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The sound of the ocean and people bathing around them faded. It was like being in a vacuum where no one else existed.
It was just the two of them: a man and a woman, male and female—alone.
Jake’s gaze slipped to her mouth, those dark blue eyes perusing it for long pulsing seconds as if memorising every tiny crease and line of her lips. ‘Time to get you out of danger,’ he said, blinking a couple of times. ‘You don’t want to get dumped unexpectedly again.’
Kitty ran her tongue over her mouth, tasting the ocean and a need so strong she felt it tingling under the surface of her lips. ‘I thought it was supposed to be safe between the flags,’ she said.
‘It depends,’ he said as he led her by the hand to shallower water.
She flicked her wet hair back over her shoulders and glanced at him as she sloshed through the lace-like foam of the shallows, trying not to notice how his fingers were so warm and strong where they were curled around hers. ‘On what?’
‘On whether you can handle the conditions,’ he said, releasing her hand once she was steady on her feet. ‘Swimming in a pool is not the same as swimming in the ocean. Every day at the beach is different. You never know when a bigger than normal wave is going to come unless you have experience at reading the swell.’
‘Maybe I’ll stick to the paddling pool for the time being,’ she said. ‘At least there are no sharks there.’
His dark blue eyes glinted down at her. ‘I think you’ll be fine once you gain your confidence,’ he said. ‘In no time at all you’ll be riding those waves like the best of them.’
Kitty had a feeling he wasn’t talking just about the ocean. But she wasn’t sure if he was talking about gaining confidence at work or in her private life. Was he warning her about getting involved with him? Letting her know the rules from the outset? Her instincts warned her that a relationship with him would not be a safe but boring mechanical lapping of a municipal pool. It would be diving head-first into a surging tide of deep rushing water that carried a constant threat of imminent danger.
She’d be best to stay well clear of it.
She reached for her towel and wrapped herself in it even though she wasn’t in the least bit cold. In fact she felt hot, both inside and out. Her skin still tingled and fizzed where he had touched her. And those tiny wings were still beating a soft but insistent rhythm deep inside her every time his eyes met hers, with that ancient primal message of male and female attraction virtually impossible to ignore.
Like right now.
Kitty suppressed a shiver as those blue eyes—as dark and deep as the ocean that surged and pulsed behind him—held hers.
The raw energy of his body reached out in invisible waves to wash over her, mesmerising her, tantalising her, consuming her. She felt the magnetic force-field of his tall masculine frame standing in front of her.
If she took a step forward she would be able to touch him. The temptation to do so was almost overwhelming. She wanted to place her hands on that muscular chest, to slide her palms over that damp hot skin, to feel those hard planes and contours, to look up and see the answering attraction in his eyes. But somehow she scrunched her fingers into her palms and stepped back instead.
‘I have to get going…’ she said, and almost tripped over her own feet in the loose sand in her haste to escape.
One of his hands shot out and steadied her, his fingers wrapping around her wrist like a steel bracelet. ‘Careful,’ he said.
Kitty swallowed as she glanced down at his fingers overlapping each other on the slender bones of her wrist. They looked so exotic and dark against the creamy paleness of her skin. Her pulse hammered beneath his touch. It felt as if a hummingbird was trapped inside her veins. She wondered if he could feel it. Was that why he had not let her go even though she was no longer in any danger of tripping?
She gave him a sheepish look. ‘You can let me go now.’
He slowly unwound his fingers, his eyes still meshed with hers. ‘I guess I’ll see you around,’ he said.
‘Yes, I expect so,’ Kitty said. She waited a beat before adding, ‘Thank you for the…rescue.’
He flashed a brief on-off smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
And without another word he ambled off to where he had left his towel further along the beach, turning every female head as he went.
Kitty slowly released a breath and only just resisted the urge to fan her face with one of her hands. ‘Way too much sun, my girl,’ she said under her breath and, trudging through the sand, headed home.
* * *
As soon as Jake walked into the A&E unit the next morning Gwen and a nurse and a resident who were in the office went silent, just as if someone had flicked a volume switch to mute.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I have to check some bloods,’ the resident said, and dashed out.
‘Er…me too,’ the nurse said, and quickly followed the resident.
Jake eyeballed Gwen. ‘What gives?’ he asked.
