Their Most Forbidden Fling

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘You could always stay here until something becomes available.’ He hadn’t realised he had said it out loud until he saw the surprised look on her face.

  ‘Here?’ she said. ‘With you?’

  ‘In one of the spare rooms,’ he said. ‘I’d charge you rent and expenses. I’m not running a charity.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Lucas wasn’t one bit sure. He still didn’t know why he had uttered those words. But he had and he couldn’t unsay them. Besides, he was already looking after her wretched cat. Better that she moved in and took charge of its feeding and toileting. It could sleep on her bed, not his. And he would willingly suffer the invasion of his private domain for a week or two rather than see her move in with Simon-up-himself Westbury.

  ‘I’d expect you to do your share of the cooking while you’re here,’ he said. ‘And I would prefer it if you entertained your men friends off site.’

  ‘It’s a very generous offer...’ Her perfect white teeth nibbled at her lower lip. ‘But what if people think we’re actually living together as in living together...you know, as a couple?’

  Lucas couldn’t stop a vision of her lying naked in his bed taking over his mind. He wondered what it would be like, waking up beside her each morning. Seeing her sunny smile, feeling her arms around him, smelling the scent of her on his skin, his body sated from long, passionate hours of lovemaking. He pushed the thoughts aside like a row of books toppling off a mantelpiece. ‘I don’t waste time worrying what other people think,’ he said. ‘What I do outside the hospital is no one’s business but my own.’

  ‘What about our families?’ she asked.

  He gave her a grim look. ‘Don’t you mean your family?’

  ‘I don’t think my mother will have a problem with it,’ she said, frowning a little. ‘My father is another story.’

  ‘Isn’t it time you lived your own life?’ he asked. ‘You’re twenty-seven years old. You shouldn’t have to justify your actions to him or anyone.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came to London. I wanted to break free. I think my father still sees me as a little girl who needs protecting.’

  ‘Yeah, well, given your choice in men so far, I’m inclined to agree with him,’ Lucas said.

  ‘I know Simon gave you the wrong impression,’ she said. ‘He’s not usually so...possessive. I think it was all show, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘He’s a prize jerk,’ Lucas said. ‘I thought you had much better taste than that.’

  Her grey-blue eyes flashed. ‘Perhaps I should have you assess every potential partner to see if they meet your exacting standards,’ she said. ‘Would that satisfy you?’

  Lucas had a feeling he wasn’t going to be satisfied by anything other than having her to himself, but he wasn’t going to admit that to her. She wasn’t his to have. He had to remember that. She was his best mate’s little sister. Any chance of a future together had died along with Matt. ‘Do you need a hand moving your things across?’ he asked. ‘I have an hour free now.’

  His offer to help appeared to mollify her. ‘That would be very helpful,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  * * *

  Molly put the last of her things in the spare room furthest away from Lucas’s master suite. She still couldn’t quite believe he had made her the offer of temporary accommodation, although she suspected it had more to do with discouraging her from moving in with Simon. It was very dog in the manger of him, given he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to pursue her himself. Perhaps he wanted to prove to himself that he could keep his hands off her. Lucas’s house was certainly big enough for them to avoid intimate contact. They didn’t even have to share a bathroom. There were six to choose from as well as his en suite.

  But even sharing a space as large as this had its complications. There was her attraction to him, for one thing. She couldn’t seem to control it. Every time he looked at her she felt a stirring of longing deep inside. She ached to feel his mouth on hers. It was almost an obsession now. She didn’t think she would rest until she had tasted him. And then there was his body: that strong, tall body that was so lean and fit and in its prime. She wanted to explore its carved muscles, smooth her hands over the satin-wrapped steel of his back and shoulders, hold him in her hand, feel the throb of his blood against her palm. Her body got moist thinking about it. Her nerves got twitchy and restless, the contraction-like pulse deep and relentless in her core.

