A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby
A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby
Amy Andrews
A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby
Amy Andrews
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#udcb58771-b95d-504b-a891-31cabe979ecb)
Title Page (#u625dd643-0453-5db4-b934-95b8121359e5)
About the Author (#ud66e39d1-a6dc-58a6-96e0-b98554dca025)
Dedication (#u01f8c683-ceaa-5dc5-a5b9-8da042c76347)
Chapter One (#uf052b9b9-ee7c-5294-8383-293ab37a1ab7)
Chapter Two (#ucd2a0c6b-ca9d-5d28-8f3f-5eef44bfa8e3)
Chapter Three (#ua29db356-2b7f-5b4b-9172-5f144aa2ae09)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Amy Andrews has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs. She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au
This book is dedicated to the Radio Lollipop volunteers at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. You bring music and distraction into a sterile, scary world. Thank you.
CHAPTER ONE
MAGGIE GREEN WISHED the universe had given her some inkling that October morning as she descended the stairs two at a time to the squealing of the emergency pager that it was going to tilt on its axis. Instead, as the shrill tone echoed around the cement labyrinth of the hospital fire escape, it appeared to be just another day, just another code blue at the Brisbane Children’s Hospital.
She had no way of suspecting, as she rushed headlong into the emergency department resus bay, the total and utter cataclysmic effect of one Dr Nash Reece. Oh, sure, she’d heard about him. Who hadn’t? The grapevine had been running hot over the country-boy charmer and every female from the cleaning staff through to the director of nursing were swooning over his sexy strut.
But she wasn’t a swooner. And things like love or lust at first sight were for teenagers. And she was a good two decades past that. Or so she’d thought.
Nash glanced up from the mottled, struggling, unconscious infant at the nurse who’d just arrived on the scene. She was slightly puffed, her generous chest heaving in and out beneath the navy of her polo shirt. Despite her breathlessness there was a calm confidence about her and he smiled.
‘Good. You’re just in time. I’m pretty sure she’s going to need intubation.’
He shifted his focus back to his patient. The drugs they’d given to stop her tiny body seizing were playing havoc with her respiratory drive and she wasn’t breathing nearly as well as he liked. He held an ambu-bag in situ over the little girl’s face, supporting her weak respiratory effort.
Maggie stared at the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Even downcast they were quite spectacular. Combined with a killer jaw line dusted in stubble and wavy dark blond hair pushed back off his tanned forehead and lapping over his collar in true cowboy fashion, she really did swoon. A little.
Oblivious to the rush around her, the controlled chaos, the trilling of alarms and the sobbing of a distraught woman, Maggie’s stomach did a three-sixty-degree flop.
Nash looked up amused to see the nurse hadn’t moved. He felt his lips tugging upwards despite the gravity of the situation. He knew that look. Women had looked at him like that for as long as he could remember. But it was the surprise on her face that was most intriguing. ‘You are the ICU nurse?’
Maggie nodded absently, feeling totally disconnected from her brain as that slow, lazy, cocky smile hit its mark. She couldn’t ever remember being rendered mute by the sheer presence of a man.
‘Well I think you might need to come closer, Sister. I’m gonna need a hand and I don’t think you’re going to be able to reach from there.’
Maggie blinked, the use of her nursing title cutting through the daze. Right. She was the ICU nurse. That’s why she was here. She was responsible for the airway. It was her job. Still, his rich voice oozed over her like warm mud from hot springs and for one crazy moment she wanted to dive in head first and wallow.
Finally her brain kicked in and her legs moved. She took two strides and was at the head of the open cot, staring straight into Nash Reece’s blue, blue gaze.
Nash smiled. She’d looked good from a distance. She looked better up close. ‘Where’s your reg?’ he asked.
‘He’s seeing a ward patient over the other side of the hospital.’
Her voice was breathy and she hated it. For God’s sake, she had to be a good decade older than him. She wasn’t remotely interested. And even if she was, why would he be interested in her? A forty-year-old divorcee who hadn’t been in a relationship for so long she’d forgotten what was required?
If his rep was anything to go by, she was way out of his league. She was way past nightclubs and partying. She came to work, she volunteered at Radio Giggle, she tended her garden, read voraciously and she slept.
Oh, God—she was turning into a hermit. A cradle-snatching hermit. All she needed was a couple of cats and she’d be the full catastrophe. She cleared her throat. ‘He’ll be here soon.’
She looked a little het up and he couldn’t help stirring a little. ‘You okay to do this?’
Maggie wanted to bristle. She wanted to say, Listen sonny, I was helping with intubations while you were till wearing baggy pants. But she didn’t. She just nodded and asked, ‘What size?’
He sent her another slow, lazy smile. ‘Four.’
Maggie lowered her gaze, feeling uncharacteristically flustered. She’d been in hundreds of medical emergencies and had never been anything other than ruthlessly efficient. This time would be no different.
She turned to the resus trolley she knew would be behind her, reached inside the drawer and pulled out the requested endotracheal tube. She opened the packaging and squirted some lubricant on the end of the narrow curved tube.
The tone on the sats monitor started to dip and the infant’s heart rate started to drop. Instantly they were both alert, the funny zing between them forgotten.
‘Heart rate falling,’ Maggie said her gaze flicking to the green squiggle behind Nash’s head. ‘One hundred.’
They watched the infant’s chest as her respiratory rate dropped off further. ‘Sats ninety-two,’ Maggie relayed, watching the blue number on the LCD screen dip lower and lower.
‘Okay, no time to wait for the ICU reg. Let’s do it.’
Maggie couldn’t agree more. Normally working with a doctor—a registrar—she didn’t know made her nervous as hell in these fraught situations. But strangely she wasn’t. She didn’t know Nash from a bar of soap— apart from his lady-killer rep—but his supreme confidence was utterly assuring.
‘Let’s give her some vecuronium, Zoe,’ Nash said to one of the emergency nurses as he pulled down on the infant’s chin, opening her mouth for a brief inspection before placing the mask firmly back in place. ‘Have we got some atropine drawn up?’
Maggie blinked as the man with the slow, sexy smile vanished and morphed into a consummate professional. She followed suit, ignoring the fierce jolt of sexual attraction and becoming the experienced PICU nurse, calm and in control.
‘Vecuronium on board,’ Zoe said as she pushed the drug into the child’s drip. ‘Atropine ready if you need it.’
Nash nodded and started taking over the infant’s breathing altogether as the drug acted quickly, paralysing all muscle function. ‘Okay,’ he murmured giving some big breaths to pre-oxygenate. The sats came up to one hundred per cent and the heart rate rocketed into the one hundred and sixties.
‘Right,’ he said, dropping the bag. ‘Let’s go.’
Maggie passed him the laryngoscope and everyone held their breath as he expertly slipped the metal into the child’s mouth. The light at the end allowed Nash to visualise the tiny white vocal cords.
‘Tube.’
He held out his hand as the other one applied pressure through the handle of the scope to keep the patient’s jaw open. He was like a surgeon asking for an instrument, his eyes never leaving the target.
Maggie passed it to him positioned correctly so he could slip it down the blade of the laryngoscope and push it through the cords in one fluid movement.
‘Heart rate one fifty-nine. Sats ninety-eight,’ she said quietly.
Nash nodded as he angled the tube in. He’d been about to ask. His back was to the monitor so he couldn’t see the figures. All he knew for sure was that while he was performing the intubation the patient wasn’t getting any respiratory input at all. The drug she’d been given had stopped her breathing altogether and the longer he took, the more he deprived her body of vital oxygen.
‘Cricoid pressure,’ he murmured.
Maggie automatically reached for the child’s neck using her thumb and forefinger to apply gentle pressure mid-trachea to the cricoid cartilage, temporarily occluding the oesophagus to prevent aspiration of stomach contents into the lungs.
Nash was impressed with the nurse’s quick, sure location and technique. Often the pressure applied was too much, deviating the airway anatomy, but her technique was perfect.
‘Heart rate one sixty-five. Sats ninety-two.’
Nash nodded as he completed the procedure. ‘I’m in.’
He held the tube in place as Maggie attached the bag and puffed in a couple of gentle breaths. The patient’s tiny chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. Her sats climbed.
‘Do you want to listen?’ Maggie asked.
Nash nodded. He took the bag from her, keeping a firm grasp on the tube. He held very still as she carefully pulled his stethoscope from his neck, and placed it in his ears. Her gaze brushed his as she did so and then stuck. Her cheeks were a pretty pink and even though a part of his brain was listening for the whoosh of breath sounds as she moved the bell of the stethoscope around the patient’s chest, the other part was noticing her deep brown eyes, her high cheekbones, her wide, full lips.
‘What a beautiful noise,’ he murmured, not taking his eyes off her.
Maggie swallowed. This close, he was incredibly handsome. His eye colour defied belief. A clear pale blue, like tropical waters or maybe, depending on his mood, glacial ice. His skin was tanned, stretched nicely across prominent cheekbones, and he had deep crinkles on his forehead and tiny lines around his eyes like he enjoyed a good laugh as much as he enjoyed a good dose of Australian sunshine.
She became aware she was staring again and snapped herself out of it. ‘Should we get this tube taped in?’ she prompted.
‘Good idea,’ Nash murmured.
Maggie dragged her gaze away, grateful to have a job that required looking down and not up. She’d applied the first piece of tape, ignoring his long tanned fingers holding the tube firmly in place, when the ICU reg finally made his entrance.
‘Mac,’ Nash greeted him. ‘You’re a little too late.’
‘Sorry,’ Mac Caldwell panted, bending over and clutching his side. ‘I ran all the way.’
Nash laughed. ‘Have a seat, man. Crisis over.’
Maggie found concentrating on the finicky task of wrapping zinc tape around the tube even more difficult with him being so close. His chest was at her head level and his body heat combined with his intoxicating aftershave formed a potent mix.
Her downward gaze took in the rich tan of his chinos and the obvious flatness of his abdomen beneath the casual masculinity of his checked shirt. He wore it open at the neck and rolled up to his elbows revealing tanned forearms in stark contrast to the covering of blond hairs.
She listened as he filled Mac in on the case and spoke with just the right amounts of empathy, confidence and authority to the infant’s distressed mother.
‘Let’s hook her up to the portable ventilator,’ Nash requested as the last tape was secured around the tube. ‘We’ll get an X-ray to check the tube position, and can we load her with some anti-convulsants, please, Zoe?’
‘I’ll just let the consultant know we’ve got ourselves another customer,’ Mac said, excusing himself to find a phone.
Maggie fussed with the tapes, trimming one end that had been stuck across the little girl’s tiny ear, hyper-aware of Nash still standing close. Her elbow occasionally came into contact with his shirt and she seemed to be tuned into his every move, every breath.
‘Thank you…’ Nash looked at the nametag clipped to his assistant’s collar. She had a smiley-face sticker over her picture and a red heart sticker covering her surname. ‘Maggie. Thank you, Maggie.’
Her hands stilled as his voice washed over her like warm treacle.
She chanced a look at him and immediately wished she hadn’t. He was smiling one of those hey-baby smiles and she was equal parts turned on and annoyed. Annoyed won out.
Some men were just too charming for their own good. Some men just didn’t know how to turn it off. She aimed for nonchalance with her shrug. ‘Just doing my job.’
‘Ah, but you do it so well.’
Maggie felt things shift inside at the suggestive quality of his low, sexy voice. She sniffed, not at all comfortable with shifting innards. This man was too young and too sure of himself by far. ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I have been doing this for a very long time.’
Nash chuckled at the emphasis. He got it—she didn’t approve of him flirting with someone of her years. ‘I love experienced women.’
Maggie refused to be flattered by such a consummate flirt. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Only experienced women?’
He grinned. ‘Okay, you got me.’
‘Nash?’
He looked away from Maggie reluctantly. ‘Yes, Zoe?’
‘Can you assess the kid in cube two for me? I think he can progress to hourly nebs now.’
‘Sure, be right there,’ Nash said. He turned back to Maggie. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Maggie.’
She sent him a stiff smile. Not if she could help it.
Maggie finally got to lunch at two o’clock. The day had been crazy-busy and everyone’s lunch-breaks had been pushed back. She found an isolated table in the almost empty canteen, glad she didn’t have to spend her thirty minutes making small talk with anyone. She cracked the lid on her calorie-laden fizzy drink and sank her teeth into the divine-smelling hot meat pie.
A pair of freakish blue eyes rose unbidden and she shook her head to dispel them from her mind. There’d been no time this morning to think about her weird response to Nash Reece and she was damned if she was going to spend her precious break thinking about him either.
‘Now that’s a nice healthy lunch.’
And sometimes the universe was just out to get you.
Maggie tensed as the voice behind her took form and shape in front of her. Hunky, sexy form and shape.
‘May I join you?’
Maggie looked around at the other empty tables. ‘Plenty of places to sit,’ she said pointedly.
Nash suppressed the urge to chuckle. He liked a woman who could hold her own with him. She reminded him of the females he’d grown up around. His five sisters, his mother, his cousins. Country women were no shrinking violets and although he’d spent his life perfecting how to twist them around his fingers, he admired the hell out of their spirit.
