THEY talked of the operation as they walked, and of Bobbie Archer’s progress, but beneath the conversation something else was going on. Like sub-titles in a foreign film, Luca’s body spoke to hers, and for all she tried to stop it, her body responded.
‘Well, here we are. I’m off upstairs for a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich.’
Luca’s face showed such disgust she had to laugh.
‘It’s comfort food,’ she said to him.
‘And you need comfort?’ His voice, deep and husky, and his eyes, suddenly hot with desire, told her just what manner of comfort he was offering.
‘Not that kind of comfort,’ she said, though her heart was beating erratically, and her breath coming fast and shallow. ‘Peanut butter and jelly—they’re reminders of home, and childhood—of simple things and simpler times when I didn’t know beautiful children like Reece and Bobbie could be born with heart defects.’
‘I, too, like simple things,’ Luca said, and Rachel hesitated. Should she invite Luca into her house? The fairy-tale that still fluttered around in her thoughts switched from Cinderella to Red Riding Hood, and though Luca was no wolf, he nonetheless represented danger.
‘Well, peanut butter, jelly and bread are the only things I know for sure we have in the pantry. Some days the refrigerator harbours cheese and ham and fruit, but on other days its shelves are bare, apart from mystery objects sprouting hairy blue mould.’
‘I need to collect some papers from my apartment,’ Luca said, and Rachel laughed.
‘Very subtle! In that case, I’ll see you later.’
‘You will indeed,’ Luca promised, then he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Rachel felt a tremor of desire begin, not at the point of contact with Luca’s lips, but deep inside her belly.
A barely heard whimper of need fluttered from her lips. Luca drew her close, hugged her tight, then stepped away.
‘It’s as well you only had peanut and jelly to offer. Had I come inside we might not have wasted time on food. I’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes, and we will walk decorously back to the hospital together.’
He smiled and touched a finger to her lips. ‘So proper, though proper is not how I wish to be with you.’
It was all too much for Rachel and she moved swiftly away, amazed she hadn’t melted with desire right there on the footpath.
What would a puddle of desire look like? she wondered as she climbed the steps. And if a kiss could turn her boneless, what would making love with Luca do to her?
Oh, dear!
She unlocked her door and stepped into the flat. With her knick-knacks scattered around and Kurt’s jazz musician posters on the walls, it should have felt like home, but it still had the soulless feeling of rented space—of a temporary abode too long inhabited by people passing through.
Was that what she was doing? Physically, she was making a sandwich—and, having found a fresh tomato, using that instead of comfort food—but was she just passing through life? Had the death of Reece and Jake’s defection turned her into an onlooker in life rather than a participant?
It was a sobering realisation, and though she argued she actively participated in work and work-related matters, she knew as far as her social life went, it was true.
‘So?’ she asked herself as she walked back down the stairs.
The word echoed in the stairwell but no one answered—the ghosts of those other people who’d passed through before her not offering any advice at all!
Luca watched her walk out the front door. Long-limbed and lithe, she moved with an unconscious grace that he knew was as much a part of her as breathing. He also knew if he complimented her on it, she would be embarrassed rather than pleased.
He had dated American women before, and had not found them so different, but this one? At times it seemed she was from another planet, not just another country.
She did not like compliments or fancy restaurants and though she had kissed him with such passion—or perhaps because of it?—she then changed and held him some way apart, so he had no idea whether his pursuit was gaining ground or losing it.
‘You move beautifully, gracefully.’
‘Crikey!’ she said, then she laughed.
‘I knew you would laugh if I told you,’ Luca muttered at her. ‘Why are you so afraid of compliments? I wouldn’t offer false praise, but I see your grace and it feels right to speak of it.’
She turned towards him and he could see her embarrassment not only in a high wash of colour on her cheekbones but in her expressive eyes as well.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not used to people telling me things like that. I don’t know how to react.’
He took her hand and brought it to her lips.
‘You smile at me, and you say, “Thank you, Luca.” Is that so hard?’
‘No, I guess not, but if I accept your compliment—that I walk gracefully—I know for sure the next thing I’m going to do is trip over something and make a complete fool of myself. I’m not good at this stuff, Luca.’
She had walked on and he kept pace with her.
‘Then let me teach you,’ he suggested.
Silence, though he felt her body tense, and he knew she was thinking of lessons of another kind—as he was all the time when he was with her. Though they would teach each other in the bedroom—he was not vain enough to think otherwise.
Then she smiled and he felt as if the sun had come out from behind clouds. Such a cliché, he thought, but what other way to describe a feeling that made the day brighter and his body warmer?
