One Night She Would Never Forget

Miranda smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘We don’t have to do this, Miranda.’

She blinked at him, searching his face for signs of disingenuousness. Relief flooded through her when she found none. Patrick looked like he was perfectly willing to say goodnight and leave things as they were.

And he’d be gone tomorrow and she’d never see him again.

But she’d always wonder.

She smiled at him, dropping her hand from the key. ‘I want to.’

Patrick kept his arm in place, the key still extended in her direction. ‘Are you sure, Miranda? Really, really sure?’

She grinned at him. She’d never been surer of anything. ‘Open the damn door, Patrick.’

He grinned back then turned towards the door, swiping the card through and hearing the click as the lights turned green. He pushed the door open and said, ‘Ladies first.’

Patrick’s gut clenched as she brushed past him on the way in, his pulse picking up in anticipation. The door closed behind him and then it was just him and her in the darkened alcove and she was standing there looking at him with possession in her eyes. His groin throbbed in response.

He walked two paces until their bodies were almost touching. She smelled like soap and Shiraz and the combination was intoxicating. He dipped his head to capture her mouth, to savour her taste and to slowly explore her mouth, her neck.

But a little whimper from somewhere at the back of her throat was his undoing and he was deepening the kiss, and her arms were twining around his neck and pulling them together, and before he knew it he’d pushed her up against the wall and they were both breathing hard.

Her hands found the hem of his shirt and it was suddenly gone. Her shirt followed. As did her bra. And as her nipples ruched beneath the pads of his thumbs, his zip was tugged down and her hand was finding its way inside.

He tore his mouth from hers and bit down on a groan. ‘Bed,’ he said, swinging her up in his arms, kissing her ravaged mouth again as he strode in the general direction, stopped at the mini-bar and panted, ‘condoms,’ satisfied when she snagged the pack of three that sat propped next to the salted nuts, barely breaking contact.

In four more strides he’d reached the bed and Patrick threw her on the mattress grateful that she’d thought to leave on one of the subdued down lights so he could see her breasts jiggle enticingly.

She was bare to her waist and breathing hard, her hair was spread out in a wild tangle on the white sheets around her.

Three condoms were never going to be enough.

CHAPTER TWO

February

THE LOCKER ROOM was unusually empty for this time of the morning as Miranda climbed into her scrubs. The novelty of scoring a job in the operating theatres at St Benedict’s had still not worn off and she inhaled the fresh, clean smell of the shirt as she pulled it down over her head like it was the latest from Versace.

The last few months had been a steep learning curve and she was excited today to be starting her anaesthetics rotation. This was where she was hoping to specialise eventually. Scrubbing in on operations and being a surgeon’s right hand was all well and good but she missed the patient contact. At least anaesthetics gave her an opportunity to talk to the people undergoing surgery, even if they were worried and anxious.

Miranda shoved her socked feet into the theatre clogs she’d been issued and grabbed a paper cap from the stash in her locker. She tied it at the back of her head, pleased that she’d decided to cut her hair short rather than have to manage long hair in a theatre cap all day.

The door burst open and two of the more experienced scrub nurses entered, filling the silence. ‘I tell you he’s hot,’ Lilly Martin said. ‘The man wears pink scrubs, pink, for crying out loud and still manages to look like a sex god.’

‘Isn’t he married?’ Denise Grady queried, nodding at Miranda as she went past.

‘Ah, but there’s married, then there’s married, isn’t that right, Miranda?’

Miranda was a little intimidated by Lilly’s brashness. She’d learned a lot about being a scrub nurse under Lilly’s tutelage but she was uncomfortable around the other woman’s forceful personality. Lilly was only a couple of years older than her but Miranda felt like a gauche seventeen-year-old again in comparison.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she murmured, not wanting to get into a debate with Lilly, who could be very opinionated. Married was married as far as she was concerned. No qualifiers. It certainly made people off limits in her books.

Not that she spent all her spare time on the prowl, as Lilly seemed to do. Or even had any spare time. Between shift work and a five-year-old, her hours were well and truly occupied.

Except for that one night.

Her mind drifted to Patrick. A very naked Patrick sprawled in her hotel bed, smiling that satisfied smile. Her cheeks warmed and her stomach rolled over. It had been everything she could ever have hoped for—she had no regrets.

‘Edna said she’d be in Theatre one when you’re done here,’ Lilly said, breaking into her delicious thoughts of a truly wonderful morning glory.

‘Oh, right.’ Miranda gave herself a mental shake, dragging her brain back to the present. ‘Thanks.’

She left Lilly and Denise to their gossip session and headed down the long corridor that separated the theatres on one side from the storerooms, staffrooms and offices on the other. St Benny’s had eight operating theatres. Six were running today with the morning procedures all about to get under way.

Goose-bumps pricked her bare arms as the frigid environment caused her to shiver. The theatres seemed to have only two temperatures—freezing cold or, if you were scrubbed and gowned under huge operating lights, boiling hot.

Miranda pushed open the swing doors to theatre one’s anaesthetic room. Edna, an ex-army nurse, who had been at St Benny’s since Eve had been a child, looked up from a trolley and smiled.

‘Miranda, my dear, how are you?’

Miranda smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Edna was the stereotypical mother figure, round and jolly and protective of her brood of new grads, though it had taken Miranda only a few days to figure out that you could take the woman out of the army but not the army out of the woman. Edna ran whichever theatre she was in charge of like a military operation and did not suffer fools gladly.

Including prima donna surgeons.

‘Right.’ Edna smiled. ‘Let’s get started. All this week will be spent familiarising yourself with machinery and drugs and some theory,’ she said, waving a thick booklet in the air, ‘then you’ll have a couple of shifts teamed up with a mentor and next week you’ll be on your own. How does that sound?’

‘Terrifying?’ Miranda admitted.

Edna chuckled. ‘You’ll be fine, dear. Just remember, if in doubt, ask. The anaesthetists won’t bite.’

Miranda nodded. Sage advice she fully intended to take.

The anaesthetists at Benny’s were experienced and very open to teaching and formed part of the great team atmosphere Miranda loved so much. Patients always raved about their surgeons and took the poor old anaesthetist for granted. If only they understood it was the anaesthetists who had the most important job—they were the ones keeping the patients alive during the operation!

Miranda absently hoped that the new guy—the god in pink scrubs—was also a team player. It only took one rotten apple to make a workplace insufferable.

Half an hour into her orientation the swing doors opened and Genevieve Cowan, the director of anaesthetics, entered, chatting to a man in pink scrubs.

A very familiar man in pink scrubs.

Patrick?

Even with his hair hidden by his blue theatre cap, she recognised him instantly. And even if she’d been suddenly blinded her traitorous cells would have whispered his presence to her anyway. Every single oxygen molecule inside Miranda’s lungs seemed to burst in unison and for a moment she struggled to catch her breath.

‘This is Edna,’ Genevieve was saying. ‘I don’t think you’ve met her yet.’