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But her yawn at somewhere past midnight spoiled the build-up. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised, covering her mouth. ‘I’m normally passed out cold by nine o’clock.’
He groaned. ‘I envy you. I feel like I haven’t had a decent sleep since Ruby came along.’
Patrick had enjoyed talking with her. He liked her entertaining stories and easy laugh. He liked how relaxed he felt. He liked how she hadn’t outwardly flirted but he still knew she was into him. He also liked it that any other woman would have jumped in and said ‘I can help you with your sleep situation’ but Miranda had just smiled at him.
‘Shall we go?’ he asked, his voice surprisingly husky.
Miranda nodded. ‘Yes.’
They didn’t talk as they walked through the bar and across the lobby. They didn’t exchange a word as they waited for the lift. Or even inside the lift. Although Patrick leaned on the opposite wall and didn’t take his eyes off her for a second. Miranda’s belly went into freefall but she held his gaze, anticipation pumping her heart rate higher.
The lift doors opened and he said, ‘Yours or mine?’ as he ushered her out.
‘Mine,’ she replied.
She knew zip about one-night stands but she’d heard enough staffroom chatter from other nurses to know she really did not want to be the one doing the walk of shame in the morning.
Patrick stopped outside the door and turned to her. ‘Key?’
Miranda reached into her back pocket, slid the piece of plastic out and handed it over. He went to take it but, suddenly nervous, Miranda didn’t let go for a moment. He raised an eyebrow. ‘You okay?’
The question was low and slid into all the places that were suddenly reminding her how good it felt to be touched. ‘I don’t … usually do this,’ she murmured.
Patrick smiled. ‘I figured.’ He watched her looking at the door, obviously torn. ‘Would it help to know that I don’t either?’
Miranda smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘We don’t have to do this, Miranda.’
She blinked at him, searching his face for signs of disingenuousness. Relief flooded through her when she found none. Patrick looked like he was perfectly willing to say goodnight and leave things as they were.
And he’d be gone tomorrow and she’d never see him again.
But she’d always wonder.
She smiled at him, dropping her hand from the key. ‘I want to.’
Patrick kept his arm in place, the key still extended in her direction. ‘Are you sure, Miranda? Really, really sure?’
She grinned at him. She’d never been surer of anything. ‘Open the damn door, Patrick.’
He grinned back then turned towards the door, swiping the card through and hearing the click as the lights turned green. He pushed the door open and said, ‘Ladies first.’
Patrick’s gut clenched as she brushed past him on the way in, his pulse picking up in anticipation. The door closed behind him and then it was just him and her in the darkened alcove and she was standing there looking at him with possession in her eyes. His groin throbbed in response.
He walked two paces until their bodies were almost touching. She smelled like soap and Shiraz and the combination was intoxicating. He dipped his head to capture her mouth, to savour her taste and to slowly explore her mouth, her neck.
But a little whimper from somewhere at the back of her throat was his undoing and he was deepening the kiss, and her arms were twining around his neck and pulling them together, and before he knew it he’d pushed her up against the wall and they were both breathing hard.
Her hands found the hem of his shirt and it was suddenly gone. Her shirt followed. As did her bra. And as her nipples ruched beneath the pads of his thumbs, his zip was tugged down and her hand was finding its way inside.
He tore his mouth from hers and bit down on a groan. ‘Bed,’ he said, swinging her up in his arms, kissing her ravaged mouth again as he strode in the general direction, stopped at the mini-bar and panted, ‘condoms,’ satisfied when she snagged the pack of three that sat propped next to the salted nuts, barely breaking contact.
In four more strides he’d reached the bed and Patrick threw her on the mattress grateful that she’d thought to leave on one of the subdued down lights so he could see her breasts jiggle enticingly.
She was bare to her waist and breathing hard, her hair was spread out in a wild tangle on the white sheets around her.
Three condoms were never going to be enough.
CHAPTER TWO
February
THE LOCKER ROOM was unusually empty for this time of the morning as Miranda climbed into her scrubs. The novelty of scoring a job in the operating theatres at St Benedict’s had still not worn off and she inhaled the fresh, clean smell of the shirt as she pulled it down over her head like it was the latest from Versace.