‘Ah, but this is my favourite table.’ Nash grinned and pulled up a chair.
‘Gee. Lucky me.’
‘We haven’t formally met.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Nash Reece.’
No way on earth was Maggie going to touch him. If he could unsettle her with his mere presence, God alone knew what would happen if she allowed her skin to come into contact with his. She took another bite of pie, feeling an instant revival to her flagging blood-sugar level. ‘I know who you are.’
Nash chuckled at her deliberate snub. ‘Ah, my reputation precedes me, I see.’
She looked at his totally unrepentant face. ‘Try to look as if it upsets you,’ she said derisively.
He grinned at her. She had the deepest brown eyes he’d ever seen. They reminded him of his grandmother’s double chocolate fudge brownies. And, man, he was suddenly ravenous for them.
‘So…Maggie? Maggie who?’
She took a swig of her drink. ‘Maggie from ICU.’
He quirked an eyebrow. Maggie from ICU was playing hard to get. Well, there was a first time for everything. ‘So, Maggie from ICU, are you doing anything tonight? Do you fancy getting a bite to eat with me?’
Maggie almost inhaled her drink into her lungs his question startled her so completely. She coughed and spluttered so much that in a final humiliation Nash reached across and belted her between the shoulder blades a couple of times.
His hand moved to her shoulder and he grinned. ‘You okay?’
Not remotely. She shrugged his hand away. ‘Fine.’
He gave her a few moments before he asked again. ‘Well?’
Was he serious? She looked at him—yep, he was. It had been three years since she’d been on a date. And certainly a good decade since she’d been with anyone whose age fell in the thirties. ‘No.’
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘No.’
Nash shrugged. ‘Well I’m easy—’
‘Clearly,’ she interrupted.
Nash grinned and continued. ‘I can fit in with you.’
Maggie shook her head, exasperated by his persistence. He had his elbows on the table, emphasising his wide shoulders. He was big and broad and loomed at her from the opposite side, taking up all the space. ‘You don’t like to take no for an answer, do you?’
‘Why ignore what’s going on between us, Maggie? I’m attracted to you.’ He watched her pale and her wide brown eyes practically double in size. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re attracted to me. Why should we pretend otherwise?’
Maggie stared at him. Was he insane? He reminded her of a kid expecting instant gratification in that infantile egocentric way of theirs. But they weren’t kids.
They were grown-ups and adults were supposed to be a little more cautious. There were rules and etiquette.
‘How old are you, Nash?’
Ah. ‘I don’t care about the age difference.’
‘How old?’ she insisted.
‘Just turned the big three zero.’
Maggie nodded—just as she’d suspected. She wished for a brief second she was thirty again. But then reality invaded. She’d been a mess at thirty. She’d been dealing—very badly—with the heartbreak of her infertility and the ink had still been wet on her divorce papers. She was in a much better place now.
‘And how old do you think I am?’
Nash looked directly at her. ‘Twenty-six.’
Maggie burst out laughing. She had to give him his due, he hadn’t batted an eyelid. She knew that she was looking pretty good for a forty-year-old woman but no one would ever mistake her for twenty-six. ‘Does that line work with everyone?’
Nash laughed with her. ‘Never had to use it before. No one’s ever knocked me back.’
His eyes crinkled at the corners and it was very, very sexy. ‘Oh, dear. Do you think your ego can stand it?’
‘It’s pretty robust.’
Maggie grinned despite herself. She did not want to be charmed by him but his easy charisma and self-deprecation made an irresistible combination. ‘I’ll just bet it is.’
He sat and watched her as she returned her attention to her lunch. Her teeth bit into the pastry of her pie and flakes stuck to her lips before her tongue darted out to remove them. It shouldn’t be erotic—she was just eating, for crying out loud—but it was. God knew, he wanted to lick them away himself.
For his own sanity he moved his gaze upwards. Her short brown hair with chunky blonde streaks looked salon perfect. Her layered fringe swept across her forehead from a side parting. The rest of it fell in fashionably shaggy layers and feathered down her nape into fine wisps.
She finished her pie and patted her mouth with her serviette. If she hadn’t seemed so totally oblivious to his reaction, he’d have suspected she was deliberately trying to provoke him. He certainly would have expected it from any other woman.
‘Well?’
Maggie had tried to ignore him as she’d eaten but his intense blue gaze had made it impossible. She sighed. ‘I’m forty, Nash.’
He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So? So I’m a whole decade older than you.’
‘So?’
‘I was in high school when you were running around in nappies.’
‘So?’
‘I got married while you were still in primary school.’
Nash’s gaze flicked to her left hand. No ring. No telltale white mark. ‘So?’
‘I’ve been divorced longer than you’ve been a doctor.’
He smiled at her. ‘You’re available, then?’
She shot him an impatient look. ‘Nash don’t you think you should be playing with women your own age?’
He reached across the table and picked up her hand. ‘Maggie from ICU, you look better than any woman I’ve ever met.’
She could feel herself blushing beneath his intense gaze. She was drowning in the warmth of his tropical island gaze and her pulse hammered where his thumb drew slow circles at her wrist.
Damn it all—she would not be flattered by his easy words. She wasn’t going to get involved with a man ten years her junior. Especially one who dated for sport and made her breathless with just one look. That would just be plain dumb. And she wasn’t that hard up for company.
Maggie removed her hand. ‘I’m going to do you a favour, Nash Reece. I’m going to turn you down. And you should be grateful. Men like you need a woman like me—’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’he interrupted.
She smiled. ‘A woman who’ll say no. Too many yes-women make Nash a spoilt boy. You’ll thank me for it one day.’
He chuckled. ‘I doubt it.’
She crunched up her paper bag and screwed the lid back on her empty drink bottle and then stood. ‘Yeah well, your wife will.’
Nash really laughed then. He had no intention of ever marrying. And women had tried. Man, had they tried. Country girls, yearning for an escape from the outback had tried, city girls wanting to snare a doctor had tried. But he had a career plan carefully mapped out that did not involve weddings, and nothing was more important to him than that.
‘Wife? Nope. Not me. Besides, I’m already married. To my career. I’m on a path.’
Maggie was surprised to see a suddenly serious side to the flirty man who’d charmed himself into the seat opposite. He was once again the serious doctor from this morning. She wondered how many women got to see beneath the playboy exterior to the goal-driven man. ‘And yet you have time to date?’
Nash grinned again. ‘I do allow myself some diversions. Come on, Maggie. You know you want to.’
She shook her head, even though he was right. She did want to. It was crazy—but she did. Still, she knew enough about Nash Reece in a handful of minutes to know that one date would never be enough. ‘Denial is good for the soul.’
‘Denial sucks.’
He reminded her again of a child seeking instant gratification and she laughed. Yes. Yes it did. ‘Goodbye, Dr Reece.’
Nash watched her turn away, the creamy skin of her neck exposed as she twisted, pulling her shirt across her chest. ‘I’m gonna keep asking,’ he called after her.
She stopped and looked back at him as his silky promise stroked insidiously along her pelvic floor. ‘There’s a shock.’
Nash chuckled. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Maggie from ICU.’
They were the same words he’d used that morning and they had a preternatural foreboding to them. ‘Don’t count on it.’
He worked in A and E. She worked two floors up in ICU. As far as hospitals went they were totally different worlds. And after today she had no intention of letting him into hers. Ever.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NEXT DAY was her day off but Maggie found herself at the hospital anyway. She was actively involved in Radio Giggle and volunteered there regularly. In fact, she’d been on the original committee that had pushed for its establishment after seeing the success of Radio Lollipop during her stint at Great Ormond Street in London.
Maggie had seen their humble service expand over the years from a handful of people launching the first two-hour broadcast to a band of volunteers that worked tirelessly, promoting the healing power of play.
Radio Giggle volunteers actively engaged children throughout the hospital in a variety of entertainment, from helping with the shows, requesting songs and hearing themselves on the radio through to bedside crafts, games and other activities for those children unable to make it to the studio.
In fact, anything that could be done to help make a child’s stay in hospital a little less frightening and a lot more fun, Radio Giggle were on it.
It wasn’t her usual day to volunteer but Ross Calvin, Giggle’s programme manager and only paid employee, was off sick today and had rung to ask her if she could take his place. Maggie hadn’t hesitated. Not being able to have her own children had been a huge blow, but hanging out with these kids helped to fill the gap.
Five-year-old Douglas Werner, a long-term inpatient, was the first person she saw when she entered the Radio Giggle office.
‘Dougy.’ She smiled and crouched down accepting the little boy’s enthusiastic cuddle.
‘He’s been asking for you.’
Maggie looked up to see fifteen-year-old Christine Leek, a cystic fibrosis patient and another regular in the Radio Giggle studio. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said, giving the little boy a quick rib tickle and laughing at his endearing shriek.
‘Guess what?’ Christine spoke over the top of Doug. ‘Ross said I could conduct the interview today all by myself.’ She looked over Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Have you seen him yet?’
Maggie watched while the painfully thin teenager shifted from foot to foot, her lip pulled between her bottom teeth. Christine was a blossoming DJ who wanted a career in community radio and spent every possible minute with the Radio Giggle organisation. ‘I’m afraid Ross is off sick today.’
‘Oh.’
Maggie couldn’t bear to see her so crestfallen. ‘You can still do it, though,’ she reassured her. Christine’s face lit up like a fireworks display and Maggie felt her heart contract.
‘Really?’ she squeaked.
‘Of course.’ Maggie laughed. ‘You know your way around the dials better than I do.’
They went through to the brightly painted studio and for the next half an hour Maggie and Christine worked out their music schedule with the requests they had in from the previous day. Christine was an eager helper, pulling out all the CDs they needed and stacking them in order, which was just as well as Dougy had commandeered Maggie’s lap.
He sat imperiously, his IV pole supporting his lifesaving fluids close by, well used to adults indulging him. He leant his colouring book against the console and Maggie chatted to him, accepting the crayons he gave her and colouring where he pointed. Meanwhile she juggled Christine’s questions and those of the volunteers as they wandered in and out on their way to the various wards in their bright Radio Giggle T-shirts.
Maggie knew the outside play area would be full of kids over the next couple of hours as those who could came down to see how a real radio show was run. They usually put callouts to their bed-bound friends and families and took part in the activities organised by the volunteers.
At four o’clock the programme got under way. Maggie and Dougy stayed in the studio and let Christine run the show. Dougy knew he had to be quiet and while he had his colouring book he was happy to sit without talking on Maggie’s lap and draw. Radio Giggle never pretended to be a professional outfit, given that the shows were largely run by kids, but it never hurt to strive for excellence.
Maggie rubbed her face against his blond curls and inhaled the hospital-soap smell as she dropped a kiss against his scalp. Dougy had been born prem to a drugaddicted mother and had developed necrotising enterocolitis, necessitating the removal of a large portion of his non-viable bowel.
He’d been very ill for the first year of his life and had been transferred from NICU to PICU at three months of age for ongoing management. He now had short-gut syndrome, which meant he didn’t have enough bowel length to absorb his food and had to be fed intravenously through a permanent line.
He’d been in hospital virtually all his life due to his condition and he made regular appearances in PICU with various infections which, due to his compromised immune system, usually knocked him for six. His last stay had been a few months ago during winter for bilateral pneumonia.
He looked like all kids with severe malabsorption disorders. Skinny arms and legs and a protruding stomach. While long-term parenteral nutrition was lifesaving for Dougy it did have its side effects, and Maggie knew liver damage was a major contributing factor to Dougy’s pot belly. She could feel its rounded contours through the thin cotton of his hospital-issue pyjama shirt and dropped another kiss on his head.
‘So this is where the party’s at.’
Maggie would have jumped a mile in the air had Dougy not been weighing her down as Nash Reece’s voice intruded into the studio bubble. What the…? Was the man stalking her?
‘Dr Reece!’
Maggie blinked as Christine jumped up from the console, reefing her headphones off smiling crazily at him. She turned to see him standing in the doorway in dark chinos and another checked shirt. A young child sat on his hip, pulling at a lopsided bandage wrapped around its head. Nash looked natural, at ease with the child and her stomach did that strange flopping thing again.
Nash smiled at the teenager. ‘Hello, Christine.’Then he turned to Maggie, looking smoking hot in her tight black denim Capri pants and her red Radio Giggle top fitting snugly across her breasts. ‘Hello, Maggie from ICU.’
Maggie felt heat creep into her cheeks as his eyes roved all over her body.
‘This little munchkin says his name is Brodie and he wants to say hello to everyone on ward three,’ he announced to Christine, dragging his eyes off Maggie.
‘Bring him over here.’ Christine smiled, holding out her arms and waggling her fingers. ‘I’ll help him. Then we can do your interview.’
Maggie looked at him dumbly as Christine settled the little one on her lap. ‘You’re the interviewee?’
Nash chuckled. ‘You think I’m going to tank?’
