Luca waited until they were seated at one of the shaded outside tables before he launched straight into the speech he’d been practising.
‘I’m sorry … about last night … It shouldn’t have happened,’ Luca said. ‘I take full responsibility. I should have shown more restraint.’ It was then he realised that he hadn’t even thought about contraception. Hell.
‘Don’t,’ Rilla said, holding up her hand and refusing to let him shoulder the blame. It was typical of Luca to want to protect her, but she was just as accountable. ‘I wanted it as much as you did.’
‘No.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘You were tired. Your niece was ill. It was a … mistake.’
Rilla felt strangely miffed by his critical summation of their spontaneous passion. She knew he was right, that their relationship didn’t need the complication, but as far as mistakes went, Rilla had made a few in her life and none of them had ever made her feel quite that good.
She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. Like she had head-banging sex against doors with men every day of the week. ‘People have sex with their exes all the time, Luca. I think it was probably inevitable. Now it’s out of our systems, we can get on with our lives. We’ve banished the lust demons, so to speak. Cleared the air.’
‘That was clearing the air?’ he asked incredulously. Seven years of denial had culminated in a hell of a climax and banished nothing. In fact, his libido, non-existent for years, had suddenly roared to life.
How were they supposed to put their past behind them, work together after that? Maybe he should have thought his impulse to apply for the position at the General through a little better. Maybe he should have ignored the urge and stayed in the UK. But the divorce papers arriving out of the blue after seven years of silence had thrown him, and he hadn’t questioned the whim to return.
Rilla blushed. OK, maybe that was simplifying it too much, considering her entire body still throbbed with his possession. Sitting opposite him now, his masculinity a potent aphrodisiac, she realised it had just whetted her appetite. Exacerbated the desire she’d kept a tight lid on for the last seven years.
‘I just think we should put last night in context. You said you came back for closure. I think we both got that last night. One last hurrah, so to speak. The important thing is we have to work together, Luca. I’ve worked hard to establish my career. I’m up for the NUM position and I can’t let anything derail my focus. Sign the papers, Luca. Let’s put an end to it so we can both move forward.’
Rilla paused, proud of her rock-solid delivery. Inside she was quaking but she knew it had sounded succinct and confident. They could analyse last night until the cows came home. It was what they did from now on that mattered.
‘You’ve changed,’ Luca murmured. She was decisive. Taking the lead. Confident. Not the Rilla who had been happy just being part of them.
Rilla shrugged. ‘I grew up, Luca. I had a miscarriage. We grew apart. You left.’
Luca winced at her ruthless but concise summation of their downward spiral.
‘Did you expect to come back and find me pining for you?’
Had he? Luca didn’t know. He would have been sorely disappointed if he had. She hadn’t even kept her wedding ring on. ‘I don’t know, Rilla.’
Rilla searched his face for a sign of his real motives. For something to make sense of his reappearance. She found nothing in his schooled features. His black eyes were unreadable, his face carefully neutral. So different from last night.
She’d seen that look too many times before. Even when she had told him to leave he had looked at her with that frustrating distance in his gaze. ‘Did you even think about me, Luca?’ she asked.
Every day. I picked up the phone to ring you every day for two years. ‘More than was good for my sanity.’
Rilla felt her heart stop in her chest before resuming at an erratic pace. She hadn’t expected to hear the wrenched admission.
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘You were my husband. I loved you. You were never far from my thoughts.’
Luca felt the husky timbre of her voice right down to his groin. ‘Am. Present tense. I am your husband.’
Rilla looked at him incredulously. Just because they’d had sex, it didn’t make them a couple again again. Too much time had passed. If it had only been two years or even five, she could have still held out hope. But his distance and his silence had gradually killed anything she’d ever felt for him.
‘No. Luca. You are my estranged husband. One signature and you’re my ex-husband. Let’s not kid ourselves that last night was any more than a unique situation fuelled by emotion and fatigue.’
‘And you think we can work together again with last night between us?’
They had to. She’d worked too long and too hard to jeopardise her chances at the top job now. ‘We’re not teenagers, Luca,’ she said, not bothering to disguise her annoyance. ‘With any luck I’m about to land the NUM position. Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to get along. Do I think we can ever go back to the way we used to work together? No. But, then, we’re no longer lowly registrar and junior nurse. You’re the consultant and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be NUM. People will be looking to us to lead. I know we can treat each other with respect and collegial propriety. In fact, I expect it. Will that be a problem for you?’
Yes and no. Certainly he would show her the same respect he’d always shown her at work as an important and integral part of the team. Someone whose opinion he valued highly. But even now, sitting opposite her, despite her assertions they’d exorcised their lust demons, he knew he wanted her again. Would that get worse, seeing her every day?
‘No problem,’ Luca assured her.
Rilla expelled the breath she’d been holding when it had looked like he was about to argue. ‘Good.’ She swallowed the remnants of her coffee. ‘In that case I look forward to working with you again, Dr Romano.’
She offered her hand and was pleased when he encompassed it in a firm grip.
‘And you, Sister Winters.’
She ignored the mad flutter of the pulse at her wrist as his low voice stroked her skin and his hand lingered. She extracted hers determinedly. There was no space in her life to indulge in fluttering pulses.
Rilla returned to work on Monday, knowing that Bridie was out of PICU and probably going to be discharged from the kids’ ward tomorrow. The fact that Hailey worked there and would be looking out for their niece doubled Rilla’s confidence.
All she had to worry about now was the fact that it was Luca’s first day at the hospital. A ball of nervous energy sat in the pit of her stomach as she worried how their first day back at work together would pan out. She’d only caught the odd glance of him over the last few days as he’d popped in to see Bridie each day, and knowing that she would be seeing him every day was daunting to say the least.
She was also acutely aware that too much of the space in her head in the last few days had been taken up by their explosive joining. It had replayed over and over in her mind. She’d looked at it from every angle, analysed it, berated herself over it and dreamt about it at night in surround-sound, giant-plasma-screen detail.
And she still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
But she was sure of one thing. Their unexpected intimacy complicated her determination to keep their relationship strictly professional.
The