her. ‘You’d better get back on the ward. There are patients to see.’
* * *
Kitty seethed all the way home from the hospital. She had mostly managed to avoid Jake during the rest of her shift. A steady stream of patients had needed attending to, but nothing major that had required her to interact with him directly.
She didn’t like the thought of his wait-and-see approach to her appointment. She had got the position on merit and she expected to keep it. What right did he have to question her management of patients? She had been trained by some of London’s best. How dared Jake Chandler leave her in such a horrid state of limbo? She had moved all the way across the globe to take this post. He had no right to make her feel insecure and inadequate. She was competent and hardworking. That was the one thing that had carried her through the heartache of the last few months. She might not be the biggest extrovert, or one of those effortlessly glamorous party girls, but she was damn good at her job.
Once she got back to the town house she changed into her one-piece bathing costume and some casual separates and headed straight for the beach. The sting of the sun had eased now it was early evening. The iconic arc of Bondi Beach was still heavily dotted with bodies making the most of the long, hot summer. Dozens of fit-looking surfers were out at the back of the swell, waiting for the perfect wave. Kitty couldn’t help envying their agility and grace. She had never been all that confident around water. She could swim…well, maybe that was stretching it a teensy bit. She could get from one end of a very short pool to the other. The ocean was another thing entirely. She had been to the beach plenty of times, but gentle, bay-like ones—ones with shingle or pebbles, not sand as fine as sugar and a swell that was rolling in with a roar that sounded like thunder as each wave crashed against the shore.
Kitty laid out her towel on the sand, anchoring the four corners with each of her flip-flops and two shells. She carefully tucked her keys inside her hat, along with her sunglasses, before she walked down to the water’s edge between the lifesaver patrol flags.
The water was warmer than she was used to and yet refreshing as she let it froth over her ankles and shins. She went in up to her knees and stood there watching as children half her height went out further, shrieking and squealing in delight as they jumped over or dived under the waves.
The lowering sun was like a warm caress on her back and shoulders, easing some of the tight golfball-sized knots that had gathered there.
‘Watch me, Uncle Jake!’ A young boy’s voice rang out over the sound of the surf.
Kitty felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and the golfballs in her shoulders knock together.
How many Jakes were there in Sydney and at Bondi Beach on this particular evening?
She looked to her right and saw Jake Chandler—the Jake Chandler—standing watching as a young boy bodysurfed a small wave.
Her heart tripped.
Her belly hollowed.
Her mouth watered.
Jake was standing less than a metre away from her. He was naked from the waist up. He was wet. He was tanned. He was lean. He was muscular in all the right places.
He was gorgeous.
‘Why is that lady staring at you, Uncle Jake?’
Kitty blinked herself out of her stasis, embarrassed colour shooting to her face as Jake’s blue gaze turned and met hers. ‘I’m not staring…’ she said, and stared.
Jake’s thick dark lashes were spiky with seawater. He had a lazy smile playing about his mouth. He had a day’s growth of sexy stubble. His black hair was wet. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow. His abdomen washboard-flat, his groin—
Kitty swallowed and blushed some more as she dragged her gaze back to his. ‘I didn’t know you were an uncle,’ she said, in a paltry effort to cover her mortification.
Jake put his hand on his nephew’s wiry shoulder. ‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet a new member of my staff at the hospital. This is Dr Cargill.’
Kitty smiled at the child, who looked about nine or ten years old. ‘Hi. I’m pleased to meet you, Nathan.’
‘You talk funny,’ Nathan said, screwing up his face.
‘It’s called the Queen’s English, Nate,’ Jake said. ‘You’d do well to learn it—and some manners while you’re at it.’
The boy wriggled out from under Jake’s hand. ‘Can I surf some more?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, but stay between the flags,’ Jake said. He turned and looked at Kitty again. ‘Sorry about that. He’s a good kid but he needs a bit of polish.’
Kitty tried not to stare at those long spiky eyelashes. ‘He’s very like you,’ she said.
His brow came up in a sardonic arc. ‘You think I need a bit of a polish too, do you, Dr Cargill?’
She felt her cheeks burn as she fought to hold his gaze. ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ she said, with as much composure as she could muster whilst standing partially naked before him. ‘I meant you’re like him in looks. Your eyes, your hair—that sort of thing.’
Jake returned his gaze to the waves, where his nephew was bodysurfing with varying degrees of success. ‘He’s a handful,’ he said. ‘I try and wear him out for my sister Rosie.’ He glanced at her again. ‘That’s whose party it was the other night. As a single mum she doesn’t get to kick up her heels much.’
‘Oh.’ Kitty caught her bottom lip with her teeth.
‘Nathan’s father shot through before he was born.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘She’s not,’ Jake said, swinging his gaze back to hers. ‘She’s better off without him.’
She tugged at her lip some more. ‘I mean I’m sorry about complaining about the music the other night,’ she said. ‘It must have seemed so…so petty.’
He checked on his nephew again before turning his gaze back to her. ‘You don’t like being out of your depth, do you?’ he asked.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’re only wet up to your knees,’ he said. ‘We usually have to drag overseas tourists unconscious from this beach. A lot of them dive in without checking the conditions first.’
‘I don’t like leaping before I look,’ she said.
‘Can you swim?’
Kitty flashed him an affronted look. ‘Of course I can swim.’
‘Give me a shout if you need a hand with some stroke correction,’ he said.
‘No doubt breaststroke is your particular specialty?’ she said with an arch look.
His lips curved upwards in a sexy smile, but not before his glinting eyes had dipped to the hint of her cleavage first. ‘How’d you guess?’ he said, and then before she could think of a return he had joined his nephew in the rushing waves.
