Waking Up With Dr. Off-Limits

by Amy Andrews

  And it had not disappointed.

  She hugged her knees and rocked. Not even the hardness of the gritty concrete beneath her butt or Tilly’s well-intentioned warning could stop the swell of possibility blooming in her chest.

  Yes. It was foolish. But what Tilly hadn’t seen had been the way Adam had looked at her. Like he saw her, really saw her, for the first time. Saw her as a woman. Not as a girl. Or even as someone out of bounds.

  She’d seen desire flash as brightly as those irresistible golden flecks in his lapis lazuli gaze. Heard the suck of his breath and the deep groan that had seemed torn from his chest. Felt the tremble of his hand as it had burrowed into her hair.

  Adam Carmichael had been…shaken.

  And shaken she could work with.

  Maybe it was time to seize the moment?

  Adam paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at the lone figure sitting hunched at the bottom. Her blonde ponytail brushed her shoulder blades as she rocked slightly and memories of their hot birthday kiss taunted him again as they had through the endless night.

  The softness of her lips, the husky timbre of her whisper, the heady satisfaction of that little whimper.

  Not even Ruby’s stern disapproval had been able to obliterate the whimper. But his sister was right.

  It was an attraction he couldn’t explore. For numerous reasons.

  They had to talk. About the kiss. About the crush. About their total unsuitability for each other.

  He hadn’t planned to do it now but it seemed fate had intervened.

  A light ocean breeze ruffled his hair as he adjusted his board under his arm and descended the stairs.

  ‘Hi,’ he said as he passed by, stepping onto the soft sand and turning to face her as he dropped his board at his feet.

  Jess started as Adam and his mouth appeared before her. His mouth, however, promptly lost its fascination as she realised he was practically naked before her. A brief pair of swimming trunks was the only thing that stood between him and total nudity.

  She’d never known a man to wear so little so consistently! She swallowed, refusing to look any further south than his chest.

  ‘Hi.’

  He looked at her for a moment, his gaze drawn to her pink mouth. ‘I didn’t realise you were a walker,’ he said, indicating her gym clothes.

  Jess shrugged. ‘I’m not. Not really. Just…couldn’t sleep.’

  He nodded. Now, that he could relate to. He’d never been more relieved to see strips of daylight illuminating the sky through the blinds of his bedroom window.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  Her heart thumped like a rotor in her chest. ‘Okay.’

  Adam cleared his throat. ‘About the kiss.’

  Jess held her breath. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have…let things get out of hand like that. It was…wrong of me.’

  Jess didn’t want to hear wrong. It had been a good kiss—a great kiss—and they were both adult and single. There had been nothing wrong about it.

  And maybe he wanted this too? Deep down. Maybe he just needed a push?

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked, cutting to what was, in her opinion, the crux of the matter.

  Hell, yeah was his most immediate thought. But he was smart enough to know he was damned, no matter how he answered. ‘Of course I enjoyed it, Jess.’

  Jess felt a little kick of triumph deep in her belly. ‘Well, isn’t that all that matters?’

  Adam sighed. If only it was that simple. ‘No, it isn’t. You’re quite a bit younger than me and you’re Ruby’s friend and you live in my house. We shouldn’t be kissing…at all…and especially not like that.’

  Because it was going to lead to more. Hell, he already wanted more.

  How could that be?

  How could he want to yank her into his arms and kiss her again? Kiss her better. Wetter, deeper, harder.

  It was insane.

  Jess regarded him seriously. She knew she probably wasn’t going to get another opportunity to make her case so, despite her heart thudding so loudly she could barely hear herself, she pushed a little more. ‘Even though we enjoyed it?’

  Adam nodded. ‘Especially because we enjoyed it.’

  Jess watched as the light ocean breeze ruffled his shaggy hair. The sun rising higher over the horizon behind him highlighted the tips and it seemed to glow like a golden halo.

  ‘Look…Ruby told me…about your…about the crush.’

