Читать книгу Hot Single Docs: Happily Ever After - Kate Hardy - Страница 14

LUKE knew that Anna was kissing him.

Just as he’d known that she had followed him from the canteen and had caught his hand. He’d heard the urgency in her voice.

But it had all been on another level of his consciousness. Maybe that was what it was like for people in a coma. Or coming out of one, anyway. They could hear the voices and feel the touch but there was a transition period before they were able to enter the same reality.

Something had snapped inside him with the sound of that cracker and he’d known he was getting sucked into a flashback. He’d tried to fight it off as he’d stormed out of the canteen. Tried to shut down the even louder cracks of the real gunfire he could hear. The explosions of landmines. The screams of dying men. But the pull had been huge. Even the smell of savoury food became acrid. Like smoke. Rusty. Like blood.

By the time he was in the corridor all Luke had been aware of had been the need to escape. To find somewhere he could be alone and bury his head in his hands until, somehow, he could wrestle the monster into submission and regain control. And then he’d felt Anna’s grip on his hand and heard her voice calling his name.

He tried to clear his head. Tried so hard. He wanted to get back to her. He was caught in the horror of a battlefield and she was there but not there. If he could just reach her, everything would be all right. Couldn’t she hear him shouting? That he was trying, dammit. Doing his utmost to get to her.

Maybe she had heard. Maybe that was why she was holding his head and pulling it down. Pressing her lips against his with such intensity.

God … he recognised this form of escape. Distraction. Release. An affirmation of life. Passionate sex that carried no strings because if you got involved you only risked more of exactly what you were using it to escape from.

How did Anna know?

It didn’t matter.

Luke could feel the force that had taken over his mind receding. He was in control again but instead of pulling away his lips moved over hers and his arms went around her body. He drew them both into the shadowy area between the bench and the giant pot plant.

He let his hands shape her body. Feeling the trim curve of her waist and the neat rounds of her buttocks and then up, beneath the layer of the tailored jacket. Up to the solid anchor of her shoulder blades and then around to the softness of her breasts. He cupped them and brushed his thumbs across the nipples that he could feel like tiny pebbles beneath the silky fabric of her blouse.

And all the time his lips moved over hers. Encouraged when they parted beneath his. Excited when his tongue made contact with hers. Aroused beyond belief when she responded, her tongue dancing with his and her hands touching his body.

This was Anna, for heaven’s sake! At work. The place where she had no personality or, at least, no personal life anyone was allowed to encroach on. Had she been drinking? No. She’d refused alcohol at the party because she had work she still needed to do. They were both sober. Sober enough to realise that this was totally inappropriate.

How long had they been standing here, locked in each other’s arms, lost in a flash of physical release that had exploded like a cork from a champagne bottle?

Too long. Not nearly long enough.

Had anyone seen them?

He had to stop but it was too hard not to taste her for just a moment longer. To hold her against the length of his body and imprint the feel of her into his brain. He would need that memory and it was too important not to make sure that it stuck.

He was kissing her back.

Anna had only intended to distract him. A brief, hard kiss that was supposed to have the same kind of shock effect that a slap on the face might provide to someone in the grip of hysteria.

But after that first stunned beat of time he had kissed her back. His lips had softened and moved beneath hers and his hands had touched her body and something inside Anna had simply melted.

He hadn’t seemed to hear her voice or know she was there as she’d followed him. Maybe he didn’t actually know who he was kissing. She could be anybody so she didn’t have to be Dr Bartlett, did she?

She could just be Anna.

An old version of herself, even. One that had been lost too many years ago to count. The young girl who had dreamed of finding true love. A prince who was going to think she was the most wonderful person on earth. Who would love her for being exactly who she was. For ever.

And layered on top of that dreaming girl were flashes of everything she’d discovered about herself later. The yearning for a soul mate. The ability to give love and the need to receive it. Wild things like a need for physical release. All the things that had had to be buried so that they couldn’t become a torment.

For just a few seconds Anna let herself sink into this astonishing kiss because she knew she would never experience anything like this ever again and she wanted to remember it, but the insanity began to fade and maybe she transmitted a tension that had nothing to do with desire. Something changed, anyway. She couldn’t have said who actually broke the kiss and pulled away.

