Just One Last Night...

Children she hadn’t wanted.

‘You could still come and work here you know, if this position doesn’t come off. We’re always looking for staff. You could have a job with flexible hours.’

Brent surprised himself with the invitation. But good hospitals needed good doctors. And he knew she wouldn’t be being interviewed unless she was damn good. He wanted the best for the Central, for his department. Their history was immaterial.

He shrugged. ‘The offer’s there, anyway.’

Grace glanced at him, startled. That was a big call. And very generous. But it also had danger written all over it. Her life was complicated enough, without repeating past mistakes.

‘Thanks,’ she said, filing it in a mental bin. ‘So …’ she looked around ‘… is there a minor ops room somewhere?’

Brent stared at her for a moment longer then took the hint. ‘This way.’

They walked to a corridor that ran along the back of the department with several more rooms evenly spaced along its length.

‘That’s X-Ray through there,’ Brent said, pointing to the door at the far end of the corridor. ‘This here …’ he indicated, opening a door ‘… is for minor ops.’

Grace perused the layout and equipment before they moved on to several other rooms, including a storeroom, medication room and an examination room for eye patients housing an expensive specialised microscope.

‘Dokator Brent!’

‘Oh, hell,’ Brent groaned at the raised female voice from nearby floated towards them. He looked behind him at the trail of black scuff marks his shoes had left on the polished linoleum floor.

‘Dokator Brent!’

The heavily accented voice was closer this time, more insistent, and Grace looked at Brent, perplexed. ‘Who is that?’

‘That’s Sophia,’ he said, frantically scrubbing at the nearest mark with his shod foot. ‘She’s the department’s cleaner. She’s a dear old thing, has to be about ninety years old. Russian or Slavic or something like that. Salt of the earth but takes fanatical pride in her floors. Does not like having them besmirched, and these damn shoes always leave horrible marks.’

As Grace watched he moved on to the next black smudge. She stared at his shoes. They looked expensive—a far cry from the tatty sneakers he’d worn when they’d been young and in love.

‘I don’t usually wear them, except of course I had the interview today. She’ll give me a terrible tongue lashing,’ he groaned, the sole of his shoe erasing the marks.

Grace smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Brent Cartwright terrified of a little old lady. She laughed then, unable to stop herself. Twenty years fell away and she was back at uni with him, goofing around.

He looked up at her laughing face and it took his breath away. She was looking at him like she had back then, like the intervening years had never happened. Like they were still lovers.

‘Oh, you think it’s funny?’ He grinned at her, letting the years disappear. ‘Just you wait. Trust me, no one wants to be on Sophia’s bad side.’

She laughed again as he smiled and his foot scrubbed at the floor. Another ‘I vill find you, Dokator Brent’ came from very close by.

Brent stopped what he was doing, grabbed Grace by the hand. ‘Quick,’ he whispered, and pushed her through a nearby door, pulling it closed after them.

Grace didn’t register the small confines of the room or the fact that it stank of the cleaning products that weighed down its three rows of shelves. It seemed to be a supply room. Not much bigger than a cupboard really. She was laughing too hard to even notice how close they were standing.

‘Shh,’ Brent whispered.

Just then the door opened abruptly, pushing them even closer together as they huddled behind it to stay obscured. He put his hand over Grace’s mouth to help stifle her laughter. He felt the texture of her lip gloss as a waft of vanilla and honey drifted his way.

What was it called again? Honey something …

Sophia called out, ‘I know you here somawhere, Dokator Brent.’

The door shut again but not before Grace heard Sophia muttering under her breath in some strange tongue.

Grace pulled his hand aside and burst out laughing again. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Brent.’ She grabbed his shirt as she leant forward a little, trying to catch her breath and laugh at the same time.

‘You should see your face. I can’t believe that the big important Dokator is afraid of a sweet little old lady.’

‘She isn’t so sweet when she’s pointing a mop at you.’

He grinned down her. She was so … familiar, so … Gracie it was impossible not to.

Impossible also not to be aware that her hand was warm on his chest and her breasts kept grazing the front of his shirt as laughter spasmed through her rib cage. Or the vanilla aroma of her lips, which somehow overpowered the smell of bleach and hospital-grade disinfectant. Or that his hand was firmly planted on one of her hips and all he needed to do was exert minimum pressure and she’d be pushed against him completely.

Grace slowly became aware of his fading smile and his growing silence and the fact that she was scrunching his shirt in her hand. He felt tense beneath her grip and he was staring at her mouth. He was big and warm and so very near.

So very Brent.

She eased her hold on his shirt and absently smoothed it with her palm. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, as she became aware of the heavy thud of his heart beneath her fingers.

‘I needed that,’ she said, to ease the growing silence.

Today had been stressful, and this unexpected laughter had been the perfect release. Still, the fact remained that she was in a cupboard with Brent, giggling like a teenager.

It was insane.

She straightened slightly and put her hand on his chest, levering some distance between them.

‘Pleased me and my shoes could be of assistance,’ he said, moving back, as much as he was able in the confined area, placing temptation further out of reach.

Grace smiled at his joke. ‘I think it’s safe to go out now.’ She checked her watch. ‘And my plane leaves in a couple of hours.’

‘That’s a flying visit. Are you not even dropping in on your parents?’

Grace shook her head. She hadn’t told her family. She didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. ‘I saw them a couple of weeks ago,’ she lied. ‘I have to get home to the kids.’

There was Tash to deal with. And Benji hadn’t coped well with changed plans since his parents’ accident.

The kids. Brent still couldn’t wrap his head around that one. ‘Who’s looking after them now?’

‘The nanny.’

‘Very suburban mum,’ he murmured, as an incredible surge of something potent—jealousy, longing—clawed at his gut.

Grace felt the husky edge to his voice all the way to her toes. And all the places in between.

She straightened her clothes, finger-combed her hair, adjusted her glasses. ‘I have to go.’