The last few months had been a steep learning curve and she was excited today to be starting her anaesthetics rotation. This was where she was hoping to specialise eventually. Scrubbing in on operations and being a surgeon’s right hand was all well and good but she missed the patient contact. At least anaesthetics gave her an opportunity to talk to the people undergoing surgery, even if they were worried and anxious.
Miranda shoved her socked feet into the theatre clogs she’d been issued and grabbed a paper cap from the stash in her locker. She tied it at the back of her head, pleased that she’d decided to cut her hair short rather than have to manage long hair in a theatre cap all day.
The door burst open and two of the more experienced scrub nurses entered, filling the silence. ‘I tell you he’s hot,’ Lilly Martin said. ‘The man wears pink scrubs, pink, for crying out loud and still manages to look like a sex god.’
‘Isn’t he married?’ Denise Grady queried, nodding at Miranda as she went past.
‘Ah, but there’s married, then there’s married, isn’t that right, Miranda?’
Miranda was a little intimidated by Lilly’s brashness. She’d learned a lot about being a scrub nurse under Lilly’s tutelage but she was uncomfortable around the other woman’s forceful personality. Lilly was only a couple of years older than her but Miranda felt like a gauche seventeen-year-old again in comparison.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she murmured, not wanting to get into a debate with Lilly, who could be very opinionated. Married was married as far as she was concerned. No qualifiers. It certainly made people off limits in her books.
Not that she spent all her spare time on the prowl, as Lilly seemed to do. Or even had any spare time. Between shift work and a five-year-old, her hours were well and truly occupied.
Except for that one night.
Her mind drifted to Patrick. A very naked Patrick sprawled in her hotel bed, smiling that satisfied smile. Her cheeks warmed and her stomach rolled over. It had been everything she could ever have hoped for—she had no regrets.
‘Edna said she’d be in Theatre one when you’re done here,’ Lilly said, breaking into her delicious thoughts of a truly wonderful morning glory.
‘Oh, right.’ Miranda gave herself a mental shake, dragging her brain back to the present. ‘Thanks.’
She left Lilly and Denise to their gossip session and headed down the long corridor that separated the theatres on one side from the storerooms, staffrooms and offices on the other. St Benny’s had eight operating theatres. Six were running today with the morning procedures all about to get under way.
Goose-bumps pricked her bare arms as the frigid environment caused her to shiver. The theatres seemed to have only two temperatures—freezing cold or, if you were scrubbed and gowned under huge operating lights, boiling hot.
Miranda pushed open the swing doors to theatre one’s anaesthetic room. Edna, an ex-army nurse, who had been at St Benny’s since Eve had been a child, looked up from a trolley and smiled.
‘Miranda, my dear, how are you?’
Miranda smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Edna was the stereotypical mother figure, round and jolly and protective of her brood of new grads, though it had taken Miranda only a few days to figure out that you could take the woman out of the army but not the army out of the woman. Edna ran whichever theatre she was in charge of like a military operation and did not suffer fools gladly.
Including prima donna surgeons.
‘Right.’ Edna smiled. ‘Let’s get started. All this week will be spent familiarising yourself with machinery and drugs and some theory,’ she said, waving a thick booklet in the air, ‘then you’ll have a couple of shifts teamed up with a mentor and next week you’ll be on your own. How does that sound?’
‘Terrifying?’ Miranda admitted.
Edna chuckled. ‘You’ll be fine, dear. Just remember, if in doubt, ask. The anaesthetists won’t bite.’
Miranda nodded. Sage advice she fully intended to take.
The anaesthetists at Benny’s were experienced and very open to teaching and formed part of the great team atmosphere Miranda loved so much. Patients always raved about their surgeons and took the poor old anaesthetist for granted. If only they understood it was the anaesthetists who had the most important job—they were the ones keeping the patients alive during the operation!
Miranda absently hoped that the new guy—the god in pink scrubs—was also a team player. It only took one rotten apple to make a workplace insufferable.
