Her heartbeat went suddenly haywire. Not with apprehension or fear, but with excitement...anticipation...a wild flutter of joy. Anything could happen in a couple of days!
Of course, even longer would be better...if he could stretch his visit to include Sydney.
‘Keep still,’ Jack rapped. ‘You’re dislodging the ice-pack.’
‘Sorry.’ She obediently settled back, her eyes still closed. ‘You—er—you’re not flying down to Sydney, Jack, to catch up with your friends there?’
She found she was crossing her fingers again, hoping—ridiculously—that he might change his mind and fly down to Sydney in two days’ time, perhaps even catching the same plane as Diana and herself, to spend a few days with a new friend, before flying back to America. She trembled at the thought.
‘You’re getting cold,’ Jack said, feeling the tremor run through her. ‘Or did I hurt you?’
She let one eye flicker open. He hadn’t answered her question, she noticed. Obviously he had no thought of flying down to Sydney. He preferred to spend his few spare days here, relaxing on the Sunshine Coast.
‘No...I’m fine.’ She gulped. His face was very close...disturbingly close. She could see every line and pore and vein in his deeply tanned face...every separate eyelash fringing the piercing blue eyes...the sooty shadow of regrowth on his chin and jaw. Another tremor shook her.
‘You are cold.’ With his free hand, he began to massage her bare legs. Under the soothing stroke of his palm, her skin felt suddenly burning hot, anything but chilled. ‘Not that you feel cold,’ he murmured. ‘Your skin’s as warm as...a new-laid egg. And as smooth. Silky-smooth. Not a single goosebump.’
Her breath seized in her throat, the provocative words affecting her as much as his gently stroking touch. If he wanted to stop her trembling, he was going about it in quite the wrong way!
‘It’s just the chill from the ice!’ she croaked, not wanting him to think she was trembling because of him. Even if she was.
‘Is it too cold?’ he asked, adjusting the pack slightly. ‘How’s that? Or do you feel you’ve had enough?’
‘No! I mean...I think I could take a bit more,’ she assured him breathlessly. ‘I’m sure it’s helping.’ She wanted to keep him close for a bit longer, wanted him to go on stroking her legs, wanted him to go on talking to her in that tantalisingly intimate way.
Wanted him to want her as much as she was beginning to want him.
Flustered by the startling thought, by the erotic images swirling through her mind, she blurted out another question. ‘How long will it be, Jack, before you come back to Australia?’
His eyes swam over hers, and she had a sensation of drowning—pleasantly this time, not with fear in her heart, as she’d felt earlier in that treacherous rip.
‘Maybe sooner than I thought,’ he said softly, only to draw back, as if he’d startled himself by the admission.
‘Tell me, Kate,’ he added in a lighter vein, making her wonder if he’d changed the subject deliberately, ‘have you always wanted to be a doctor?’
Her breath whispered out in a faint sigh. She would far rather have heard why he was thinking of coming home sooner than planned. ‘No...not always,’ she admitted. ‘I once dreamed of being an artist,’ she told him honestly, giving a brief laugh as she said it, to show him the dream was well and truly behind her.
‘An artist?’ His gaze veered towards the sketchbook she’d dropped on the grass beside her beach-bag. ‘What kind of artist?’ he asked curiously. ‘Landscapes? Modern art? Still life?’
‘Portraits.’ She felt herself blushing under the cold pack, and hoping fervently that he wouldn’t take it into his head to snatch up her sketchbook and peek inside. But he would never do that. Not without her permission...
Would he?
‘So...it’s faces and figures that interest you.’
Figures... The heat in her cheeks intensified.
‘I...it was just a childish pipe dream,’ she told him, dismissing the once burning passion. ‘I used to draw a lot when I was younger. I loved it. But in my final year at school I...decided to do medicine instead. Art’s just a hobby now,’ she said with a shrug.
She blinked away a sudden image of her sister...the sister who’d been so determined to follow in their famous father’s footsteps. Charlotte’s death had changed everything. Taking up medicine, as her sister had, had seemed the best way to ease her parents’ pain...to make them proud of her, as they’d been of Charlotte. She’d hoped to make up in some small way for their tragic loss.
But she was going to be a decidedly pale shadow of her sister, she was sadly aware, because she intended to be a simple, ordinary GP, like her mother, not a prestigious heart surgeon like her father...like Charlotte had hoped to be. Her father, she knew, still had hopes that she would specialise, but her mind was made up. She wanted to be a more down-to-earth, patient-oriented doctor, like her mother—dealing with the whole of a person, mind, body and soul, not just focusing on one small, if vital part.
‘So you chose to do medicine...just like that.’ The piercing blue eyes glimmered under her gaze. She wasn’t sure if it was in admiration...or amusement. ‘You must have been a bright student, Kate. It’s some switch...from art to medicine. What brought it about? Family pressure? Peer pressure? Parental expectations? You have doctors in your family?’
She sat up abruptly, causing the ice-pack to spin from his feather-light grasp and land in her lap. Snatching it up, she pressed it into her bruised flesh with fingers far less gentle than his.
‘No one pressured me...I wanted to do medicine!’ She couldn’t meet Jack’s eye. She was afraid that if she did, it would all tumble out...how and why Charlotte had died...how shattered her parents had been, her father in particular...how her father had vented his fury on his daughter’s absent ex-lover, tearing up the note of condolence Jonathan Savage had sent from America after Charlotte’s death, and throwing it away in disgust.
No...she couldn’t bring herself to tell Jack all that. She was afraid tears would tumble out along with the words, and she didn’t want to cry in front of Jack, didn’t want to bring a sad note into their brief time together...or, worse, make him uncomfortable. Some men tended to back away from tragedy and emotion...from emotional females in particular...and she didn’t want Jack backing away from her.
‘But you still find time to do some sketching...’ Jack’s voice splintered her fevered thoughts.
She peeked up at him through her lashes, relief whooshing through her that he hadn’t pressed her for an answer, that he’d switched from the subject of medicine. He was eyeing her sketchbook again, she noted, with a rush of heat to her cheeks.
‘May I take a look?’
Alarm flared in her eyes as he reached down and picked it up.
‘No!’ she cried, her cheeks positively flaming now. The ice-pack, forgotten, slipped from her fingers onto the grass. ‘Please, Jack—’
He laughed. It was obvious he thought she was just teasing him, or being coy. ‘I won’t criticise, I promise. I can’t draw a straight line myself.’ He flipped it open before she could stop him.
Dismay, humiliation, washed over her as a slow smile spread across his face.
‘So...you did see me.’ His lips stretched wider. ‘From more than one angle, it seems.’
She wished she could sink through the banana lounger into oblivion. She’d more than just ‘seen’ him—she’d memorised every powerful sinew and tautly packed muscle of his fantastic body. She’d never been more mortified in her life!
‘They’re very detailed sketches.’ He eyed