‘Alice.’
Even her name was a caress on his lips. She closed her eyes briefly, annoyed that her radar had failed to warn her that he was coming. Marco Ricci, her unbelievably sexy, unbelievably annoying and insubordinate subordinate. Except that had sexual connotations, and there was no room for any of that in their relationship and she was keeping it that way if it killed her.
Which it might.
She sucked in a breath, plastered a noncommittal smile on her lips and turned to face him.
‘Marco. Did you want me?’
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Something flitted through his eyes and was gone, but his lips had twitched and she braced herself for the smart retort.
‘Nothing that won’t keep. You look beautiful tonight, Alice,’ he murmured, his voice like rough silk teasing her nerve endings.
She felt a wash of colour sweep up her throat and she looked away, shocked by the hitch in her heart rate and her body’s reaction to that deep, rich, slightly accented voice and the slow caress of his eyes that had left fire in its wake.
She was used to him flirting with her, but he wasn’t flirting now. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice went far beyond that and called to something deep inside her, long repressed, cold and lonely and desperate for attention.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, and swallowed hard. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’
Understatement of the century. He was sexy enough in scrubs. In a beautifully cut tux that showed off broad, solid shoulders to perfection, with the sharp contrast of the blinding white dress shirt against olive skin darkened by the shadow of stubble, those dark-lashed eyes simmering with latent heat, he was jaw-droppingly, unsettlingly gorgeous and she felt the impact of it in every yearning cell of her body.
‘So—Evie’s done a brilliant job organising this,’ she added hurriedly, hauling her eyes off him and groping for something uncontroversial. ‘I wouldn’t have believed the conference hall could be turned into such an amazing ballroom.’
‘No,’ he said, not taking his eyes from her face. Not that she was looking at him, but she could still feel the steady, searching gaze of those magnetic eyes and her pulse was rocketing.
She was trying to find something to say to fill the yawning void when the music started, and to her surprise he held out his hand to her.
‘Come. Dance with me. We’ve been fighting all day about nothing and it’s time to stop.’
‘Is that an apology?’
She made herself meet his eyes again, and for a fleeting instant she thought she saw regret. No. Marco never regretted anything, he wasn’t made like that. She’d imagined it. Of course it wasn’t an apology.
‘Yes, it’s an apology,’ he said softly, his Italian accent suddenly stronger. ‘Dance with me, Alice. Life’s serious enough. It’s time to have some fun.’
Fun? She hadn’t let herself have fun in years. At least, not the sort of fun she thought he was talking about.
Eyes steady, he took the glass out of her hand, handed it to one of the circulating bar staff and led her to the dance floor, turning her into his arms. She felt the heat of his hand on her bare back, the other still holding hers, curled loosely between them by her shoulder. Normally her head was level with his chest, but she was wearing heels tonight and her eyes were right by his immaculately knotted bow tie. Above it she could see the throb of a pulse beating in his throat, and he tilted his head so his cheek was against her forehead as he drew her closer.
She could smell cologne, just a faint touch of something exotic, something dangerously enticing that seemed to enter her bloodstream and invade every part of her as she swayed to the music. The hand on her back slid down, down to the base of her spine, his fingers splayed against her skin as he eased her closer still.
Too close for her sanity. Close enough to bring back the dream—
She took a step back out of his arms.
‘I need some air,’ she said breathlessly, and, turning, she made her way quickly off the crowded dance floor and out of the conference hall, her body on fire with a need she’d never felt before, hadn’t even known existed.
The lift? She couldn’t run downstairs in her heels, so there was no choice, and the lift was standing there waiting...
* * *
He watched her retreat for a nanosecond, then followed her, carving his way through the crowd, the white-blonde of her hair easy to pick out when he could find it, but even in those heels she wasn’t tall and the room was full and he kept losing her.
The doors. She was heading for the doors, and then the lift. He cut off the corner, went through another set of doors and reached the hallway just as the lift doors started to close.
Good job he was fit. He sprinted across the landing from a standing start, slammed his hand into the gap and pushed the doors open again.
She turned and met his eyes furiously—or desperately?
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, but her voice sounded odd, a little frantic.
He hit the button to close the doors. ‘What does it look like? I’m following you.’
‘Why?’
Her voice was breathless, a slight catch in it, and he smiled a little grimly. ‘Because I need to apologise properly. Not just about the fighting, but about this, too.’
He stabbed the button for the ground floor and folded his arms just to stop himself reaching out to her.
‘What this? I don’t understand.’
He sighed again. ‘Yes, you do, Alice, because it’s just here, between us, all the time,’ he told her, waving his hand back and forth between them, ‘and it’s getting in the way of our work. We need to talk about it.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ she said, but she couldn’t hold his eyes, and he unfolded his arms and reached out and turned her head gently to face him.
‘Am I?’ he murmured. ‘Am I really? I don’t think so, Alice. I think you want me as much as I want you, and what we have to do is work out how we’re going to deal with it, because we have to, one way or the other, because it’s getting in the way all the time and it can’t go on like this.’
* * *
It was there again in his eyes, that flash of something she’d seen just before he’d asked her to dance, briefly pushed aside by regret but back again now, with bells on.
Heat. Smouldering heat in the black depths of his eyes, his pupils flared, his chest rising and falling as he studied her silently, those eyes reeling her in.
‘Why would you want me?’ she asked, her voice annoyingly breathless again. ‘Of all the women in this hospital, why me, Marco?’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Why? Because you’re beautiful and sexy and funny and sharp and clever and—because you keep your distance, button yourself up, bottle up everything that I can see raging inside you, and all I can think about is unbuttoning all those tiny little buttons holding you together and seeing what would happen if I set those feelings free.’
Set them free? The thought terrified her, because he was right, they were there, raging inside her, and every day, every minute, every time she saw him, this beautiful, magnificent, tempestuous, arrogant man, she wanted him.
And