‘What do you mean—if you can find it?’ Cassidy bent over and read the squiggly writing on the tag.
Brad shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dowangate Lane. I’m not entirely sure where it is. One of the porters put me onto it at short notice. I needed somewhere that was furnished and was available at short notice. He says its only five minutes away from here, but I don’t recognise the street name.’
Cassidy gave him a suspicious look. ‘I don’t suppose anyone told you that I live near there.’
‘Really? No, I’d no idea. Can you give me some directions?’
Cassidy sighed. ‘Sure. Go out the front of the hospital, take a left, walk a few hundred yards down the road, take a right, go halfway down the street and go down the nearby close. Dowangate Lane runs diagonally off it. But the street name fell off years ago.’
Cassidy had a far-away look in her eyes and was gesturing with her arms. Her voice got quicker and quicker as she spoke, her Scottish accent getting thicker by the second.
‘I have no idea what you just said.’
Cassidy stared at him—hard. ‘It would probably be easier if I just showed you.’
‘Really? Would you?’
‘If it means you’ll get all this rubbish out of my duty room, it will be worth it.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘Do you want my help or not?’
He bent forward and caught her gesturing arms. ‘I would love your help, Cassidy Rae. How does six o’clock sound?’ There it was again—that strawberry scent from her hair. That could become addictive.
She stopped talking. He could feel the little goose-bumps on her bare arms. Was she cold? Or was it something else?
Whatever it was, he was feeling it, too. Not some wild, throw-her-against-the-wall attraction, although he wouldn’t mind doing that. It was weird. Some kind of connection.
Maybe he wasn’t the only person looking for a Christmastime distraction.
She was staring at him with those big brown eyes again. Only a few seconds must have passed but it felt like minutes.
He could almost hear her thought processes. As if she was wondering what was happening between them, too.
‘Six o’clock will be fine,’ she said finally, as she lowered her eyes and brushed past him.
Brad hung his white coat up behind the door and pulled his shirt over his head. He paused midway. What was he going to do with it?
Cass stuck her head around the door. ‘Are you ready yet?’ Her eyes caught the tanned, taut abdomen and the words stuck in her throat. She felt the colour rush into her cheeks. ‘Oops, sorry.’ She pulled back from the door.
All of a sudden she felt like a teenager again. And trust him to have a set of to-die-for abs. Typical. There was no way she was ever taking her clothes off in front of Mr Ripped Body.
Where had that come from? Why on earth would she ever take her clothes off in front of him? That was it. She was clearly losing her marbles.
Almost automatically, she sucked in her stomach and looked downwards. Her pink jumper hid a multitude of sins, so why on earth was she bothering?
Brad’s hand rested on the edge of the door as he stuck his head back round. ‘Don’t be so silly, Cassidy. You’re a nurse. It’s not like you haven’t seen it all before. Come back in. I’ll be ready in a second.’
She swallowed the huge lump at the back of her throat. His shoulder was still bare. He was obviously used to stripping off in front of women and was completely uninhibited.
So why did that thought rankle her?
She took a deep breath and stepped back into the room, trying to avert her eyes without being obvious. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was embarrassed. With an attitude like his, she’d never live it down.
He was rummaging in a black holdall. Now she could see the muscles across his back. No love handles for him. He yanked a pale blue T-shirt from the bag and pulled it over his head, turning round and tugging it down over his washboard stomach.
‘Ready. Can we go?’
Cassidy had a strange expression on her face. Brad automatically looked down. Did he have a huge ketchup stain on his T-shirt? Not that he could see. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, matching the soft pink jumper she was wearing. A jumper that hugged the shape of her breasts very nicely. Pink was a good colour on her. It brought out the warm tones in her face and hair that had sometimes been lost in the navy-blue tunic she’d been wearing earlier. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a short ponytail, with a few wayward curls escaping. She was obviously serious about helping him move. No fancy coats and stiletto heels for her. Which was just as well as there were around fifty boxes to lug over to his new flat.
‘Will you manage to carry some of these boxes down to my car?’
‘I’ll do better than that.’ She opened the door to reveal one of the porters’ trolleys for transporting boxes of equipment around the hospital. The huge metal cage could probably take half of his boxes in one run.
‘Genius. You might be even more useful than I thought.’
‘See, I’m not just a pretty face,’ she shot back, to his cheeky remark. ‘You do realise this is going to cost you, don’t you?’ She pulled the cage towards the duty room, letting him stand in the doorway and toss out boxes that she piled up methodically.
‘How much?’ As he tossed one of the boxes, the cardboard flaps sprang open, spilling his boxers and socks all over the floor.
Cassidy couldn’t resist. The colours of every imagination caught her eyes and she lifted up a pair with Elmo from Sesame Street emblazoned on the front. ‘Yours?’ she asked, allowing them to dangle from one finger.
He grabbed them. ‘Stop it.’ He started ramming them back into the box, before raising his eyebrows at her. ‘I’ll decide when you get to see my underwear.’
When. Not if. The thought catapulted through her brain as she tried to keep her mind on the job at hand. The boxes weren’t neatly packed or taped shut. And the way he kept throwing them at her was ruining her precision stacking in the metal cage.
‘Slow down,’ she muttered. ‘The more you irritate me, the more my price goes up. You’re currently hovering around a large pizza or a sweet-and-sour chicken. Keep going like this and you’ll owe me a beer as well.’
The cheeky grin appeared at her shoulder in an instant. ‘You think I won’t buy you a beer?’ He stared at the neatly stacked boxes. ‘Uh-oh. I sense a little obsessive behaviour. One of your staff warned me about wrecking the neatly packed boxes of gloves in the treatment room. I can see why.’
‘Nothing wrong with being neat and tidy.’ Cassidy straightened the last box. ‘Okay, I think that’s enough for now. We can take the rest downstairs on the second trip.’
Something flashed in front of his eyes. Something wicked. ‘You think so?’
He waited while she nodded, then as quick as a flash he shoved her in the cage, clicking the door behind her and pushing the cage down the corridor.
Cassidy let out a squeal. For the second time today she was surrounded by piles of toppling boxes. ‘Let me out!’ She got to her knees in the cage as he stopped in front of the lifts and pushed the ‘down’ button.
His shoulders were shaking with laughter as he pulled a key from his pocket for the ‘Supplies Only’ lift and opened the door. ‘What can I say? You bring out the wicked side in me. I couldn’t resist wrecking