Except it did.
It did matter, because when they were lying on his sofa and revisiting that kiss on the beach, only this time without Alison having her top on, when she should be able to close her eyes and just sink into him, she was all too aware that she was five minutes away from a call that needed to be made—a lie that she was willing to tell.
His back was against the sofa, his long legs holding her from falling, and there was a film coming to end of which they’d only seen the opening credits, and there was the bliss of privacy for them both. His mouth was on her ear and his hand was stroking her breast. Her hands, which had traced his chest, were stealing downwards now. They had left the balcony door open but neither the roar of the ocean nor his kiss in her ear could dull the call of duty. She wriggled back just a little, breathless and moist from his kiss. Yes, hell yes, she would lie for him.
‘I’ve just got to make a phone call.’ His mouth was in her neck and her body was in his arms and it was almost torture to pull just a little further away. She didn’t know whether to pull on her top and hamper an easy return to his arms, but neither did she want to shiver half-naked in his bathroom.
‘And tell her what?’ His question came as a surprise, not to Alison but to Nick. He shouldn’t ask, he told himself, because it was no business of his, and he shouldn’t really care.
He just did.
‘Nick?’ She shook her head, would not elaborate—was a little cross even as he thwarted her attempts to stop reality invading. ‘I won’t be a moment.’
‘Alison.’ He caught her wrist and even though she’d been half-naked in his arms, she felt stupid standing there with her top half exposed, could feel the blush creeping down over her chest as he asked questions a man like Nick shouldn’t have to. ‘You don’t have to lie for me.’
‘Who said I’m lying?’
‘They did.’ He pointed to her rosy breasts and somehow she almost managed a smile.
‘My mum’s…’ Alison swallowed, she truly didn’t want to land him with all of it; even Ellie, who had seen it all, struggled to fathom how rigid her mother could be. ‘She’s difficult.’
‘They often are,’ Nick said, and he handed her her top. ‘And with all she’s been through.’
‘She was the same before,’ Alison admitted, ‘though when Dad and Tim were there…’ She couldn’t really explain, but without further explanation Nick seemed to understand.
‘You weren’t in the full spotlight?’ When she nodded he continued, ‘So where are you tonight?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ She tried blasé, tried casual, but Nick could tell otherwise and she knew it. ‘You really picked the wrong girl to have your torrid Sydney fling with.’
And he looked up at her and was silent for a moment because, yes, he had. He could see stains of hurt in her serious brown eyes and he didn’t want to add to them, except inevitably he already had. Already this was turning into something else, something bigger, something he hadn’t come to Australia for.
‘It doesn’t feel like a fling,’ Nick admitted.
‘It’s all it can be.’ Alison was practical, even if she was shaking inside.
‘Come on.’ He stood and looked around for his keys. ‘I’ll walk you home.’
‘It’s five minutes away.’
And he should say goodnight here, Nick knew.
End it here.
But Nick never went for the easy option, so he reached for his keys.
‘You’re not walking on your own.’
They walked back to Alison’s home in pensive silence, and he didn’t kiss her on the doorstep, because he knew she didn’t want him to, but as she let herself in her mouth still tingled from his and her body held the scent and memory of him. Her eyes must have glittered with stirred passion because Rose’s face screamed of martyrdom as she offered Alison a cup of tea. Even though she didn’t want tea, even though she wanted to go to bed and think of Nick and read the text he’d just sent because she could feel the vibration of her phone in her bag, that this time made her feel giddy with wanting to read it, she said, ‘That would be nice,’ and curled up on the sofa and took the mug from her mum.
‘I thought you were at a party.’
And instead of saying she had been, or offering the usual half-truth, Alison was honest.
‘We gave it a miss,’ she admitted. ‘We went back to Nick’s for dinner.’
‘He seems nice,’ Rose said, because after all he’d brought her baby home.
‘He is nice.’
‘How long did he say he was here for?’ Skilfully, so skilfully, Rose took the pin and deflated the bubble Alison was floating on. Carefully, lovingly, perhaps, she warned her daughter that this could never, ever be. ‘Nice-looking man,’ Rose said. ‘He must have broken a few hearts on his travels,’ she added, just to make sure her daughter got it.
‘I’m going to bed.’ Alison tried to keep her voice light.
She peeled off her clothes and read her text, which was hardly torrid, hardly from a man hell bent on getting in her knickers and promptly breaking her heart. It just thanked her for a nice day and a really nice night, that he’d enjoyed it.
She should stop this now, common sense said.
Just turn her back on his charm, because there really was no point.
She swam between the flags, certainly wasn’t into casual relationships, and that was really all it could be with Nick. In a few weeks he’d be off and she’d be left, and if she wasn’t extremely careful, Alison knew she’d be nursing a broken heart.
Actually, she already knew she would be.
He’d arrived in her life as blonde and as dazzling as summer. He just lit everything up and enhanced it all some more.
She didn’t get him, but she wanted to.
She wanted the little bit of him that was possible, because there was something about Nick that got her, something that was…just a little bit like the single word she sent back to him.
Same. x
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’M NOT stalking you!’
