With A Little Help

Best laid plans, she told herself as she pulled the front door shut.

He was holding his car door open. “I thought you wanted to walk,” she said. What was he up to?

He slid into the driver’s seat. “We’re only driving as far as Canada Bay. Have you done the bay walk?”

Sophie had been nagging her to try it. “Not so far.”

“You’re in for a treat.”

The sun was low and the temperature pleasantly mild by the time he parked the car on Henley Marine Drive near the Iron Cove Bridge. Emma sniffed the salty air. He was right. She was glad to be out of the office, but sorry the walk was a means to an end for him. Reminding herself that her business was already gaining clients on the strength of her connection with him, she set herself to match his long strides along a wide footpath around the mangrove-lined foreshores of the cove.

She would have liked to stop and read the signs about the flora and fauna in the surrounding bay, but Nate set a demanding pace that left little time to admire the scenery as it shifted between city skyline and thick greenery. Most of Emma’s workouts were in a gym, accompanied by music with a throbbing beat. She wasn’t out of shape, but neither was she in his league, although she was damned if she’d let him outclass her.

When had this walk become a competition? she wondered. But then her whole life had been one long competition with the medical fraternity on one side and herself on the other. This was only the latest installment.

“Ready for a break? We’re about halfway,” he said, steering her to a park marked by a large sandstone cross at the top. From here she could see the city of Sydney and waterways all the way to Rodd Island. He dropped to the grass and wrapped his arms around his bent knees, taking in the view.

She sat down beside him, careful to keep a safe distance. He unclipped a water bottle from his belt and handed it to her. She drank, aware that his lips would soon touch the same spot as hers. Almost like a kiss.

And she knew exactly how that felt, an inner voice whispered. The hard contours of his mouth, the rasp of stubble against her cheek, the wine-rich taste of his breath were all burned into her memory.

The thought made her frown. She’d known spending too much time with him was a risk. Their worlds were too different. Getting involved with a high-flying surgeon like Nate was playing with fire, and she had no intention of getting burned.

Jumping to her feet, she handed him back the water bottle. “I should get moving.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“It will be dark soon” was her lame excuse.

“Don’t you feel safe with me?”

Physically perhaps, but not where her peace of mind was concerned. “You might be missed,” she said. “I’m surprised your cell phone hasn’t rung by now.”

He rose in one lithe movement. “My phone’s set to vibrate. My assistant knows how to get hold of me, and then only if there’s a crisis she can’t handle.”

Emma couldn’t hide her disbelief. To her parents and brother, every call was a crisis only they could handle. Confusion coiled through her, followed by annoyance. He’d seen how irritated she’d been over the constant interruptions to their meeting at his house. Was this a new strategy to get his own way, or was something else going on here?

She planted her hands on her hips. “This won’t work.”

“What won’t?”

“Provided we can agree on the details, I’ll cater your party because it’s in both our interests, but that’s all.”

He frowned. “What else do you think I want?”

She dragged in a deep breath. “Isn’t it obvious? Me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

WHAT THE HELL? STANDING IN front of him, slim but curved in all the right places and barely reaching up to his chin, Emma looked like a terrier ready to take on a rottweiler. Her workout clothes were rumpled from sitting on the grass, and her skin glowed with recent exertion. Her hair was carelessly twisted at the back and caught up in a tortoiseshell clip, making him want to undo the golden mass and send it tumbling to her shoulders. The red-gold strands curling around her ears and nape teased at him like a promise of things to come.

He pushed the thought away. Somehow she’d gotten the idea that he wanted more from her than her catering skills. Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d felt the attraction between them from first meeting. He’d seen her brother slip the vodka into her drink, but hadn’t known until later that it wasn’t her idea, intrigued to think she needed Dutch courage to approach him.

Since then he’d relived the memory of her kiss more times than was good for him. Her approach had been naive, fueled by the party mood, but the taste of her had awakened a desire for more. When Cherie had suggested he talk to Emma about his birthday dinner, he’d felt like a nervous teenager.