‘You were seen canoodling with Dr Cargill,’ Gwen said as she folded her arms across her ample chest. ‘Apparently it’s all over the hospital.’
Jake frowned. ‘Canoodling?’
‘Yes,’ Gwen said in mild reproach. ‘I thought you liked to keep your private life separate from your professional one—or are you making a special exception this time?’
‘Canoodling?’ he said again. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘You know exactly what it means,’ Gwen said. ‘What are you thinking, Jake? You know how awkward it gets when staff members have flings with each other. It’s bad enough when they work in separate departments, but on the same unit? Everyone feels the fall-out when it’s bye-bye time.’
‘I am not involved with Dr Cargill,’ he said. Yet, he tacked on silently. ‘Who the hell put that rumour out there?’
‘You work together,’ Gwen said. ‘Word has it you live in the same town house block, and now we hear you’re playing together.’
He looked at her blankly. ‘Playing together?’
Gwen gave him a look. ‘On the beach,’ she said. ‘In full view of everyone.’
Jake barked out a laugh. ‘I was teaching her to swim…or sort of.’
Gwen rolled her eyes. ‘Well, whatever you were doing with her has been witnessed and reported. I thought you should know.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ Jake said, grinning. ‘Does Dr Cargill know we are now an item?’
‘Not yet,’ Gwen said with grim foreboding. ‘But I hope I’m not around when she finds out.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#u8d0850a1-6236-520e-8515-12a32ce49e0b)
KITTY was examining a patient with a mild blunt force trauma to his forehead in Cubicle Four when she overheard two junior nurses talking as they changed the linen in cubicle three.
‘Talk about a fast worker,’ one of them said. ‘She’s only been here a day or two and she’s already got her hooks into him.’
‘Yeah, well, she certainly got his attention by turning up in that hooker costume the other night,’ the other one said. ‘Do you reckon it was staged?’
‘Must’ve been,’ the other one said. ‘What a slut.’
Kitty’s heart slammed into her breastbone. She broke out in a sweat, her cheeks firing up and her skin prickling all over in outrage.
‘Is everything all right?’ the patient lying on the bed asked worriedly. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’
Kitty forced a cool professional smile to her stiff features. ‘No, Mr Jenkins,’ she said. ‘You have a small haematoma that will take a day or two to subside. The skin isn’t broken, so there’s a slim to none chance of infection. You’re not showing any signs of a concussion, but you need to take things easy over the next day or so. Don’t drive, operate heavy machinery or consume alcohol for the next twenty-four hours.’
‘Thanks, Doctor,’ the man said. ‘The wife will kill me if I cark it now. We’ve got a cruise booked for next month. We’ve been saving up for it for five years.’
‘You’ll be fine by then,’ Kitty said, patting his arm before she left the cubicle.
During her lunch break Kitty went in search of Jake Chandler, but he wasn’t on the floor or in either of the doctors’ rooms. He was in his office. She felt every eye following her as she made her way through the unit. She had been the subject of hospital gossip before. Her break-up with Charles had done the rounds. It had been excruciating to know everyone was talking about her private life in such lurid detail. She had felt so exposed; so raw and vulnerable. She knew it would only have got worse after Charles’s wedding so she had decided to take herself out of the picture. But it seemed that even on the other side of the world people with pathetically small lives thought it sport to speculate on the lives of others. She didn’t have the option of running away this time. She would have to face it and deal with it.
She took a calming breath and rapped firmly on the door.
‘Come in, Dr Cargill.’
Kitty’s hand stilled where it rested on the doorknob. So he had been expecting her, had he? What was he playing at? Was this his idea of a joke? Did he have nothing better to do than make a laughing-stock out of her?
She pulled her shoulders back and kept her chin up, and turned the knob and entered the office, closing the door with a resounding click behind her. ‘I hate to interrupt you when you’re busy, but—’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve ordered the invitations, and I know a really cool florist who’ll do the flowers for mate’s rates, not retail.’
Kitty blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘The wedding,’ he said indolently, swivelling his office chair from side to side.
‘Wedding?’ She frowned until her forehead ached. ‘What wedding?’
His blue eyes shone with amusement. ‘Ours,’ he said. ‘Apparently we’re engaged and expecting triplets.’
She felt her jaw drop. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
He smiled a breath-stealing smile. ‘Gossip,’ he said. ‘You only have to look at someone around here and people start planning the guest list for the wedding.’