Maggie felt more fire in her cheeks. ‘Of course not.’ It was hardly Meet the Press. She’d just wished she’d known. She hadn’t asked Christine about the interview because she’d assumed it was going to be one of the other inpatients as usual. ‘How’d that come about?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been dropping in from time to time and Christine asked if she could interview me.’
Nash had been dropping in to Radio Giggle? ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘What about you? You help out here much?’
Maggie shrugged. ‘From time to time.’
‘Hey,’ Christine said, butting in. ‘That’s not true. Don’t listen to her, Dr Reece.’ She pointed to a series of framed photos on the wall above the console, several of them starring Maggie. ‘Ross says Maggie was the driving force behind Radio Giggle and that it wouldn’t even exist without her.’
Nash cocked his head back and looked at the enlarged snaps. A younger-looking Maggie with headphones on, sporting a wedding band and grinning at the camera caught his eye. And another with Maggie helping a very official-looking gent in a suit cut a ribbon across the doorway behind him.
He whistled. Yesterday he’d seen her as the efficient PICU nurse and today he’d seen her in another light. While his libido saw her as a gorgeous, sexy woman, the evidence of his eyes told him Maggie was definitely more than a pretty face.
Dougy finally looked up from his picture. ‘Dr Reece,’ he called, and Maggie was spared from the frank curiosity in Nash’s face.
‘Hey, Dougy.’ Nash crossed the small distance and crouched beside Maggie. Doug had been his patient during his medical rotation. ‘How you doin’, mate?’
Dougy held up his colouring book. ‘I’m colouring in a princess. Isn’t she pretty?’
Nash nodded. ‘As a picture.’
‘She’s not as pretty as Maggie, though.’
Nash, fully aware that his knee was almost brushing her thigh, glanced at her face and smiled as Maggie’s cheeks bloomed with another flush of red.
Out of the mouths of babes.
‘No,’ he agreed, his gaze holding hers. ‘No one’s as pretty as Maggie.’
There was a strange couple of seconds when everyone else in the room ceased to exist. And it was in that moment that Maggie saw the difference in Nash. He wanted her, she could tell, but there was something more there. Respect maybe. Whatever it was it was infinitely more seductive than flirty Nash of yesterday.
‘Okay,’ Christine said, pulling the earphones away again while simultaneously jiggling her new assistant on her lap. ‘After this song you’re up, Dr Reece. Are you ready?’
Nash reluctantly flicked his gaze from Maggie to Christine, giving the teenager his full attention. ‘Ready when you are.’
Maggie watched Christine blush under Nash’s gaze. It was apparent the girl had a massive crush on him, a fact of which he was obviously aware as he carefully navigated the interview. He was charming and gentlemanly to a fault, and everything a teenager hooked on Jane Austen could ever hope for, but Maggie could tell he was constantly aware of the boundary.
He spoke about growing up on a huge cattle property hundreds of kilometres west of Sydney in rural New South Wales and taking his school lessons via a radio through the School of the Air and mustering cattle in a helicopter.
‘And why did you decide to become a doctor?’ Christine asked.
Maggie, who’d been preoccupied with colouring a pink flower, looked up at the question. Christine had her back to Maggie but Nash was facing her. She noticed that at some stage Brodie had switched laps and was once again cuddled into Nash’s side. She wouldn’t have thought it possible but he looked more masculine, more appealing. Their gazes locked as he answered.
‘My sister was sick a lot when we were kids and she had to go to Sydney frequently for treatment because there just weren’t the services in the bush. I promised her then I’d become a doctor and change it.’
Maggie noticed the lightness to his voice and the smile he flashed Christine as he broke eye contact with her, but it was too late. For a brief moment she’d seen a vulnerability in his gaze as he’d spoken about his sister that called to her more than any amount of sexual attraction. And who could resist a fervent boyhood promise?
‘You told me the other day that Radio Giggle was a life-saver. What did you mean by that?’
Maggie gaped at the very grown-up question. Forget community radio, Christine was heading for a career with 60 Minutes.
‘The hospital in Sydney where Tammy…stayed had its own kids’ radio station. My sisters and I used to ring up and put in requests for her. She listened every day, she said it helped her miss home a little less.’
Goose-bumps broke out on Maggie’s arms at the streak of raw emotion in Nash’s not-quite-steady voice. His family had obviously been close and the connection with his ill sister through a hospital radio station, no matter how far in the past, clearly still resonated with him.
She’d never thought of that aspect of Radio Giggle before, more concerned with its diversionary attributes. But as a way for inpatients to feel connected to home, it was extraordinarily touching and she was proud all over again to be part of such a great organisation.
‘Do you have a special request for us today, Dr Reece?’
Brodie started to grizzle and Nash shifted him to the other hip and jiggled him a little. ‘I sure do. I’d like to hear “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It was Tammy’s favourite.’
Maggie was pleased for Dougy and her enforced activity as the mournful strains of ‘Puff’ filtered through the studio. She gripped the crayon hard, the goosebumps multiplying.
‘Thanks, Dr Reece,’ Christine enthused, pulling her headphones off.
Nash smiled and stood. Brodie was becoming more fractious, rubbing his eyes. ‘No probs.’ He started to sway as Brodie’s grizzling became louder. ‘Better get this little one back to the ward.’
Christine nodded. ‘See you later.’
He nodded to the teenager then looked down at Maggie, who was colouring in studiously. ‘See you, Maggie.’
Maggie looked up, unprepared for the picture Nash made as he swayed with bandage-headed Brodie. He was lean and sexy and utterly endearing. Yesterday she had thought how totally out of his league she was but today, child on hip, amidst the background chaos of Radio Giggle, he looked totally down-to-earth. Easily within reach. Temptingly so.
‘Bye,’ she dismissed, returning her attention to Dougy almost immediately.
She gripped the crayon harder as his sexy chuckle lingered in the studio well after he’d gone.
If she was ever granted the use of a magic wand for even just a few seconds, Maggie would use it to completely annihilate night duty from existence.
She hated it. With a passion.
Her first night in particular. So, she wasn’t in the best of moods the next night when she switched off her ignition and climbed out of the car beneath a star-studded sky. Ten hours stretched before her and she yawned. Not a good sign!
Oh, she knew once she actually walked through the doors and greeted her fellow sufferers she’d be fine— it was the thought that was the most depressing. And the older she got the harder they were to get over. Back in her student days she’d bounce straight back. Twenty years later it took her a good couple of days to get over a run of nights.
After communal handover in the tearoom Maggie was allocated bed three and took bedside handover from Ray, the nurse who’d been looking after Toby Ryan since his admission to the unit at lunchtime.
Toby was a three-year-old boy who’d been born with a rare hereditary haematological disease. He’d been in and out of hospital most of his brief life, undergoing a multitude of different therapies in a bid to cure him. When everything had failed a bone-marrow transplant had been his only option and he was now fifty days post-procedure.
But not out of the woods. Unfortunately nothing had gone smoothly for little Toby and his chest X-ray had deteriorated in the last few days and was looking very pneumonic. He’d been started on antibiotics and had had sputum collected for analysis, but it had become obvious that morning that he required closer monitoring and further respiratory support so he’d been shifted to PICU.
She watched her patient carefully, noting even in his sleep he was using the accessory muscles in his chest to help him breathe. The sound of high-flow oxygen whooshing through his face mask and filling the attached plastic reservoir bag was surprisingly loud in an already noisy environment.
He was as cute as a button with tight black curls crowning his head, clutching a raggedy-looking teddy bear that was missing an eye and half an ear. He was wearing only pyjama pants, leaving his upper half exposed. Maggie frowned. He was working really hard, which was concerning especially considering his state of slumber.
Maggie did her start-of-shift checks and nursing assessments. Linda, the nurse in charge of the shift and a close friend, was setting up bed four for a retrieval patient when Maggie asked her to check some drugs shortly after. Then Toby’s mother, Alice, returned and Maggie chatted with her for a while.
It was a good couple of hours before Maggie had the chance to sit down and read back over Toby’s notes. The PICU had electronic charting, with each bedside having its own computer terminal. Maggie sat at hers and read back through her patient’s history. She noted that Toby’s cousin had died from the same condition only last year.
She looked up from the screen and took in Alice dozing by her son’s bed, his hand in hers. Maggie couldn’t even begin to imagine how scary it must be for her and the rest of Toby’s family.
The night settled into a familiar rhythm. Toby slept and held his own. Around her the other patients were behaving themselves also. The everyday noises of the unit didn’t register as Maggie went about her work. The low hum of machines, the beeping and trilling of monitors, the slurp of suckers and the variety of alarms attached to the technology-saturated environment formed a continuous background drone.
Collectively they were as familiar to Maggie as the sound of her own breath, the beat of her pulse. And subconsciously she registered what each of them were. She knew which ones to worry about and which ones to ignore. And even deeply involved in other tasks, she knew instantly when something sounded different.
Linda relieved Maggie for her first break. She returned half an hour later, coinciding with the arrival of the retrieval patient. Two paramedics pushed the gurney accompanied by a wardsmen and Gwen, the retrieval nurse.
But none of them held her interest or her gaze. Maggie could focus only on the other member of the party making their way towards her.
Nash Reece.
What the hell? What was Nash doing here? Wasn’t it bad enough that visions of the man with a child on his hip had been in her head like a recurring nightmare since yesterday? His gaze locked with hers as the gurney rolled past and he winked at her.
‘Hello, Maggie Green.’
Maggie stared at him, not even registering that he now knew her last name as her brain grappled with how exactly he came to be doing a PICU retrieval. Or at least it was trying to underneath the surge of one hundred per cent octane lust that had flooded her system and threatened to overload her circuits.
The man looked incredible. His hair was mussy in a too-sexy-to-be-true fashion, no doubt aided by the inflight helmet. The navy-blue shirt of the retrieval uniform fitted snugly across his broad shoulders and chest, the pocket announcing his position as Doctor in vibrant red stitching. The cuffs were rolled back to reveal those strong forearms dusted with blond hairs.
Flaunting propriety, he wore a pair of faded jeans instead of the matching navy trousers. They clung in all the right places and Maggie found herself wondering what he’d look like in nothing but the jeans.
‘I’ll shut this across, Maggie, so we don’t wake Toby,’ Linda said.
Maggie nodded mutely and watched as the concertinaed divider between beds three and four shut out not only the spill of light but also Nash Reece and those damn distracting Levi’s.
Trying to concentrate on her work now was utterly useless. The voices next door were muted but she seemed finely tuned in to every low rumble or murmur that was distinctly Nash. Luckily Toby continued to sleep and although his effort remained the same, he still appeared to be coping.
An hour later, as Maggie typed her username and password into the computer to sign for a drug, she felt Nash’s presence behind her like the heat from a nuclear power plant.
‘MMG,’ he mused, reading over her shoulder. It had taken him a few days to get a handle on the electronic charting and there was probably a heap of features he’d yet to work out, but he did know that all the staff user-names consisted of their initials. ‘What’s your middle name, Maggie Green?’
Maggie ignored him, refusing to turn and acknowledge his query. It was none of his business.
Nash moved so he was standing in front of her, one tanned elbow and one lean hip propped against her mobile computer table. ‘Is it May? Are you a “Maggie May”? Was your mother a Rod Stewart fan?’
Maggie thanked her lucky stars for the relative dimness of the room as he crooned the opening notes of the well-known song.
‘Yes. I know what you meant,’ she said cutting into his surprisingly good baritone not sure she could stand being serenaded with that particular song about an illicit love affair between a younger man and an older woman. ‘I was named May after my grandmother,’ she said frostily. ‘I’m older than the Rod Stewart song.’
Nash chuckled. ‘I’ve never met a woman so keen to talk up her age.’
Maggie shrugged with as much nonchalance as she could muster. She couldn’t help it if the twentysomethings he dated had issues with getting older.
‘I guess I’d better get used to it seeing as how I’m working here for the next three months.’
Maggie took a moment to reel in the leap of her pulse. Three months? Maggie frowned as a sudden realisation hit her. ‘You knew!’ she accused. ‘The other day…at lunch…yesterday…you knew you were coming here.’
Nash smiled. ‘Guilty.’
Maggie looked into his utterly guiltless face. ‘You might have told me.’
‘And have you prepared?’ Nash laughed. ‘I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green.’ Nash suspected not much flustered her and the fact that he’d put her off balance three times now was the boost his ego needed in the face of her continued resistance.
Maggie took a breath, refusing to rise to his bait or let him see how the prospect of three months in his vicinity rattled her. ‘So how’d you swing that? The current registrars are only halfway through their term.’
‘A short-term position came up. Dr Perkins offered it to me.’
Maggie frowned. Dr Gemma Perkins, the PICU director, never offered reduced terms. He must be bloody good. ‘Why only three months?’
‘I’ve got a position at Great Ormond Street in January.’
Maggie blinked. London? It must be part of his great career plan. ‘Good hospital,’ she murmured.
Still…London? She found it hard to believe how he’d survive in the environs of British medicine where suits and ties were mandatory. He’d changed from his retrieval top into a T-shirt, that combined with the faded fashion of his low-rider jeans, was the epitome of laid-back.
