Lovers Unmasked: The Complete Series

by Nicole Flockton

  “Well, in that case, I’ll have one, too, but can I grab an extra shot with it?”

  Sophie quirked her eyebrow and asked, “Planning on not sleeping tonight?”

  She wanted the earth to open up and swallow her. If that wasn’t a suggestive comment, she didn’t know what was.

  “Caffeine has never been a problem for me,” he replied blandly. “What about you, though? If you’re planning on having a coffee will you be able to sleep?”

  That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Like Alex, she could have a coffee late and it wouldn’t hamper her sleeping habits. What could be a problem tonight, though, was the man standing in front of her. She’d managed to banish the dreams she’d experienced after their one night. But now, she had a feeling that the dream would be front and center again tonight. She wouldn’t let Alex know he could be the cause of a sleepless night. She gave him a bland look.

  “Guess we’re the lucky ones. Caffeine has never been a problem for me, either.” She wanted to get out of the minefield their conversation was heading into. “Why don’t you go into the living room, I’ll bring in the coffees.”

  Sophie breathed a sigh of relief as he took her up on her suggestion. As the coffees were being made, she gave herself a lecture on engaging brain before mouth. If she did that, she might say intelligent, not suggestive, things.

  Sophie carried the mugs through to the living room and found Alex standing at her sliding door, admiring the city view.

  She placed the coffees on the center table and picked up the keys she’d tossed down when they’d walked in. She walked over and unlocked the doors.

  “It’s a nice night. We should sit out here.” She was hoping to make the invitation sound casual. She stood to the side as he made his way out.

  Sophie went back in and collected the coffees. When she walked out again, Alex was leaning against the rail, looking at the view, but not really taking it in.

  She placed the mugs on the small table and went to stand next to him.

  “I find after a really tough day there’s nothing more magical than soaking in the view and remembering I’m a small fish in a huge pond.”

  She’d given a little bit of herself away with those words, but this time she didn’t mind. If they were going to work together they had to feel comfortable around each other. It sounded good in theory — whether it was possible in practice, only time would tell.

  Sophie went back and picked up the mugs, handing Alex’s over to him. She took a sip, letting the scalding liquid slide down her throat.

  “We never did discuss how we were going to handle our work situation,” she mused.

  Silence stretched between them and Sophie wondered if she was going to have to repeat what she’d said.

  “It’s all I’ve been thinking about most of the evening,” he eventually replied.

  Sophie watched as, with lithe movements, Alex replaced his cup on the table and came back to stand in front of her. He reached for her cup, taking it and placing it next to his. She wanted to take it back. She needed the security of holding the mug in her hand. It stopped the temptation to reach up and run her fingers across his broad shoulders.

  “I think we could make this work, Sophie.” She held herself still as he reached out and ran a finger down her cheek. All she wanted to do was turn her face into his warm hand.

  “Make — ” her voice squeaked out. She cleared her throat and started again. “Make what work?”

  “A personal relationship between us.”

  To prove his point he closed the gap between them and placed his lips on hers. No other parts of their bodies touched, just their lips. His heat consumed and warmed her. She clenched her hands to stop from reaching out and sinking her fingers into his hair.

  Standing on a balcony underneath a full moon with a stunning city view as a backdrop was what romance was made of, and his lips were decadent.

  They were soft and firm and she couldn’t fight it any longer. Sophie opened up beneath his touch. She needed to feel more. She gave into her earlier desire and wrapped her arms around his neck and let her fingers fulfill their wish. He gathered her close and she moaned in appreciation of the hard male body pressing against hers.

  It would be so easy to give in to the chemistry between them. So easy to push aside her doubts, so easy to shout the word yes. But the fallout if anything should go wrong between them would not be so easy to deal with. One of them would have to leave the hospital. She’d didn’t want to be the person who had to move. She loved working with her colleagues. She’d been there since she’d graduated from college. She’d achieved her goal of becoming NUM. Getting involved with Alex couldn’t possibly work. No matter how attracted she was to him. No matter how much she wanted to take him by the hand and drag him into her room.

  Sanity and common sense barged its way through her sensuous thoughts.

  She pushed against his powerful chest and tore her mouth away. “No, Alex. No. I can’t do this again.”

  His words sounded tortured, as if ripped from his throat. “Can’t do what again, Sophie?”

  “This,” she waved her hand between them. “Us. I can’t do us. I can’t do another one night with you. I just can’t.”

  She turned her back on him and gripped the railing. She sensed him wanting to reach out and grab her. “Don’t, please don’t.”

  “Sophie, it wouldn’t be for one night, it would be for more. Can’t you at least try?”

  She whirled around and faced him, anger at the world, at him, at the situation they found themselves in starting to build. “And if I try, what happens to me when it all ends? I’m the one who can be easily replaced. I’m the one who, as I said in our office earlier, has so much more to lose.”

