believed in me, in my potential, who helped me reach it without hindering it with their own self-serving interests.
But wasn’t I dreaming an impossible dream? I was twenty-seven years old. I’d already wasted a chunk of my life on a man who wasn’t right for me. Could I risk squandering another period of my life with a man who had offered me nothing but a behind-closed-doors … what? A fling? He hadn’t exactly been specific about the terms. ‘We’d make an interesting pair,’ sounded more like an experiment than a relationship. Was that how he saw me? As a test sample?
What if I failed?
I’d had a full day in Theatre the following day so didn’t get to ICU until we had to transfer the last patient. None of the other cases needed high dependency care so they went straight to Recovery. Once I was finished with the transfer I went to Matt’s office. The door was closed and I gave it a tentative knock. There was no response so I knocked louder.
‘He’s gone home.’
I jumped about a foot when Jill Carter spoke from behind me. ‘Oh.’
‘He left a couple of hours ago,’ she said. ‘He was in most of the night with Rosanne Finch, the leukaemia patient. I told him to go home. I told him he looked worse than some of our patients.’
I frowned. ‘Is he unwell?’
‘He wouldn’t admit it but I reckon he’s got the bug. Gives you a blinding headache and a fever for twenty-four hours, give or take nausea and vomiting.’
‘Sounds like a heap of fun.’
Jill smiled wryly. ‘At least our husbands have us to wait on them hand on foot. What’s yours like as a patient? If he’s anything like mine, you’d rather be at work.’
‘That just about sums it up,’ I said.
I FOUND MATT’S great-aunt’s house without any trouble. I asked one of the neighbours who was walking by with an overweight labrador which house had a corgi called Winnie.
Here’s what I’ve found out recently. Dog owners have their own network. It’s like the medical community—everyone knows everyone. The only difference with dog owners is they only know the dogs’ names, not each other’s. They call each other things like Fifi’s mum or Milo’s dad. Weird but true.
The house was a lovely Victorian mansion—personally, I thought it was way too big for a single old lady—with a lovely knot garden at the front, which was currently covered in snow. There was a light on downstairs but the upper floors were dark. I pressed my finger to the brass doorbell and listened as it rang throughout the house. I heard Winnie bark and then the click-clack of her claws on the floor. After what seemed a long time I heard someone coming down the stairs. They weren’t happy footsteps.
The door opened and Matt stood there dressed in nothing but a pair of drawstring cotton pyjama bottoms. I stared at his chest and abs. He was so cut it looked like he had stepped off a plinth in the Uffizi in Florence. My fingers itched to touch him, to trace my fingertips over every hard ridge and contour. I dragged my eyes up to his. His weren’t pleased to see me, or at least that was the impression I got. ‘I thought you might like some company,’ I said.
‘Now’s not a good time.’
I looked at his forehead, where beads of perspiration had gathered. The rest of his features looked pale and drawn. ‘Consider it a house call,’ I said.
He managed to summon enough energy to lift one of his eyebrows but I could tell it caused pain somewhere inside his head by the way he winced. ‘I thought you didn’t make house calls?’
I pushed past him in the door. ‘I’m making an exception.’ I bent down to ruffle Winnie’s ears. ‘Besides, this old girl could do with a walk, surely?’
‘It won’t hurt her to miss a day.’
I turned back to face him. ‘Stop frowning at me like that. It’ll make your headache worse.’
‘How do you know I have a headache?’
I gave him a look. ‘Have you taken something for it?’
He dragged a hand down his face, wincing again. ‘Paracetamol.’
‘You probably need something stronger.’
‘What I need is to be left alone.’
I put my hands on my hips. Jem calls it my ‘taking-charge pose’. I can be quite bossy when I put my mind to it. ‘Come on, off to bed with you. I’ll sort out the dog and rustle up something for you to eat and drink.’
He made a groaning noise. ‘Don’t mention that word in my hearing.’
‘When was the last time you ate?’
He gave me a glare but it didn’t really have any sting in it. ‘Yesterday.’
I shifted my lips from side to side. ‘Fluids?’
‘A couple of sips of water.’
‘When?’
He let out an exhausted-sounding breath. ‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’
‘I’ve been playing doctors and nurses since I was three,’ I said. ‘Now, where is your bedroom?’
He scored his fingers through the tousled thickness of his hair. ‘Second floor. First on the right.’
I made my way to the kitchen and boiled the kettle and made a cup of chamomile tea, which is really good for settling an upset stomach. I had brought herbal tea bags with me as I know from experience that not everyone has them in their pantry. I was right about Matt’s aunt. She only had English Breakfast and Lady Grey. I took the steaming cup up on a gorgeous silver tray I found in a display cabinet and carried it upstairs. I felt like one of the chambermaids in Downton Abbey.
Matt was lying in a tangle of sweaty sheets, his forearm raised at a right angle over his eyes. I got a good look at his chest and abdomen. Ripped muscles, just like an old-fashioned washboard, lean and toned with just a nice sprinkling of chest hair that fanned from his pectoral muscles into a V below the drawstring waist of his pyjama bottoms.
I hadn’t realised how sexy male pyjamas could be, way more sexy than sleeping naked. It was the thought of what was hiding behind that thin layer of cotton that so tantalised me. He was lying with his legs slightly apart, his feet and ankles turned outwards, his stomach not just flat but hollowed in like a shallow cave. I looked at it in unmitigated envy. My stomach was more domelike than the one on St Paul’s Cathedral. I sucked it in and approached the bed. ‘I have a cup of tea for you.’
He cranked open one eye. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘Here.’ I held the cup up to his mouth. ‘Just take a few sips. It’ll help with the nausea.’
He raised his head off the pillow and took a small sip but then he sprayed it out as if it were poison. ‘What the freaking hell is that?’
‘Chamomile tea,’ I said.
He gave me a black look. ‘It tastes like stewed grass clippings.’
I put the cup on the bedside table and mopped the front of my jumper with a tissue I’d plucked from the box near the bed. ‘You won’t feel better until you get some fluids on board. Maybe I should bring an IV set from the hospital and run a couple of litres into you.’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
I got up from the edge of the bed and went through to the ensuite bathroom. It was a beautiful affair, with black and white tiles on the floor and a freestanding white bath with brass clawed feet. The shower was separate and had brass fittings the same as the bath taps. There were black and white towels hanging on a brass rail, although there were another