  She gave herself a mental shake. She was probably only fixated on him because he had said he wasn’t interested in acting on his attraction to her. It was the contrariness of human nature’wanting something you knew you couldn’t have.

  Molly took Mittens with her downstairs and placed him on the floor near his kitten milk and biscuits. It was raining outside; the droplets of water were rolling like diamonds down the glass of the windows and French doors. It was hard not to think of home when the weather was so dismal. The cold seemed to seep right into her bones. The bedsit had felt like an icebox, but at least Lucas’s house was warm, even if his manner towards her was not.

  She heard his firm tread behind her as he came into the room. ‘Are you all settled in?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Molly said, turning to face him. ‘It’s a lovely room and so spacious. Much nicer than the bedsit, I can assure you.’

  He gave her one of his brisk, businesslike nods. ‘I’m going out for a while,’ he said. ‘I have some paperwork to see to at the hospital.’

  ‘You work too hard,’ she said.

  ‘I get paid to work hard.’

  ‘Surely not this hard,’ Molly said. ‘You look like you didn’t sleep at all last night. Why do you drive yourself so relentlessly? No, don’t tell me. I already know.’

  His mouth flattened grimly. ‘I would prefer it if you kept your opinions to yourself. You might currently share my house but that’s all you’re going to share. I don’t need you to take on the role of a caring partner. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘When was the last time you had a partner?’ Molly asked.

  It was a moment or two before he spoke. She wondered if he was trying to remember. ‘I can assure you I’m no monk,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me the last time you had sex.’

  His brows snapped together. ‘What is this? Do you really think I’m going to give you a blow-by-blow account of my sex life?’

  ‘You’ve felt at perfect liberty to comment on mine,’ Molly pointed out.

  ‘That’s because you were conducting it in the hospital cafeteria.’

  ‘That is not true!’ she said.

  ‘You’d better keep a lid on your public displays of affection if you want to keep your job,’ he said.

  Molly felt her back come up. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  His eyes warred with hers. ‘Not personally, but I think I should inform you the current CEO is a stickler for professional behaviour at all times,’ he said. ‘Patients come to St Patrick’s for health care, not to witness a cheesy soap-opera love scene in the middle of the corridor. If a patient complains to him it would be one look at the CCTV and you’d be fired on the spot.’

  ‘And I bet you’d be the first to be glad to see me go,’ she said with a resentful look.

  ‘So far I’ve heard nothing but good reports about you from patients and staff alike,’ he said. ‘I would hate to see all that come undone by behaviour that would be considered puerile in a high school, let alone in a professional setting.’

  Molly set her mouth tightly. ‘I can assure you it won’t happen again.’

  ‘Make sure that it doesn’t,’ he said, and strode out.

  * * *

  When Molly came downstairs in the morning Lucas had already left for work. His housekeeper was in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher. She smil
ed and straightened as Molly came in. ‘I’m Gina,’ she said. ‘Dr Banning told me you and the little cat are staying for a few days.’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘I hope that’s not going to make extra work for you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Gina said. ‘It will be good for Dr Banning to have some company in this big old house of his. You’re from his home town in Australia, yes?’

  ‘Is my accent that obvious?’ Molly asked with a self-deprecating smile.

  ‘Not your accent,’ Gina said. ‘Your looks.’

  ‘My...looks?’

  ‘The photo in the library,’ Gina said. ‘You’re Matthew Drummond’s sister, yes?’

  Molly frowned. ‘You know about Matt?’

  Gina nodded solemnly. ‘Dr Banning’s mother told me when they visited a few years ago. Very sad. Such a tragic accident.’

  ‘Yes...yes, it was.’

  ‘It is good that you are still friends,’ Gina said.

  Friends? Molly thought. Is that what she and Lucas were? ‘Um...yes,’ she said. ‘Our parents were neighbours for years and years. We sort of all grew up together, same school, same teachers even.’