  She had to move away from him; being in close proximity to him wasn’t helping the situation. She made her way back into her living room, sensing him following her. Maybe she was more in tune with him than she’d thought. But she had to fight it. She kept walking until she reached her front door. Only then did she face him again.

  “Look, Alex, I’ll have a relationship with you, but it will be a professional one. I’ve come too far in my career to jeopardize it by having a relationship with the director of emergency.” She paused momentarily before continuing. “I broke my engagement with a work colleague not long ago. Part of the fallout from that was dealing with the gossip around the hospital. I’m not going through that again. I’m not ready for a personal relationship with anyone. Can you respect that?”

  Sophie waited as Alex walked toward her, his steps sure and predatory. When he reached her he answered her question. “Yes, I can respect that, even understand it, but do I like it? Not really.”

  He placed his hand on her door handle and turned it pausing before passing through the opening. “But it’s not over yet, Sophie, believe me.”

  He walked through the open door and let it close behind him.

  Her breath whooshed out of her and she slid down the wall until her bottom hit the ground with a quiet thud.

  She’d experienced a gamut of emotions in the space of a few hours. How was she going to get through having to spend so much time with Alex at work? Looking for a new job wasn’t an option. She’d worked hard to get where she finally was and she wasn’t going to give that up.

  No, the only option she had was to suck it up and deal with it. She could be professional and she could bury the feelings of attraction that coursed through her blood.

  She had to.

  • • •

  Sophie was sipping on her second coffee for the morning as she walked through the emergency room doors. A flurry of activity greeted her. Perfect. A busy day was exactly what she needed to forget the previous evening’s events.

  “Sophie, thank goodness you’re here.” The harried voice of the chief n
ight nurse had her smiling. It was good to feel useful and appreciated.

  “Hi, Dawn, what’s up?”

  “After you left last night things went into hyper drive. You’d think it would’ve been quiet for a Monday night, but it was the opposite. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Dawn kept up her constant stream of chatter as they made their way to Sophie’s office. She flung open the door with a confidence she wasn’t feeling and was slightly disappointed when she found it empty.

  “Dr. Scavoni not in yet?” she asked Dawn as she dumped her bag in her desk drawer.

  “Yep, he was in at the crack of dawn. Apparently he couldn’t sleep. He’s upstairs at the burns unit checking out the patient you brought in last night.”

  Sophie noted Dawn’s comment about Alex not sleeping. Her heart beat faster as she wondered whether she was the cause of his sleeplessness. “How’s Tim doing?”

  Dawn sat on the corner of her desk and flipped the pages on the clipboard she was carrying.

  “He’s stable. The swelling is starting to subside. No news on whether he’ll lose the use of his hand.”

  Sophie made a mental note to go visit him later on. It was going to be a long, hard recovery road for the young chef and he would need a lot of support.

  “What about the rest of the evening? Anything I should know about?”

  They spent the next few minutes going over the night’s events. They still had some people waiting for test results and bed availability before they could be moved.

  Dawn stood and handed over the clipboard. “I’ll leave it in your capable hands. I’m beat and my bed is calling.”

  Sophie laughed. She totally understood the strain and stresses working the night shift could do to your body.

  “Well, according to my roster, you now have a couple of days off. Enjoy them, Dawn, and I’ll see you on your next shift.”

  “Thanks, Soph, have a good day.”

  Sophie murmured her thanks but her mind was already on the shuffling she was going to have to do to make room in the department for any incoming patients. It was a vicious circle. There never seemed to be enough beds in the wards to take the amount of patients that seemed to flow through the emergency room doors.

  She was about to head out into the jungle when Alex strode in. She schooled her features but she couldn’t stop the rapid beating of her heart or the moisture that started to form on her hands.

  “Good morning, Alex.” She felt she should say more but couldn’t form the words. It was as if her mind was made up of jelly.

  “Morning, Sophie, I trust you slept well?”

  How did she answer that?

  Yes, Alex, I slept like the dead. Until you invaded my dreams and turned them from pleasant to hot. So hot that I woke up tangled in my sheets, needing you to assuage the hunger I was feeling.

  Oh yeah, that would go down real well.

  “Fine, thanks. How about you? Coffee didn’t bother you?” She couldn’t resist asking even though she knew from Dawn how well he’d slept.

  He raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer. A tense silence settled momentarily over the room.

  Sophie cleared her throat. “I, ah, I heard from Dawn that Tim is stable. That’s good news.”

  Alex ran his fingers through his hair, mussing it, and she had to stop herself from reaching out to tidy it up.

  “Yes, it is good. But on to other things. We’ve got people in beds that need to be moved. People in the waiting room that can’t be seen because we have no beds. Does the night staff not know how to run things?”

  Anger warred with shock at his words. He hadn’t even spent one full day in the department and he was already casting aspersions over the ability of the staff.

  “How on earth did you become director of emergency, Doctor?” She strode around her desk. “This is what happens day after day after day. We’ve even had ambulances lined up outside. It’s a constant battle that can never be won. We just have to deal with it and try to keep our patients comfortable.”