Did he even own a tie?
Nash grinned at her understatement. G.O.S.H. was a world leader. ‘The best.’
She nodded. ‘I worked there years ago.’
Nash couldn’t resist. ‘Back when you were my age?’
Maggie looked into his open flirty gaze, humour skyrocketing his attraction tenfold. ‘No. Back when I was first married. Twenty years ago. I do believe you must have been about ten at the time?’
‘About that.’
Maggie shook her head at his unabashed reply. He was never ten.
‘Well, I guess I’d better get my A into G,’ Nash said, reluctant to leave. ‘I’m sure Mac wants to be getting home.’
Tonight? He was working tonight? She gave an inward groan. She’d assumed he was just doing the retrieval and then leaving. Great! Now she had to add Nash Reece and his unsettling presence to her first-night blues.
Two hours later Maggie lay in the darkened break room on a mattress on the floor, cocooned in warm blankets from the blanket warmer, trying to sleep. But her thoughts kept turning to Nash Reece with his impossible blue eyes.
Damn it! She was supposed to be sleeping.
She had one precious hour to recharge her batteries and here she was staring at the ceiling with Nash’s I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green whispering its treachery into her subconscious.
After twenty minutes she admitted defeat, got up and headed for the tearoom, feeling tired and irritable. She was going to have to settle for bad late-night TV and a cup of tea instead. She was channel-surfing when Nash entered the room a little later.
‘Couldn’t sleep, Maggie?’
His voice purred around her and her irritation ballooned. It was all his fault she was going to feel like death warmed up in the morning.
‘Are you watching that?’ he asked, not waiting for her to answer.
Maggie passed him the remote control. There was nothing on. ‘Not really.’
‘Goodo.’ He took the gadget and flicked it to a sport channel. ‘Country versus city,’ he said to her. ‘I missed it this afternoon.’
‘You can take the boy out of the country, hey?’
He grinned at her. ‘Something like that.’
Maggie sipped her cup of tea for a few minutes while Nash watched the television. The silence between them was unsettling. Not that he looked unsettled but she sure as hell felt it. It was too…intimate.
‘So where exactly is home?’ she asked.
‘Far western New South Wales. The family owns a couple of hundred thousand acres.’
‘You’re a long way from your roots. I thought country boys hated the city?’
Nash hooted. ‘Are you kidding? I love the city. I may be a country boy at heart but I feel like a kid in a lolly shop here. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting down and dirty and dusty…’ Nash paused as he watched Maggie’s knuckles grow white around her mug. He knew she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she pretended. ‘But I love the theatre and the shopping and the night life.’
Maggie swallowed a snort. She just bet he liked the night life. She just bet he fitted right in and the girls in the clubs drooled over his strange mix of metro-sexual hottie and country-boy charm.
He was going to adore London. London was certainly going to adore him. ‘So you’re converted?’
‘It’ll do for now.’
‘Ah.Your great career plans?Your path? Tell me about it.’ This was good, they were chatting. Like two normal, reasonable adults. No vibe, just polite small talk.
Nash shrugged. ‘Become the best damn paediatrician in Australia and then take myself back home. The bush is notoriously underresourced and underfunded. I want to start up a flying paed service.’
Maggie shouldn’t have been surprised by that, given the stuff he’d talked about yesterday during his interview. His childhood promise to his sister. But she was. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said he was going to drop out of medicine and become a drag queen.
When he’d talked about being married to his career the other day and finding out about London tonight she’d assumed it was for some hotshot, high-profile calling. To discover he was staying true to his boyhood promise was stunning.
Nash Reece, the charming flirt who’d made it clear he wanted her, had been pretty irresistible. Nash Reece, honourable doctor with a selfless purpose born from his sister’s illness, was completely irresistible. She’d caught a glimpse of this man yesterday in the studio. And she was looking at the rest of him now.
‘Your sister must be very proud of you,’she murmured.
Nash shrugged. ‘I’m sure she would be if she was alive.’
Maggie stilled as a sense of dread washed over her. Nash’s features had become shuttered. ‘Oh, Nash. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. ‘She had leukaemia. I was eight. She was ten. It was a long time ago.’
‘I’m sorry, I just assumed yesterday…you didn’t say,’ she ended lamely.
‘I didn’t think it was appropriate to broadcast my sister’s death on a kids’radio show in a children’s hospital.’
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose not.’
He was silent for a moment as the overwhelming rawness of that time came back to him. He didn’t often talk about Tammy. Maybe the interview yesterday had sparked the memories again but he found himself wanting to tell Maggie about it.
‘She died in the city because there weren’t the appropriate support services at home to help with palliative care. Having to make long trips into Sydney was a drain on our family life and my parents’ finances. Being separated from Tammy a lot of the time was really, really hard on the rest of us. We missed her.’
Maggie nodded. ‘I can imagine.’
He looked at her, compassion swirling in the fudge-brownie depths of her eyes. It was nice not to have to explain the true impact of that to someone. The PICU got its share of oncology patients and he knew Maggie would understand the true horrors of the illness.
‘It took a long time for Mum and Dad to get over it. I mean, they tried hard…for the rest of us, but they were just…sad.’
‘Of course they were,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure you all were.’
Nash looked at her, seeing not only compassion but respect. Suddenly she didn’t look at him like he was an annoying bug buzzing around. Or a child, to be tolerated or humoured. Suddenly she looked as if she was taking him seriously. Not dismissing him with a pat on the head. She was looking at him like he was a man.
Sort of like how he’d felt about her yesterday when he’d discovered her background with Radio Giggle. Instantly she’d become a three-dimensional entity and he’d had to face that there was more than a physical trigger to the tug he felt when they were together.
He didn’t know whether to be pleased by this development or to get up and leave the room. There was something in her gaze that saw deep inside him. Something he knew for sure would demand more from him than he was usually prepared to give.
The television erupted. The crowd cheered and the commentator’s voice rose an octave or two as one of the country team made a mad dash for the goalpost. Nash was grateful for the diversion and he dragged his gaze from hers and feigned interest in the game.
Maggie was also pleased for the distraction. Things had suddenly gotten quite intense and it was the last thing she wanted. Writing Nash off as a frivolous jack-the-lad had made it easier to ignore the attraction between them. But his family tragedy and dedication to his career had added a whole further dimension. A fully fleshed-out Nash Reece was going to be much harder to ignore.
‘Well, my time’s up.’ Maggie stood. Actually, she had another eight minutes but she really needed to get away.
Nash nodded, deliberately keeping his eyes trained on the television. Something had passed between them, making his interest in Maggie Green very unwise. He needed to give up on her pronto, because the Maggie who had just looked at him with compassion and respect in her eyes wouldn’t be so easy to turn his back on come January.
And that he couldn’t allow. There was London and then home. No woman had ever swayed him from his goal and he wasn’t about to get tangled up with one who could.
So, there was chemistry. So, he wanted her. Maggie Green was off limits.
He’d better get used to it.
CHAPTER THREE
NASH SPENT THE next two weeks ignoring his attraction to Maggie. Something he never did. He’d learnt from his sister’s passing that life was short and should be lived to its fullest. But during their talk the other night he’d realised Maggie was not the type of woman with whom he could indulge in a quick fling.
There was something about her that flashed a big red warning light at him. Maggie was a forever kind of woman. And he wasn’t a forever kind of guy.
He had years left of his training to go, several in London and then back to the bush. Maybe one day, maybe, he’d find a nice country girl to settle down with, maybe have what his parents, his grandparents had, but he was certainly in no rush.
But then he made the fatal error of joining the staff for Friday night drinks and he knew he couldn’t deny it any more. Two hours of watching her moist lips suck amber liquid out of long-necked bottles and he was wishing he was her beer. She was driving him to distraction. He had to have her—despite the warning light, despite knowing it was crazy.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman this badly.
Maggie lifted her gaze to his for a brief second before she hastily looked away and smiled at something Linda was saying. He knew she could feel the pounding of attraction growing out of control too. Louder than the noise of the juke box and the chatter all around them. It was as if the social situation, far removed from the hospital, had changed the boundaries between them.
She’d been slipping him furtive looks all evening when she’d thought he hadn’t been watching and while it was dim inside her desire flared like a lighthouse beacon, beckoning him closer. Even though the rocks were treacherous and he risked being snagged, their attraction pulled at him like the undertow of a tsunami.
He needed another drink.
Maggie breathed a sigh of relief as Nash left the table. She’d felt the weight of his gaze all evening and it excited and terrified her in equal measure. She had an overwhelming feeling of inevitability and it sucked the breath out of her lungs.
He looked his usual laid-back sexy self tonight in faded jeans and a polo shirt the exact shade of his tropical-waters eyes. It touched all the right places on him and inside her. He looked good enough to sprinkle with sugar and eat with a spoon.
God, this was getting way out of hand. They’d spent a fortnight studiously avoiding each other. Oh sure, the zing between them was there but it was as if he’d decided to crank back the vibe. He didn’t flirt. He was polite, friendly. And that suited her just fine.
In fact, she was very grateful for his detachment and returned it in the same spirit. But tonight it was if a channel of energy had opened up across the table between them, a portal visible only to them, and the bounds they’d subliminally put on their relationship had been sucked away.
Nash returned to the table with a glass of beer and looked directly at her, his gaze grazing her face before dropping to the V neckline of her T-shirt. He looked back up at her and Maggie could see the raw hunger in his eyes. She stood. She couldn’t bear it any longer. If she didn’t leave now she was going to drag him into the loo just to get it out of their system.
‘I’m off,’ she announced.
There was a chorus of protest but Maggie waved it all away.
‘Me too.’ Nash stood, leaving his untouched beer. ‘Do you think you could give me a lift?’ he asked, looking directly at her.
Maggie swallowed, hoping the heat between them wasn’t as obvious to everyone else. ‘I’m getting a taxi.’
‘Good. We can share.’
Maggie saw the desire in his gaze light up his blue eyes with purpose and it scared her witless. But she nodded anyway.
There was a queue at the taxi rank and Maggie’s heart belted along at triple time as they stood side by side, jostled by others in front and behind.
‘What are we going to do about this, Maggie May?’
Maggie heard the murmur of his voice near her ear and knew they were standing at a crossroads. The wise thing to do would be to stick to her side of the path. But as she looked up into his face she knew she wanted him to kiss her more than she’d wanted anything in the last decade, and she knew she was powerless to resist.
Tonight, anyway.
They moved to the top of the queue and she looked around at the people behind, relieved to see they were too engrossed in their own conversations to be paying any heed to theirs.
‘One night,’ she said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice as she took charge of her destiny to the pounding of her bongo-drum pulse. ‘One night only.’
Nash’s heart crashed to a brief standstill in his chest before galloping madly. He searched her gaze for a moment. He’d expected her to knock him back, to persist with her denial. But she was looking at him calmly. Intently. No doubts. No Maggie of old. Just double chocolate fudge brownie eyes sucking him in, tempting him further.
And one night was good. Enough to quench the attraction but not for it to be misconstrued as anything other than two adults having a good time. Perfect. ‘Works for me.’
Maggie breathed again. ‘How far away do you live?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘I’m closer.’
A taxi pulled up. ‘Get in,’ he said, opening the door.
A trill of lust squirmed through her abdomen at what she’d just initiated, and her hands trembled a little before her legs kicked into action. She hesitated at the door for a moment then Nash smiled at her like he already knew all her secrets and wild horses wouldn’t have kept her out of the cab.
She slid across the seat, giving the driver her address, aware of Nash like she’d never been aware of anyone before as he scooted across the seat. He moved in close, draping his arm along the back of the seat, crowding her, surrounding her.
He nuzzled her ear and her neck, and when his hand skimmed her thigh, slowly creeping up one denim-clad leg, Maggie almost whimpered out loud she was so turned on. She should have been mortified that they were necking like teenagers but she was so utterly caught up in his heat and his smell and the sexual squall lashing her insides and scrambling her thought processes, she couldn’t have cared less.
She wanted to feel his lips on her so badly she turned her face towards him, her mouth seeking his as she clutched at his shirt, fisting it. ‘Nash,’ she whimpered as his lips brushed lightly against hers. Soft, teasing. She clutched his thigh, trying to anchor herself in the maelstrom.
Nash felt her desperate whimper right down to his toes and knew exactly how she felt. He wanted to tear her clothes off right here and now, push her back against the seat and have his way with her, audience or not.
And if he deepened the kiss that’s exactly what would happen. ‘Shh, Maggie,’ he whispered, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her cheek. ‘Nearly there.’
Maggie made a sound of protest deep in her throat. How could he be so controlled when she was practically blind with lust? His thigh felt thick and powerful beneath her hand and she massaged it convulsively, trying to claw back her breath, her sanity.
Nash clasped his hand over hers as it moved higher. God, didn’t she know he was holding on by a thread? He placed his forehead against her cheekbone, forcing himself to slow it down, to think practically for a moment while he still had the chance.