  ‘He is a very kind man,’ Gina said. ‘But he works too hard. I tell him he needs to find a nice girl, get married and have some kids. It would help him to have something other than work to occupy his mind, yes?’

  ‘Um...he does seem very career driven,’ Molly said.

  ‘He uses work to forget,’ Gina said. ‘He saves lots of lives but he can never bring back the one he wanted to save the most.’ She shook her head. ‘Sad, very sad.’

  Molly gave the housekeeper a pained smile. ‘I have to get going,’ she said. ‘It was lovely meeting you.’

  ‘I hope you’re still here when I come next week, yes?’ Gina said with a twinkle in her chocolate-brown eyes.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Molly said hurriedly. ‘I hope to find another flat well before then.’

  * * *

  ‘Have you found another flat?’ Jacqui asked in the staff tearoom a couple of days later.

  Molly closed the newspaper rental guide with a dispirited sigh. ‘I’ve looked at five so far but none of them allow pets,’ she said. ‘The ones I’ve looked at that do allow them are not fit for an animal, let alone a human. I swear the last one I looked at, even the vermin have packed up and left in disgust.’

  ‘So how’s it working out at Lucas’s place?’ Jacqui asked.

  Molly trained her gaze on her mug of tea rather than meet the ward clerk’s eyes. She had hoped to keep her temporary living arrangements a secret but apparently someone from the hospital had seen her walking out of Lucas’s front door a couple of mornings ago. It had been all over the hospital by the time she’d got to work. If Lucas was bothered about his private life being a topic of public speculation, he hadn’t mentioned it, but, then, she hadn’t seen him other than in passing, and bringing up the topic at work, even in the privacy of his office, wasn’t something she was keen to do. She suspected he was avoiding her but, then, she could hardly talk. She had kept well out of his way too.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t see much of him. I see more of him here, to be honest.’

  ‘You could’ve knocked me down with a feather when I heard you were shacking up with him,’ Jacqui said. ‘As far as I know, no one from here has even stepped inside his place.’

  ‘I’m not “shacking up” with him,’ Molly said, trying not to blush. ‘He very kindly offered me a room for a few days.’

  ‘Has he made a move on you?’

  Molly pushed her chair back and took her teacup to the sink. ‘We don’t have that sort of relationship,’ she said. ‘We’re just...housemates.’

  Jacqui angled her head at her speculatively. ‘You’d make a nice couple, you know. It’s kind of sweet you grew up in the bush together. Kind of a friends-to-lovers thing.’

  ‘I’m a bit over men at the moment,’ Molly said. She’d been keeping her distance from Simon over the last couple of days. After his altercation with Lucas in the cafeteria he had increased his pressure on her to move in with him, but she didn’t like being used as a pawn in a game of one-upmanship.

  ‘I thought you were seeing someone’Simon what’s his name? The plastics registrar.’

  ‘Simon Westbury,’ Molly said. ‘Yes, well, I’ve been trying to get out of that relationship for a while now. I shouldn’t have got into it in the first place.’

  Jacqui tapped her lips thoughtfully. ‘Mmm, I can definitely see it.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘You and Lucas,’ Jacqui said. ‘I think you two would be a perfect match.’

  ‘Not going to happen,’ Molly said flatly. ‘Dr Banning is not interested in me. Quite frankly, he can’t wait to see the back of me. He hates it that I came here. He thinks I only came to cause trouble for him.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been picking up on that vibe,’ Jacqui said. ‘But why would he think that?’

  Molly blew out a breath and pushed open the door to leave. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I have to get back. I’ll see you down there.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LUCAS WAS IN his office, writing up some notes, when he got a call from Alistair Brentwood in Accident and Emergency. He’d had hundreds of calls over the years from various doctors in A and E, but something about this one made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as soon as Alistair gave him the rundown on the incoming patient.

