‘I promise you, there will be no sleeping.’
Paige swallowed hard. Both at the gravel in his voice and the sincerity in his gaze. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Her throat was parched as she fought a little longer, hoping the sexual malaise invading her bones would lift. ‘Any woman in that room tonight would have accompanied you here in a flash—why the hell do you want me?’
Val gave her a lazy smile as anticipation built in his gut, his loins. ‘Because you’re the only woman who wouldn’t have.’
So she was a challenge? She supposed she should have been insulted but funnily enough they were precisely the right words for him to use. It told her she was something to be conquered and discarded, like all the others. Which, contrarily, right now, suited her just fine. She didn’t have time or room in her life for the distraction of a love affair. But she did have tonight.
Obviously the only thing he was interested in.
It was win-win.
Paige pushed off the wall and without saying a word brushed past him and entered her room. She hoped it looked confident and sexy and that he couldn’t hear the boom of her heart or the knocking of her knees.
She stopped in front of her bed, opened her bag, took her mobile out, checked it for messages then placed it on the bedside table before tossing the bag aside. She heard the click of the door behind her in the muted light and didn’t have to turn to know that he was walking towards her. And in seconds his heat was behind her, his breath at her neck.
He said nothing as his fingers stroked up her arms. Neither did she. Nor did she say anything when his hands peeled the dress off her shoulders, baring her to her waist.
But she did cry out when his thumbs swept across her bare nipples, already hard and eager for his touch.
And when he kissed her neck.
And when he whispered her name.
Paige woke disorientated to a warm hand laid possessively low on her abdomen and a strange buzzing as a pale dawn broke through the gaps in the heavy curtains. She glanced at the clock—five-thirty. They’d been asleep for thirty minutes—Valentino had been true to his word.
The buzzing came again and movement caught her eye as her mobile vibrated and moved slightly across the surface of the bedside table. It must be a text message.
It took another couple of seconds for the import to set in. A text message.
McKenzie.
Instantly frantic, she grabbed her phone and accessed the message, her hands shaking, her heart pounding.
McKenzie woken with a slight temp. Don’t worry. Everything under control.
Paige read the message three times, feeling progressively more ill. Oh, God. Her daughter was sick again and where was she? In the arms of some Italian Lothario thinking only about herself.
She leapt out of bed, ignoring the pull of internal muscles, grabbing for her clothes, furious at herself and Valentino for last night. She should have followed her instincts and gone home. Not stayed. Not let herself be seduced into a one-night stand, no matter how amazing it had been. Seduced into forgetting about the one person who meant more to her than anything else on the entire planet.
Her baby was ill. She had to get to her.
She didn’t even look at Valentino as she threw her things together in record time. Or as she fled the room.
As far as she was concerned, if she ever saw him again, it would be too soon.
Chapter Two
PAIGE arrived for her last day of work before her holidays at St Auburn’s, with a spring in her step. She hadn’t had a spring in her step for a long time but it was there today. She couldn’t believe that McKenzie’s operation was just three days away now. Her daughter hadn’t been unwell or had a fever since the night she’d slept with…since Nat and Alessandro’s wedding two months ago, and she had even put on a little weight.
Things were finally looking up. Finally going their way. All she had to do was convince Harry to let her be in the theatre to observe McKenzie’s operation on Monday and life would be complete.
A butterfly flapped its wings in her stomach as she rehearsed the words again. Not that Paige really thought it would be an issue. Yes, it wasn’t usual but she knew Harry well enough to feel confident that he’d overlook the rules for his right-hand woman.
Paige was actually humming as she entered the operating theatre change rooms. Dr Gloria Reinhart, the anaesthetist Harry used for his lists, was changing into her scrubs and Paige bade her a hearty good morning.
‘Morning,’ Gloria said, staring at Paige, an odd look on her face.
Paige frowned. ‘What?’
Gloria shrugged. ‘Nothing. It’s just that I’ve never heard you hum before.’
Paige didn’t need a translation. She knew she was serious. That she wasn’t much fun. She came to work, ran Harry’s theatre and his clinics with ruthless efficiency, not particularly caring whether she made friends or not. She didn’t socialise or have time for gossip or idle chit-chat.
She was respected. Whether she was liked or not hadn’t been a priority.
Paige grinned. ‘Well, it’s about time that changed, don’t you think?’
Gloria responded with a grin of her own. ‘Past time, I’d say.’
They chatted while Paige changed into her scrubs and then went in different directions—Gloria to the staffroom for a cuppa with her colleagues, Paige to Theatre four to set up for the first case.
The theatre list was sticky-taped to the door of theatre four’s anaesthetic room and Paige removed it. Not that she needed it, she knew exactly which patients were being operated on today. In fact, if pushed, she could probably recite the list for the next month, even though it was next Monday’s she was the most fixated on.
There were two paediatric patients on the list this morning. Children were always done first. It caused less stress for the parents, who didn’t have to wait around all day worrying about their child going under general anaesthesia, and also for the children, who were often at an age where they were frightened of the clinical hospital environment and didn’t understand why they couldn’t eat and drink and run around.
A little thrill ran through Paige’s stomach at the thought that, come Monday, McKenzie Donald would be first on this list and her spirits lifted even further. Paige couldn’t remember a time when she had felt this positive. It had been a long hard three years with many a detour and roadblock. It was hard to believe the path was suddenly clear.
Theatre four was frigid when she entered via the swing doors and Paige rubbed at the goose-bumps on her arms. Soon she would be gowned up and under hot lights and wistfully remembering the cold, but for now it seeped quickly into bones that had very little covering insulating them.
You’re too thin.
The words Valentino had uttered that fateful night as he had lazily run his finger up her spine crept up on her unexpectedly, as they so often did, echoing loudly in her head and sounding very close in the silence of the empty theatre. So close, in fact, she looked behind her to check he hadn’t actually appeared.
Nope. Just her.
She shook her head and frowned. She’d thought about the man so much in the last two months it wouldn’t have surprised her to have conjured him up. She’d tried, usually quite successfully, to pigeonhole her thoughts of him to night-time only, to her dreams, but sometimes they crept up on her unawares.
She should have been insulted by his assessment of her body but one look at the heat and desire in his eyes and she’d known that he hadn’t