Alison Roberts - Scandal In Sydney

‘There are bedbugs.’

‘Nonsense. I would have been bitten by now.’

For answer he tugged her arm forward, slid her sleeve to her elbow and exposed a cluster of red welts. They both looked down at them. Irrefutable evidence. ‘I saw these this morning,’ he said. ‘I rest my case.’

She stared down at the welts, perplexed. Bedbugs. She had been itchy, she thought. She’d just been too preoccupied to notice.

‘Yikes,’ she muttered. ‘And double yikes. I’ll buy insect spray.’

‘You don’t get rid of bedbugs with inspect spray. You get rid of them by moving out.’

‘Not an option.’

‘You have an option. Here.’

‘I’m not in the market for a relationship,’ she snapped.

‘I told you, I have a very comfortable sofa bed. I’m not in the market for a relationship either.’

‘I didn’t even mean to kiss you.’

‘Neither did I.’

They were glaring at each other. He was still holding her arm. A frisson of something … electricity? … was passing between.

She couldn’t figure it out.

Why had she kissed him?

She wanted, quite fiercely, totally inexplicably, to do it again.

Get a grip, she told herself frantically. Even if her body was operating at ten per cent capacity, she had to think.

She was so tired. She wanted to go back to sleep.

But a woman with no money, a woman who was dependent on her next pay cheque, a woman like her , couldn’t sleep.

She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. She was due back at the hospital at eight. She went to toss back the covers and then thought better of it. Her nightgown wasn’t all that long. She didn’t intend to make this situation more personal than it already was.

‘I need to get to work,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She glanced at her suitcase in the corner. ‘Thank you for bringing my stuff. Would you mind giving me some privacy while I get dressed?’

‘You’re not getting dressed.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me. And there’s no need. You’re not required at work again until Monday.’

‘Monday!’ She gasped. ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ve signed on for four weeks. If I don’t go to work tonight, I’ve broken my contract. No pay. Do you know what that means?’

‘The hospital’s paying,’ he said. ‘Their barrier nursing clearly isn’t working; they took out the controls too soon. The least they can do is pay you while you’re sick. I’ve already organised it. Standard leave for this bug is four days—barrier nursing requires it. They don’t want you back there before Monday but you’ll be paid regardless.’

Whoa.

No work until Monday.

Four days with pay.

She could sink …

She couldn’t sink. She was in this man’s bed .

‘You’re looking paler every minute,’ he said conversationally. ‘You don’t want to be sick again. Put your head down and sleep.’

‘No!’ It was practically a wail.

Why did he want her here? She was starting to feel like a white slave trader was standing at the end of her bed. His bed .

‘I’m not holding you here against your will,’ he said.

‘Yes, you are.’ She was having trouble making herself speak. ‘If you won’t let me get dressed …’

‘Your baggage has been cavorting with bedbugs,’ he said, prosaically. ‘I’ll take it down to the basement and fumigate it while you sleep.’

‘But why?’ It was a wail this time—she was reaching the point where the world was starting to blur.

He knew it. He took her hands in his before she could resist, his strong fingers holding hers. The strength of him was infinitely … masculine. Infinitely seductive and infinitely comforting.

How long since someone had held her to comfort her?

He wasn’t holding her to comfort her, she reminded herself, trying frantically to defuzz her thoughts. He was holding her to have his wicked way … although how he could want to have any sort of way with a woman who’d just stopped throwing up …

‘We can help each other,’ he said, quite gently, and she blinked and tried to think of something other than the feel of his hands holding hers. His gorgeous eyes; his gaze meeting hers, pure and strong. The strength of his jaw, the strong bone structure of his face, the shadow of a smile that was gentleness itself.

He’d make a gorgeous doctor, she thought. He was a gorgeous doctor.

‘You’re already helping me,’ she muttered. ‘Your housekeeper gave me an egg and toast soldiers.’

‘Good for Gladys. I hope they helped.’

‘I kept ‘em down.’

‘All the more reason why you should help me back. Stay here for a month.’

Her eyes weren’t working properly. They kept blinking.

She was seeing him in soft focus. He was a beautiful man, she thought, and he was proposing that she stay with him for a month. Like a sheik and a desert princess.

Princesses didn’t wear shabby nightgowns and smell of … She didn’t want to think of what she smelled of, despite her shower. A night on duty, followed by gastro …

‘I think you’re weird,’ she said. ‘Go find a princess, instead of—’

‘I’m not in the market for a princess,’ he said, the gentleness fading a little. ‘That’s why I want you.’

‘Pardon?’

He sighed, looked down at their linked hands and carefully disengaged. The gentle look became grim.

‘I don’t do relationships,’ he said.

‘I see that,’ she said cautiously, casting a quick look round the sparse bedroom. This was such a male domain.

‘But everyone in the hospital wants me to.’

This was important, she decided. She had to get to the other side of the fuzz. Figure out where reality and nonsense merged. ‘You don’t think that’s just a wee bit egotistical?’ she demanded, and his smile returned. It was a truly gorgeous smile.

His smile could make a girl’s knees turn to putty—if a girl’s knees weren’t already putty.

‘Sydney Harbour Hospital is gossip central,’ he said. ‘Too much intense emotion, too many people working long hours, thrown together over and over … Everyone at the Harbour knows everyone else’s business.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she said faintly. ‘I’d thought it’d be a huge, anonymous hospital.

‘The Harbour?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Anonymous is not us. Big or not, we’re made up of individual teams. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, sometimes I think right down to the jocks we wear. Actually, that may well be the literal truth; Mrs Henderson does my washing. This apartment block is home to at least half a dozen Harbour medics who also use Mrs Henderson, so I guess that’s public knowledge as well. But since my wife died four years ago …’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s history,’ he said harshly. ‘But that’s the problem. The hospital, the grapevine, the whole gossip network has decided it’s time for me to move on. Even my boss keeps pushing women at me.’

‘Gee,’ she said cautiously, her interest caught through the fuzz. ‘So you’re being besieged with women. That must be tough.’

‘I’ve been married,’ he said, maybe more harshly than he intended because he paused and softened his tone. ‘What I mean is that I have no intention of going there again. I’d like everybody to lay off. You’re in Sydney for a month?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then where are you going?’

‘Brisbane?’ It was the first place that came into her mind. It sounded a lot more fun than Lighthouse Cove.

‘A month would give me head space,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them we’ve been in a relationship for a while.’

‘You did that?’ The fuzz was thickening.