‘OK,’ she said, and he knew she understood the implications of both his suggestion and her own reply. Their relationship had moved in the right direction at last!
But the afternoon was tough, and the final operation on an eighteen-month-old boy with coarctation of the aorta—a significant narrowing of the body’s main artery, preventing blood circulating properly through the body—became complicated when Phil, who was operating, discovered the little patient’s body had produced subsidiary vessels in an attempt to fix the problem and, rather than just removing the narrow part of the aorta and rejoining the ends, he had to find out where the new vessels led before he could move them.
‘Damn, that’s a coronary artery we’ve cut, Scott, not a subsidiary,’ Phil said, as blood spurted everywhere.
‘I’ll sew it up,’ Luca said calmly, ‘while you continue with what you are doing, Phil.’
But the coronary arteries supplied the heart muscle with the blood they need to keep pumping, and without that blood the heart grew sluggish. Rachel could see the little organ swelling as blood collected within it.
‘Damn!’ Phil said again, while Rachel gently squeezed the bloated heart to help it pump.
Luca, she knew, would be sewing swiftly, reconnecting the two ends of the severed artery neatly and efficiently. This was what being part of a team was all about.
But the stress level had risen and when they were finally done, they all suffered let-down.
‘We need better information before we cut,’ Alex said later, when the team was gathered in the lounge after the final operation. They were all still in various degrees of theatre garb, as a caffeine fix had seemed more important than a shower.
‘Better echo pictures,’ Rachel said. ‘Surely subsidiary vessels that size would have shown up in echocardiograms.’
‘They should have,’ Phil said, ‘but when you think of the maze of vessels running around, into and out of a baby’s heart, it’s a wonder we get as much information as we do.’
‘You’re right,’ Alex said, ‘but maybe in future we should try to build a model of the situation so we’ve a three-dimensional representation of what we’ll find before we get in there.’
‘We don’t have time for model-building in most situations,’ Phil reminded him.
‘And with patients like that baby—Andrew, wasn’t he?—most of the information we had to hand was from the transferring hospital.’
‘I know, but we still have to do better.’
Alex turned to Luca.
‘In your clinic will you have your own specialist radiologist—an echocardiologist—so you can ask for the pictures you want?’
‘He’s already appointed and, like me, is currently expanding his knowledge, but in a hospital in London.’
‘That’s good,’ Alex told him. ‘We have our own man back home, but I’m beginning to believe to make a small unit like this work properly we need an echocardiologist attached to the team. He’ll soon learn exactly what we need, and can do the follow-up scans on the patients and also be used in the cath lab for catheterisations. There’d be enough work.’
Alex sounded tired, although he hadn’t been in Theatre for the final operation.
Luca looked around the room and realised just how much of themselves this team put into their work. It was already after eight at night, and they all still had to shower and dress and make their way home. Although he suspected Alex would remain at the hospital until he was sure all today’s patients were stable.
It was what he, Luca, would have done in the circumstances.
But these were not his circumstances, and as Alex declared a day off for the whole team for the following day, Luca glanced across at Rachel, who met his eyes and smiled.
Just a smile, but his body responded with a burst of testosterone that had his heart thudding in his chest.
Dio! He was hardly so frustrated that a smile could do this to him! Even with the promise behind the smile, he should not have been affected quite so strongly.
Was it more than lust he felt for Rachel?
Not that it was just lust—he liked her a lot. She was already, he thought, a friend.
But beyond lust?
Unable to answer any of the questions in his head, he stood up and headed for the changing rooms. He’d have a shower, dress, then walk her home. Maybe tonight they’d get to the Spanish restaurant. It was sure to be open late.
And after that, with a free day ahead tomorrow—well, who knew?
More excitement stirred and he hurried to the showers.
Rachel sat in the lounge while the team filtered out, timing their moves for when they thought the showers would be free.
Kurt, who’d followed Luca out, returned, all shiny clean and with the air of a man with fun on his mind.
‘Don’t expect me home,’ he said to Rachel, bending to drop a kiss on her head. ‘And if you’ve got an ounce of sense, you won’t be home tonight either.’
Rachel looked up at him, and saw concern as well as mischief in his eyes.
‘I’m scared about this,’ she told him, and he sat down on the couch beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.
‘Of course you are. You’re practically a virgin, for all you’ve been married and had a baby. And you’ve still got all the old hang-ups in your head. Will he still respect me in the morning, and all that rubbish. Forget it, Rach, and go into it to have fun. Think pleasure and enjoyment. You’re not Cinderella. You’ve got a full and rewarding life, so you don’t need rescuing from the kitchen, but you do need some relaxation.’