Maybe they both did.

For a long, long moment they stood there, still close enough to touch but not doing so. Staring at each other. Anna could see it was Luke looking down at her, not a tormented soul who was caught in a different reality. He knew who he was. Where he was.

And who he had been kissing.

Oh … Lord …

Anna swallowed hard. How on earth was she supposed to handle this? And not just the kiss. She’d witnessed another flashback incident. He’d said it wasn’t going to happen again but it had. OK, so he wasn’t in the middle of surgery and it hadn’t endangered anyone, but there was no way her conscience would allow her to make excuses or ignore the implications of this.

She had a professional responsibility here and she had just complicated it to the nth degree by not thinking and by doing something as outrageous as kissing her new boss.

Then again … maybe that gave her a way in. An opening to talk about what had happened and what they were going to do about it.

She took a deep breath.

‘Feeling better?’

She knew. Too much.

Luke could feel himself closing off. Slamming mental doors in an effort to protect himself. To protect her?

‘Maybe I should ask you the same thing,’ he said coolly.

‘Sorry?’

‘You kissed me.’ He managed to sound offhand, as though it hadn’t blown him away. Like it hadn’t meant anything at all.

He could see the way her eyes widened in shock as though he’d physically slapped her. The way she collected herself and looked away.

‘You needed distraction.’

She couldn’t know. Not everything. Not that she was already a distraction that he held onto every single night. That she represented a kind of rope that he could use to haul himself back to where he needed to be. A link that he had now tied firmly into the horrors of the past but one that led back to the present. To the future. A rope that he just needed to run his hand along to save his sanity. He would get where he intended to go eventually, as long as he could feel it running beside him.

The rope had been formed largely due to the intrigue that the contrast between what this woman was like at home and at work had sparked. Appreciating the fact that she was an attractive woman had woven another strand into it. But this … this blinding demonstration of what physical passion she was capable of did more than thicken the rope. It had come alive. It was warm and soft and he could stay glued to it with no effort at all. He didn’t even need to touch it because a part of his mind could see it. Glowing.

‘It was the Christmas crackers, wasn’t it?’ Anna asked. ‘That sound like gunfire. You had some kind of flashback, like you did that day in surgery.’

‘Nonsense.’ It was. It had to be because if it wasn’t, it would mean he would lose his job and that was all he had to fill his future.

And if he lost his job, he would lose Anna.

‘I didn’t like the noise,’ he admitted stiffly. ‘I told you I didn’t like parties. I left because I’d had enough. The noise of the crackers was just the last straw.’

‘Do you actually remember leaving the canteen?’

‘Of course I do.’ And he did, in a vague, dream-like way. A background that had faded rapidly as he’d got sucked into the flashback. He remembered that Anna had been following him and … ‘I … bumped someone,’ he said aloud. ‘They spilled their drink.’

That surprised her. ‘You didn’t look like you were aware of what you were doing.’

‘I was … angry.’

‘Why?’

‘The party. The noise. All that food and drink and the silly costumes. It’s all such a waste of time and money.’

She wasn’t convinced. ‘You didn’t stop, Luke. You didn’t hear me calling you. I kissed you because I couldn’t think of anything else that might shock you enough to get you off whatever planet you were on.’

‘And I hope you plan to include that little gem in whatever report you’re obviously intending to make.’

A spark flashed in Anna’s eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Luke. This isn’t about reports or jobs or whether someone gets embarrassed. This is about the fact that if there’s any chance of you “losing focus” or having a flashback or whatever the hell that was really all about that you’re obviously not prepared to talk about, then you can’t operate on people.’

Luke watched the play of expression on Anna’s face. Her distress was all too easy to see in the frown lines framing her eyes. In the way her lips trembled.

‘I’m not out to get you,’ she said fiercely. ‘I want to help you.’

It was more than that, Anna realised as the words left her mouth. Had it been growing within her all the time she’d been watching Luke so carefully? Hoping to see him smile? Thinking so often about that short space of time when they’d been alone in her house and tumbling ever further into the confusion of her response to him. She could see the shadows that clouded his life and his eyes. There were things that haunted him and closed him off but she’d had a glimpse of the man he’d once been. Or could be.