Half an hour into her orientation the swing doors opened and Genevieve Cowan, the director of anaesthetics, entered, chatting to a man in pink scrubs.
A very familiar man in pink scrubs.
Patrick?
Even with his hair hidden by his blue theatre cap, she recognised him instantly. And even if she’d been suddenly blinded her traitorous cells would have whispered his presence to her anyway. Every single oxygen molecule inside Miranda’s lungs seemed to burst in unison and for a moment she struggled to catch her breath.
‘This is Edna,’ Genevieve was saying. ‘I don’t think you’ve met her yet.’
Miranda watched as Patrick extended his hand and shook Edna’s saying, ‘Nice to meet you.’
Patrick was the sex god in pink scrubs? It was all falling into place now. And then a truly horrifying thought fell into place.
He was married?
‘Edna has been here for ever and she knows where every single thing in this place lives. If you need something, she’s the woman for the job.’
Miranda barely heard Genevieve as her gaze flew to Patrick’s left hand. The macaroni bracelet that had adorned his wrist six months ago was gone. But a plain gold band on his ring finger was out and proud.
‘She’s also,’ Genevieve continued, unaware of Miranda’s complete turmoil, ‘the best anaesthetic nurse you’ll ever meet.’
Married.
He was married.
She’d slept with a married man.
Her throat constricted. Nausea threatened.
Edna folded her arms across her ample bosom. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere, Dr Cowan.’
And then she laughed her giant honking laugh, yanking Miranda out of her escalating panic just in time to hear her own introduction.
‘And this is Miranda Dean,’ Genevieve said. ‘She’s new to our team here at Benny’s and I believe this is her first day on anaesthetic rotation?’
Miranda looked at the floor, wishing it would swallow her whole, desperate to disappear into thin air. She wanted to go. To run. To run and not stop. To never have to face Patrick and what they’d done.
What she’d done.
Patrick frowned at the familiar name as his gaze swung towards the other occupant of the room, who seemed to be finding the floor utterly fascinating. Miranda Dean?
His Miranda Dean?
The woman he’d thought about every day, dreamed about every night for the last six months?
Surely not?
‘Miranda?’
He watched as the woman slowly raised her head to look at him. Smoky green eyes peered out from a familiar heart-shaped face and he smiled as his body took a walk down memory lane, reacting to her presence on a purely primitive level.
She didn’t smile back.
‘Patrick,’ she acknowledged through stiff lips, every letter sticking in her toast-dry throat.
‘You two know each other?’ Genevieve asked.
Patrick felt his gut tighten at Miranda’s less-than-enthusiastic welcome. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We met at the medical symposium in September.’
‘Excellent.’ Edna beamed. ‘It’s always nice to see a familiar face when you’re new.’
Patrick wasn’t sure Miranda agreed. Why on earth did she look so mortified? He knew what had happened between them had been out of character for her but there was no need to look so guilty about it.
They were both adults, for crying out loud.
‘Listen, Miranda, Patrick, do you mind if I snaffle Edna while I’ve got her?’ Geneveive asked. She turned to Edna. ‘I need to make some changes to tomorrow’s theatre five list.’
Edna nodded. ‘Sure. Come to the office.’ She looked at Miranda. ‘I shouldn’t be too long.’
Neither of them waited for approval from Miranda and Patrick and within seconds they were alone.
Patrick frowned at her as Miranda continued to look at him like he’d given her a particularly nasty disease. ‘I gather you’re not too thrilled to see me?’ he started tentatively.
Miranda snorted, galled at his calmness. ‘You could say that.’
Okay … she was obviously annoyed about something. ‘Look, if you’re worried I’ll … talk about what happened with us, there’s really no need. I don’t kiss and tell.’
Miranda folded her arms across her chest. ‘How very magnanimous of you.’
Patrick’s extremities almost contracted frostbite from the ice in her tone. ‘I’m sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. Did you expect me to call you?’
That hadn’t been the impression he’d been left with that morning. True, they hadn’t had the talk but there’d been something about their goodbye that had been final.
Sure, in another time and place, if his circumstances had been different, he’d have followed up but they’d both lived in different cities and had had obligations to their families.
