How to Resist a Heartbreaker. Louisa George

plenty of amusing women.

      It all came back to the way one look of hers could pierce his soul.

      In the staff room she’d only been making polite conversation. She hadn’t attached him to a lie detector and demanded answers. And yet for the first time ever he’d felt like talking about his past. About the way things had careered out of control, about everything he’d lost. And had never got back.

      No matter. He’d survived so far—excelled, in fact. Spilling his guts to a woman wouldn’t change a thing.

      He exited the lift and huffed out a long breath. The day had melted into forty-eight hours of constant demands, an unexpected death, dealing with a grieving family. The gut-wrenching reminder that life was so fragile.

      All he needed was a shower and bed. Where he could put everything out of his mind. Focus on rest and getting ready for more surgery tomorrow. Ensuring Jamie got better. Putting things back together with Mitch. Forgetting Gabriella.

      Gee, there’d been a time when he’d had no one to think about but himself. Be careful what you wish for.

      Turning the corner towards his apartment, a flash of colour grabbed his attention. Scarlet in the midst of the carefully designed neutral palette. A splash, vivid. Bright.

      Weird. He got closer. A plant? A red plant. In a black ceramic pot.

      Not a pretty plant either—this was gnarled wood, browny-green leaves, a bunch of itsy red petals. He picked it up and examined it. It had a strange smell.

      Why the hell would anyone leave him a plant?

      Shrugging, he let himself into his apartment where the fading remnants of Gabby’s fragrance hit him square in the solar plexus. Between her and the plant they were going to fumigate him out of the penthouse.

      He held his breath as he placed the plant on the kitchen bench. Stepped back. It didn’t look right—too much red.

      Moved it to the dining table. No.

      The coffee table. No.

      It was too eye-catchingly bright, a misfit, chaotic in the sea of … in Gabby’s eyes, bland. God, now he was looking at everything from her perspective too. He really needed to stop that.

      He didn’t notice the note until he’d put the plant outside on the deck. Hoping for out of sight, out of mind.

      Max,

      I’d rate your so-called ‘garden’ a woeful one.

      And that’s only because it’s so cool to even have a garden at twenty thousand feet. Here’s something to help it rise up the scale.

      Charge Nurse Radley

      He smirked and began jabbing numbers into his phone. Made a few calls. On the last one she picked up. ‘Hello?’

      ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with this … monstrosity?’

      ‘Good evening to you too, Mr Maitland. It’s a geranium. They’re very popular in France. People put them in window boxes.’

      He heard the laughter in her voice and immediately relaxed. ‘If I did that and it fell off the railing, it’d kill someone. It’s a long way down.’ He peered down to the city street hundreds of feet below. ‘Why are you giving me lethal weapons?’

      ‘It’s a flower, but you’re a guy so everything has to be a weapon, right? It was more about encouraging you to take time out to smell the … er, geraniums. Besides, it’s a sin to live anywhere where there aren’t flowers.’

      ‘Looks like I veered deep into the dark side, then. I’m good at that.’

      ‘I know.’ There was a catch at the back of her throat. Sounded a lot like the sighing noise she’d made the other night when he’d kissed her. Then her voice crackled back down the wire, softer now. ‘Hey, I heard about your day.’

      ‘Yeah? It happens sometimes. We lose the ones we don’t expect and sometimes the sickest ones pull through.’ Exhaustion washed over him. It was never good to let his guard down, to share the toll a day like this took on him. Much easier to push it all deep inside into a hard, tight knot and hope it didn’t get so big it strangled him.