Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty

His brow came up in a sardonic arc. ‘You think I need a bit of a polish too, do you, Dr Cargill?’

She felt her cheeks burn as she fought to hold his gaze. ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ she said, with as much composure as she could muster whilst standing partially naked before him. ‘I meant you’re like him in looks. Your eyes, your hair—that sort of thing.’

Jake returned his gaze to the waves, where his nephew was bodysurfing with varying degrees of success. ‘He’s a handful,’ he said. ‘I try and wear him out for my sister Rosie.’ He glanced at her again. ‘That’s whose party it was the other night. As a single mum she doesn’t get to kick up her heels much.’

‘Oh.’ Kitty caught her bottom lip with her teeth.

‘Nathan’s father shot through before he was born.’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘She’s not,’ Jake said, swinging his gaze back to hers. ‘She’s better off without him.’

She tugged at her lip some more. ‘I mean I’m sorry about complaining about the music the other night,’ she said. ‘It must have seemed so … so petty.’

He checked on his nephew again before turning his gaze back to her. ‘You don’t like being out of your depth, do you?’ he asked.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’re only wet up to your knees,’ he said. ‘We usually have to drag overseas tourists unconscious from this beach. A lot of them dive in without checking the conditions first.’

‘I don’t like leaping before I look,’ she said.

‘Can you swim?’

Kitty flashed him an affronted look. ‘Of course I can swim.’

‘Give me a shout if you need a hand with some stroke correction,’ he said.

‘No doubt breaststroke is your particular specialty?’ she said with an arch look.

His lips curved upwards in a sexy smile, but not before his glinting eyes had dipped to the hint of her cleavage first. ‘How’d you guess?’ he said, and then before she could think of a return he had joined his nephew in the rushing waves.

CHAPTER THREE

KITTY went back to her towel. Resting her chin on her bent knees, she concentrated on watching the surfers further out, but her gaze kept drifting back to where Jake was coaching his nephew. He looked so magnificently male, so vital and fit and healthy. She couldn’t help thinking of Charles, with his fair skin, his slight paunch and his receding hairline.

She pulled her thoughts back into line. She wasn’t the shallow looks-are-everything type. She was attracted to depth of character, to strong values and dedication and ambition, to caring for others …

She chewed at her lip as she watched Jake scoop his nephew out of a particularly rough wave, holding him steady against him until Nathan got his breath back and found his feet.

He would make a wonderful father.

Kitty felt ambushed by the errant thought. What did she care what sort of father he would make? It had nothing to do with her. What right did her belly have to give a soft little flutter at the thought of him holding a tiny baby in his large masculine hands?

She got to her feet and shook the sand off her towel, frowning as she folded it into a neat square. It might be close to seven-thirty in the evening but she’d clearly had way too much sun.

‘Leaving already?’ Jake asked as he came towards her across the sand.

Kitty drank in the sight of him. How could anyone look that good after a twelve-hour day at work and an hour of kid-sitting at the beach? ‘I—I have to wash my hair,’ she said, flustered, putting a hand to her hair.

‘You didn’t even get it wet,’ he said.

She ignored his comment and looked past him. ‘Where’s your nephew?’ she asked.

‘My sister collected him a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I would’ve introduced you to her but she was in a hurry.’

Kitty hugged her towel against her chest as if that would stop her heart from beating so erratically and so fast. His skin glistened with droplets of water, and she watched in spellbound fascination as they rolled like a row of glittering diamonds down over his muscled chest. He smelt of the sea, with a grace note of something else—perhaps a lingering trace of his citrus aftershave or shampoo.

He was standing close enough for her to feel a tiny shower of water drops land on her skin when he finger-combed his hair back off his face. She didn’t understand how such a sensation could have a disturbing undercurrent of intimacy about it, but it did. Her skin shivered as if he had slowly run his long tanned fingers down the slim length of her bare arms. She moistened her lips and tried to get her brain to work.

‘I have to get going …’ she said, but her feet didn’t move. It felt as if the sand had suddenly turned into quick-setting concrete.

‘I’ll go in with you if you like,’ he said, nodding towards the ocean. ‘Just till you get your confidence. Your first time can be a bit scary.’

Kitty’s breath stalled. It was tempting. It was hot, and the water felt marvellous around her knees, but what if he touched her? What if those strongly muscled arms actually held her? ‘You don’t have to babysit me,’ she said with icy hauteur. ‘I’m perfectly able to take care of myself.’

He took the towel she was holding like a lifeline and tossed it to the sand at their feet, his dark blue eyes never once leaving hers. ‘Prove it,’ he said.

Kitty put her shoulders back and her chin up. ‘All right,’ she said, and spun around and made her way to the water. She splashed through the waves until she was in up to her waist before she turned to look at him. But he wasn’t watching from the beach. He had followed her in. He was less than half a metre away. Did he think she was that hopeless?

She gritted her teeth.

She would show him.

‘Watch out!’ he said suddenly.

Kitty turned just as a bigger than normal wave smashed into her. She felt as if she had been thrown into a washing machine on a rapid wash cycle. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stand up even if she had known which way was up.

Suddenly a strong hand gripped one of her arms and hauled her upright. She blinked the briny water out of her stinging eyes and looked up at Jake’s face. Her body was pressed against the rock-like wall of his by the force of the water. Every hard plane of his body was imprinted on her softer ones. Her breasts were pushed up against his chest, her belly against his washboard abdomen. One of his arms was like a band of iron behind her back; the other was holding her hand in an equally firm grip, his long fingers entwined with hers. His strong legs were slightly apart to brace against the undertow of the water, and the cradle of his pelvis against hers reminded her shockingly, alarmingly, deliciously of all that was different between them.

She felt a flickering between her thighs, like a thousand tiny wings beating inside a cramped space. Electricity shot through her veins, sending sparks of reaction up and down her spine, through every limb, even to the very ends of her fizzing fingertips and her curling toes.

Her eyes went to his mouth. She couldn’t stop staring at the rough stubble that surrounded it. The desire to reach up and trace that sexy masculine regrowth with her fingertips was almost overwhelming. Her hands were splayed against the hard wall of his chest, and that electrifying sensation was passing from his body to hers through the sensitive pads of her fingers. She could feel the thudding of his heartbeat drumming into her palm.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this close to a man … Well, she could, but that final goodbye hug from Charles hadn’t felt anything like this.

‘You’re way out of your depth,’ Jake said, with an unreadable expression on his face.

Kitty couldn’t get her breathing to steady, but it had very little to do with the water she’d inadvertently swallowed. ‘A little … perhaps …’

He braced her against him as another wave bore down on them. ‘Hold on,’ he said.

The crazy water swished and swirled around them but Kitty barely noticed. She was acutely aware of his body pressed against hers, from her soft breasts to his hard chest, from her smooth slim legs to his strong hair-roughened thighs. She felt the imprint of his arousal against her belly. That starkly primal instinctive reaction of male to female sent her senses into a madcap frenzy. His body seemed to thicken and harden as each heart-stopping second passed. She felt his heartbeat pick up under her hand. It was just a hint of escalation, but it relayed a message that was older than time itself.

Their gazes locked for a moment.

The sound of the ocean and people bathing around them faded. It was like being in a vacuum where no one else existed.