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Amy Andrews
A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby
Amy Andrews
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#udcb58771-b95d-504b-a891-31cabe979ecb)
Title Page (#u625dd643-0453-5db4-b934-95b8121359e5)
About the Author (#ud66e39d1-a6dc-58a6-96e0-b98554dca025)
Dedication (#u01f8c683-ceaa-5dc5-a5b9-8da042c76347)
Chapter One (#uf052b9b9-ee7c-5294-8383-293ab37a1ab7)
Chapter Two (#ucd2a0c6b-ca9d-5d28-8f3f-5eef44bfa8e3)
Chapter Three (#ua29db356-2b7f-5b4b-9172-5f144aa2ae09)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Amy Andrews has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs. She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au
This book is dedicated to the Radio Lollipop volunteers at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. You bring music and distraction into a sterile, scary world. Thank you.
CHAPTER ONE
MAGGIE GREEN WISHED the universe had given her some inkling that October morning as she descended the stairs two at a time to the squealing of the emergency pager that it was going to tilt on its axis. Instead, as the shrill tone echoed around the cement labyrinth of the hospital fire escape, it appeared to be just another day, just another code blue at the Brisbane Children’s Hospital.
She had no way of suspecting, as she rushed headlong into the emergency department resus bay, the total and utter cataclysmic effect of one Dr Nash Reece. Oh, sure, she’d heard about him. Who hadn’t? The grapevine had been running hot over the country-boy charmer and every female from the cleaning staff through to the director of nursing were swooning over his sexy strut.
But she wasn’t a swooner. And things like love or lust at first sight were for teenagers. And she was a good two decades past that. Or so she’d thought.
Nash glanced up from the mottled, struggling, unconscious infant at the nurse who’d just arrived on the scene. She was slightly puffed, her generous chest heaving in and out beneath the navy of her polo shirt. Despite her breathlessness there was a calm confidence about her and he smiled.
‘Good. You’re just in time. I’m pretty sure she’s going to need intubation.’
He shifted his focus back to his patient. The drugs they’d given to stop her tiny body seizing were playing havoc with her respiratory drive and she wasn’t breathing nearly as well as he liked. He held an ambu-bag in situ over the little girl’s face, supporting her weak respiratory effort.
Maggie stared at the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Even downcast they were quite spectacular. Combined with a killer jaw line dusted in stubble and wavy dark blond hair pushed back off his tanned forehead and lapping over his collar in true cowboy fashion, she really did swoon. A little.
Oblivious to the rush around her, the controlled chaos, the trilling of alarms and the sobbing of a distraught woman, Maggie’s stomach did a three-sixty-degree flop.
Nash looked up amused to see the nurse hadn’t moved. He felt his lips tugging upwards despite the gravity of the situation. He knew that look. Women had looked at him like that for as long as he could remember. But it was the surprise on her face that was most intriguing. ‘You are the ICU nurse?’
Maggie nodded absently, feeling totally disconnected from her brain as that slow, lazy, cocky smile hit its mark. She couldn’t ever remember being rendered mute by the sheer presence of a man.
‘Well I think you might need to come closer, Sister. I’m gonna need a hand and I don’t think you’re going to be able to reach from there.’
Maggie blinked, the use of her nursing title cutting through the daze. Right. She was the ICU nurse. That’s why she was here. She was responsible for the airway. It was her job. Still, his rich voice oozed over her like warm mud from hot springs and for one crazy moment she wanted to dive in head first and wallow.
Finally her brain kicked in and her legs moved. She took two strides and was at the head of the open cot, staring straight into Nash Reece’s blue, blue gaze.
Nash smiled. She’d looked good from a distance. She looked better up close. ‘Where’s your reg?’ he asked.
‘He’s seeing a ward patient over the other side of the hospital.’
Her voice was breathy and she hated it. For God’s sake, she had to be a good decade older than him. She wasn’t remotely interested. And even if she was, why would he be interested in her? A forty-year-old divorcee who hadn’t been in a relationship for so long she’d forgotten what was required?
If his rep was anything to go by, she was way out of his league. She was way past nightclubs and partying. She came to work, she volunteered at Radio Giggle, she tended her garden, read voraciously and she slept.
Oh, God—she was turning into a hermit. A cradle-snatching hermit. All she needed was a couple of cats and she’d be the full catastrophe. She cleared her throat. ‘He’ll be here soon.’
She looked a little het up and he couldn’t help stirring a little. ‘You okay to do this?’
Maggie wanted to bristle. She wanted to say, Listen sonny, I was helping with intubations while you were till wearing baggy pants. But she didn’t. She just nodded and asked, ‘What size?’
He sent her another slow, lazy smile. ‘Four.’
Maggie lowered her gaze, feeling uncharacteristically flustered. She’d been in hundreds of medical emergencies and had never been anything other than ruthlessly efficient. This time would be no different.
She turned to the resus trolley she knew would be behind her, reached inside the drawer and pulled out the requested endotracheal tube. She opened the packaging and squirted some lubricant on the end of the narrow curved tube.
The tone on the sats monitor started to dip and the infant’s heart rate started to drop. Instantly they were both alert, the funny zing between them forgotten.
‘Heart rate falling,’ Maggie said her gaze flicking to the green squiggle behind Nash’s head. ‘One hundred.’
They watched the infant’s chest as her respiratory rate dropped off further. ‘Sats ninety-two,’ Maggie relayed, watching the blue number on the LCD screen dip lower and lower.
‘Okay, no time to wait for the ICU reg. Let’s do it.’
Maggie couldn’t agree more. Normally working with a doctor—a registrar—she didn’t know made her nervous as hell in these fraught situations. But strangely she wasn’t. She didn’t know Nash from a bar of soap— apart from his lady-killer rep—but his supreme confidence was utterly assuring.
‘Let’s give her some vecuronium, Zoe,’ Nash said to one of the emergency nurses as he pulled down on the infant’s chin, opening her mouth for a brief inspection before placing the mask firmly back in place. ‘Have we got some atropine drawn up?’
Maggie blinked as the man with the slow, sexy smile vanished and morphed into a consummate professional. She followed suit, ignoring the fierce jolt of sexual attraction and becoming the experienced PICU nurse, calm and in control.
‘Vecuronium on board,’ Zoe said as she pushed the drug into the child’s drip. ‘Atropine ready if you need it.’
Nash nodded and started taking over the infant’s breathing altogether as the drug acted quickly, paralysing all muscle function. ‘Okay,’ he murmured giving some big breaths to pre-oxygenate. The sats came up to one hundred per cent and the heart rate rocketed into the one hundred and sixties.
‘Right,’ he said, dropping the bag. ‘Let’s go.’
Maggie passed him the laryngoscope and everyone held their breath as he expertly slipped the metal into the child’s mouth. The light at the end allowed Nash to visualise the tiny white vocal cords.
‘Tube.’
He held out his hand as the other one applied pressure through the handle of the scope to keep the patient’s jaw open. He was like a surgeon asking for an instrument, his eyes never leaving the target.
Maggie passed it to him positioned correctly so he could slip it down the blade of the laryngoscope and push it through the cords in one fluid movement.
‘Heart rate one fifty-nine. Sats ninety-eight,’ she said quietly.
Nash nodded as he angled the tube in. He’d been about to ask. His back was to the monitor so he couldn’t see the figures. All he knew for sure was that while he was performing the intubation the patient wasn’t getting any respiratory input at all. The drug she’d been given had stopped her breathing altogether and the longer he took, the more he deprived her body of vital oxygen.
‘Cricoid pressure,’ he murmured.
Maggie automatically reached for the child’s neck using her thumb and forefinger to apply gentle pressure mid-trachea to the cricoid cartilage, temporarily occluding the oesophagus to prevent aspiration of stomach contents into the lungs.
Nash was impressed with the nurse’s quick, sure location and technique. Often the pressure applied was too much, deviating the airway anatomy, but her technique was perfect.
‘Heart rate one sixty-five. Sats ninety-two.’
Nash nodded as he completed the procedure. ‘I’m in.’
He held the tube in place as Maggie attached the bag and puffed in a couple of gentle breaths. The patient’s tiny chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. Her sats climbed.
‘Do you want to listen?’ Maggie asked.
Nash nodded. He took the bag from her, keeping a firm grasp on the tube. He held very still as she carefully pulled his stethoscope from his neck, and placed it in his ears. Her gaze brushed his as she did so and then stuck. Her cheeks were a pretty pink and even though a part of his brain was listening for the whoosh of breath sounds as she moved the bell of the stethoscope around the patient’s chest, the other part was noticing her deep brown eyes, her high cheekbones, her wide, full lips.
‘What a beautiful noise,’ he murmured, not taking his eyes off her.
Maggie swallowed. This close, he was incredibly handsome. His eye colour defied belief. A clear pale blue, like tropical waters or maybe, depending on his mood, glacial ice. His skin was tanned, stretched nicely across prominent cheekbones, and he had deep crinkles on his forehead and tiny lines around his eyes like he enjoyed a good laugh as much as he enjoyed a good dose of Australian sunshine.
She became aware she was staring again and snapped herself out of it. ‘Should we get this tube taped in?’ she prompted.
‘Good idea,’ Nash murmured.
Maggie dragged her gaze away, grateful to have a job that required looking down and not up. She’d applied the first piece of tape, ignoring his long tanned fingers holding the tube firmly in place, when the ICU reg finally made his entrance.
‘Mac,’ Nash greeted him. ‘You’re a little too late.’
‘Sorry,’ Mac Caldwell panted, bending over and clutching his side. ‘I ran all the way.’
Nash laughed. ‘Have a seat, man. Crisis over.’
Maggie found concentrating on the finicky task of wrapping zinc tape around the tube even more difficult with him being so close. His chest was at her head level and his body heat combined with his intoxicating aftershave formed a potent mix.
Her downward gaze took in the rich tan of his chinos and the obvious flatness of his abdomen beneath the casual masculinity of his checked shirt. He wore it open at the neck and rolled up to his elbows revealing tanned forearms in stark contrast to the covering of blond hairs.
She listened as he filled Mac in on the case and spoke with just the right amounts of empathy, confidence and authority to the infant’s distressed mother.
‘Let’s hook her up to the portable ventilator,’ Nash requested as the last tape was secured around the tube. ‘We’ll get an X-ray to check the tube position, and can we load her with some anti-convulsants, please, Zoe?’
‘I’ll just let the consultant know we’ve got ourselves another customer,’ Mac said, excusing himself to find a phone.
Maggie fussed with the tapes, trimming one end that had been stuck across the little girl’s tiny ear, hyper-aware of Nash still standing close. Her elbow occasionally came into contact with his shirt and she seemed to be tuned into his every move, every breath.
‘Thank you…’ Nash looked at the nametag clipped to his assistant’s collar. She had a smiley-face sticker over her picture and a red heart sticker covering her surname. ‘Maggie. Thank you, Maggie.’
Her hands stilled as his voice washed over her like warm treacle.
She chanced a look at him and immediately wished she hadn’t. He was smiling one of those hey-baby smiles and she was equal parts turned on and annoyed. Annoyed won out.
Some men were just too charming for their own good. Some men just didn’t know how to turn it off. She aimed for nonchalance with her shrug. ‘Just doing my job.’
‘Ah, but you do it so well.’
Maggie felt things shift inside at the suggestive quality of his low, sexy voice. She sniffed, not at all comfortable with shifting innards. This man was too young and too sure of himself by far. ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I have been doing this for a very long time.’
Nash chuckled at the emphasis. He got it—she didn’t approve of him flirting with someone of her years. ‘I love experienced women.’
Maggie refused to be flattered by such a consummate flirt. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Only experienced women?’
He grinned. ‘Okay, you got me.’
‘Nash?’
He looked away from Maggie reluctantly. ‘Yes, Zoe?’
‘Can you assess the kid in cube two for me? I think he can progress to hourly nebs now.’
‘Sure, be right there,’ Nash said. He turned back to Maggie. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Maggie.’
She sent him a stiff smile. Not if she could help it.
Maggie finally got to lunch at two o’clock. The day had been crazy-busy and everyone’s lunch-breaks had been pushed back. She found an isolated table in the almost empty canteen, glad she didn’t have to spend her thirty minutes making small talk with anyone. She cracked the lid on her calorie-laden fizzy drink and sank her teeth into the divine-smelling hot meat pie.
A pair of freakish blue eyes rose unbidden and she shook her head to dispel them from her mind. There’d been no time this morning to think about her weird response to Nash Reece and she was damned if she was going to spend her precious break thinking about him either.
‘Now that’s a nice healthy lunch.’
And sometimes the universe was just out to get you.
Maggie tensed as the voice behind her took form and shape in front of her. Hunky, sexy form and shape.
‘May I join you?’
Maggie looked around at the other empty tables. ‘Plenty of places to sit,’ she said pointedly.
Nash suppressed the urge to chuckle. He liked a woman who could hold her own with him. She reminded him of the females he’d grown up around. His five sisters, his mother, his cousins. Country women were no shrinking violets and although he’d spent his life perfecting how to twist them around his fingers, he admired the hell out of their spirit.
