Читать книгу Top-Notch Men! - Anne Fraser - Страница 14

‘THANK you for dinner,’ Allegra said once he’d walked her to the door of her apartment block. ‘I had a good time. It was a nice restaurant. Not a pizza in sight.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in for coffee?’

‘I was going to but I wasn’t sure if you would take it the wrong way.’

‘I take it the same way you do—black.’

She gave him a quelling look. ‘I meant … well, you know what I meant.’

He smiled at her flustered expression and before he could stop himself lifted a finger to her cheek, trailing his knuckle over the creamy curve where a spot of heightened colour had pooled.

Allegra ran her tongue over her lips in a nervous gesture. ‘I’d better go in. It’s getting late and I’m on early and …’ She stopped when she saw the dark glitter in his eyes as they caught and held hers, her stomach hollowing in anticipation.

His head came down slowly, his warm breath brushing over her lips before he placed his mouth on hers in a soft, hardly touching kiss.

She looked up at him, her heart increasing its pace as he ran his tongue over his lips as if tasting her sweetness.

‘I probably shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

She swallowed the restriction in her throat and croaked, ‘Why?’

‘Because now I know what it feels like, I want to do it again.’

‘Oh …’

‘It could cause all sorts of problems,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders and bringing her one tiny step closer, her breasts brushing against his chest.

‘You think so?’ she asked, leaning into his hardness instinctively.

‘I know so.’

‘Too bad …’

He held her gaze for several pulsing seconds. ‘The gossip would be unbearable.’

‘Totally …’

‘And then there’s the problem of shifts.’

‘Yes …’ She moistened her lips again. ‘That’s always a downside.’

‘And then there’s the issue of your place or mine.’

‘Tricky.’

He smiled and tipped up her chin. ‘You are one hell of a temptation, Allegra Tallis, but I’m going to be the strong one here and step back before we drift into dangerous territory.’

‘OK …’ She swallowed again as she felt the hard ridge of his growing erection against her. ‘That would be wise, I guess.’

‘Very wise.’

A full thirty seconds passed.

‘So … so why aren’t you doing it?’ she asked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Stepping back,’ she said. ‘You said you were going to be the strong one and step back.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, his gaze dipping to her mouth. ‘Now would be a good time.’

‘A very good time …’

Her stomach did a complete somersault as his hands slid down the length of her bare arms to encircle her wrists.

‘Why don’t we do it on the count of three?’ he suggested, after another heart-stopping pause.

Allegra’s fingers curled around the length and strength of his. ‘Right … let’s do that. On the count of three.’ She took a breath and began the countdown, ‘One …’

‘Two …’ he said, and released her wrists to place his hands on her hips.

Another deep throb of silence passed. Allegra knew it was her turn to say the last number but somehow she couldn’t get the one word past the trembling shield of her lips. Her gaze locked with his as the time beat on, his hands on her hips feeling like a slow burn as his heat passed from his body to hers.

‘Aren’t you going to say it?’ he asked, his breath caressing the surface of her mouth as his head came inexorably closer.

‘I was getting to it …’

She felt the imprint of his lazy smile on her lips before he gradually increased the pressure, each slow drugging movement of his mouth on hers sending her senses into overload. The sexual charge of his tongue probing for entry made her legs buckle with instant uncontrollable need and she pressed herself against him, relishing in the feel of his body’s instant reaction to hers. She wasn’t without experience but never had she felt the energy and force of such fierce attraction before. It was like her body had been storing up its need for this moment when his mouth scorched its timeless message on hers.

Her tongue played with his boldly, each movement inciting her desire to a higher level, moving even further out of her control. Her mind swam with images of how they would be together, his strong leanly muscled body pinning her beneath him.

A passing car’s headlights brought her back to earth with a shaft of exposing light that she knew would do her no credit with her overly conservative neighbours.

She eased her mouth away from his and said somewhat breathlessly, ‘Th-three.’