He’d been pretty sure she’d known it too.
‘I expected you to not be married!’ she snarled.
For a second or two Patrick was very confused then he looked down at his wedding ring.
Damn it! He was so unused to wearing it he’d forgotten he’d put it back on.
‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘No, no, no. This is not what it looks like,’ he hastened to assure her.
Miranda was so angry she could barely see straight. He’d lied to her. To get her into bed. She’d specifically asked him the question and he’d denied it. And like some stupid young affection-starved fool she’d believed him. ‘So you aren’t married?’ she demanded.
Patrick sighed. ‘Well … technically I am, but—’
‘Oh, God,’ Miranda wailed, shutting her eyes, hoping she could block him and what had happened out. It had been the most amazing night of her life and now it had been totally sullied by his lies. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Look,’ Patrick said, taking a step towards her as she opened her eyes.
Miranda stabbed her finger in the air towards him. ‘Stay right there,’ she hissed. ‘Do not come any closer.’
Patrick stopped, holding his hands up in surrender. He was pleased that the daggers in her eyes were purely metaphorical because she looked like she could do damage with a sharp pointy weapon right about now. ‘Let me explain.’
Miranda laughed at his audacity. ‘Oh, okay, fine.’ She folded her arms again. ‘Go ahead. Explain to me how you’re married but not really and how it doesn’t make you and me lying, cheating, despicable human beings?’
Patrick heard the tap, tap, tap of her clog against the hard floor. Saw the determined little tilt to her chin. God, he couldn’t go into it all here. It was a life he still found difficult to believe he was living. ‘Not here, Miranda. It’s … complicated.’
Miranda nodded. She knew all about complicated relationships. Growing up an illegitimate child of the other woman, she was intimately acquainted with complicated.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘the married ones always say that.’
Patrick frowned. What on earth did that mean? ‘Why don’t we get coffee or lunch together today? I can explain, Miranda.’
Miranda shook her head. It didn’t matter. What was done was done. And having lunch, coffee or any contact with this man simply wasn’t on the table.
Thankfully Edna and Geneveive bustled back through the door and she was spared from any further conversation.
Miranda rushed to the school later that afternoon. Flexibility of hours at St Benny’s had been one of the draw cards, along with its closeness to home, but it was unavoidable that Lola was going to need to use the after-school care facilities from time to time—her grandmother already did too much without adding to her burden of care. Luckily Lola was a social little girl who made friends easily.
Today, though, not even thoughts of her daughter could elicit a smile as she went over and over her conversation with Patrick, her head thumping a little harder each time. Thankfully she’d seen very little of him for the remainder of the shift and then only at a distance. Twice it had looked like he was going to approach her and she wasn’t too proud to admit she’d deliberately walked in the other direction.
A squall of emotions had taken up residence in her belly and she didn’t want him near her until she’d thought them through.
It was hard to get her head around the startling implications of his beringed presence and its impact on her sense of self. Dressed in pink scrubs, he had indeed looked like the sex god he’d been declared but having grown up the casualty of infidelity Miranda hadn’t allowed his devastating sexual attraction to be a factor.
She’d formed very early opinions of the sanctity of marriage that she had staunchly lived by. Married men were simply off limits.
No exceptions.
No grey areas.
And yet she’d slept with one. The mere thought kicked up the squall in her stomach another notch.
Sure, he’d said he could explain and she had no doubt there was some tale of woe about being separated, about how his wife didn’t understand him or how they had an open marriage.
She was sure there was some easy patter about the technicality of his marriage.
But she didn’t want to hear any of it.
What they’d done had been unforgiveable. What he’d done had been unforgiveable. And after eight hours of stewing over it she was even more annoyed now than she had been initially. White-hot anger boiled in her belly.
Add to that disgust, abhorrence and humiliation and she had a headache the size of Australia banging away at her frontal lobe.
Frankly, she couldn’t wait to go home and have a shower and wash away the guilt and the stain of her transgression. She’d spent six months fantasising about that night, living every deliciously sexy moment over and over, and he’d dashed it all in one day.
She felt dirty. She felt used.