‘Ah, but this is my favourite table.’ Nash grinned and pulled up a chair.
‘Gee. Lucky me.’
‘We haven’t formally met.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Nash Reece.’
No way on earth was Maggie going to touch him. If he could unsettle her with his mere presence, God alone knew what would happen if she allowed her skin to come into contact with his. She took another bite of pie, feeling an instant revival to her flagging blood-sugar level. ‘I know who you are.’
Nash chuckled at her deliberate snub. ‘Ah, my reputation precedes me, I see.’
She looked at his totally unrepentant face. ‘Try to look as if it upsets you,’ she said derisively.
He grinned at her. She had the deepest brown eyes he’d ever seen. They reminded him of his grandmother’s double chocolate fudge brownies. And, man, he was suddenly ravenous for them.
‘So…Maggie? Maggie who?’
She took a swig of her drink. ‘Maggie from ICU.’
He quirked an eyebrow. Maggie from ICU was playing hard to get. Well, there was a first time for everything. ‘So, Maggie from ICU, are you doing anything tonight? Do you fancy getting a bite to eat with me?’
Maggie almost inhaled her drink into her lungs his question startled her so completely. She coughed and spluttered so much that in a final humiliation Nash reached across and belted her between the shoulder blades a couple of times.
His hand moved to her shoulder and he grinned. ‘You okay?’
Not remotely. She shrugged his hand away. ‘Fine.’
He gave her a few moments before he asked again. ‘Well?’
Was he serious? She looked at him—yep, he was. It had been three years since she’d been on a date. And certainly a good decade since she’d been with anyone whose age fell in the thirties. ‘No.’
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘No.’
Nash shrugged. ‘Well I’m easy—’
‘Clearly,’ she interrupted.
Nash grinned and continued. ‘I can fit in with you.’
Maggie shook her head, exasperated by his persistence. He had his elbows on the table, emphasising his wide shoulders. He was big and broad and loomed at her from the opposite side, taking up all the space. ‘You don’t like to take no for an answer, do you?’
‘Why ignore what’s going on between us, Maggie? I’m attracted to you.’ He watched her pale and her wide brown eyes practically double in size. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re attracted to me. Why should we pretend otherwise?’
Maggie stared at him. Was he insane? He reminded her of a kid expecting instant gratification in that infantile egocentric way of theirs. But they weren’t kids.
They were grown-ups and adults were supposed to be a little more cautious. There were rules and etiquette.
‘How old are you, Nash?’
Ah. ‘I don’t care about the age difference.’
‘How old?’ she insisted.
‘Just turned the big three zero.’
Maggie nodded—just as she’d suspected. She wished for a brief second she was thirty again. But then reality invaded. She’d been a mess at thirty. She’d been dealing—very badly—with the heartbreak of her infertility and the ink had still been wet on her divorce papers. She was in a much better place now.
‘And how old do you think I am?’
Nash looked directly at her. ‘Twenty-six.’
Maggie burst out laughing. She had to give him his due, he hadn’t batted an eyelid. She knew that she was looking pretty good for a forty-year-old woman but no one would ever mistake her for twenty-six. ‘Does that line work with everyone?’
Nash laughed with her. ‘Never had to use it before. No one’s ever knocked me back.’
His eyes crinkled at the corners and it was very, very sexy. ‘Oh, dear. Do you think your ego can stand it?’
‘It’s pretty robust.’
Maggie grinned despite herself. She did not want to be charmed by him but his easy charisma and self-deprecation made an irresistible combination. ‘I’ll just bet it is.’
He sat and watched her as she returned her attention to her lunch. Her teeth bit into the pastry of her pie and flakes stuck to her lips before her tongue darted out to remove them. It shouldn’t be erotic—she was just eating, for crying out loud—but it was. God knew, he wanted to lick them away himself.
For his own sanity he moved his gaze upwards. Her short brown hair with chunky blonde streaks looked salon perfect. Her layered fringe swept across her forehead from a side parting. The rest of it fell in fashionably shaggy layers and feathered down her nape into fine wisps.
She finished her pie and patted her mouth with her serviette. If she hadn’t seemed so totally oblivious to his reaction, he’d have suspected she was deliberately trying to provoke him. He certainly would have expected it from any other woman.
‘Well?’
Maggie had tried to ignore him as she’d eaten but his intense blue gaze had made it impossible. She sighed. ‘I’m forty, Nash.’
He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So? So I’m a whole decade older than you.’
‘So?’
‘I was in high school when you were running around in nappies.’
‘So?’
‘I got married while you were still in primary school.’
Nash’s gaze flicked to her left hand. No ring. No telltale white mark. ‘So?’
‘I’ve been divorced longer than you’ve been a doctor.’
He smiled at her. ‘You’re available, then?’
She shot him an impatient look. ‘Nash don’t you think you should be playing with women your own age?’
He reached across the table and picked up her hand. ‘Maggie from ICU, you look better than any woman I’ve ever met.’
She could feel herself blushing beneath his intense gaze. She was drowning in the warmth of his tropical island gaze and her pulse hammered where his thumb drew slow circles at her wrist.
Damn it all—she would not be flattered by his easy words. She wasn’t going to get involved with a man ten years her junior. Especially one who dated for sport and made her breathless with just one look. That would just be plain dumb. And she wasn’t that hard up for company.
Maggie removed her hand. ‘I’m going to do you a favour, Nash Reece. I’m going to turn you down. And you should be grateful. Men like you need a woman like me—’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’he interrupted.
She smiled. ‘A woman who’ll say no. Too many yes-women make Nash a spoilt boy. You’ll thank me for it one day.’
He chuckled. ‘I doubt it.’
She crunched up her paper bag and screwed the lid back on her empty drink bottle and then stood. ‘Yeah well, your wife will.’
Nash really laughed then. He had no intention of ever marrying. And women had tried. Man, had they tried. Country girls, yearning for an escape from the outback had tried, city girls wanting to snare a doctor had tried. But he had a career plan carefully mapped out that did not involve weddings, and nothing was more important to him than that.
‘Wife? Nope. Not me. Besides, I’m already married. To my career. I’m on a path.’
Maggie was surprised to see a suddenly serious side to the flirty man who’d charmed himself into the seat opposite. He was once again the serious doctor from this morning. She wondered how many women got to see beneath the playboy exterior to the goal-driven man. ‘And yet you have time to date?’
Nash grinned again. ‘I do allow myself some diversions. Come on, Maggie. You know you want to.’
She shook her head, even though he was right. She did want to. It was crazy—but she did. Still, she knew enough about Nash Reece in a handful of minutes to know that one date would never be enough. ‘Denial is good for the soul.’
‘Denial sucks.’
He reminded her again of a child seeking instant gratification and she laughed. Yes. Yes it did. ‘Goodbye, Dr Reece.’
Nash watched her turn away, the creamy skin of her neck exposed as she twisted, pulling her shirt across her chest. ‘I’m gonna keep asking,’ he called after her.
She stopped and looked back at him as his silky promise stroked insidiously along her pelvic floor. ‘There’s a shock.’
Nash chuckled. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Maggie from ICU.’
They were the same words he’d used that morning and they had a preternatural foreboding to them. ‘Don’t count on it.’
He worked in A and E. She worked two floors up in ICU. As far as hospitals went they were totally different worlds. And after today she had no intention of letting him into hers. Ever.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NEXT DAY was her day off but Maggie found herself at the hospital anyway. She was actively involved in Radio Giggle and volunteered there regularly. In fact, she’d been on the original committee that had pushed for its establishment after seeing the success of Radio Lollipop during her stint at Great Ormond Street in London.
Maggie had seen their humble service expand over the years from a handful of people launching the first two-hour broadcast to a band of volunteers that worked tirelessly, promoting the healing power of play.
Radio Giggle volunteers actively engaged children throughout the hospital in a variety of entertainment, from helping with the shows, requesting songs and hearing themselves on the radio through to bedside crafts, games and other activities for those children unable to make it to the studio.
In fact, anything that could be done to help make a child’s stay in hospital a little less frightening and a lot more fun, Radio Giggle were on it.
It wasn’t her usual day to volunteer but Ross Calvin, Giggle’s programme manager and only paid employee, was off sick today and had rung to ask her if she could take his place. Maggie hadn’t hesitated. Not being able to have her own children had been a huge blow, but hanging out with these kids helped to fill the gap.
Five-year-old Douglas Werner, a long-term inpatient, was the first person she saw when she entered the Radio Giggle office.
‘Dougy.’ She smiled and crouched down accepting the little boy’s enthusiastic cuddle.
‘He’s been asking for you.’
Maggie looked up to see fifteen-year-old Christine Leek, a cystic fibrosis patient and another regular in the Radio Giggle studio. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said, giving the little boy a quick rib tickle and laughing at his endearing shriek.
‘Guess what?’ Christine spoke over the top of Doug. ‘Ross said I could conduct the interview today all by myself.’ She looked over Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Have you seen him yet?’
Maggie watched while the painfully thin teenager shifted from foot to foot, her lip pulled between her bottom teeth. Christine was a blossoming DJ who wanted a career in community radio and spent every possible minute with the Radio Giggle organisation. ‘I’m afraid Ross is off sick today.’
‘Oh.’
Maggie couldn’t bear to see her so crestfallen. ‘You can still do it, though,’ she reassured her. Christine’s face lit up like a fireworks display and Maggie felt her heart contract.
‘Really?’ she squeaked.
‘Of course.’ Maggie laughed. ‘You know your way around the dials better than I do.’
They went through to the brightly painted studio and for the next half an hour Maggie and Christine worked out their music schedule with the requests they had in from the previous day. Christine was an eager helper, pulling out all the CDs they needed and stacking them in order, which was just as well as Dougy had commandeered Maggie’s lap.
He sat imperiously, his IV pole supporting his lifesaving fluids close by, well used to adults indulging him. He leant his colouring book against the console and Maggie chatted to him, accepting the crayons he gave her and colouring where he pointed. Meanwhile she juggled Christine’s questions and those of the volunteers as they wandered in and out on their way to the various wards in their bright Radio Giggle T-shirts.
Maggie knew the outside play area would be full of kids over the next couple of hours as those who could came down to see how a real radio show was run. They usually put callouts to their bed-bound friends and families and took part in the activities organised by the volunteers.
At four o’clock the programme got under way. Maggie and Dougy stayed in the studio and let Christine run the show. Dougy knew he had to be quiet and while he had his colouring book he was happy to sit without talking on Maggie’s lap and draw. Radio Giggle never pretended to be a professional outfit, given that the shows were largely run by kids, but it never hurt to strive for excellence.
Maggie rubbed her face against his blond curls and inhaled the hospital-soap smell as she dropped a kiss against his scalp. Dougy had been born prem to a drugaddicted mother and had developed necrotising enterocolitis, necessitating the removal of a large portion of his non-viable bowel.
He’d been very ill for the first year of his life and had been transferred from NICU to PICU at three months of age for ongoing management. He now had short-gut syndrome, which meant he didn’t have enough bowel length to absorb his food and had to be fed intravenously through a permanent line.
He’d been in hospital virtually all his life due to his condition and he made regular appearances in PICU with various infections which, due to his compromised immune system, usually knocked him for six. His last stay had been a few months ago during winter for bilateral pneumonia.
He looked like all kids with severe malabsorption disorders. Skinny arms and legs and a protruding stomach. While long-term parenteral nutrition was lifesaving for Dougy it did have its side effects, and Maggie knew liver damage was a major contributing factor to Dougy’s pot belly. She could feel its rounded contours through the thin cotton of his hospital-issue pyjama shirt and dropped another kiss on his head.
‘So this is where the party’s at.’
Maggie would have jumped a mile in the air had Dougy not been weighing her down as Nash Reece’s voice intruded into the studio bubble. What the…? Was the man stalking her?
‘Dr Reece!’
Maggie blinked as Christine jumped up from the console, reefing her headphones off smiling crazily at him. She turned to see him standing in the doorway in dark chinos and another checked shirt. A young child sat on his hip, pulling at a lopsided bandage wrapped around its head. Nash looked natural, at ease with the child and her stomach did that strange flopping thing again.
Nash smiled at the teenager. ‘Hello, Christine.’Then he turned to Maggie, looking smoking hot in her tight black denim Capri pants and her red Radio Giggle top fitting snugly across her breasts. ‘Hello, Maggie from ICU.’
Maggie felt heat creep into her cheeks as his eyes roved all over her body.
‘This little munchkin says his name is Brodie and he wants to say hello to everyone on ward three,’ he announced to Christine, dragging his eyes off Maggie.
‘Bring him over here.’ Christine smiled, holding out her arms and waggling her fingers. ‘I’ll help him. Then we can do your interview.’
Maggie looked at him dumbly as Christine settled the little one on her lap. ‘You’re the interviewee?’
Nash chuckled. ‘You think I’m going to tank?’