Kitty opened and closed her mouth, totally lost for words.
‘Apparently we were caught canoodling,’ he said.
‘Canoodling?’
He gave her a been-there-asked-that look. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I looked it up in the dictionary. It means to kiss and cuddle amorously.’
‘But we didn’t do any such thing!’ she blurted.
He lifted one of his broad shoulders up and down in a casual shrug. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It looked like it. That’s enough to set the tongues wagging around here. No one believes me when I tell them I was actually saving your life.’
‘You weren’t saving my life,’ she said, sending him an affronted glare. ‘I wasn’t drowning.’
‘And I wasn’t kissing and cuddling you amorously, but there you go,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done.’
Kitty clenched her fists by her sides. ‘Then it will have to be undone,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want people speculating on my private life.’
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘They’ll find someone else to talk about soon enough.’
She strode over and slammed her hands on the desk in front of him, leaning forward to drive home her point. ‘Relax?’ she said. ‘How can I relax? I heard two nurses talking about me in the next cubicle while I was with a patient. I was totally mortified. They called me a slut. They said I’d staged it the night I brought my cousin into A&E just to get your attention.’
His eyes took their merry time meeting hers, taking a sensual detour to the shadow of her cleavage, which she had inadvertently exposed to him. She quickly straightened, but it was too late. She could see the gleam of male appraisal in the depths of his dark blue gaze as it met with hers. The temperature of her skin went up to blistering hot and a hollow feeling opened up in her stomach.
‘I’ll have a word with them and put them straight,’ he said. ‘And if I hear any further gossip I’ll categorically deny we have anything going on.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, pressing her lips together for a moment. ‘I would appreciate it.’
He leaned back in his chair with a squeak of vinyl. ‘Just for the record, Dr Cargill,’ he said. ‘Next time you come in here you’d better not close the door.’
‘Pardon?’
He nodded towards the door behind her which she had clicked shut on her entry. ‘You know how people’s minds work,’ he said. ‘A man and a woman in an office together behind a closed door…Who knows what they might get up to.’
Kitty’s cheeks exploded with colour. ‘That might be how other people’s minds work but it’s certainly not the way mine operates,’ she said.
A lazy smile lurked around the edges of his mouth. ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Nice to know there’s still some innocence in this big, bad old world of ours.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You think I’m naive and inexperienced, don’t you?’ she asked.
He pushed back his chair and sauntered over to the office door, standing with a hand on the doorknob without turning it. ‘I think, Dr Cargill,’ he said, ‘that you should get back to work before someone comes looking for you. We don’t want any more gossip circulating about us, do we?’
Kitty snatched in a quick unsteady breath. She could smell his clean citrus and wood smell. She could see the individual pinpricks of his cleanly shaven jaw. She could see the sensual contours of his sinfully tempting mouth. She could see the flare of those ink-black pupils in the dark blue sea of his eyes. She was barely aware of sending her tongue out to moisten her lips until she saw those sapphire-blue eyes drop to her mouth to track the movement.
Something tightened in the air.
It was an invisible energy, a force Kitty could feel passing over the entire surface of her skin, disrupting the nerves inside and out, making them super-aware and super-sensitive.
She became aware of the deep thudding of her heart: a boom, boom, boom sensation inside her ribcage that was almost audible.
His eyes moved from her mouth to mesh with hers in a heart-stopping little lockdown that sent her senses into a tailspin. ‘You know, there is an alternative to handling this situation we find ourselves in,’ he said, in a deep and husky tone that sent a shower of reaction down her spine.
‘Th-there is?’ she said in an equally raspy voice.
His eyes went to her mouth again, resting there an infinitesimal moment before meeting her eyes once more. ‘Instead of denying it we could say it’s true,’ he said. ‘Then everyone will stop speculating about us.’
Kitty blinked. ‘But…but it’s not true.’
One side of his mouth tilted. ‘I know, but only we would know that.’
She frowned. ‘So you’re saying we should pretend we’re having a fling just to stop people gossiping about us?’ she asked.
‘It could work,’ he said. ‘It’ll stop the “are they?” or “aren’t they?” comments.’
Kitty made a little scoffing sound. ‘But you’re not my type. I would never in a million years date someone like you.’
‘Same goes.’