She wanted, more than anything, to dispel those shadows. To get close enough to be allowed to help him.

She cared about him, Anna realised with something like dismay. She couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened. Maybe the evidence had been there for days and days. A sum of everything she had seen or imagined. Elements that had floated in an uncoordinated fashion until the fear she had felt in seeing Luke virtually run from the canteen.

Something else had been added in when she had felt him respond to her kiss. A confused medley of caring and attraction. Not something she wanted to try and analyse and she certainly couldn’t possibly tell him about any of it. Not when it was beyond the realms of possibility that he could feel anything like the same connection. Or that someone like him would want help from someone like her. He was more qualified than she was in so many ways. He was older. More skilled. He had seen and done things she would never want to do.

No wonder he was looking at her in a stony silence that took a little too long to be broken.

‘Help me?’ The words were bitten out scathingly. ‘How do you propose doing that, exactly, Anna? By spreading a rumour that I might be unfit to do my job?’

‘No.’ Anna tried to catch his gaze but Luke was looking at the blasted potted tree they were standing beside. ‘I think if you have the time, you’ll get on top of whatever it is or find the help you need from someone a lot more qualified than I am.’

The snort of sound was incredulous. ‘A shrink, you mean? Cheers, Anna.’

She ignored the rejection. She’d be angry, too, if someone suggested she couldn’t handle her own issues. ‘What I was going to suggest is that you don’t operate unless I’m assisting you. For the protection of everybody involved.’

‘You think I need supervising? By you?’

Anna flinched, biting back the observation that he had needed her during Colin Herbert’s surgery. Something told her that Luke was trying to turn this into a confrontation he could feel justified in dismissing. She had to find a way to rescue this discussion or she would lose him. For ever.

The lift suddenly pinged into life close by. The doors slid open.

‘Oops, wrong floor,’ a masculine voice said. ‘Hey … sounds like there’s a party going on.’

‘Yeah. Staff do, mate. Doctors and nurses. Security wasn’t invited.’

‘Shame. Wanna crash it?’

‘Nah. More than our jobs are worth. Come on. Push the damn button.’

The doors slid shut again but a single word of the exchange lingered in Anna’s ears.

Crash.

The kiss seemed a very long time ago. Hard to believe it had happened, even. But it had and for a brief time Anna had felt the same kind of connection she had that day he’d told her about his friend ‘Crash’. It was possible to find a chink in the armour he wore.

‘Actually,’ she told Luke quietly, ‘I was thinking of it more in terms of it being beneficial to both of us.’

‘So I get a supervisor. What do you get?’

‘A mentor,’ Anna said. ‘The chance to learn from someone whose work I already respect.’ She managed a smile as Luke finally made eye contact again. Had she also managed to placate him? ‘Think about it. I’m going to go back to that party for a bit. I need some food.’

Going back into the canteen was the last thing Luke wanted to do but he found himself following Anna after a brief hesitation. He needed to prove he could. To Anna and to anyone else who might have raised their eyebrows at the manner in which he’d left. Most of all, he needed to prove it to himself.

He could see Anna walking well ahead of him.

He didn’t need a babysitter. Or help.

He didn’t need somebody kissing him because they thought he was on ‘another planet’ either. Because they felt sorry for him?

No. Anna had said she could learn from him. That she respected his work. That didn’t suggest she felt sorry for him. That kiss hadn’t held any hint of unwillingness. Quite the opposite.

She’d kissed him because she’d wanted to kiss him. And what’s more she’d wanted to keep on kissing him. It wouldn’t have been difficult to pull away as soon as he’d responded. What she was saying was at odds with her behaviour. As much of a contradiction as her smart suits and paint-splattered old clothes. It was a puzzle and Luke liked that. He liked having Anna to think about. To ponder over. He was like a boat being tossed on a stormy ocean and Anna was his anchor. Maybe he could get to his future without her but it would be hard.

Lonely.

Luke was walking slowly. He could see the brightly lit interior of the canteen now, beyond the doors that were propped open by chairs. Anna had vanished into the crowd.

