Picking up the Pieces

Nick unwound his legs and stood up, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet.

‘Come on, then, let’s get out of this fancy dress and go and find some food.’

They disappeared into their separate shower-rooms, and emerged a few minutes later looking much refreshed. Nick could have done with a shave and Cassie felt her make-up needed a bit of attention, but, considering the night they had had, she felt they looked pretty respectable.

She was unprepared, however, for Nick’s open appreciation over breakfast in the gloomy canteen.

She paused, a loaded fork hovering in front of her mouth, and met his eyes.

‘Have I got a smut on my nose?’ she joked to break the tension.

‘I didn’t realise eating could be so erotic,’ he said softly, and she felt hot colour flood her cheeks.

She set her fork down again.

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Am I?’ His gaze was hot, intent, and he took a bite of toast and ran his tongue round his lips to retrieve the crumbs. ‘Really?’

Cassie’s heart jerked against her ribs, and she looked away, taking refuge in her coffee.

‘You’re beautiful.’

She choked into her cup.

‘And you’re nuts,’ she croaked, glaring balefully at him over the remains of her coffee.

His mouth lifted again, one side tilting slightly higher to lend a touch of piracy to his lean, shadowed cheeks and wickedly twinkling blue eyes. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You look like a pirate,’ she said without thought, and his smile widened.

He leant towards her, and his hair flopped forward again; her fingers itched to smooth it back. ‘Is that your private fantasy?’ he murmured. ‘To be captured and dragged off on to the high seas, condemned to a life of sexual slavery at the hands of the autocratic pirate king?’

She snorted inelegantly. ‘Sounds like your private fantasy to me,’ she told him bluntly.

His grin was wicked. ‘You’ve found me out. Finish your breakfast — I promise not to ogle.’

But her appetite had gone, replaced instead by another hunger, one long suppressed.

‘I don’t want any more,’ she told him, and pushed back her chair, glancing at her watch. ‘It hardly seems worth going to bed,’ she said rashly, and could have bitten her tongue out as his brows arched speculatively.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

She glared at him, trying hard to ignore the beating of her heart and the slow spread of warmth through her veins.

He stood up too. ‘I’ll walk you back to your room.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘There’s every need. I don’t know where you sleep. How can I indulge my fantasies without knowing where you sleep?’

‘Precisely my point,’ she retorted, but her heart beat even faster. She had to get away.

‘I’ll follow you,’ he taunted softly.

She turned to glare at him, hands on hips, and met the challenge in his laughing eyes.

She chuckled, defeated. ‘You would, as well. All right, you can walk me to the door, but you’re not coming in.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Hmph.’

They made their way through the corridors of the awakening hospital, bustling now with the new shift coming on, the cleaners timing their assault on the floors to coincide exactly with the busiest period.

It was worse in the residence, with doors banging and water running, radios blaring, occasional laughter, the odd plea for quiet from some overhung young reveller desperate for a few more hours of oblivion.

‘Here we are,’ she said, and turned her back to the door. ‘My flat — or “flatette”. It isn’t really big enough to be called a flat, but it’s home, and it’s a sight cheaper and cleaner than the only sort of hovel I could find in London —’ I’m babbling, she thought frantically, but she didn’t know how to get rid of him. Try the blunt approach, she told herself. She forced herself to meet those lazy, knowing blue eyes.

‘Thank you for breakfast. Goodbye —’

‘But you’re not safely in. You might have lost your keys, or you could have had an intruder —’

‘Nice try, Mr Davidson. Bye-bye.’

He grinned appealingly. ‘Thirty seconds? There’s something I have to say to you.’

‘Can’t you say it out here?’

He pulled a thoughtful face. ‘It’s a little sensitive. It’s about your — er — lapse in Theatre.’

She whipped the door open and dragged him in, shutting the door and leaning back against it.

‘I’m sorry about that. I was…’

‘Distracted?’ he supplied helpfully. ‘So was I. I believe I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I lost my temper. I was rather unkind to you, and it was just because I was…’

‘Distracted?’ she suggested, and his mouth softened.

‘Completely. All I could think about was the feel of your body pressed up against me, and every time I tried to shift away from you you followed me —’

‘I didn’t! I was trying to get away, and you kept following me!’ Heat flared in her cheeks. His voice was like a caress, and she could feel again the heat of his thigh against hers, the shift of his hip, the hardness of his leg muscles as he braced himself …

‘You could have moved the trolley. Whatever, I’m sorry I embarrassed you publicly.’

She blinked. That was it? She had expected a mild reproof, at the very least, if not an outright dressing-down — certainly not what amounted to a full-scale apology! And in that soft, coaxing voice, like rough velvet.

He had turned and was looking round her bed-sitting-room with interest.