She grinned as she walked across the foyer to Emergency on Monday night and Nick joined her. ‘Amy asked yesterday if I could cover her week of nights.’
‘Oh.’
‘I got called in yesterday,’ Nick explained.
‘I didn’t see you on the bus.’
‘I drove. It was a last-minute thing. I didn’t know whether to ring and offer a lift…’ He admitted only a quarter of it—if the truth were told, he hadn’t known what to do, full stop.
Despite her kisses, despite the thrum between them, there was more to Alison, of that he was sure. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, didn’t want to get involved.
Or that was what he had told himself.
Sunday had been spent turning down offers to go out, and not just from colleagues. He’d been called in for a multi-trauma late afternoon and had found a rather blatant card from a Louise H., reminding him where she worked and that she’d love to see him there.
It would actually have been the safer option.
Instead he’d accepted Amy’s suggestion they ring out for takeaways, which they’d eaten in her office. The conversation had been easy and before he’d known it, the clock had been edging towards midnight and he’d agreed to take over her week of nights.
But Alison was on nights too.
He headed straight for the staffroom, Alison to her locker, and if she hurried there was time for a drink before she started.
‘God!’ Moira was tying back her hair. ‘I’m tired before we’ve even started. Try sharing a house with eight travellers and doing a week of night shift!’ She gave her dazzling smile. ‘All worth it, though.’ They walked through to the staffroom and Moira gave a delighted whoop as she saw Nick. ‘Are you on nights too?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Now, that does cheer me up,’ Moira said, and she was just so light and uninhibited with her banter, Alison would have killed for a little of the same. ‘There’s no
t a spare room at that fancy house of yours, is there?’ Moira rattled on. ‘For a fellow travelling night worker?’
‘It’s a one-bedroomed flat.’ Nick grinned.
‘Move over in the bed, then!’ Moira winked. Of course, she had no idea about Alison and Nick, she was just having fun…
Sort of.
‘Alison.’ Sheila popped her head around the staffroom door. ‘We’ve had a lot of staff ring in sick tonight. Mary will be in charge, but apart from that it’s agency.’ She gave a brief smile to Moira and a couple of the others. ‘Luckily it’s been quiet. The wards all have beds, so you shouldn’t have too many problems. Can you make sure the restocking and drug orders get done, and make sure the trolleys are all wiped down. Oh, and there’s a list up on the notice-board—you need to do a refresher lifting course. Make sure you tick off what session you’re attending.’
So Alison did, and tried not listen to Moira’s chatter and Nick’s easy replies—tried not to feel as if he was surely thinking he’d set his sights on the wrong girl. After all, he and Moira were both here on holiday.
This was her life.
It showed in so many little ways through out the night, perhaps because it was a particularly quiet one.
Moira and the other nurses sat chatting when it was quiet.
Alison did the stock ordering. Working around them, she climbed up on footstools to count packets of gauze, and to everyone else Nick appeared not to notice her. He did notice, she knew, because she could feel his lingering eyes at times, or a smile that was there waiting every now and then when she looked up and turned round.
He was brilliant with each and every patient that came through the doors, but during the many, many lulls that filled this quiet night Nick scrolled through his social networking site—there was no registrar’s office bulging with a backlog of work for him…probably because there was no backlog when you were just passing through.
‘Moira,’ Alison asked, ‘can you put these boxes away?’
‘Sure.’ Moira jumped off her stool. ‘Where do they go?’
‘In the second storage room.’
And she was willing, but by the time Alison had shown her where it was, and when for the third time she had to borrow Alison’s ID to gain access, it was just far easier to do it herself. There was just a touch of a martyred air to Alison as an hour later she took a gulp of cold tea in the nurses’ station and found out all the biscuits she’d brought in were gone.
‘I’ve bought earplugs,’ Moira chatted on happily, ‘but hopefully everyone will be so hungover, no one will be up before midday and I can get some peace and quiet. I’m a shocking sleeper on nights. What about you, Nick?’
‘Sorry?’
‘How do you sleep on nights?’
‘Like a log,’ Nick said, without looking up from the computer, and Alison realised that despite being pleasant, despite the good-natured bantering, there was no flirting from Nick, that he gave nothing back to Moira, as he hadn’t to Louise. It was aimed all at her, Alison realised as now he did look up from the computer and gave her a very nice smile, those green eyes turning her pink as she gave a small smile back.
‘Is there anything you need me to do?’
‘Nothing,’ Alison said. It was five a.m., the board was clear and as Nick checked an X-ray with the resident he stretched and yawned. ‘I’m going to lie down—call if you need me.’
‘Lucky,’ Alison grumbled, hauling out the trolleys to be cleaned, and for just a moment their eyes met and Nick felt as if he was back in far North Queensland, standing on a platform with a piece of elastic around his ankle, wanting to jump, knowing it was reckless, ridiculous, that there was no rhyme nor reason to it, yet wanting to all the same.
‘What time do you finish?’
‘By the time we’ve given handover—about seven-thirty.’
‘I’m here till eight, if you want to hang around—I’ll be quicker than the bus.’
He would be, there wasn’t one till ten minutes to.
‘Thanks,’ Alison said.