Rachel laughed.
‘I guess that’s one way of putting it, but aren’t there deep-breathing techniques for relaxation? Or I could take up yoga.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Kurt growled at her. ‘And if he asks you out somewhere swish to dinner, wear the black. Do not climb into your ancient jeans and that green T you’re so fond of. And take that sexy black trench coat I bought you for your birthday if you need warmth, not your old, bulky knit cardigan.’
‘Yes, master!’ Rachel saluted him, but his words had given her confidence. OK, her jeans and the green T might give her more confidence, but the fact that Kurt cared and, knowing that whatever happened, he’d always be there for her filled her with gladness.
He kissed her cheek and departed, leaving Rachel alone in the lounge, knowing she had to shower and change back into civvies, then…
Then what? Maybe she was making mountains out of molehills—cliché central!—and Luca hadn’t even waited for her.
Maybe she’d misread the sub-titles earlier and all he intended teaching her was how to accept compliments gracefully.
She stood up and walked through to the changing room, deserted now except for Maggie who, as the anaesthetist, always saw their young patients safely back to the PICU so was always last to shower and change.
‘Going to do something exciting on your day off?’ Rachel asked her, and Maggie nodded.
‘Very exciting, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to spend the entire day in bed. The problems we’ve had lately, I can’t think when I last had a sleep-in, let alone a day in bed.’
Then she blushed and Rachel laughed.
‘I pictured you sleeping, not doing anything else,’ she hurried to assure her friend.
Maggie smiled at her.
‘Well,’ she admitted shyly, ‘there might be a little of something else.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘And you? Any plans?’
Rachel felt the heat start in her abdomen and rise towards her face so she was certain her whole body was blushing.
‘Nothing special,’ she managed to gulp, then she dashed into the shower cubicle and turned on the taps.
Luca, no doubt guessing she’d eventually return to their rooms to sign off on the operation, was waiting for her there.
‘You’ve been thinking new thoughts about the situation between us?’ he said quietly. ‘I said before I wouldn’t rush you.’
‘Second thoughts, we call them.’ She was slightly put out by the ease with which he seemed to read her mind. ‘I suppose I have, but you’re not rushing me.’
He smiled and she felt the last resisting chips of ice around her heart melt, and her body go on full alert, her nerve-endings so attuned to him that her nipples tightened.
‘I refuse to kiss you here, for if we start we may not get home. We’ll eat first. You will show me your Spanish restaurant, then let the night unfold as it will.’
He waited while she tidied her desk then they left the rooms together, not touching at all, though Rachel was so sensitised to his presence that every movement he made sent tingling messages of desire through her body.
Let’s forget dinner, she wanted to say, although common sense told her she needed food, but when they exited the hospital they were barely on their way to the front gate before Luca guided her into the shadow of a thick bush beside the path. He took her in his arms, and common sense was forgotten.
His kiss met and matched the urgency her body had been experiencing and she trembled in his grasp, her need so great she thought her knees might give way.
‘Let’s forget dinner,’ she managed to whisper, though her lungs were strangling in the tightness of desire and her breath was coming in little desperate gasps.
‘I have food at my apartment—beyond what we know is in your pantry. You will come there?’
Still held tightly to him in the shadows, she nodded against his shoulder. He turned her and, with his arm firmly around her waist, guided her back to the path and along the road towards his temporary home.
‘I suppose we’d look silly if we ran,’ Rachel said, hoping even a weak joke might break the tension.
‘Extremely so,’ Luca said, his arm tightening momentarily as if in appreciation of her comment. ‘Especially as I’m not at all graceful in my movements.’
‘But you’ve got great hands in Theatre,’ Rachel told him, feeling one compliment deserved another then flushing when she realised the implication behind the words.
They didn’t run, but it seemed no time before they were at his apartment, and Rachel, who’d imagined this might be the moment when doubts and second thoughts reared their heads, found her excitement, far from abating, had grown, and Kurt’s admonition to have fun was ringing in her head.
‘What a beautiful place,’ she said, when Luca opened the door to the penthouse and she saw the view out across her much smaller building. To the north were the city lights and to the east the seaside suburbs, the foreshores brightly lit and the moon shining on the night-dark ocean.
‘It is sufficient,’ Luca said, so offhandedly she knew he was used to such luxury—to places as luxurious as this, and maybe even more so! But the difference in their lives was not going to bother her tonight. She was going into this affair with Luca with her eyes wide open. She was going to have fun!
