It Happened One Night Shift

She wet her lips in some kind of subconscious memory and grimaced at their dryness. Between winter and the hospital air-con they felt perpetually dry. She pulled her lip gloss out of her bag and applied a layer, feeling the immediate relief.

The lift dinged and she pushed wearily off the wall and headed to the fire exit for the last two flights of steps to the rooftop car park. She jumped as a figure loomed in her peripheral vision from the stairs below, her pulse leaping crazily for a second before she realised it was Gareth.

And then her pulse took off for an entirely different reason. ‘You took the stairs?’ she said in disbelief. ‘All eight floors?’

Of course he had. Super-nurse, freaked-out-doctor whisperer, kisser extraordinaire. What wasn’t the man capable of?

‘Of course.’ He grinned. ‘It’s about the only exercise I get these days.’

Billie shook her head as they continued up the last two flights, which was torture enough for her tired body. By the time they’d reached the top and Gareth was opening the door, her thighs were grumbling at her and she was breathing a little harder.

Of course, that could just have been Gareth’s presence.

Was it her overactive imagination or had his ‘After you’ been low and husky and a little too close to her ear?

She stepped out onto the roof, her brain a quagmire of confusion, thankful for the bracing winter air cooling her overheated imagination. She zipped up her hoody and hunched into it.

Gareth was hyper-aware of Billie’s arms brushing against his as they walked across the car park to their vehicles. ‘You on days off now?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Three. How about you?’

‘Me too.’ Which meant they’d be back on together on Wednesday. An itch shot up Gareth’s spine.

Fabulous.

Three days didn’t seem long enough to cleanse himself of the memory of the kiss and he really needed to do that because Billie, he’d discovered, was fast becoming the only thing he thought about.

And that wasn’t conducive to his work. Or his life.

The last woman he remembered having such an instantaneous attraction to wasn’t around any more, and it had taken a long time to get over that. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d managed it yet. He grimaced just thinking about the black hole of the last five years.

Billie was in the ER for six months and the next few years of her life would be hectic, with a virtual roller-coaster of rotations and exams and killer shifts sucking up every spare moment of her time. She didn’t have time to devote to a relationship, let alone one with a forty-year-old widower.

They were in different places in their life journeys.

They reached their cars, parked three spaces from each other, and he almost breathed a loud sigh of relief.

‘Well …’ he said, staring out at the Brisbane city skyline, ‘I guess I’ll be seeing you on Wednesday.’

She looked like she was about to say something but thought better of it, nodding instead, as she jingled her keys in her hand. ‘Sure,’ she murmured. ‘Sleep well.’

Gareth nodded, knowing there was not a chance in hell of that happening. ‘Bye.’

And he turned to walk to his vehicle, sucking in the bracing air and refusing to look back lest he suggest something crazy like her coming to his place and sleeping off her night shift there.

In his bed.

Naked.

Get in the car, man. Get in the car and drive away.

He opened the door, buckled up and started the engine. It took a while for his car to warm up and the windscreen to de-mist and he sat there trying not to think about Billie, or her sparkly dress, or her cute freckles.

Or that damned ill-advised kiss.

A minute later he was set to go and he reversed quickly, eager to make his escape. Except when he passed her car, it was still there and she was out of it, standing at the front with the bonnet open, looking at the engine.

He groaned out loud. No, no, no! So close. He sighed, reversing again and manoeuvring his car back into his car space. He disembarked with trepidation, knowing he shouldn’t but knowing he couldn’t not offer to help her.

‘Problem?’ he asked, as he strode towards her.

Billie looked at him with eyes that felt like they’d been marinating in formaldehyde all night. If possible he looked even better than before. ‘It won’t start,’ she grumbled.

‘Is it just cold?’

‘No. I think the battery’s flat.’

‘Want me to give it a try?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ she invited.

Gareth slid into the plush leather passenger seat and turned the key. A faint couple of drunken whirrs could be heard and that was it. He placed his head on the steering-wheel. Yep. Dead as a doornail.

‘Did you leave your lights on?’ he asked, as he climbed out.

She shook her head. She’d taken her hair out of her ponytail and it swished around her face, the tips brushing against the velour lettering decorating the front of her hoody. Her nose was pink from the cold.

‘The car automatically turns them off anyway.’

Of course it did. It wasn’t some twenty-year-old dinosaur. A pity, because if it had been he could have offered her a jump start. But with the newer vehicles being almost totally computerised, he knew that wasn’t advisable.

‘Do you have roadside assistance?’

‘No. I know, I know …’ Billie said, as he frowned at her. She rubbed her hands together, pleased for the warmth of her jeans and fleecy top in her unexpected foray into the cold. ‘It expired a few months back and I keep meaning to renew it but …’

His whiskers looked even shaggier after three nights and his disapproving blue eyes seemed to leap out at her across the distance. ‘You’re a woman driving alone places, you should have roadside assistance.’

Billie supposed she should be affronted by his assumption that she was some helpless woman but, as with everything else, she found his concern for her well-being completely irresistible.

He sighed. ‘I’ll drive down to the nearest battery place and get you one,’ he said.

Billie blinked as his irresistibility cranked up another notch. Was he crazy? ‘It’s Sunday, Gareth. Nothing’s going to be open till at least ten and I don’t know about you but I’m too tired to wait that long.’ She shut her bonnet. ‘I’ll get a taxi home and deal with the battery this afternoon after I’ve had a sleep.’

Gareth knew he was caught then. He couldn’t let her get a taxi home. Not when he could easily drop her. Unless she lived way out of his way. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said. ‘Where do you live?’

He hoped it was somewhere really far away.

Billie would have been deaf not to hear the reluctance in his voice. And she was too tired to decipher what it meant. Tired enough to be pissed off. ‘You don’t have to do that, Gareth,’ she said testily, fishing around in her bag for her mobile phone. ‘I’m perfectly capable of ringing and paying for a taxi. I could even walk.’