  She stopped and took a breath before continuing. “And another thing, I’d think twice before saying things about your staff, otherwise you’ll have no staff to deal with your patients.”

  Now it was his turn to look shocked. Clearly, no one had ever spoken to him that way. As the red haze of anger cleared, Sophie realized she’d just told off her superior. A superior who could have her removed from the job with a quick slash of his pen. A superior who she really wanted to kiss.

  “Are you finished?” he asked, with a slight note of admiration in his tone.

  Sophie knew she’d overstepped her boundaries, and owed Alex some sort of an apology. Even though she meant every word of her tirade. “Sorry, but I will defend my staff against overbearing doctors who have no idea just how hard my nurses work.”

  It could hardly be described as an apology, but she would always defend her nurses.

  Alex slumped down into his chair. “No, you’re right, Sophie. It was unreasonable of me to take my foul mood out on you and our staff. I’m sorry.”

  Sophie didn’t know how to take his apology or his tone. He sounded so dejected and he hadn’t even been there one day. It didn’t bode well for the ER if he was so low.

  This time it was her turn to sit on his desk. “What is it, Alex, what’s wrong?”

  He took his time before he answered, as if he was pondering exactly what to say and how much he wanted to say to her. The anger in her started to rise again. “Look, Alex, whatever you have to say, just say it. I can take it. Believe me, I’ve had worse thrown at me over the last couple of months.” She laid her hands on the cool wooden surface of his desk and leaned forward, passion filling her words. “But when it comes to the hospital and our staff, it’s up to us to keep moral high and deal with the problems of bed shortages and making the department run smoothly.”

  “You really do love your job, don’t you?” Bewilderment and admiration mixed to chase away the dejection on his face.

  “Of course I do, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love it. Why are you so surprised?”

  “I just am, that’s all. When I first met you, I would never have pictured you as a nurse.”

  She snorted, cynicism lacing her voice. “You thought I was some airhead. Some socialite who had nothing better to do with her time, other than getting her hair and nails done.”

  She had the pleasure of seeing a shade of burgundy flood his cheeks. “I can see I was right. You’re not the first one and I doubt you’ll be the last one. If my father had his way, his ‘precious princess’ would never get her hands dirty again. She’d marry well and let her husband look after her and provide for her, so she wouldn’t have to worry her little head about working in a public hospital.”

  She took a breath and continued before Alex could interrupt. “I may be property tycoon Richard Franklyn’s only daughter. But I make my own mind up and I live my life with purpose. I’m a nurse and a damn good one at that. I am not defined by my father’s wealth.”

  Alex held up his hands in mock surrender. “I won’t lie, Sophie. Yes, I thought you were a socialite, but there was something else there I could see. I don’t care who your father is or how wealthy he is. I can see that his money doesn’t define you. But something that drew me to you from the moment I sat down next to you that night. Something I couldn’t ignore.”

  Sophie didn’t want to hear those words. It sounded too personal and she wouldn’t do personal now. “Well, let’s just forget that night ever happened. It’s in the past and we need to move on.”

  Her breath fluttered in her chest as his hand reached out and touched her face. So reminiscent of the gentle caresses he bestowed upon her that one night. It took all her strength to remain rigid and not let him know how much his touch affected her.

  “Can you re
ally do that, Sophie?” he asked. “Can you really forget everything we shared that night and even last night?”

  She moved away, determined to put some distance between them. She felt like a broken record, but it seemed he wasn’t listening to what she kept saying. “Alex, as I told you last night, I can’t do this. I will not be pressured into a personal relationship with you.” She paused to catch her breath. “Last night you said you could deal with that.”

  • • •

  The stubborn tilt of her chin and the steely look of determination in her eyes garnered nothing but admiration in him. She had grit and was focused on what she wanted. He had to respect that about her.

  “Yes, Sophie, I can deal with that. Professionalism from here on out.”

  Sophie lifted her chin a little higher. “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my nursing staff will be wondering where I am.”

  He watched as she opened the door and strode out, leaving behind the lingering scent of her perfume.

  What was it about Sophie that had his sensibilities flying out the window whenever he got within a few feet of her?

  She was right, though, he should be listening to her. She spoke the truth. A personal relationship should be out of the question. He made a vow to himself after his failed marriage he didn’t want to go down that road again. Hadn’t he learned the first time?

  What he should do was ring Amanda. She was always a voice of reason. It had taken them a few years, but he and his former wife had managed to salvage a friendship out of the wreck of their marriage. He was even godfather to her daughter.

  A dull ache pierced his heart as he thought about Abby. How, if things had been different, she might have been their child. But no, if he couldn’t be a proper husband there was no way he would be a proper father. A proper father was there when his child needed him. Not a passing figure that either left too early in the morning or arrived home too late. A child needed their father not to be on call, having to rush off to an emergency. It would kill him to see the look of disappointment on his child’s face, once again, when he had to rush out and leave behind a party or a picnic.