The Emergency Doctor Claims His Wife. Margaret McDonagh

Footsteps echoed on the concrete stairs, snapping Annie back to the reality of where she was, what she was doing and who she was doing it with. With a cry of distress she wrenched away, fighting against Nathan’s hold.

      ‘Stop!’ she gasped.

      She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t allow Nathan’s potent sex appeal to sweep away all the pain, anger and despair of the last five years as if nothing had happened. It was over. It was! As Nathan reluctantly released her she stepped away, her legs feeling too weak and rubbery to hold her up. She’d chosen to take the back stairs in an attempt to avoid him, yet had only succeeded in trapping herself alone with him in a secluded spot for long enough to forget every powerful reason she must keep him at a distance.

      ‘There’s unfinished business between us, Annie. Somehow, somewhere, we are going to deal with it,’ he warned her.

      His intent was clear, and it scared her, because she couldn’t handle seeing him or raking up the past, knowing she was still vulnerable to him.

      ‘You didn’t want—’

      ‘You have no idea what I wanted…you never did,’ he interrupted heatedly, dragging a hand through his wayward hair. ‘And you certainly didn’t stay around long enough that last day to listen to my point of view. Then you refused to see or speak to me. I loved you, but you ripped out my heart and stomped all over it, turning your back on everything we were to each other, tossing it away as if it was nothing.’

      Tears filled her eyes and she held up a hand, backing away. ‘You’re wrong!’

      ‘No, I’m not.’ His tone was uncompromising and he refused to allow her retreat, despite the footsteps coming closer up the stairs. ‘I deserve my say—you owe me that much at least.’

      ‘I have to go,’ she insisted, shaking her head, denying his words, anxiety tying her nerves into knots.

      ‘I’m not letting you run this time, Annie.’

      But that was just what she did. Ran from him. Shaking, scared and confused, she pushed past him and rushed down the stairs as fast as her wobbly legs could carry her, deaf to the greeting of the admin assistant she passed on the flight below. The woman’s presence had brought a much-needed return of sanity, preventing her from something even more reckless than the explosive kiss. She had to get away from Nathan—had to have some time alone to regroup and restore her shattered equilibrium.

      With one touch, one kiss, the barriers she had thought impenetrable had been rent asunder. Despite everything that had happened, all the pain he had caused her, Nathan still brought her to her knees and sent her hormones crazy with insatiable desire. She had to do something to prevent herself from falling for him and being hurt all over again.

      Slipping unnoticed through a side fire exit, Annie hurried outside the hospital building, moving around the corner out of sight of anyone coming and going from the car park, the A and E department, or the separate building nearby that housed the maternity unit.

      Oblivious to the cold, she leaned against the wall, her whole body trembling. As she drew in several deep breaths in an effort to compose herself the fingers of one hand strayed to her mouth. Her lips, puffy and sensitised from the wildness of the kiss, still tingled in reaction, and she could still savour Nathan’s taste on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she groaned, reliving the last few minutes in Technicolor detail.

      Dear heaven, what had she done?

      And what on earth was she going to do now?

      All she could think about was the urgent need to protect herself against Nathan’s potent effect on her. He had stormed back into her life and clearly planned to turn it upside down, demanding that they confront their painful past. Why now? What did he hope to achieve? And why couldn’t she put his accusations that she had broken his heart out of her mind? There had been no denying the hurt in his eyes. And his suggestion that she had never given him the chance to explain his point of view nagged at her. She squared her shoulders, struggling to maintain her own sense of being wronged. What was there to explain? Nathan hadn’t wanted her. He’d made that obvious when he’d rejected her. How could he now try to turn it around and imply she was at fault?

      But he had—and he was here for reasons of his own, refusing to let it go.

      Somehow she had to erect a façade that even Nathan couldn’t penetrate. It was the only way she could survive. There certainly couldn’t be a repeat of what had just happened on the stairs. Her instant surrender to his kiss had proved just how vulnerable she was to him.

      But what could she do?

      A sudden plan came to mind.

      Desperate, she pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket, turned it on and sent an SOS message to the one person she could trust to save her from herself and stop her from making a monumental mistake.