made the mistake of looking up at him. Our eyes met in a timeless moment that swirled and throbbed with sensual undertones I could feel reverberating in my body.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. ‘You have chocolate on your lip.’
‘I do?’ I swept my tongue over my lips. ‘Gone?’
He brought the pad of his thumb to my lower lip and gently blotted it. ‘Got it.’
Our eyes met again. Held. Burned. Tempted.
I drew in a shaky breath and pulled out of his magnetic field.
I turned and walked down the corridor, but it wasn’t until I turned the corner that I heard his door click shut.
AFTER ANOTHER WEEK I was completely over doing night shifts. My circadian rhythms were so out of whack I was practically brain dead. My eyes were so darkly shadowed I looked like I’d walked off the set of a zombie movie. I had a couple of days off, which I spent painting my sitting room, something I’d had to put on hold while I’d had Freddy staying. Margery was back from her sister’s now so I could stop worrying about muddy paws and mad yapping, not to mention obsessive chewing.
I’d given Freddy a big marrowbone to chew instead of my shoes and electronic appliance cords, but he’d buried it in the back garden and then brought it in covered in mud and slush and left it on my pillow. Nice.
The time off had also given me some space to work on the hospital ball. I’d gone back to the hotel and talked to the catering manager and I’d ordered the decorations and got posters printed and had them hung around the hospital. The ticket sales had been slow until I had taken over, which was rather gratifying. It seemed everyone was delighted with the idea of a fancy-dress ball and were madly ordering costumes online or in stores.
When I got back to work after my days off I was pleased to hear Jason Ryder had been gradually weaned off the sedation, but while his brain pressures hadn’t soared and he was breathing on his own, he was still not responding to verbal commands. I encouraged his family to continue with the therapies I’d suggested and hoped they would see some improvement over the next week or so.
The EEG had encouragingly shown brain activity. There was something going on in Jason’s head, but it wasn’t getting out, a possible case of ‘locked-in syndrome’. But what was locked in was still an unknown. Just how much loss of brain function had resulted from the surgery was anyone’s guess at this stage.
Matt Bishop was alone in the central ICU office when I came in from checking on Jason. All the nurses, including Gracie, were occupied with patients. Jill was on an errand to another ward and the registrars were with one of the other consultants with a patient in Bay Five.
‘Good news so far on Jason,’ I said, by way of greeting. I was going to stick to my plan of keeping things professional and distant.
Matt was less optimistic. ‘He’s not responding to any stimuli.’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But his CT shows reasonable blood flow in most of the brain, and his EEG shows activity.’
He put the file he was holding down on the counter desk and momentarily leaned forward and rested his hands on top of it. There was a deep frown line between his eyes, his olive-toned skin looked even paler than usual and he had a pinched looked about his features.
If a zombie movie director had been looking for walk-on extras, I thought Matt and I would make a great pair.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
He drew in a breath and straightened, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. ‘Fine.’
‘You don’t look fine.’
‘Thanks.’
I peered at him up close. ‘Your eyes are bloodshot. Have you been on the turps?’
He gave me a look. ‘No. I was up all night. And, no, I wasn’t on night shift.’
‘At least on night shift you get paid to feel like crap.’
He managed a quarter-smile and then it faded as he dragged his hand down his face this time, wincing as if the movement caused him pain. ‘You have no idea of the mess this place is in. Jeff Hooper might win a popularity contest over me any day but he had no idea how to balance a budget. We’re four months from the end of the financial year and the budget is blown. The CEO says there is no more money. How the hell can we pay staff and provide a service with an empty bank account? I’ve been told to come up with a solution.’
I stepped back and folded my arms across my chest before I was tempted to smooth that canyon-deep furrow off his brow. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
He looked at me then. Really looked at me. His eyes went to mine, holding them in a lock that contained the sensual heat of everything we had experienced together in private—the kisses, the touches, the mutual arousal of primal desire. It went back and forth between our gazes like a fizzing current of electricity. I swear it was almost audible.
Lust unfolded deep inside my body like a lithe cat stretching its limbs. I could feel my body heating and beating with want, the little tingle of nerves, the flutter of my belly, the rush of my blood and the pounding of my heartbeat.
His gaze went to my mouth, stayed there for a pulsing moment, as if he was wondering if he could steal a kiss and get away with it. The thought thrilled me. The illicitness of it spoke to the wild woman in me I tried so desperately to keep contained.
I found myself stepping up on tippy-toes, leaning towards him, my mouth slightly parted in anticipation of the press of my lips to his.
‘Oh, um, er, sorry,’ Gracie said from the door.
I sprang back from Matt as if someone had fired a cannonball between us. Gracie was looking at me as if she had never seen me before. But then her eyes took on a wounded look, her pretty freckled face drooping in disappointment.
‘It’s not what you think—’
‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ Gracie said crisply.
Matt straightened his tie, cleared his throat and moved past us both. ‘I have patients to see,’ he said, and left.
I closed my eyes for a second. My life was such a farce.
‘Bertie, how could you?’ Gracie said in a shocked voice.
‘Nothing happened,’ I said. ‘We were just … talking.’
‘I saw you lean towards him,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve just come back from your honeymoon, for God’s sake. I never would’ve taken you for a player.’
‘Who’s being a player?’ Jill asked, as she came breezing in with a stack of paperwork. She looked between Gracie and me and raised her artfully pencilled brows. ‘You’re not talking about Matt Bishop, are you? The man’s entitled to have a private life, you know. Mind you, I’d give my back teeth to know whom he’s seeing. No one seems to know but I’m sure it’s someone from the hospital.’
I mentally rolled my eyes. Could this get any more ridiculously entangled?
‘I believe he has a thing for married women,’ Gracie said, shooting me a hard look.
Jill gave a disbelieving cough of laughter as she rolled back her chair to sit down. ‘Can’t see him following in his old man’s footsteps.’
‘What do you know about his father?’ I asked.
Jill swivelled her chair to face me. ‘Richard Bishop’s a well-known womaniser, the younger the better, apparently. His wife Alexis turns a blind eye, has been doing so ever since their other son died.’
My insides lurched. ‘What other son?’
‘Matt’s