‘Champagne?’
‘Why not?’ she said, walking towards the kitchen where he had the fridge door open and a bottle held aloft in one hand.
‘And some things to nibble on while we drink a toast.’
He handed her the bottle, and bent again to the fridge, bringing out a large plate with an array of tiny, tempting hors d’oeuvres.
The implication of this platter struck her like a blow to the head. He’d planned for her to be here. The talk of the Spanish restaurant had been just that! No doubt there was an apartment manager somewhere in this building, part of whose job was to provide whatever food a tenant wanted.
Seduction food!
Luca must have heard her thoughts, for he put the platter on the bench and took the champagne from her, placing it on the bench as well, then he pulled her to him and held her close while he explained.
‘I asked the manager to organise some food for our supper—I was thinking supper, not a meal, but our hunger for each other—well, it brought us here, and it was mutual, wasn’t it?’
He had tilted her head so he could look into her eyes as he asked that last question, and looking into his eyes—dark with sincerity—Rachel couldn’t doubt him.
She smiled, and shrugged.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I seem to be thinking either in fairy-tales or clichés these days and the champagne and tiny nibbles—a seduction cliché if ever I saw one.’
Luca answered her smile with a warm one of his own.
‘Then I shall proceed to seduce you, my beautiful Rachel. With champagne and nibbles and compliments that will make your skin glow with colour, and your eyes sparkle like bright jewels.’
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips then drew away, opening the champagne, pouring out two glasses, peeling the plastic wrap from the platter and setting it in front of her.
He passed her a brimming glass, and lifted his own in salute.
‘To seduction!’ he teased, and Rachel felt the colour he’d spoken of heat her cheeks.
‘To seduction,’ she echoed, but the fun seemed to have gone out of things. She sipped the champagne—dry bubbles fizzing off her tongue—and thought back, realising that perhaps she’d harboured in her heart the thought this might be more than a seduction—realising she’d been more caught up in the Cinderella story than she’d thought she’d been!
No, it wasn’t that, she decided as Luca pressed her to take from the plate a tiny biscuit with soft cheese and a strawberry topping it. She didn’t want the castle, or a prince, but being with Luca, working with him, seeing him with her friends—somewhere along the line she’d fallen just a little bit in love with him, and her silly heart must have harboured thoughts of love returned.
So the seduction scenario had struck deeper than it should have, although her head knew damn well an affair was all there’d be between them.
It was also all she wanted between them, she reminded herself.
He had guided her, while her thoughts had run riot, to a couch that looked out through wide glass windows towards the view, and was over by a CD player, organising music.
He’d put the food on a coffee-table in front of her, and the champagne was in an ice bucket beside it. Soon he’d come and sit beside her and, she had no doubt, she’d be an equal partner in whatever seduction might take place. But deep inside she felt a thin layer of ice building up again around her heart, and her head chided her for her folly in letting it melt in the first place.
‘You are sad now, thinking perhaps of your husband, and of the pain he caused you,’ Luca murmured, settling beside her on the couch, the warmth from his body transferring to hers where their thighs touched.
‘No way!’ she told him, glad she could answer honestly. ‘Jake’s a closed book as far as I’m concerned. I realised later that I was never really in love with him.’
‘I’m glad,’ Luca said, taking her empty glass from her fingers and setting it on the table, ‘for I don’t want thoughts of him coming between us.’
He held her gently and his kiss was more an exploration than a seduction, though as his hands touched her body, feeling their way across her shoulders, neck and back, she knew it was seduction.
But such sweet seduction, especially now his hands had slid across her belly and circled breasts that ached for his touch. So she became a participant instead of an onlooker and through touch explored his shape—broad shoulders and the strong bones of his skull, neat ears flat against his head, soft hair as black as midnight.
She caught her breath as he brushed his thumbs across her demanding nipples, and bit his lip—gently but with insistence—wanting more, wanting pain herself, feeling pain from frustration.
‘Strong, soft and beautiful,’ Luca whispered, his hands beneath her shirt now, warm on her skin. ‘You are a very special woman, Rachel, and so enticing—so exciting.’
His lips, parted from hers for speech, moved to her neck, where a nibble against her pulse had her crying out in need. Then he was gone—but not gone far, simply standing up and taking her hand, helping her up off the couch and guiding her towards a bedroom.
‘Where we will be more comfortable,’ she heard him say, though her mind had gone AWOL and her body simply followed where he led.
The bed was the size of Texas, but she had little time to take much notice of it, for Luca was undressing her, undoing buttons, kissing and murmuring endearments against her lips as he did it—stripping away any faint strands of resistance she might have been able to muster as he stripped away her clothes.