Joel’s hands moved from her hips, his wry smile sending another wave of longing through her. ‘There, I knew you could do it.’

‘It was a tough call but I guess someone has to do it.’

‘Yes,’ he said, brushing the curve of her cheek once more. ‘Someone does.’

‘So …’ She tried to sound casually unaffected, as if she kissed handsome, full-blooded men on her doorstep all the time. ‘I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.’

‘Yes, I guess you will.’

‘‘Night …’

‘Goodnight, Allegra. I really enjoyed this evening. You’re surprisingly good company.’

‘Better than an internet date?’

‘Way better,’ he said, staring again at her mouth.

‘Um … this is the bit where you go down those steps and get in your car and drive home,’ she said, pointing to where his car was. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’

‘I’m working myself up to it.’

She couldn’t help laughing. ‘You have definitely graduated with honours from the school of irresistible charm.’

He bent his head and pressed a soft kiss to the side of her mouth. ‘So have you, Dr Tallis.’ He gave her cheek one last gentle flick with his finger and stepped away, walking with long strides towards his car.

‘Have a good sleep,’ she called out, as he got in his car.

He turned his head to lock gazes with her. ‘Are you joking?’

‘No … not really …’

He lifted his hand in a wave and with a deep throaty roar of the engine drove off and disappeared around the corner.

Joel hadn’t expected to sleep but when the phone rang beside his bed at three a.m. he realised he’d been in a deep dreamless slumber that took some effort on his part to come out of. He reached blindly for the phone and answered it groggily, ‘Joel Addison.’

‘Dr Addison, it’s Brian Willis, I’m on night shift for the unit. We’ve got one hell of a problem here. I thought I should tell you about it now instead of when you come in the morning.’

Joel rubbed his face and sat up. ‘What problem? What’s going on?’

‘It’s Mrs Lowe,’ Brian said. ‘Her ventilator has been tampered with and she had a respiratory arrest.’

‘What?’ Joel leapt off the bed, his pulse accelerating. ‘What the hell do you mean, her ventilator was interfered with? Interfered with by whom? Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, Dr Addison. It’s all back under control here, but the nursing staff are very shaken. Judy Newlands was looking after her and raised the alarm. If she wasn’t as organised and level-headed as she is, it could have been a total disaster,’ Brian said. ‘Someone had switched off the ventilator alarms and switched oxygen and nitrous oxide inputs to the ventilator—she was breathing a 50-50 mix of nitrous and air.’

‘That’s impossible, Brian, the connectors are different. You can’t screw an oxygen supply to a nitrous inlet, or vice versa.’

‘I know that, but that’s not how they did it. They cut the tubing and used clip-on joiners to switch the tubing. Nitrous comes out of the wall, and halfway along the tubing it changes into the oxygen tubing input of the ventilator. And the opposite for the oxygen supply.’

‘This is serious, Brian. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Have hospital security and the police been notified?’

‘The place is crawling with them right now, Dr Addison, and somehow the press has been informed. There are at least two newspapers here already and security tells me there’s a TV news van setting up a satellite dish out the front.’

Joel let out one sharp expletive. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

A group of journalists approached Joel as soon as he headed for the front doors of the unit. ‘Dr Addison? You’re the new director of Melbourne Memorial’s innovative new ICTU. Do you have any comments on Kate or Tommy Lowe’s condition? Has this incident or accident in the unit involved either of them?’ one of them fired at him.

‘I’m sorry but I am not at liberty to discuss patient details with anyone other than close family members,’ he said, and made to brush past.

‘Dr Addison, there are rumours that Kate Lowe tried to kill herself and her son, and there are rumours that an attempt was made on her life in the early hours of this morning in your unit. Do you believe there is a major weakness in security in the new unit? Could anyone just walk in and interfere with patients?’

‘Is the public safe in your unit, Dr Addison?’ another journalist persisted.

‘Please, get out of my way,’ Joel said, swiping his pass key to enter the building.

