Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty

‘Yeah,’ he drawled. ‘I went as the Big Bad Wolf. I huffed and I puffed and brought the whole house down.’

She gave him a haughty look down the length of her nose that was right out the pages of a Jane Austen novel. ‘At least you wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble and expense of hiring a costume,’ she said. ‘You would have gone just as you are.’

Jake held her feisty little eye-lock. He felt a stirring in his groin that had nothing to do with her skimpy outfit. There was something about her imperious air and her toffee-nosed accent that made his flesh tingle from head to foot.

Was it his self-imposed dating drought that had stirred his senses so intensely? He’d made a bet with his sister at Christmas that he could give up sex for the rest of the summer. Rosie had criticised his playboy lifestyle, even going as far as saying it was setting a bad example for her young son, Nathan. If he lost the bet he would have to pay Rosie a thousand dollars towards Nathan’s education fund. He had no problem with donating the money for Nathan. He would give that and more, bet or no bet. But he did have a problem with his kid sister thinking he had no self-control and discipline. So he’d set a new record for himself—a new personal best. He didn’t like admitting it, but abstinence had been good for him. His sex life had become a bit boring and predictable over the last year. But he didn’t want anything long-term. He was happy with his fancy-free approach to relationships. It had just been a bad year, that was all.

Besides, he liked his flings short and uncomplicated.

No strings.

No rings.

No promises.

Once his period of celibacy was up, Kitty Cargill, with her I’m-just-pretending-to-be-a-wild-child routine, could be just the one to kick things off for the rest of this year.

‘You can take your cousin home as soon as she’s had her X-ray,’ Jake said. ‘And I hope when I next see you in this unit you’re wearing something a little more appropriate. We’re supposed to be saving patients’ lives here, not giving them myocardial infarcts. Understood?’

She gave him a glittering glare. ‘Perfectly, Dr Chandler.’

‘Grrrgghhh!’ Kitty was still fuming as she unpacked her things at her new town house three days later. She cringed in embarrassment when she thought of turning up for work the following Monday. How on earth was she going to face him?

Julie, damn her, was still laughing about it, in spite of hobbling about on crutches and having to take time off from her job as a beautician. Her cousin thought the sprained ankle was worth it to have seen someone as prim and proper as Kitty floundering so far out of her depth.

‘God, he was so gorgeous,’ Julie had said only that morning when Kitty had rung to check on her. ‘Did you see how dark his blue eyes were? And so tall! He must have been six foot three or four, don’t you think?’

‘I’m trying not to think about him,’ Kitty said. ‘That was singularly the most excruciatingly embarrassing evening of my entire life.’ Well, apart from finding my best friend, Sophie, in bed with my long-term boyfriend the very weekend I thought he was going to propose to me. ‘I wonder if it’s too late to ask for a transfer to another hospital …’ She bit down on her lip, daunted at the thought of finding a new placement at such short notice.

‘He had great hands,’ Julie rabbited on. ‘So strong and capable and masculine. I wonder if he’s married. I don’t think he was wearing a ring. But he was wearing gloves, so who knows? Maybe a little fling with your new boss will be just the trick to get that two-timing jerk Charles Wetherby out of your system once and for all.’

‘Will you stop it, for pity’s sake?’ Kitty said. ‘I don’t want to talk about Dr Chandler.’ Or Charles, she added silently, with a tight cramping pain over her heart.

But even so her mind kept rerunning the whole debacle like a DVD-player jammed on replay. Jake Chandler had accused her of being drunk and yet she was more or less a teetotaller. He’d thought she was a prostitute, and yet she was twenty-six years old and had only had one lover—her childhood sweetheart, who had turned out not to be such a sweetheart after all.

This three-month trip Down Under was part of her coping strategy.

Kitty had always considered herself a gracious and forgiving type, but staying in London while Charles got married to Sophie Hamilton was stretching the bounds of her grace and forgiveness a little too far.

Kitty had grown up with Charles. He had lived in the same village, on the same street, in a house only four doors down from hers. She had gone through infants, primary school, high school and medical school with him. They had done their residency and internship at the same hospitals. They had practically been joined at the hip. Everyone had described them as the perfect couple. They’d never argued. They’d been best friends. They’d enjoyed the same things. They’d had the same friends. They had wanted the same things—or so Kitty had thought.

For months she had been expecting a romantic proposal. She had even secretly chosen a ring to match the promise ring Charles had given her on her sixteenth birthday. She had walked into bridal shops and dreamily tried on gorgeous gowns and voluminous veils. She had bought dozens of bridal magazines, making copious notes as she flicked through them. She had even—she cringed in embarrassment even now—gone to several wedding venues to check on prices and availability.

Now Charles was gone and she was on her own.

No perfect white wedding.

No honeymoon in a luxurious and exotic location.

No happy ever after.