Unlike the model types he usually dated, Emma wasn’t beautiful in the runway sense. Her looks were too distinctive, her nose a fraction too sharp, and her mouth a touch wide for perfection. But when she smiled or gave her infectious laugh, she was stunning. A pang of jealousy still gripped him when he thought of her laughing with another man at her parents’ function. She hadn’t ever laughed with Nate like that.

Her sea-green eyes shone now and she clasped her hands together, her expression daring him not to take her seriously. “You’d better explain what you mean, because I seem to have missed a step or two.”

“I doubt you’ve missed a step in your life, Dr. Hale,” she said. “Did my mother suggest I might be part of the package if you hired me?”

His patience was becoming strained. “I can’t deny it’s an attractive thought. But if anyone put that idea in my head, it was you.”

She looked taken aback. He was almost sorry to see some of the fire fade from her eyes. Anger was a pure, honest emotion, stripping a person of artifice. What you saw was what you got. And in Emma’s case, what he saw was enough to raise his blood pressure several points.

“Really?” She sounded skeptical. “We’ve had only one business meeting.”

“And another meeting that was pure pleasure.” For him, anyway. It was hardly his fault if she felt embarrassed by the encounter. He’d go back for seconds anytime.

Color bloomed in her cheeks. “I might have known you’d bring that up. I made one mistake…”

“Are you sure it was a mistake?”

“It—it had to be. I didn’t want…”

Her stammered denial was enough to convince him that she’d been as affected by their brief kiss as he had. He was tempted to see if the chemistry he recalled was still potent and leaned close enough to feel her breath whispering across his mouth before he caught himself. His shoulders felt stiff as he pulled back, and a growing discomfort told him they weren’t the only part of him hardening. He was going to end up proving her right about scheming to have her as part of the package.

“You have some rigid ideas about doctors’ lives,” he said. “I invited you along on this walk to show you we aren’t all the same. If you and I are going to work together, it will be easier if you stop treating me as the enemy. You can’t deny that’s what you’ve been doing.”

She let her hands drop to her sides. “Any ideas I have are based on long experience.”

“Not with me.”

“No.”

But her tone said she reserved the right to toss him in with all the other medical people she knew. What had they done to her to prejudice her so thoroughly against an entire profession? Most people thought of doctors as valuable members of a community. Emma treated them as arrogant bastards who were out to make her life unpleasant. Maybe while she worked for him, he could ferret out the reasons for her hostility. He realized he wanted to do that very much. Did he think that once he overcame the hurdle, whatever it was, he’d have a chance to get to first base with her? That seemed selfish. Yet the more he tried to convince himself he wanted to help for Emma’s sake only, the hollower it sounded.

His own psychoanalysis could wait, he decided. There was still that blasted party he didn’t want, but which his friends clearly expected him to make happen. He found he also didn’t want to do it without Emma. Afterward, he could worry about where they went next.

EMMA’S THOUGHTS WERE IN turmoil as they set off again down the wide path past Timbrell Park, where a family group was enjoying a ball game. Seeing a father chase after his toddler, she felt an unexpected pang. What would it be like to have a man give you children, then cherish you both the way this man obviously did?

The child giggled as he was scooped up and carried shoulder-high back to his mother. The sight made Emma smile. What a contrast to her own father, rigid with anger, returning his four-year-old Emma to her mother in Gramma Jessie’s kitchen.

Emma’s smile faded. No loving warmth for her, only disapproval over the worry she’d caused. Emma’s cuts and scrapes had been treated with clinical care, but her emotional distress had been completely ignored. As an adult, she still suffered occasional nightmares about being lost in a dark, forbidding place as a result of that experience, but apart from Jessie’s interest, her family had never mentioned the incident again.

She dismissed the memory and focused on Nate’s assertion that she was the one putting ideas into his head. One impetuous kiss at a party didn’t amount to an open invitation. Had she sent subtle signals of her interest to him in other ways she hadn’t been aware of, or was he simply confirming her belief that doctors made their own rules?

The solution was to be as clinical as her parents in her dealings with Nate. From now on there would be no casual meetings in gardens, on walking trails or anywhere outside their respective offices. He would soon get the message that their dealings were to be strictly business.