He located Brian Willis and almost frog-marched him into his office. Once there, the door shutting behind them with a snap, he asked Brian to fill him in on events of the night in detail.

‘Whoever did this didn’t realise about all the other separate alarms,’ Brian said. ‘The first thing to go off was the alarm on the pulse oximeter. Then the heartrate alarm went off at the desk. We were a bit short on staff, and had a one-to-three nursing ratio for about fifteen minutes down that end of the unit. Judy had gone to mix an antibiotic dose for Tommy, I was in the office. Judy heard the first alarm and came back in. The ventilator seemed to be working fine, she saw the alarms were off and switched them back on, and of course they all started sounding off. Oxygen sats had dropped to 70 per cent, so Judy just disconnected Mrs Lowe from the ventilator and hand-bagged her. Her obs came back to normal. She then reset all the ventilator settings and reconnected her, but within a minute all the alarms went off again.

We decided the ventilator was faulty. We bagged her while one of the unused machines was brought across by Chris Farmer, the orderly. We set her up on it on its bottle supply and it worked fine, so we disconnected the wall supply, moved out the old one, moved in the new one, connected the wall supply to the new one, then all the alarms went off on the new one. We knew the wall supply must have been OK because it’s driving every other ventilator in the unit. It’s just didn’t add up. Then Chris found the connectors and switched-over tubing—one loop of it, with the connectors, was concealed under the equipment trolley in the corner of the cubicle.’

‘This is not just sabotage, Brian, this is attempted murder,’ Joel said.

‘I agree. The police think so, too. They’re interviewing Judy and Chris now. I gave a statement a while ago. They want to talk to you at some point.’

‘Were there any relatives in the unit?’

‘There were people coming and going earlier in the night, up till pretty late actually,’ Brian answered. ‘You know what it’s like in here sometimes, we allow relatives as much contact as possible. That boy that came in the other day—you know, the spinal injury? His parents have barely left his bedside. I think his sister and girlfriend have been in, too, but it’s impossible to keep track of everybody in a unit as big as this.’

Joel ran a distracted hand through his hair. ‘I know … it’s hard to tell people to stay away when it could be the last time they see the patient.’ His hand fell to his side. ‘Has Mrs Lowe’s husband been informed?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was his reaction?’

‘Apparently pretty cold and dismissive about it,’ Brian said. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t think he’d care if someone pulled the plug on his wife.’

Joel frowned. ‘Was he in the unit at any time during the night?’

‘I’m not sure, I’d have to check with the nursing staff. Do you think he did this?’

‘It’d be a pretty stupid thing to do under the circumstances,’ Joel said. ‘The finger of blame would point straight at him.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. But he must be extremely cheesed off about it all the same. The kid isn’t doing so well. Mr Lowe will probably lose it if his son doesn’t recover or if he’s left permanently brain-damaged.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be permanent,’ Joel said, at the same time as his phone rang.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Brian said and made his way out.

‘Joel, it’s Patrick Naylor here,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘What the hell is going on in the unit? I just had a call from Switchboard that the press and the police are crawling all over the place.’

‘There’s been an incident in ICTU with a patient,’ Joel explained, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers to release the tension he could feel building behind his eyes. ‘It’s under control now but the press will expect a statement from one of us—if it’s me, I want you to clear it before I make it. You’d better come in and I’ll fill you in with the details.’

‘For God’s sake, man, it’s four a.m.!’ the CEO said. ‘Can’t it wait until morning? I normally don’t get in till eight-thirty.’

Joel dropped his hand and rolled his eyes, actively forcing himself to remain polite. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘Good. I’ll see you in my office at eight-thirty. And get Security to get rid of the press. I don’t want to be harassed by journalists getting from my car to the lifts.’

‘Fine, but if it’s going to be eight-thirty I can’t be held responsible for whatever unenlightened speculation appears on the front of the Melbourne papers,’ Joel said, but the CEO had already hung up.