A couple stood on the shadowy side of the doors, partly screened because one of the chairs had shifted. A man and a woman. He wouldn’t have taken any particular notice of them except that he could feel the atmosphere as he got closer.

A palpable tension. Maybe he recognised it because the air had the same charged feeling as it had had in those stunned moments after kissing Anna.

Sexual tension.

The man raised a hand to shove his fingers through his hair and then rub his forehead with the palm of his hand.

It was Josh O’Hara, Luke realised with astonishment. The A and E consultant he’d met the day he’d accompanied Roger into the emergency department after his cardiac arrest. The man last seen going after his distressed wife when she’d fled the Christmas party.

This woman was definitely not his wife.

She was quite tall and very beautiful, with long dark brown hair tied loosely into a ponytail.

‘I saw her leave,’ the woman was saying. ‘She looked dreadful, Josh. You should go home. Talk to her.’

‘I know. I will. But she had gone by the time I got outside and I just had to … Oh, God, Megan …’

It was only a snatch of conversation that he overheard and Luke wished he hadn’t. There was something going on and he didn’t need to know about it. It was none of his business how difficult or miserable other people were making their lives.

He had more than enough to deal with in his own.

Something made him turn his head again, however, as he pushed himself back into the party.

He saw Josh move his head. Tilting it further into the space behind the door that no one in here could see. Luke could sense the intent. Josh was planning to kiss this Megan. But almost at the same moment his head jerked backwards and he saw the shadowy figure ducking from reach as she emerged. She was shaking her head and she walked away without a backward glance.

Almost ran away, in fact.

That’s what he should have done when Anna had gone to kiss him. Ducked the gesture and gone.

So why did he feel relieved that he hadn’t even thought of doing so at the time?

Sleep proved elusive for Anna that night.

She couldn’t close her eyes without thinking about that kiss and thinking about it brought it unerringly back to life.

She could still feel it.

The way his lips had moved over hers. Exploring them. Claiming them.

The strength in his hands. Their sure grip when he had pulled her close.

That incredibly gentle touch of his thumbs on her breasts.

And every time she relived that particular moment, her nipples tingled and a shaft of desire pierced her belly. And every time it got stronger. Feeding on itself. Taking on a life of its own. Becoming so intense it was physically painful.

With a groan, Anna shifted her body, turning over in her bed yet again. She had to stop thinking about it before day broke and she found herself on duty having had no rest.

Becoming aware of an odd thumping sound a moment later, she dragged her eyes open to find another set of eyes disturbingly close to her own. A long, wet tongue emerged to lick her face and the thumping accelerated when Anna laughed and wiped her face on her pillow to dry it.

‘You’re supposed to be asleep, Crash. On your bed.’

The puppy wriggled with delight at hearing her voice. He obviously had no objection to being awake in the middle of the night.

‘It’s all right for you.’ Anna pulled her hand out from under her pillow and reached to stroke the dog. ‘You can sleep whenever you want to in the daytime. I need to sleep now and I can’t.’

Crash leaned against the side of the bed, his chin tilting up against the mattress.

‘He made out it was all my idea,’ Anna informed Crash indignantly. ‘And maybe it was, to start with, but you know what?’

Big ears twitched into their endearing sideways position and Anna smiled as she stroked them.

‘He liked it as much as I did, that’s what. He could have backed off and he didn’t. He kissed me back.’

And how!

Anna let her breath out in a long sigh. A release that was partly pure pleasure at the memory but it also held a good whisper of frustration and more than a hint of anxiety about the implications of it all.

Silence gathered around them both as Anna’s thoughts drifted on the breeze of that sigh. Her hand stilled and finally Crash heaved a sigh of his own, folding himself into a lumpy shape on the floor. He didn’t go back to his own bed. He was still there, right beside her, prepared to share any vigil.

But Anna’s eyes had drifted shut. One thing was certain. That kiss couldn’t be undone and it put her and Luke on new ground. Unexplored, potentially dangerous but undeniably exciting territory.

Was Luke awake right now?

Would he remember that kiss?

Oh, yes. Anna was as certain of that as she was about the fact that the kiss couldn’t be undone. Curiously, the knowledge was comforting and sleep finally came, but it didn’t quite erase the tiny smile curling her lips.