  Jess stilled as a bloom of colour whooshed over her from the roots of her hair to the tips on her sand-buried toes. She dropped her gaze.

  Ruby? How could she?

  She wanted to die. She wanted to dig a big hole in the sand and bury herself in it. She wanted to cough and splutter and deny it and pretend that Ruby had lost her mind.

  She wanted to stamp her foot. Giggle. Cry.

  Anything to get through this excruciating moment.

  Running away was another option.

  But, staring at her toes buried in the sand, she knew she couldn’t. This was the ultimate test of her adulthood. A child, a girl would run away and hide. Adults didn’t. They talked about their issues. No matter how difficult or embarrassing. They faced things head on.

  Just like Adam.

  Adam couldn’t bear it as the silence stretched, broken only by the cry of a seagull. He’d embarrassed her—that much was obvious—but surely she didn’t think this conversation was any easier for him.

  ‘Jess?’

  Jess took a steadying breath and looked up. Time to prove to him, in a less overt way than last night, how mature she could be.

  ‘I’m twenty-four years old, Adam. Crushes are for teenagers.’

  She took a breath to gather herself to lay it all out. To speak up for a change instead of keeping it all to herself.

  ‘I think you’re sexy. Hot. Delicious.’ She could feel her face getting warmer but she plunged on. She couldn’t back out now.

  ‘But more than that, you’re amazing. You’re smart and kind and what you do for a living is sexy. And it makes me proud to know you. Proud to be part of the human race. You’re noble and that’s sexy. So sexy it makes me hot all over. And even if you were ugly, which…’ she couldn’t help herself, she looked him up and down and sighed ‘…God help me, you’re not, you’d still make me hot all over.’

  There, she’d said it.

  Every part of her wanted to drop her gaze from his stunned face, to hide the embarrassed flush, to sink into the ground. But if she did, if she blinked, all the things she’d said would lose their impact.

  So she kept her chin firmly up.

  He needed to know that this was more than just some silly girly crush. He needed to know that what she felt for him was very, very adult. And that it was about more than the external package.

  Adam was speechless. Stunned. Too stunned to even move. Well, most of him anyway. One part of him was having no problems in that quarter. Her so sexy it makes me hot all over was having an alarming effect and he wasn’t exactly dressed to conceal involuntary reactions.

  ‘Can I have a moment to process that?’ he asked as he hastily lowered himself to the same step that Jess was sitting on but as close to the opposite end as was possible without falling off.

  Jess, pleased to break the intense eye contact, nodded. ‘Sure. It’s a lot to take in,’ she said, returning her gaze to the ocean, feeling as light as the gull still riding the air currents above.

  Finally, she’d got it off her chest.

  Adam stared out at it too, feeling decidedly burdened as his brain grappled with Jess’s words. Quite a few women had called him sexy. And hot. Usually they were between sheets at the time but the point was, he was used to being flattered by women. Compliments about his body weren’t exactly a new thing.

  Surfing kept him in good shape and he certainly worked it to his advantage. He enjoyed the way women looked at him. He liked their candid appreciation. That look in their eyes that told him they’d a
lready undressed him.

  But Jess’s impassioned little speech wasn’t like that. There wasn’t that frank look in her eyes when she called him sexy. No sexual overtones when she’d told him she was hot for him. Her eyes didn’t do that flirty thing that let him know she’d put him next on her bucket list.

  There was just honesty. And appreciation. Of him as a human being. Not just as a man with a good body.

  And something else. Adoration. For what he did. For his skills. His brain. His humanity.

  Somehow it was sexier than any amount of being mentally undressed.

  Frankly it was…well…hot.

  Finally he understood why his old man, the chief, got such a kick out of it. Why hundreds of fawning patients and colleagues and myriad accolades despite his terrible arrogance and unprofessional conduct puffed out his chest. Why his mother’s total adoration, unwavering even after forty years and several affairs, was such a huge ego trip.

  The thought of his parents’ screwed-up relationship put the brakes on his own burgeoning ego. He wasn’t his father and he didn’t want that kind of relationship with anyone, especially not a woman.