‘Beautiful—I knew you would be,’ he said, when he had her naked and she stood before him, embarrassed yet somehow proud he found her beautiful. ‘Now it is your turn,’ he said, holding out his arms, so serious she almost laughed.
But stripping Luca, she soon discovered, was no laughing matter. His body called to hers, his skin, like satin beneath her fingertips, tempting her to press her lips against it. And if she had any doubts about his readiness for love-making, they vanished when she put her hands against the black silk of his briefs.
Desire rendered her light-headed, almost dizzy, but then Luca was kissing her again, and together, naked and entwined, they found the bed.
‘You will make the pace, remember,’ he whispered, as he drew a line with his finger from her breast to the junction of her thighs. ‘You’ll tell me to go fast or go slow.’
‘I can barely think, let alone talk,’ Rachel replied, teasing him in turn. ‘Let’s just go with the flow.’
‘Go with the flow,’ Luca repeated, moving his mouth from her lips to one pebble-hard nipple and slowly teasing it to even greater excitement with the tip of his tongue.
Rachel felt herself drowning in sensation, her nerves singing with anticipatory delight, the world reduced to here and now—to this bed, and the man who was making magic in her body.
‘Ah, so sweet, so giving,’ he murmured, though even without the words she knew her response was delighting him.
Then touching and kissing was no longer enough, and as Luca’s fingers teased her open and his exploring thumb found the tight nub of her desire, she cried out his name, and helped him slide inside, deeper and deeper until he filled her to overflowing, his movements matching hers, bringing more and more delight until she shattered into a million glittering pieces, clutching him tight, crying his name now, feeling him expand to help her explode again, only this time he cried her name, and clung to her as if he needed an anchor to keep him tethered to the earth.
‘Crikey!’ she managed to croak when she finally drew breath. She hoped her attempt at weak humour might hide the awe she felt at what had just occurred. She’d just had an orgasm of truly seismic proportions—so what was she supposed to say?
Thank you?
She probably should, but right now it was all she could do to breathe and cling to the man who’d lifted her to such incredible heights.
He moved so his weight was no longer on her, but kept his arms around her, holding as tightly to her as she clung to him. His chest rose and fell as he drew in deep breaths, and for once the man who always seemed to have so many words at his command said nothing.
But the kisses he pressed on her hair and her skin were gentle—even loving—and she knew from the tremors she’d felt in his body that his satisfaction had been as great as hers.
He lifted himself on one elbow and looked down into her face, tracing her profile with his finger.
‘If I get the champagne and food, will you be upset?’
She couldn’t read his eyes as the only light in the room came from beyond the open door, but she could hear uncertainty in his voice.
She raised her head far enough to kiss him on the lips.
‘I’ll only be upset for as long as it takes you to get them,’ she told him. ‘Once you’re back again, I’ll have no reason to be upset.’
And she wouldn’t, she told herself as she sat up and turned on the bedside light so she could untangle the sheet and pull it over her body to hide her nakedness.
Making love with Luca had been a revelation of just how wonderful an experience it should be, and she had every intention of enjoying it again. As often as possible over the next three weeks.
She was going to have fun and if, at the end, losing Luca meant the ice-pack would once again form around her heart, then too bad.
He returned, set the glasses on the bedside table and filled them, then sat beside her on the edge of the bed. He pressed one glass into her hands, drew the sheet down so he could see her breasts, and raised his glass to hers.
‘To love between us,’ he said, sipping the cold liquid then bending, his tongue still cold, to lick at first one nipple then the other.
‘I’ll choke to death if you do that while I’m drinking!’ Rachel told him, taking a big gulp of her drink and telling herself they couldn’t possibly make love again just yet.
Luca raised his head and smiled.
‘I love the way you joke while we make love,’ he said. ‘That word you used— “crikey”—it said so much I should have echoed it.’
He sipped his drink again and this time fed her lips with the taste of champagne from his tongue, but his hands were on her breasts, and her heart was pounding.
In a couple of effortless minutes Luca had readied her for love again, and her body called to him to take it and make his magic within it once more.
‘It should not be possible,’ he said, taking her hand in his and guiding it to the irrefutable evidence of his readiness. ‘You have potent powers, my beautiful Rachel. Too potent for resistance.’
But this time it was she who took the glass from his hand, and she who led the way along the path to their ultimate satisfaction, teasing him until he groaned with needing her, positioning herself so she took charge and brought them both to shuddering climaxes together.