She cleaned and polished the trolleys, and tried not to think about it as she dealt with the occasional patient, who was seen by the resident and didn’t require Nick.
In the morning, when Moira was still teasing for a loan of his bed and he was skilfully deflecting her thinly disguised offer, the rest of the night team, apart from Mary, sped off on the dot of seven-thirty. Alison hung around for a quick chat with Ellie, put her name on the list for the lifting refresher course and then, when Sheila asked if she had five more minutes to go over some annual leave requests, she nodded. When there was nothing else to linger for, except Nick, he walked down the corridor, blonde, tired, offering a lift. Alison smiled and said thanks.
When with him, when it was just them, the doubts that plagued her when they were apart were silenced as always.
‘Better than the bus?’ Nick asked as she sank back into the passenger seat.
‘This morning—yes,’ Alison admitted.
‘Do you drive?’ He glanced over.
‘Sometimes—I just prefer the bus for work. The traffic getting in and the staff car-park is impossible sometimes so it’s nice just to sit and read the paper.’
‘It’s been nice not driving,’ Nick admitted, ‘but I can’t stand the thought of a bus ride after being on all night—I’d fall asleep.’
‘It’s always happening to me,’ Alison said. ‘I end up being woken by the driver.’
He was so easy to talk to—about the complicated, about the mundane—but even though they chatted easily, there was a definite charge in the air, which had a sleepy Alison on the alert. He must have shaved yesterday morning, rather than before coming to work, because he was clearly unshaven now, she noticed. Just as she noticed when he pulled on dark glasses against the glare of the morning sun. Just as she noticed his long tanned fingers tapping on the steering-wheel as they sat in heavy traffic.
‘Do you sleep well?’ Nick asked, because he had heard about the whole nursing crew’s habits and he wanted to find out about hers.
‘Depends,’ Alison said. ‘Mum’s at work so the house is quiet…’ And her voice trailed off, because somehow that charge in the air intensified, and there was this pause, this silent pondering, a false night that stretched ahead and a shining window of opportunity.
‘Do you want to go somewhere for breakfast?’ Nick asked as the bay came into view.
‘No, thanks,’ Alison said, because she wasn’t thinking about breakfast.
Just bed.
Bed.
And though they were both tired and sleepy and longing for bed, as he pulled up outside her door, there was no denying it—they were longing for each other too—and as naturally as breathing she turned to him. There was no awkwardness, no will he, won’t he, just the bliss of a night spent looking and thinking and pretending you didn’t want to, all melting away now that no one else was around. It was a really nice kiss, a slow, morning kiss that could tip easily to more, but there was no way she was asking him in because Alison knew where his kiss could lead and probably there was no chance of her mum coming home, but she just couldn’t put herself or her mother in that situation.
‘Have a good sleep.’ She pulled her mouth away, but she wanted to dive back in.
‘I doubt it,’ Nick said, and Alison doubted she would either.
She was a kiss away from his bed, Nick knew that, and for the first time in his quest for freedom Nick felt as if he needed to spell out the rules, needed to be very sure that she knew, and so he said it.
He made himself say it.
‘I can’t stay…’
And she smiled and was very brave, even managed a little joke. ‘I didn’t ask you in.’
But he wasn’t talking about that—she knew he wasn’t talking about that as she climbed out of his car.
He watched her walk up the garden path and for the first time in a long time, at least where women were concerned, Nick was confused—Nick the one almost will
ing her not to turn round—because of how much he wanted her, and for the foreseeable future, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Except this was how it was.
She was exhausted, utterly and completely exhausted, but though her body ached for bed as she walked up her garden path, she ached for him too. It was just criminal that a few streets apart he’d be in bed and she’d be in bed and they had a whole day, a whole wonderful day, if only she would take it. She had her key in the front door, and she opened it, turned round to give him a wave, and he just sat there, looking at her, and she stood there, looking at him, and wished he’d drive off, would just go, except he didn’t.
Then she panicked that he would drive off, that he’d pull off the handbrake and she’d miss her chance.
Her one lovely chance to be wild and brave and sexy and impulsive.
Alison slammed the door closed again and turned round. She could see his smile even from the garden, see the want in his eyes as she made the one reckless decision of her life and sped down the garden path. He had the passenger door open before Alison got there. She jumped in like an eager puppy, and he was an equally eager master because he was pulling her in and kissing her, this smothering kiss that sighed and groaned with mutual consent of what was to come. There was just a flicker of sanity, of what would the neighbours think because it was eight a.m. and they were necking like teenagers. Then he pulled back and gave her the most fantastic smile and Alison, who had craved wild, craved passion and adventure, took a breath, took the plunge, and what she said was from her wildest dreams, because she said what Alison Carter would never have—looked into eyes that looked into hers, and in the mirror of them she saw herself, found herself, was finally herself. ‘I want breakfast in bed.’
CHAPTER NINE
HE KISSED her even as the front door closed and for a moment, just a moment, she did wonder what the hell she was doing and tried not to worry that she’d been working all night and must smell of hospitals, consoling herself, that so too must he, but then his kiss did its magic, produced an Alison that only he could.
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