  Blind adoration may be flattering but he’d rather be involved with someone who had her own agenda, was her own woman. That’s what he’d loved so much about Caroline—as a kindy teacher and having not grown up in a medical family, she hadn’t given a toss about his medical pedigree or whose son he was.

  She hadn’t even cared that his father disapproved of her—not malleable enough, son—in the beginning, anyway.

  She’d just taken each day as it came and asked nothing of him other than letting her be her own woman. She’d been the complete opposite of his mother. And he’d adored her for it.

  He hadn’t wanted to fall into the same pattern his parents’ marriage had taken. His mother eclipsed and happy to be so. Ready and willing to drop everything to do her husband’s bidding.

  And he’d desperately wanted to stick it to his father. Show the chief what a real relationship was about. One that involved mutual respect.

  But in the end, having escaped an overbearing father when her mother had divorced him in her teens, Caroline hadn’t wanted anything to do with the great Gregory Carmichael—including his son.

  She hadn’t been convinced that Adam wouldn’t turn into his father one day.

  That had been gutting.

  And he’d spent every day since proving her wrong.

  He dragged his gaze from the ocean and found Jess looking at him with that open, honest gaze. ‘Jess…I’m flattered. Really, I am.’

  Jess could hear the but coming from a mile off.

  ‘But you and I just aren’t going to happen.’

  She felt the inevitability of the rejection but refused to be dissuaded. If he thought she was going to take it meekly then he was wrong.

  She was a country girl and they spoke their minds.

  And she’d already laid herself bare. What did she have to lose?

  ‘Because your twelve years older than me?’

  Adam groaned inwardly as she said the age difference out loud. It sounded obscene and instead of young and virile he felt old and dirty.

  ‘No. Not just because of that, although, God knows, that’s bad enough.’

  He rubbed his hand through his hair as he searched for the right words to let her down gently.

  ‘It’s just… Jess, we want two different things from relationships. I’m not the settling-down type and, as Ruby so rightly pointed out last night, you are. I can’t in all honesty kiss you and know that while I’m thinking about how quickly I can get you into bed, you’re thinking about what colour to paint the nursery. That wouldn’t be right, Jess.’

  ‘See,’ she joked lightly, her heart expanding even more at his innate sense of fairness. ‘I told you you were noble.’

  ‘Jess…’

  She sighed at the warning in his voice. ‘How do you know you’re not the settling-down type when you’ve never even tried, Adam? I know you came close once but that was a long time ago.’

  So Jess knew about Caroline. Ruby must have told her. But did she have any idea how devastated he’d been?

  ‘Jess, I’m only here for a handful of weeks before I go off on my next mission. And I can’t get into something with you that could have repercussions for your relationship with Ruby and with the important surgeries we’ve got coming up. If you were ten years older, ten years wiser, if you didn’t live in my house and I wasn’t about to become your boss, I’d totally be up for a fling. But that’s all I could offer you. I don’t do anything serious.’

  Jess contemplated the temptation for a moment. A fling with a man she’d lusted after for three years. The same man who sat not two metres from her with practically every muscle, every inch of skin he had exposed to her gaze.

  It was so very tempting. ‘Maybe I’m totally up for a fling too?’

  Adam narrowed his gaze at the bravado he heard trembling in her voice. ‘Really?’ He cocked an eyebrow, his heart pounding in rhythm with the surf. ‘You wouldn’t want more?’

  Of course she would. Even before their kiss she’d wanted more. And her grandmother always told her to be true to herself and others.

  She looked back towards the horizon. ‘I’d want everything.’

  Even though her words were barely more than a whisper Adam heard them loud and clear. They slipped under his skin as he also turned his gaze to the rising sun. ‘I only give everything to my job.’

  Jess nodded. In her heart of hearts she knew that. It was, after all, one of the things she admired about him. But he suddenly sounded utterly miserable and she realised she’d done that. She’d brought the man down when all he’d no doubt been hoping for when he’d come to the beach this morning had been to catch a wave or two.