  It was like hearing his and Matt’s accident replayed back to him. The names and ages had changed but it was so similar he felt like he had been swept up in a time warp. The horror of that night came back to him in hammer blows of dread. He felt them pound through his blood as he listened to his colleague’s description.

  ‘Lucas, we’ve got a male, twenty-one, with a serious head injury,’ Alistair said. ‘Blunt chest trauma and haemodynamically stable. I can see a bit of lung contusion on his chest CT, abdo is OK, but his brain scan looks like global contusions and oedema. His GCS was three at the scene but picked up to six in here. One pupil fixed and dilated, the other sluggish. Pretty serious closed head injury. You got a bed for him up there?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lucas said, mentally gearing up to face the shattered family. He would have to deal with them on a daily basis, helping them come to terms with the severity of their loved one’s injuries. ‘We’re right to take him. Have the neurosurgeons assessed him yet?’

  ‘Yes, they’ll put in an ICP monitor when he’s settled in the unit. If he survives it’s going to be a long haul,’ Alistair said matter-of-factly. ‘Name’s Tim Merrick, he was the passenger. The driver got off very lightly’a Hamish Fisher. He’s going to the ward for obs.’

  Lucas felt a cold hand press hard against his sternum. Two shattered families, he thought. Lives that just hours ago had been normal would now never be normal again. He wondered if Hamish Fisher had any idea of what lay ahead for him’the guilt, the despair, and the what-ifs and if-onlys that would haunt his days and nights for the rest of his life. ‘OK. I’ll come down now if he’s ready,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, he’s fine to go.’

  * * *

  ‘Dr Drummond, this is Tim Merrick, twenty-one-year-old male from a MVA,’ Lucas said with his usual clinical calm as the patient was transferred to ICU. Just another patient, he kept saying inside his head, but it wasn’t working as it normally did. This was somebody’s son, someone’s brother.

  Someone’s best friend.

  A cold, sick feeling curdled his stomach. Bile rose in his throat. His chest felt as if it was being compressed by an industrial vice. He was having trouble breathing. He could feel sweat beading between his shoulder blades. His temples pounded.

  Scenes from seventeen years ago kept flashing through his mind on rapid replay. Matt’s parents looking ashen and g
utted as they came in to where their son’s broken and bloodied body lay on a hospital gurney. Molly standing there, holding her mother’s hand, her grey-blue eyes wide with fear and dread, her little face as white as milk but for the nutmeg-like dusting of her freckles. Lucas’s parents looking shocked. Their faces seeming to age in front of him as he falteringly tried to explain what had happened.

  The doctors with their calm clinical voices and the police with their detached demeanours as they took down his statement and asked questions he could barely answer for the ropey knot of anguish that had risen in his throat.

  Lucas blinked a couple of times and brought himself back to the moment. ‘He’s got a severe closed head injury, but not much else. Neurosurgery are coming up in twenty minutes to put in an ICP monitor. Can you set him up on the ventilator?’

  ‘Sure,’ Molly said.

  ‘I’m going to start mannitol and steroids, and do the paperwork,’ he said. ‘Some relatives have just arrived. I’ll go and talk with them. We’re going to pull out every stop here to give him a chance of recovery.’

  ‘I’ll run the CO2 slightly up and put in a central line, and get the ICP monitor set up ready to connect,’ Molly said.

  ‘Good,’ Lucas said. ‘He’s got right pulmonary contusion, and I’ve just got the official CT report. He’s also got a small pneumothorax on the right.’

  ‘Good that was picked up,’ Molly said. ‘We could’ve blown that up overnight on the ventilator. I’ll put in a right chest drain after I’ve set the ventilator.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He drew in a heavy breath that felt like it had a handful of thumbtacks attached. ‘I’ll talk to the relatives. He’s got a severe head injury, but he could recover. He’s only young. He’s got to be given the maximum chance.’

  * * *

  Once Molly had put in Tim Merrick’s chest drain she went back to the central office where Aleem Pashar was going through the patient notes that had come up from A and E.