She felt like a fool.
All she wanted to do was get home, have that shower and hug her daughter hard.
Lola gave her one of those big, girly, whole-face grins as she walked into the centre and Miranda felt her headache ease a little. Her heart did its usual squeeze in her chest.
Being a teen mum had been hard and it would never have been a choice she’d have made for herself voluntarily, but her little blonde-ringletted baby girl was simply the best thing that had ever happened to her. Lola filled her heart with joy every day and Miranda couldn’t even begin to imagine life without her daughter.
Lola ran across the room in her usual excitable way and threw herself at Miranda’s body. ‘Mummmmmy!’
Miranda laughed as she clutched her daughter close, kissing her beautiful curls. It was hard to believe that an insane teenage coupling born from rebellion and disaffection had resulted in the perfect little person in front of her. Sleeping with a transient surfer dude only a couple of years older than herself had been a three-week moment of madness but his DNA could not be faulted.
‘Come on, darling,’ Miranda said, crouching down and accepting an enthusiastic kiss. ‘Get your bag. Let’s go home.’
‘Can my new best friend in the whole world come too? For a tea party? We could have Nan’s cupcakes and drink Earl Grey just like real ladies.’
Miranda gave an inward groan as her headache thumped in earnest. The very last thing she wanted to do now was to entertain another child. ‘I’d need her mummy’s permission, Lols. Let’s do it another day, okay? Maybe at the weekend? I’ll get her number from the phone tree.’
Lola clasped her hands together as if she was an orphan asking for more food. ‘Oh, no, Mummy, pleeeeeease? I love her. I love her. I told her she could come.’
Miranda smiled despite her tiredness and felt her little girl’s passionate entreaty worm its way under her skin. ‘Lols …’
Lola shifted from foot to foot and clapped. ‘I’ll go and get her.’
Miranda stood and sagged in resignation. Any other day she’d have brushed off Lola’s sneaky big-eyed plea with a firm ‘Not today’ but life had battered her a little too much these last eight hours and children could always spot a weakness.
She turned to ask the teacher for the list of parent phone numbers. She seriously doubted the other mother would say yes—she certainly wouldn’t let Lola go to a place she wasn’t familiar with and to people she didn’t know—but maybe they could set something up for the weekend.
The very last person she expected to see walking through the front door was Patrick.
For a moment she forgot he was a lying, cheating sneak who had put her in a morally untenable position and just rode the surge of undiluted lust that brushed her skin in a crimson flush. Memories of his kiss, of his heat, of his hardness flooded in and muscles deep inside her tightened in recognition.
God, she wanted him again. Wanted to drag him into the little room where she knew they kept the supplies, strip his clothes off and do him against the wall.
This was what happened when a grown woman lived her life like a nun. Inappropriate thoughts about men who did not deserve them!
He gave her a surprised look and her heart thundered as he approached, even his grim smile with that sinful chin cleft seemed somehow devilishly sexy.
‘Are you following me?’ she demanded. It seemed irrational but the thumping in her head wasn’t exactly allowing for clear thought processes. She didn’t know what he was doing here but she certainly didn’t want to exchange pleasantries with the man.
Or listen to his excuses.
Patrick blinked at her aggressive tone. He knew he had some explaining to do but he was too tired for female histrionics. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Miranda folded her arms across her chest. ‘I told you I did not want to talk to you about … our … stuff and I don’t appreciate you trying to push the issue.’
‘Look, Miranda.’ He ruffled his hair. ‘I’m just here to pick up Ruby, that’s all.’
It took a few seconds for Miranda to get the import of his words, distracted as she was by the ruffled sexiness of his hair. She frowned but was interrupted by a ‘Mummy’ and a yank on her jeans. She looked down blankly, pleased for the respite from his weary brown eyes that tugged in places they had no right to be tugging.
Her blonde curly-haired moppet blinked up at her, one skinny arm slung around the neck of a cute little redhead with rosy cheeks and her father’s eyes.
‘This is Ruby,’ she announced. ‘My new bestest friend for ever. She has a lipth. Please, Mummy, please can she come over for cupcakes?’