  To be exhilarated, not aggravated.

  It’s not like he’d ever given her crush any encouragement. Until last night, and the naked-in-her-bed thing, he’d been absolutely above board with her.

  It wasn’t his fault she was besotted with him.

  And she didn’t want him to feel awkward or like this was somehow his fault. She looked back at him. ‘Guess we’re just going to have to stay friends, then, huh?’

  Adam looked at her sharply. ‘You think we can do that? Ignore this whole…awkward conversation and go on like before?’

  No. She didn’t want it to go back to what it had been. But Jess felt a responsibility to fix what she’d broken with her seize-the-moment attitude.

  ‘No. I don’t want it to be like it was before. We were just acquaintances, passing each other like ships in the night. You barely spoke to me, for crying out loud, which is crazy because your sister is one of my closest friends and we’re going to be working together. Our paths are kind of intertwined—whether you like it or not. I’d like to think we could be friends.’

  Adam couldn’t think of a single woman friend he’d had whose pants he hadn’t wanted to get into. And usually did.

  But this wasn’t any woman. It was Jess. Ruby’s friend. And it was a very sensible suggestion.

  He smiled. ‘Now, that sounds like something I could live with.’

  Jess responded to his smile despite herself. He was incredible in this early morning light as the soft morning sun stroked gentle fingers over all his golden glory. He looked fit and healthy and very, very male.

  ‘Go surf,’ she ordered. Before I push you down right here in the sand.

  Adam grinned. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  All the serious talk had put paid to his erection so he leapt to his feet, bending to pick up his board. He was grateful for the familiar weight against his body and for the invisible pull of the waves.

  But a sudden pang of conscience tugged at him and he looked over his shoulder. ‘If you want off the team, you know I’d understand.’

  Jess recoiled from the suggestion as an immediate rebuff hovered on her lips. ‘Do you want me off?’ she asked, holding her breath.

  ‘No.
’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not. Just…you know… Thought it might be easier…’

  Nothing was easy where her feelings for him were concerned. So what difference did it make? ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me from the team.’

  Adam smiled again, buoyed by her emphatic reply. He’d been looking forward to working with her. ‘Good.’

  Jess sat and watched the swagger of his butt until it disappeared into the ocean.

  A week later Jess somehow found herself sitting in the middle of a press conference, the Eastern Beaches Hospital logo behind her and flashes strobing in front of her. She was a most reluctant participant but as the other nurses in Adam’s team were all in surgery, she hadn’t been given a choice.

  ‘Just fake it,’ her boss had advised. ‘They’re not interested in you anyway. You’re just a prop.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ Jess had murmured.

  Martha laughed. ‘Sorry. What I mean is…this is all just a publicity exercise for the hospital and the charities involved so we put on our scrubs and we play along.’

  ‘Scrubs? But nobody wears their scrubs outside the operating theatres.’

  ‘Yes, you know that and I know that but the general public, who’ve had a steady diet of medical shows for the last thirty years, don’t. Gordon Meriwether wants us in scrubs. We wear scrubs. He’s the boss.’

  So here she sat in her scrubs, hair tucked into her theatre cap, in what felt like the middle of a circus as her fellow performers were introduced by Gordon.

  Adam, of course, followed by Rajiv, the anaesthetist, Paula, the surgical registrar, and the two charity CEOs.

  And next to her sat Lai Ling, the star case.

  Beside her, an interpreter.

  At nineteen and obviously embarrassed by her condition, Lai Ling seemed very overawed by all the noise and attention. She barely lifted her gaze and when she did she looked shyly through her fringe.

  All the patients had arrived on a flight yesterday morning and the surgical team had met them in the afternoon. And in three days’ time, on Monday morning, the first case would be operated on. Lai Ling was scheduled for Wednesday.

  ‘Dr Carmichael,’ someone yelled from the back of the room once the floor had been thrown open to questions. ‘Can you tell us about Lai Ling’s condition?’