Maggie felt more fire in her cheeks. ‘Of course not.’ It was hardly Meet the Press. She’d just wished she’d known. She hadn’t asked Christine about the interview because she’d assumed it was going to be one of the other inpatients as usual. ‘How’d that come about?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been dropping in from time to time and Christine asked if she could interview me.’
Nash had been dropping in to Radio Giggle? ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘What about you? You help out here much?’
Maggie shrugged. ‘From time to time.’
‘Hey,’ Christine said, butting in. ‘That’s not true. Don’t listen to her, Dr Reece.’ She pointed to a series of framed photos on the wall above the console, several of them starring Maggie. ‘Ross says Maggie was the driving force behind Radio Giggle and that it wouldn’t even exist without her.’
Nash cocked his head back and looked at the enlarged snaps. A younger-looking Maggie with headphones on, sporting a wedding band and grinning at the camera caught his eye. And another with Maggie helping a very official-looking gent in a suit cut a ribbon across the doorway behind him.
He whistled. Yesterday he’d seen her as the efficient PICU nurse and today he’d seen her in another light. While his libido saw her as a gorgeous, sexy woman, the evidence of his eyes told him Maggie was definitely more than a pretty face.
Dougy finally looked up from his picture. ‘Dr Reece,’ he called, and Maggie was spared from the frank curiosity in Nash’s face.
‘Hey, Dougy.’ Nash crossed the small distance and crouched beside Maggie. Doug had been his patient during his medical rotation. ‘How you doin’, mate?’
Dougy held up his colouring book. ‘I’m colouring in a princess. Isn’t she pretty?’
Nash nodded. ‘As a picture.’
‘She’s not as pretty as Maggie, though.’
Nash, fully aware that his knee was almost brushing her thigh, glanced at her face and smiled as Maggie’s cheeks bloomed with another flush of red.
Out of the mouths of babes.
‘No,’ he agreed, his gaze holding hers. ‘No one’s as pretty as Maggie.’
There was a strange couple of seconds when everyone else in the room ceased to exist. And it was in that moment that Maggie saw the difference in Nash. He wanted her, she could tell, but there was something more there. Respect maybe. Whatever it was it was infinitely more seductive than flirty Nash of yesterday.
‘Okay,’ Christine said, pulling the earphones away again while simultaneously jiggling her new assistant on her lap. ‘After this song you’re up, Dr Reece. Are you ready?’
Nash reluctantly flicked his gaze from Maggie to Christine, giving the teenager his full attention. ‘Ready when you are.’
Maggie watched Christine blush under Nash’s gaze. It was apparent the girl had a massive crush on him, a fact of which he was obviously aware as he carefully navigated the interview. He was charming and gentlemanly to a fault, and everything a teenager hooked on Jane Austen could ever hope for, but Maggie could tell he was constantly aware of the boundary.
He spoke about growing up on a huge cattle property hundreds of kilometres west of Sydney in rural New South Wales and taking his school lessons via a radio through the School of the Air and mustering cattle in a helicopter.
‘And why did you decide to become a doctor?’ Christine asked.
Maggie, who’d been preoccupied with colouring a pink flower, looked up at the question. Christine had her back to Maggie but Nash was facing her. She noticed that at some stage Brodie had switched laps and was once again cuddled into Nash’s side. She wouldn’t have thought it possible but he looked more masculine, more appealing. Their gazes locked as he answered.
‘My sister was sick a lot when we were kids and she had to go to Sydney frequently for treatment because there just weren’t the services in the bush. I promised her then I’d become a doctor and change it.’
Maggie noticed the lightness to his voice and the smile he flashed Christine as he broke eye contact with her, but it was too late. For a brief moment she’d seen a vulnerability in his gaze as he’d spoken about his sister that called to her more than any amount of sexual attraction. And who could resist a fervent boyhood promise?
‘You told me the other day that Radio Giggle was a life-saver. What did you mean by that?’
Maggie gaped at the very grown-up question. Forget community radio, Christine was heading for a career with 60 Minutes.
‘The hospital in Sydney where Tammy…stayed had its own kids’ radio station. My sisters and I used to ring up and put in requests for her. She listened every day, she said it helped her miss home a little less.’
Goose-bumps broke out on Maggie’s arms at the streak of raw emotion in Nash’s not-quite-steady voice. His family had obviously been close and the connection with his ill sister through a hospital radio station, no matter how far in the past, clearly still resonated with him.
She’d never thought of that aspect of Radio Giggle before, more concerned with its diversionary attributes. But as a way for inpatients to feel connected to home, it was extraordinarily touching and she was proud all over again to be part of such a great organisation.
‘Do you have a special request for us today, Dr Reece?’
Brodie started to grizzle and Nash shifted him to the other hip and jiggled him a little. ‘I sure do. I’d like to hear “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It was Tammy’s favourite.’
Maggie was pleased for Dougy and her enforced activity as the mournful strains of ‘Puff’ filtered through the studio. She gripped the crayon hard, the goosebumps multiplying.
‘Thanks, Dr Reece,’ Christine enthused, pulling her headphones off.
Nash smiled and stood. Brodie was becoming more fractious, rubbing his eyes. ‘No probs.’ He started to sway as Brodie’s grizzling became louder. ‘Better get this little one back to the ward.’
Christine nodded. ‘See you later.’
He nodded to the teenager then looked down at Maggie, who was colouring in studiously. ‘See you, Maggie.’
Maggie looked up, unprepared for the picture Nash made as he swayed with bandage-headed Brodie. He was lean and sexy and utterly endearing. Yesterday she had thought how totally out of his league she was but today, child on hip, amidst the background chaos of Radio Giggle, he looked totally down-to-earth. Easily within reach. Temptingly so.
‘Bye,’ she dismissed, returning her attention to Dougy almost immediately.
She gripped the crayon harder as his sexy chuckle lingered in the studio well after he’d gone.
If she was ever granted the use of a magic wand for even just a few seconds, Maggie would use it to completely annihilate night duty from existence.
She hated it. With a passion.
Her first night in particular. So, she wasn’t in the best of moods the next night when she switched off her ignition and climbed out of the car beneath a star-studded sky. Ten hours stretched before her and she yawned. Not a good sign!
Oh, she knew once she actually walked through the doors and greeted her fellow sufferers she’d be fine— it was the thought that was the most depressing. And the older she got the harder they were to get over. Back in her student days she’d bounce straight back. Twenty years later it took her a good couple of days to get over a run of nights.
After communal handover in the tearoom Maggie was allocated bed three and took bedside handover from Ray, the nurse who’d been looking after Toby Ryan since his admission to the unit at lunchtime.
Toby was a three-year-old boy who’d been born with a rare hereditary haematological disease. He’d been in and out of hospital most of his brief life, undergoing a multitude of different therapies in a bid to cure him. When everything had failed a bone-marrow transplant had been his only option and he was now fifty days post-procedure.
But not out of the woods. Unfortunately nothing had gone smoothly for little Toby and his chest X-ray had deteriorated in the last few days and was looking very pneumonic. He’d been started on antibiotics and had had sputum collected for analysis, but it had become obvious that morning that he required closer monitoring and further respiratory support so he’d been shifted to PICU.
She watched her patient carefully, noting even in his sleep he was using the accessory muscles in his chest to help him breathe. The sound of high-flow oxygen whooshing through his face mask and filling the attached plastic reservoir bag was surprisingly loud in an already noisy environment.
He was as cute as a button with tight black curls crowning his head, clutching a raggedy-looking teddy bear that was missing an eye and half an ear. He was wearing only pyjama pants, leaving his upper half exposed. Maggie frowned. He was working really hard, which was concerning especially considering his state of slumber.
Maggie did her start-of-shift checks and nursing assessments. Linda, the nurse in charge of the shift and a close friend, was setting up bed four for a retrieval patient when Maggie asked her to check some drugs shortly after. Then Toby’s mother, Alice, returned and Maggie chatted with her for a while.
It was a good couple of hours before Maggie had the chance to sit down and read back over Toby’s notes. The PICU had electronic charting, with each bedside having its own computer terminal. Maggie sat at hers and read back through her patient’s history. She noted that Toby’s cousin had died from the same condition only last year.
She looked up from the screen and took in Alice dozing by her son’s bed, his hand in hers. Maggie couldn’t even begin to imagine how scary it must be for her and the rest of Toby’s family.
The night settled into a familiar rhythm. Toby slept and held his own. Around her the other patients were behaving themselves also. The everyday noises of the unit didn’t register as Maggie went about her work. The low hum of machines, the beeping and trilling of monitors, the slurp of suckers and the variety of alarms attached to the technology-saturated environment formed a continuous background drone.
Collectively they were as familiar to Maggie as the sound of her own breath, the beat of her pulse. And subconsciously she registered what each of them were. She knew which ones to worry about and which ones to ignore. And even deeply involved in other tasks, she knew instantly when something sounded different.
Linda relieved Maggie for her first break. She returned half an hour later, coinciding with the arrival of the retrieval patient. Two paramedics pushed the gurney accompanied by a wardsmen and Gwen, the retrieval nurse.
But none of them held her interest or her gaze. Maggie could focus only on the other member of the party making their way towards her.
Nash Reece.
What the hell? What was Nash doing here? Wasn’t it bad enough that visions of the man with a child on his hip had been in her head like a recurring nightmare since yesterday? His gaze locked with hers as the gurney rolled past and he winked at her.
‘Hello, Maggie Green.’
Maggie stared at him, not even registering that he now knew her last name as her brain grappled with how exactly he came to be doing a PICU retrieval. Or at least it was trying to underneath the surge of one hundred per cent octane lust that had flooded her system and threatened to overload her circuits.
The man looked incredible. His hair was mussy in a too-sexy-to-be-true fashion, no doubt aided by the inflight helmet. The navy-blue shirt of the retrieval uniform fitted snugly across his broad shoulders and chest, the pocket announcing his position as Doctor in vibrant red stitching. The cuffs were rolled back to reveal those strong forearms dusted with blond hairs.
Flaunting propriety, he wore a pair of faded jeans instead of the matching navy trousers. They clung in all the right places and Maggie found herself wondering what he’d look like in nothing but the jeans.
‘I’ll shut this across, Maggie, so we don’t wake Toby,’ Linda said.
Maggie nodded mutely and watched as the concertinaed divider between beds three and four shut out not only the spill of light but also Nash Reece and those damn distracting Levi’s.
Trying to concentrate on her work now was utterly useless. The voices next door were muted but she seemed finely tuned in to every low rumble or murmur that was distinctly Nash. Luckily Toby continued to sleep and although his effort remained the same, he still appeared to be coping.
An hour later, as Maggie typed her username and password into the computer to sign for a drug, she felt Nash’s presence behind her like the heat from a nuclear power plant.
‘MMG,’ he mused, reading over her shoulder. It had taken him a few days to get a handle on the electronic charting and there was probably a heap of features he’d yet to work out, but he did know that all the staff user-names consisted of their initials. ‘What’s your middle name, Maggie Green?’
Maggie ignored him, refusing to turn and acknowledge his query. It was none of his business.
Nash moved so he was standing in front of her, one tanned elbow and one lean hip propped against her mobile computer table. ‘Is it May? Are you a “Maggie May”? Was your mother a Rod Stewart fan?’
Maggie thanked her lucky stars for the relative dimness of the room as he crooned the opening notes of the well-known song.
‘Yes. I know what you meant,’ she said cutting into his surprisingly good baritone not sure she could stand being serenaded with that particular song about an illicit love affair between a younger man and an older woman. ‘I was named May after my grandmother,’ she said frostily. ‘I’m older than the Rod Stewart song.’
Nash chuckled. ‘I’ve never met a woman so keen to talk up her age.’
Maggie shrugged with as much nonchalance as she could muster. She couldn’t help it if the twentysomethings he dated had issues with getting older.
‘I guess I’d better get used to it seeing as how I’m working here for the next three months.’
Maggie took a moment to reel in the leap of her pulse. Three months? Maggie frowned as a sudden realisation hit her. ‘You knew!’ she accused. ‘The other day…at lunch…yesterday…you knew you were coming here.’
Nash smiled. ‘Guilty.’
Maggie looked into his utterly guiltless face. ‘You might have told me.’
‘And have you prepared?’ Nash laughed. ‘I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green.’ Nash suspected not much flustered her and the fact that he’d put her off balance three times now was the boost his ego needed in the face of her continued resistance.
Maggie took a breath, refusing to rise to his bait or let him see how the prospect of three months in his vicinity rattled her. ‘So how’d you swing that? The current registrars are only halfway through their term.’
‘A short-term position came up. Dr Perkins offered it to me.’
Maggie frowned. Dr Gemma Perkins, the PICU director, never offered reduced terms. He must be bloody good. ‘Why only three months?’
‘I’ve got a position at Great Ormond Street in January.’
Maggie blinked. London? It must be part of his great career plan. ‘Good hospital,’ she murmured.
Still…London? She found it hard to believe how he’d survive in the environs of British medicine where suits and ties were mandatory. He’d changed from his retrieval top into a T-shirt, that combined with the faded fashion of his low-rider jeans, was the epitome of laid-back.