CHAPTER THREE (#u8d0850a1-6236-520e-8515-12a32ce49e0b)
KITTY went back to her towel. Resting her chin on her bent knees, she concentrated on watching the surfers further out, but her gaze kept drifting back to where Jake was coaching his nephew. He looked so magnificently male, so vital and fit and healthy. She couldn’t help thinking of Charles, with his fair skin, his slight paunch and his receding hairline.
She pulled her thoughts back into line. She wasn’t the shallow looks-are-everything type. She was attracted to depth of character, to strong values and dedication and ambition, to caring for others…
She chewed at her lip as she watched Jake scoop his nephew out of a particularly rough wave, holding him steady against him until Nathan got his breath back and found his feet.
He would make a wonderful father.
Kitty felt ambushed by the errant thought. What did she care what sort of father he would make? It had nothing to do with her. What right did her belly have to give a soft little flutter at the thought of him holding a tiny baby in his large masculine hands?
She got to her feet and shook the sand off her towel, frowning as she folded it into a neat square. It might be close to seven-thirty in the evening but she’d clearly had way too much sun.
‘Leaving already?’ Jake asked as he came towards her across the sand.
Kitty drank in the sight of him. How could anyone look that good after a twelve-hour day at work and an hour of kid-sitting at the beach? ‘I—I have to wash my hair,’ she said, flustered, putting a hand to her hair.
‘You didn’t even get it wet,’ he said.
She ignored his comment and looked past him. ‘Where’s your nephew?’ she asked.
‘My sister collected him a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I would’ve introduced you to her but she was in a hurry.’
Kitty hugged her towel against her chest as if that would stop her heart from beating so erratically and so fast. His skin glistened with droplets of water, and she watched in spellbound fascination as they rolled like a row of glittering diamonds down over his muscled chest. He smelt of the sea, with a grace note of something else—perhaps a lingering trace of his citrus aftershave or shampoo.
He was standing close enough for her to feel a tiny shower of water drops land on her skin when he finger-combed his hair back off his face. She didn’t understand how such a sensation could have a disturbing undercurrent of intimacy about it, but it did. Her skin shivered as if he had slowly run his long tanned fingers down the slim length of her bare arms. She moistened her lips and tried to get her brain to work.
‘I have to get going…’ she said, but her feet didn’t move. It felt as if the sand had suddenly turned into quick-setting concrete.
‘I’ll go in with you if you like,’ he said, nodding towards the ocean. ‘Just till you get your confidence. Your first time can be a bit scary.’
Kitty’s breath stalled. It was tempting. It was hot, and the water felt marvellous around her knees, but what if he touched her? What if those strongly muscled arms actually held her? ‘You don’t have to babysit me,’ she said with icy hauteur. ‘I’m perfectly able to take care of myself.’
He took the towel she was holding like a lifeline and tossed it to the sand at their feet, his dark blue eyes never once leaving hers. ‘Prove it,’ he said.
Kitty put her shoulders back and her chin up. ‘All right,’ she said, and spun around and made her way to the water. She splashed through the waves until she was in up to her waist before she turned to look at him. But he wasn’t watching from the beach. He had followed her in. He was less than half a metre away. Did he think she was that hopeless?
She gritted her teeth.
She would show him.
‘Watch out!’ he said suddenly.
Kitty turned just as a bigger than normal wave smashed into her. She felt as if she had been thrown into a washing machine on a rapid wash cycle. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stand up even if she had known which way was up.
Suddenly a strong hand gripped one of her arms and hauled her upright. She blinked the briny water out of her stinging eyes and looked up at Jake’s face. Her body was pressed against the rock-like wall of his by the force of the water. Every hard plane of his body was imprinted on her softer ones. Her breasts were pushed up against his chest, her belly against his washboard abdomen. One of his arms was like a band of iron behind her back; the other was holding her hand in an equally firm grip, his long fingers entwined with hers. His strong legs were slightly apart to brace against the undertow of the water, and the cradle of his pelvis against hers reminded her shockingly, alarmingly, deliciously of all that was different between them.
She felt a flickering between her thighs, like a thousand tiny wings beating inside a cramped space. Electricity shot through her veins, sending sparks of reaction up and down her spine, through every limb, even to the very ends of her fizzing fingertips and her curling toes.
Her eyes went to his mouth. She couldn’t stop staring at the rough stubble that surrounded it. The desire to reach up and trace that sexy masculine regrowth with her fingertips was almost overwhelming. Her hands were splayed against the hard wall of his chest, and that electrifying sensation was passing from his body to hers through the sensitive pads of her fingers. She could feel the thudding of his heartbeat drumming into her palm.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this close to a man…Well, she could, but that final goodbye hug from Charles hadn’t felt anything like this.
‘You’re way out of your depth,’ Jake said, with an unreadable expression on his face.
Kitty couldn’t get her breathing to steady, but it had very little to do with the water she’d inadvertently swallowed. ‘A little…perhaps…’
He braced her against him as another wave bore down on them. ‘Hold on,’ he said.
The crazy water swished and swirled around them but Kitty barely noticed. She was acutely aware of his body pressed against hers, from her soft breasts to his hard chest, from her smooth slim legs to his strong hair-roughened thighs. She felt the imprint of his arousal against her belly. That starkly primal instinctive reaction of male to female sent her senses into a madcap frenzy. His body seemed to thicken and harden as each heart-stopping second passed. She felt his heartbeat pick up under her hand. It was just a hint of escalation, but it relayed a message that was older than time itself.
Their gazes locked for a moment.
