CAROL MARINELLI - Special Deliveries - Wanted - A Daddy - Dr. Dark and Far Too Delicious / Royal Rescue / Father by Choice

‘Anything,’ Jasmine said. ‘Well, anything apart from chicken nuggets.’

So instead of leftover nuggets there was wine and seafood, and conversation was easy, as long as it was just about food, about movies and the beach, but the second it strayed deeper there was a mutual pulling back.

‘Will you go back to your maiden name?’ Jed asked after a while.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if I should change Simon’s …’

‘So what is it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your maiden name?’

She didn’t answer him, just peeled a prawn. She didn’t even get a reprieve when he asked what had happened in her marriage, because for a marriage to break up when someone was pregnant it sounded as if something pretty serious had.

‘I’ve got three hours, Jed.’ She smiled, dipping a prawn in lime mayonnaise. ‘In fact, two hours and fifteen minutes now. I want to enjoy them, not spend time talking about my ex.’

And later, when they were finishing up their heavenly dessert and he mentioned something about a restaurant in Sydney, she asked why he’d moved. His answer was equally vague and Jasmine frowned when he used her line.

‘We’ve got thirty minutes till you need to be back for Ruby. Do we really want to waste them hearing my woes?’

‘No.’ She laughed.

But, yes, her heart said, except that wasn’t what they were about—they had both decided.

They were going to keep things simple and take things slowly.

But it was difficult to find someone so easy to talk to and not open up, especially when the conversation strayed at one point a little too close to Penny. She’d mentioned something about how good it was to have Ruby, given her mum and sister were so busy with their jobs. As soon as she said it she could have cut out her tongue.

‘Your mum’s in real estate?’ Jed checked, and she nodded. ‘What does your sister do?’

It was a natural question but one she’d dreaded.

‘She does extremely well at whatever she puts her mind to,’ Jasmine evaded, reaching for her glass of wine.

‘Ouch.’ Jed grinned. ‘Sore point?’

‘Very.’

So he avoided it.

It was nice and going nowhere, they both knew that. It was an out-of-hours fling, except with each turn it became more complicated because outside work there were Simon and Penny and unbeknown fully to the other the two hearts that were meeting had both been incredibly hurt.

Two hearts that had firmly decided to go it alone for now.

They just hadn’t factored in desire.

‘It’s like being a teenager again.’ Jasmine grinned as he pulled the car over before they turned into her street and kissed her. ‘My mum lives in this street.’

‘We’re not outside …?’

‘No.’

‘Good,’ he said, and got back to kissing her.

They were under a huge gum tree that dropped gum nuts everywhere, but Jed risked the paintwork, grateful for the leafy shield, and they were ten minutes into a kiss that was way better than teenage ones she’d partaken in, right on this very spot, especially when Jed moved a lever and her seat went back a delicious fraction.

She could hardly breathe. He was over her and looking down at her, his hand was creeping up between her legs, and she could feel how hard he was. However, they could not take it even a fraction further here and she was desperate to pay Ruby and have her out of there, wanted so badly to have him in her bed.

And it would seem that Jed was thinking the same thing. ‘I could wait till Ruby’s gone.’

‘No.’ She hauled the word out, for if she regretted using it now, she knew she would regret it more in the morning if she didn’t. ‘I don’t want that for Simon.’ She looked up at those gorgeous eyes and that mouth still wet from her kisses and it killed her to be twenty-six and for it to feel wrong to ask him in. ‘We’re keeping things light,’ Jasmine said. ‘Agreed?’ she prompted, and he nodded. ‘Which is fine for me, but I won’t treat his little heart lightly.’

‘I know.’

‘Next time we’ll go to yours,’ Jasmine suggested.

He looked down at her and the rules he’d embedded into his brain were starting to fade, because he had enjoyed being out, but now he wanted in.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, because this was starting to be about a whole lot more than sex. He’d more than enjoyed tonight, had loved being in her company. The only bit that was proving difficult was leaving things here. ‘Maybe we’ll go out but eat more quickly?’

‘Confusing, isn’t it?’ she said, and again she crossed her eyes and he laughed and then one more kiss and it ached to a halt.

Killed to turn on the engine and drive down the street and then turn into her own street and to park two doors down from her home.

To smile and walk out and to rearrange her dress as she let herself in.

To chat and pay Ruby and carry on a normal conversation, saying that, yes, she’d had a great night catching up with an old friend, and maybe she’d ask Ruby to babysit so that they could catch up again, perhaps as soon as next week.

But a week didn’t seem so soon once Ruby was gone.

A night felt too long.

It killed her not to text him to come back.

‘HI, JASMINE!’

She looked up at the familiar face of a paramedic who was wheeling a stretcher in.

‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’

‘Hi, Mark.’ Jasmine smiled, but there was a dull blush on her cheeks, and as Jed looked over to see how the new patient was, he couldn’t help but notice it, couldn’t help but see that Jasmine was more than a little flustered as she took the handover. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘We’re all over the place today,’ Mark said. ‘I had a transfer from Rosebud that got cancelled and then we were called out to Annie here.’ Jasmine smiled at her new patient. ‘Annie Clayfield, eighty-two years old, fell at home last night. We were alerted by her security when she didn’t respond to their daily phone call. We found her on the floor,’ Mark explained. ‘Conscious, in pain with shortening and rotation to the left leg.’

He pulled back the blanket and Jasmine looked at the patient’s feet and saw the familiar deformity that was an obvious sign of a hip fracture.

Annie was a lovely lady and tough too—she tried to hold back her yelp of pain as they moved her over as gently as they could onto the trolley.

Jed came over when he heard her cry and ordered some analgesic.

‘We’ll get on top of your pain,’ Jed said, ‘before we move you too much.’ He had a listen to her chest and checked her pulse and was writing up an X-ray order when he saw one of the paramedics leave the stretcher he was sorting out and head over to Jasmine.

‘So you’re here now?’

‘That’s right.’ Jed noted that her voice was falsely cheerful and he had no reason to listen, no reason not to carry on and see the next patient, except he found himself writing a lot more slowly, found himself wanting to know perhaps more than he should if they were planning to keep things light.

‘I heard you and Lloyd split up?’

‘We did.’

‘What’s he doing with himself these days?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Jasmine said. ‘We’re divorced now. I think he’s working in his family’s business.’

As Jed went to clip the X-ray slip to Annie’s door he saw the paramedic give Jasmine a brief cuddle.

‘You had nothing to do with it, Jasmine, we all know that. You don’t have to hide.’

‘I’m not hiding.’

And there was no such thing as uncomplicated, Jed decided, looking at Annie’s X-rays a good hour later and ringing down for the orthopaedic surgeons. They’d both agreed to keep it light, to take things slowly. Neither of them talked much, about families or friends or the past, and it should suit him, and yet the more he knew, or rather the less he got to know …