Kitty worked on flattening cardboard boxes for the recycling bin in the town house complex car park. She was hot and sweaty. She wondered if she would ever get used to this oppressively humid heat. Just as well she was only staying twelve weeks. London could get hot in summer, but Sydney in early February was like living in a pizza oven. She had been to the beach, but the sun—in spite of layers of sunscreen—had scorched her pale skin and given her even more freckles on her nose. Tendrils of her thick chestnut hair were sticking to her neck, even though she had piled it as high as she could in a ponytail-cum-knot on the top of her head.

She brushed her forearm across her perspiring brow and reached for the last box. The last box, however, was reluctant to be reduced to a flat layer. She stomped on it, but it flapped back up to snap at her ankles. ‘Down, down, down, damn you to sodding hell and back,’ she cursed, and she gave it one last almighty stomp by jumping on it with both feet.

‘Need some help?’ A deep male voice drawled from behind her.

Kitty swung around so fast she almost lost her footing. Her eyes went wide and her heart gave a flap like a sail in a fifty-knot wind. ‘You!’ she gasped.

He gave a sweeping obsequious bow. ‘At your service, ma’am.’

Kitty felt her skin pebble all over with irritation and embarrassment. ‘I was just—’ She waved her hand at the recycling bin. ‘Um … recycling …’

His eyes were smiling, no—laughing at her. ‘Looks like you need a man to do that for you,’ he said.

‘I do not need a man.’ She felt the slow burn of Jake Chandler’s gaze as it took in her baggy track pants and tank top, pausing for a heartstopping moment on her breasts. Her stomach felt as if it was being stirred by a long-handled spoon and her heart kept leaping and jumping as if it was being prodded by the wire of a high-voltage electric current.

She couldn’t remember Charles ever looking at her like that—as if he could see right through her clothes to the flesh beneath. She couldn’t remember feeling so taken aback by a man’s looks before, either. She had to admit Jake Chandler had looked pretty hot in theatre scrubs on Saturday night, but dressed in dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt he looked staggeringly gorgeous. The white of the T-shirt highlighted his naturally olive-toned skin, and his perfectly formed pectoral muscles and flat, toned stomach indicated he was a man who worked hard and played harder. He was certainly every bit as tall as Julie had suggested, and because Kitty wasn’t wearing four-inch heels she had to crane her neck to meet his dark sapphire-blue eyes.

‘Are you the new tenant?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m renting number three,’ she said, with the sort of cool composure that would have earned her an Oscar if she were an actor. But she certainly didn’t feel cool around Jake Chandler. She felt blisteringly hot, and it didn’t have a thing to do with the searing temperature of the summer day. There was something about his dark blue gaze that made her feel as if each time he looked at her he wasn’t seeing her as she was dressed now but as she had been dressed the other night. ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she said, bending down to scoop up the recalcitrant cardboard.

‘Here,’ he said, reaching for the bundle that was almost as tall as her. ‘Let me help you with that.’

Kitty felt one of his hands brush against her right breast in the exchange. It was like a strike of lightning against her flesh. It zapped right through her body, sizzling it with erotic heat and making every hair on her head rise up from her scalp. She stepped back as if she had been burnt, her face flaming, her heart going at a pace that would have made any decent cardiologist call for an immediate ECG.

But Jake Chandler seemed totally unaffected. He stuffed the cardboard into the bin and shoved it down as if it were a marshmallow with a powerful press of his muscled and deeply tanned arm. ‘Do you need anything else done?’ he asked. ‘Furniture shifted? Boxes carried up the stairs?’ His dark blue eyes glinted again. ‘Costumes unpacked—that sort of thing?’

‘I’m fine … Thank you,’ she said, wishing she could stop blushing like a silly little schoolgirl. What was it about this man that made her feel so gauche? Was it his laughing blue eyes or his in-your-face masculinity or both? ‘You’ve done quite enough.’

A tiny silence crept past as he continued to hold her flustered gaze with his unwavering one.

‘I’m having a few people over for a barbecue this evening,’ he said. ‘Nothing fancy. No cucumber sandwiches or anything. Just a few steaks and snags slapped on the grill and some beers. Feel free to pop over and join us.’

Kitty thought of the frozen, calorie-controlled, most probably hideously tasteless dinner she had bought. She thought of eating it alone, just like all the other frozen meals she had mechanically consumed with tears on the side since the break-up. She hadn’t seen the point in cooking for one person so she had stopped.

But then she thought of spending the evening with Jake Chandler and his coterie of like-minded beer-swilling friends. What if some of them were other staff members from St Benedict’s? He was probably only inviting her so he could make fun of her in front of them. She had met his type before: the confident, smooth-talking charmer who was the life of every party.

She would be roasted alive.

‘Thank you for the invitation, but I think I’ll pass,’ she said.

‘I hope we don’t keep you awake,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to move in for another week or two. The people between your house and mine are overseas. Feel free to pop over if you change your mind or find yourself at a loose end.’

‘Thank you, but no,’ she said, even more crisply this time.

His dark eyes twinkled again. ‘Social diary that full already, is it?’ he asked.