Did he even own a tie?
Nash grinned at her understatement. G.O.S.H. was a world leader. ‘The best.’
She nodded. ‘I worked there years ago.’
Nash couldn’t resist. ‘Back when you were my age?’
Maggie looked into his open flirty gaze, humour skyrocketing his attraction tenfold. ‘No. Back when I was first married. Twenty years ago. I do believe you must have been about ten at the time?’
‘About that.’
Maggie shook her head at his unabashed reply. He was never ten.
‘Well, I guess I’d better get my A into G,’ Nash said, reluctant to leave. ‘I’m sure Mac wants to be getting home.’
Tonight? He was working tonight? She gave an inward groan. She’d assumed he was just doing the retrieval and then leaving. Great! Now she had to add Nash Reece and his unsettling presence to her first-night blues.
Two hours later Maggie lay in the darkened break room on a mattress on the floor, cocooned in warm blankets from the blanket warmer, trying to sleep. But her thoughts kept turning to Nash Reece with his impossible blue eyes.
Damn it! She was supposed to be sleeping.
She had one precious hour to recharge her batteries and here she was staring at the ceiling with Nash’s I like seeing you flustered, Maggie Green whispering its treachery into her subconscious.
After twenty minutes she admitted defeat, got up and headed for the tearoom, feeling tired and irritable. She was going to have to settle for bad late-night TV and a cup of tea instead. She was channel-surfing when Nash entered the room a little later.
‘Couldn’t sleep, Maggie?’
His voice purred around her and her irritation ballooned. It was all his fault she was going to feel like death warmed up in the morning.
‘Are you watching that?’ he asked, not waiting for her to answer.
Maggie passed him the remote control. There was nothing on. ‘Not really.’
‘Goodo.’ He took the gadget and flicked it to a sport channel. ‘Country versus city,’ he said to her. ‘I missed it this afternoon.’
‘You can take the boy out of the country, hey?’
He grinned at her. ‘Something like that.’
Maggie sipped her cup of tea for a few minutes while Nash watched the television. The silence between them was unsettling. Not that he looked unsettled but she sure as hell felt it. It was too…intimate.
‘So where exactly is home?’ she asked.
‘Far western New South Wales. The family owns a couple of hundred thousand acres.’
‘You’re a long way from your roots. I thought country boys hated the city?’
Nash hooted. ‘Are you kidding? I love the city. I may be a country boy at heart but I feel like a kid in a lolly shop here. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting down and dirty and dusty…’ Nash paused as he watched Maggie’s knuckles grow white around her mug. He knew she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she pretended. ‘But I love the theatre and the shopping and the night life.’
Maggie swallowed a snort. She just bet he liked the night life. She just bet he fitted right in and the girls in the clubs drooled over his strange mix of metro-sexual hottie and country-boy charm.
He was going to adore London. London was certainly going to adore him. ‘So you’re converted?’
‘It’ll do for now.’
‘Ah.Your great career plans?Your path? Tell me about it.’ This was good, they were chatting. Like two normal, reasonable adults. No vibe, just polite small talk.
Nash shrugged. ‘Become the best damn paediatrician in Australia and then take myself back home. The bush is notoriously underresourced and underfunded. I want to start up a flying paed service.’
Maggie shouldn’t have been surprised by that, given the stuff he’d talked about yesterday during his interview. His childhood promise to his sister. But she was. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said he was going to drop out of medicine and become a drag queen.
When he’d talked about being married to his career the other day and finding out about London tonight she’d assumed it was for some hotshot, high-profile calling. To discover he was staying true to his boyhood promise was stunning.
Nash Reece, the charming flirt who’d made it clear he wanted her, had been pretty irresistible. Nash Reece, honourable doctor with a selfless purpose born from his sister’s illness, was completely irresistible. She’d caught a glimpse of this man yesterday in the studio. And she was looking at the rest of him now.
‘Your sister must be very proud of you,’she murmured.
Nash shrugged. ‘I’m sure she would be if she was alive.’
Maggie stilled as a sense of dread washed over her. Nash’s features had become shuttered. ‘Oh, Nash. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. ‘She had leukaemia. I was eight. She was ten. It was a long time ago.’
‘I’m sorry, I just assumed yesterday…you didn’t say,’ she ended lamely.
‘I didn’t think it was appropriate to broadcast my sister’s death on a kids’radio show in a children’s hospital.’
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose not.’
He was silent for a moment as the overwhelming rawness of that time came back to him. He didn’t often talk about Tammy. Maybe the interview yesterday had sparked the memories again but he found himself wanting to tell Maggie about it.
‘She died in the city because there weren’t the appropriate support services at home to help with palliative care. Having to make long trips into Sydney was a drain on our family life and my parents’ finances. Being separated from Tammy a lot of the time was really, really hard on the rest of us. We missed her.’
Maggie nodded. ‘I can imagine.’
He looked at her, compassion swirling in the fudge-brownie depths of her eyes. It was nice not to have to explain the true impact of that to someone. The PICU got its share of oncology patients and he knew Maggie would understand the true horrors of the illness.
‘It took a long time for Mum and Dad to get over it. I mean, they tried hard…for the rest of us, but they were just…sad.’
‘Of course they were,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure you all were.’
Nash looked at her, seeing not only compassion but respect. Suddenly she didn’t look at him like he was an annoying bug buzzing around. Or a child, to be tolerated or humoured. Suddenly she looked as if she was taking him seriously. Not dismissing him with a pat on the head. She was looking at him like he was a man.
Sort of like how he’d felt about her yesterday when he’d discovered her background with Radio Giggle. Instantly she’d become a three-dimensional entity and he’d had to face that there was more than a physical trigger to the tug he felt when they were together.
He didn’t know whether to be pleased by this development or to get up and leave the room. There was something in her gaze that saw deep inside him. Something he knew for sure would demand more from him than he was usually prepared to give.
The television erupted. The crowd cheered and the commentator’s voice rose an octave or two as one of the country team made a mad dash for the goalpost. Nash was grateful for the diversion and he dragged his gaze from hers and feigned interest in the game.
Maggie was also pleased for the distraction. Things had suddenly gotten quite intense and it was the last thing she wanted. Writing Nash off as a frivolous jack-the-lad had made it easier to ignore the attraction between them. But his family tragedy and dedication to his career had added a whole further dimension. A fully fleshed-out Nash Reece was going to be much harder to ignore.
‘Well, my time’s up.’ Maggie stood. Actually, she had another eight minutes but she really needed to get away.
Nash nodded, deliberately keeping his eyes trained on the television. Something had passed between them, making his interest in Maggie Green very unwise. He needed to give up on her pronto, because the Maggie who had just looked at him with compassion and respect in her eyes wouldn’t be so easy to turn his back on come January.
And that he couldn’t allow. There was London and then home. No woman had ever swayed him from his goal and he wasn’t about to get tangled up with one who could.
So, there was chemistry. So, he wanted her. Maggie Green was off limits.
He’d better get used to it.
CHAPTER THREE
NASH SPENT THE next two weeks ignoring his attraction to Maggie. Something he never did. He’d learnt from his sister’s passing that life was short and should be lived to its fullest. But during their talk the other night he’d realised Maggie was not the type of woman with whom he could indulge in a quick fling.
There was something about her that flashed a big red warning light at him. Maggie was a forever kind of woman. And he wasn’t a forever kind of guy.
He had years left of his training to go, several in London and then back to the bush. Maybe one day, maybe, he’d find a nice country girl to settle down with, maybe have what his parents, his grandparents had, but he was certainly in no rush.
But then he made the fatal error of joining the staff for Friday night drinks and he knew he couldn’t deny it any more. Two hours of watching her moist lips suck amber liquid out of long-necked bottles and he was wishing he was her beer. She was driving him to distraction. He had to have her—despite the warning light, despite knowing it was crazy.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman this badly.
Maggie lifted her gaze to his for a brief second before she hastily looked away and smiled at something Linda was saying. He knew she could feel the pounding of attraction growing out of control too. Louder than the noise of the juke box and the chatter all around them. It was as if the social situation, far removed from the hospital, had changed the boundaries between them.
She’d been slipping him furtive looks all evening when she’d thought he hadn’t been watching and while it was dim inside her desire flared like a lighthouse beacon, beckoning him closer. Even though the rocks were treacherous and he risked being snagged, their attraction pulled at him like the undertow of a tsunami.
He needed another drink.
Maggie breathed a sigh of relief as Nash left the table. She’d felt the weight of his gaze all evening and it excited and terrified her in equal measure. She had an overwhelming feeling of inevitability and it sucked the breath out of her lungs.
He looked his usual laid-back sexy self tonight in faded jeans and a polo shirt the exact shade of his tropical-waters eyes. It touched all the right places on him and inside her. He looked good enough to sprinkle with sugar and eat with a spoon.
God, this was getting way out of hand. They’d spent a fortnight studiously avoiding each other. Oh sure, the zing between them was there but it was as if he’d decided to crank back the vibe. He didn’t flirt. He was polite, friendly. And that suited her just fine.
In fact, she was very grateful for his detachment and returned it in the same spirit. But tonight it was if a channel of energy had opened up across the table between them, a portal visible only to them, and the bounds they’d subliminally put on their relationship had been sucked away.
Nash returned to the table with a glass of beer and looked directly at her, his gaze grazing her face before dropping to the V neckline of her T-shirt. He looked back up at her and Maggie could see the raw hunger in his eyes. She stood. She couldn’t bear it any longer. If she didn’t leave now she was going to drag him into the loo just to get it out of their system.
‘I’m off,’ she announced.
There was a chorus of protest but Maggie waved it all away.
‘Me too.’ Nash stood, leaving his untouched beer. ‘Do you think you could give me a lift?’ he asked, looking directly at her.
Maggie swallowed, hoping the heat between them wasn’t as obvious to everyone else. ‘I’m getting a taxi.’
‘Good. We can share.’
Maggie saw the desire in his gaze light up his blue eyes with purpose and it scared her witless. But she nodded anyway.
There was a queue at the taxi rank and Maggie’s heart belted along at triple time as they stood side by side, jostled by others in front and behind.
‘What are we going to do about this, Maggie May?’
Maggie heard the murmur of his voice near her ear and knew they were standing at a crossroads. The wise thing to do would be to stick to her side of the path. But as she looked up into his face she knew she wanted him to kiss her more than she’d wanted anything in the last decade, and she knew she was powerless to resist.
Tonight, anyway.
They moved to the top of the queue and she looked around at the people behind, relieved to see they were too engrossed in their own conversations to be paying any heed to theirs.
‘One night,’ she said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice as she took charge of her destiny to the pounding of her bongo-drum pulse. ‘One night only.’
Nash’s heart crashed to a brief standstill in his chest before galloping madly. He searched her gaze for a moment. He’d expected her to knock him back, to persist with her denial. But she was looking at him calmly. Intently. No doubts. No Maggie of old. Just double chocolate fudge brownie eyes sucking him in, tempting him further.
And one night was good. Enough to quench the attraction but not for it to be misconstrued as anything other than two adults having a good time. Perfect. ‘Works for me.’
Maggie breathed again. ‘How far away do you live?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘I’m closer.’
A taxi pulled up. ‘Get in,’ he said, opening the door.
A trill of lust squirmed through her abdomen at what she’d just initiated, and her hands trembled a little before her legs kicked into action. She hesitated at the door for a moment then Nash smiled at her like he already knew all her secrets and wild horses wouldn’t have kept her out of the cab.
She slid across the seat, giving the driver her address, aware of Nash like she’d never been aware of anyone before as he scooted across the seat. He moved in close, draping his arm along the back of the seat, crowding her, surrounding her.
He nuzzled her ear and her neck, and when his hand skimmed her thigh, slowly creeping up one denim-clad leg, Maggie almost whimpered out loud she was so turned on. She should have been mortified that they were necking like teenagers but she was so utterly caught up in his heat and his smell and the sexual squall lashing her insides and scrambling her thought processes, she couldn’t have cared less.
She wanted to feel his lips on her so badly she turned her face towards him, her mouth seeking his as she clutched at his shirt, fisting it. ‘Nash,’ she whimpered as his lips brushed lightly against hers. Soft, teasing. She clutched his thigh, trying to anchor herself in the maelstrom.
Nash felt her desperate whimper right down to his toes and knew exactly how she felt. He wanted to tear her clothes off right here and now, push her back against the seat and have his way with her, audience or not.
And if he deepened the kiss that’s exactly what would happen. ‘Shh, Maggie,’ he whispered, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her cheek. ‘Nearly there.’
Maggie made a sound of protest deep in her throat. How could he be so controlled when she was practically blind with lust? His thigh felt thick and powerful beneath her hand and she massaged it convulsively, trying to claw back her breath, her sanity.
Nash clasped his hand over hers as it moved higher. God, didn’t she know he was holding on by a thread? He placed his forehead against her cheekbone, forcing himself to slow it down, to think practically for a moment while he still had the chance.
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Amy Andrews
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby, электронная книга автора Amy Andrews на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы