And now, almost two months into our working together, it had come down to this.
I’d woken up at five this morning, cursing myself in the darkness, when any sensible person would have drowsed in bed for hours longer. I’d been woken by Caesar, who’d trotted into my bedroom to heft his huge fluffy body at the foot of my bed. The sheepdog had become my morning alarm, because he only came to visit me after Edward was gone. When the dog woke me, I knew the day’s battle was already half-lost.
Now, snow was falling softly outside as I hurried toward the gardener’s cottage. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt more tightly over my head, shivering as the gravel crunched beneath my feet. It was still dark, as was to be expected at five o’clock in December, the darkest day of the year.
I’d thought I could bring Edward St. Cyr to his knees? Ha. I’d thought I would make him beg for mercy? Double ha.
I’d worked with football players, injured stuntmen, even a few high-powered corporate types. I thought I knew what to expect from the typical arrogant alpha male.
But Edward was tough. Tougher than I’d ever seen.
Shivering down the garden path in the darkness, I pushed open the cottage door to discover that, just as I’d thought, Edward was already there. Doing yoga stretches on the mat, he looked well warmed up, his skin glowing with health, his body sleek in the T-shirt and shorts as he leaned forward in Downward Dog. My eyes lingered unwillingly on his muscular backside, pushed up in the air.
“’Morning.” Straightening, Edward looked back at me with amusement, as if he knew exactly where my eyes had been. I blushed, and his grin widened. He stretched his arms over his head, then spread his arms and legs wide in Warrior II Pose. “Enjoy your lie-in, did you?”
“I didn’t sleep in,” I protested. “It’s the middle of the night!”
He lifted his eyebrows and murmured, “If five is too early for you, just say so.”
I glared at him. “It’s fine. Happy to be here.” I’d come at four tomorrow, I vowed privately. Maybe I’d start sleeping in the gym, instead of the beautiful four-poster bed down the hall from Edward’s master suite on the second floor of Penryth Hall.
Edward looked at me with infinite patience. “Whenever you’re ready....”
Scowling, I stomped to the equipment closet, where I yanked out a stairstep and some resistance bands. The bands got caught, so I yanked even harder.
“Maybe you should do some yoga,” he observed. “It’s very calming.”
My scowl deepened. “Let’s just get started.”
I supervised his stretches, rotating his foot and his arm and shoulder, before we progressed to squats and knee lifts on the step, then thirty minutes on the exercise bike, then stretching again with the resistance bands, then walking on the treadmill, then lifting weights—carefully, with me spotting him. I helped him stretch and strengthen his muscles, stopping him before he could do himself another injury, or dislocate his shoulder again. But it was a constant battle between us. He worked like a demon at it, and his determination showed.
After nearly two months, he no longer wore a sling or brace. In fact, looking at him now, you wouldn’t see a sign of injury. He looked like a powerful, virile male.
And he was.
Damn it.
Don’t notice. Don’t look.
We’d become almost friends, in a way. During the hours of physical therapy, we’d talked to fill the silence, and prove that neither of us was winded. I’d learned that his financial firm was worth billions, was called St. Cyr Global, and had been started by his great-grandfather, then run by his grandfather and father, until Edward took it over at twenty-two with his father’s death. He’d tried to explain what his company did precisely, but it was hopeless. My eyes glazed faster than you can say derivatives and credit default swaps. It was more interesting to hear him talk about his cousin Rupert, whom he hated, his rival in the company. “That’s why I need to get better,” he said grimly. “So I can crush him.”
Seemed a strange way to treat family. When I was ten, my beloved father had died, which had been gut-wrenching and awful. A year later, my mom had married Howard Lowe, a divorced film producer with a daughter a year younger than me. Howard’s outlandish personality was a big change from my father’s, who’d been a gentle, bookish professor, but we’d still been happy. Until I was seventeen, and my mom had gotten sick. Afterward, I’d realized I wanted a career where I could help people. And patients never died.
“You’ve never lost a single one?” Edward said teasingly.
“You might be the first,” I’d growled. “If you don’t quit adding extra weights to your bar.”
But there were some topics we carefully avoided. I never mentioned Madison, or Jason or my failed movie career. We never again discussed Edward’s car accident in Spain, or the woman he’d loved and tried to kidnap from her husband. We kept it to two types of talk—small and smack.
We’d become coworkers, of a sort. Friends, even.
Friends, I thought mockingly. He’s a client. Not a friend.
So why did my body keep noticing him not as a patient, not even as a friend—but a man?
Beneath the rivalry and banter, I felt his eyes linger on me. I told myself not to take it personally. I’d cut him off from his sex supply. It was like denying gazelles to a lion. He was hungry. And I was handy. He couldn’t help himself from looking, but I wouldn’t fall prey to it.
And so I kept telling myself as we worked together in near silence, till the sun rose weakly over the horizon. Then I heard his stomach growl.
“Hungry?” I said in amusement.
Straightening from his stretch, he looked at me.
“You know I am,” he said quietly.
I turned away, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of my heart. I tried to think of what Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley would say. Looking at my watch, I kept my voice professional. “Time for breakfast.”
But I couldn’t stop looking at him beneath my lashes as we left the cottage to go back to the hall. Edward was so darkly handsome. So powerful and dangerous. So everything that Jason was not.
Stop it. Don’t think that way. But I shivered as we tromped through the snowy garden, beneath morning skies that had now turned sodden violet in color.
A full English breakfast, prepared by Mrs. MacWhirter, was soon ready for us in the medieval dining hall. As I sat beside Edward at the end of the long table, I watched his hands pour hot tea into his china cup. I felt hyperaware of his every movement as he served himself bacon and eggs and toast. I felt him lift the fork to his mouth. I could almost wish I was bacon, feeling the caress of his breath and tongue.
This was getting ridiculous.
Shaking myself angrily, I dumped a bunch of cream and sugar into my coffee.
I couldn’t let myself linger over the face and body of my handsome, brooding boss. But I couldn’t stop. For weeks, my eyes had lingered over his chiseled jawline, often dark with five o’clock shadow. Lingered over the curve of his cruelly sensual lips. Over his wicked smile. Over his large hands, the thickness of his neck, his muscled forearms, dusted with dark hair.
And his eyes. When they met mine, I lingered there most of all.
As I sat next to him now at the breakfast table, pretending to read the newspaper, I couldn’t stop being aware of everything about him. Every time he moved, every slight vibration from his direction amplified in waves. When the waves hit my body, they could have been measured on the Richter scale.
Sadly, there was no chapter in Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley’s book about how a nurse should