LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sadie flashed her hospital security tag at the theatre receptionist, her stomach a tight ball of nerves and nausea.
How had she managed to botch her interaction with Roman so spectacularly? Before she’d discovered from Sammy that her mystery lover was the hospital hottie being auctioned for a date, everything had been so clear in her head.
Her plan had been simple: express surprise that he was in London, suggest a meeting outside work so they could talk in private and then casually inform him that their night of passion had created a miracle little girl with his blue eyes and Sadie’s smile.
Easy.
In her fantasy version of the conversation, he would have expressed delight at the news and understanding that she’d had no way of contacting him after their no-strings hook-up. They might have laughed at the foolishness of sleeping with an anonymous stranger and praised their good luck that fate had once more thrown them together. Roman would see how much Sadie loved Milly, certainly enough for two parents, and they would work together for a few weeks and then part as friends when he left London.
Only nothing about the conversation on Sunshine Ward had worked out the way Sadie had planned. Firstly, she’d been terrified that Sammy or some other keen-eyed nurse would see them together, put two and two together and figure out that he was Milly’s father, before she’d had a chance to tell him. Then she’d been struck tongue-tied by the claustrophobic closeness of him in that tiny office, his imposing height and muscular strength reminding her how hard he’d clung to her as he’d groaned into her neck when they’d been intimate. While she’d been dealing with the roar of renewed attraction—he was impossibly and unfairly even hotter than eleven months earlier—and the unexpected shafts of jealousy that she had to fix him up with some other woman, she’d become horribly flustered, dithering and mumbling her way through a list of excuses the length of her arm.
Initially, she’d been hurt when she’d assumed he’d lied to her about wanting to stay single in Vienna. Then he’d made it glaringly clear that he still wasn’t interested in a family, even clarifying the ground rules while inviting her for a drink as if he expected that they could pick up where they’d left off physically.
Great casual sex? Yes!
A relationship...a family? No way!
He was a loner. A rolling stone. The fact that she still fancied him was irrelevant.
No wonder she’d utterly fumbled her calm and rational plan to tell him her big, life-changing news. News that might ruin any chance of the amicable working relationship he suggested. She’d over-talked, weighed down by the pressure of what she had to confess, of finding the right time, and saying the right things so he understood that, when it came to raising their daughter, she required nothing from him, neither emotionally nor financially. She just needed him to know of Milly’s existence.
Resolved to pull herself together and carry out her mission, properly this time, she pushed through the double doors in search of the theatre staff room. She hoped to catch him between surgeries, and before she headed home to Milly. No matter how much or little he wanted to be part of his daughter’s life, he deserved to know that he was a father.
As she rounded the staffroom doorway, distracted by the enormity of what she needed to confess, and wary of his possible reactions given their disastrous meeting earlier, she smacked head first into an impressive wall of maleness.
The breath whooshed from her lungs.
Firm hands gripped her upper arms.
Awash in the heady scent of subtly sexy aftershave, Sadie looked up, meeting the piercing blue gaze of the man himself.
Roman Ježek. She couldn’t get used to how sensual his name sounded.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, determined to ignore how hot he looked in his scrubs by keeping her eyes on his this time.
Except her reason for being there dissolved in the face of how horribly attracted to him she still found herself. All she could recall was that he’d wanted to take her out for a drink and how, for a thrilling, irrational second, he’d looked as if he might kiss her when she’d struggled to open the office door.
No, those thoughts were banned.
Expecting some short retort, she glanced at his mouth, which was compressed with annoyance. Big mistake. He was close enough to kiss. He was a phenomenal kisser. She hadn’t been kissed by anyone since him, that restrained and tender goodbye kiss they’d shared the fodder for all of her fantasies these past eleven months.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, ducking his head to peer into her face with his intuitive-seeming concern.
She nodded as her heart banged against her ribs so hard he must be able to feel it, given she was plastered to his hard chest the way she’d been when they were naked and lost in baby-making passion.
Why didn’t he push her away? Why couldn’t she find the strength to move?
‘Fine... I’m fine,’ she muttered, not trusting herself to say anything more sophisticated in case she blurted out the truth about their baby in an emotion-fuelled rush.
But it wasn’t fair for him to find out that he was a father in a busy corridor outside a crowded staff room when he still had to spend the afternoon operating.
‘I... I came to find you,’ she said, wincing at how pathetic she sounded.
With Roman once more up close, irrelevant and pointless memories of Roman the lover blasted her body like mini electric shocks. The way he’d held her face when he’d kissed her lips. The intensity of his passion, as if he hadn’t been intimate with anyone in a long time. The split second of regret she’d noticed in his eyes when he’d kissed her goodbye.
While their baby had grown inside her, she’d imagined scenarios like this, where they somehow met once more, their chemistry still off the charts.
Except Sadie knew from experience how reality crushed dreams. And she had bigger problems than erasing Roman Ježek from her erotic fantasies. Like how, flustered earlier, she’d offended him, as good as accusing him of stalking, and now needed to apologise. Like how, despite the way he’d looked at her when he’d asked her how she’d been, she had to set him up on a date with some other horny woman. Like how a man with his gifts—handsome, intelligent, confident, willing to play the prize stud in a Valentine’s Day auction—most likely had a string of casual conquests littered across Europe.
And don’t forget darling Milly...
‘Why did you come to find me?’ he asked, finally releasing her from his grip and folding his arms across his broad chest. ‘I thought we said everything we needed to say earlier.’
Why was she here...?
Oh, yes!
‘We did say...a lot, but I need to ask you something.’
There was so much more to say. But now that the time had come to apologise, to invite him for that drink he’d suggested and subtly slip into conversation that, against all odds, they’d created a life together, her mind had gone blank.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
What was it about this man that turned her brain to mush and her body to molten need?
Stepping back, she mentally reprimanded her foolish libido. No matter what fantasies she’d harboured of a repeat performance of Vienna—the best sex of her life—Roman was a self-confessed commitment-phobe who would likely scarper abroad as quickly as his theatre shoes could carry him once she told him about Milly.
‘I’m not interested in relationships, the whole “marriage and kids” thing... I’m not interested in putting down any roots...’
Determined that this time there would be no nervous verbal diarrhoea, she cleared her throat, her composure ragged. ‘I’ve thought about it, and I think your idea of meeting for a drink is a good one.’
She sagged with relief, her message successfully delivered.
‘Really?’ he said, his expression sceptical, all trace of this morning’s even-tempered and friendly Roman gone.
She hadn’t planned for his refusal.
Before she could explain, utter one word of her apology, a nurse left the staffroom, squeezing past Sadie and Roman, who were still partly obscuring the doorway, shoving them once more almost chest to chest.
‘What about your busy schedule and your list of excuses, and the fact that I’m to be auctioned off like a prize bull?’ he said seemingly completely unfazed by their proximity, where she was struggling to forget how it had felt to be naked and crushed in his arms.
Sadie winced, looked away from the sexy peek of dark chest hair at the V-neck of his scrubs, regretting that her earlier dithering had armed him with ammunition to mount a counter-attack.
‘I did make excuses,’ she said, wishing she could just blurt out her announcement and then run. But this busy hospital corridor wasn’t the right environment for the serious conversation required. Although she was struggling to come up with an appropriate venue to tell someone they’d unknowingly fathered a child...
Her flat was packed to the rafters with baby paraphernalia. She couldn’t just invite herself to his place. It would have to be a café or a pub.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she added, stepping aside so they no longer obstructed the doorway. ‘I was just a little thrown by seeing you at my hospital, appearing like a genie from a lamp, looking...’ she waved her hand in his general direction ‘...heart-attack gorgeous in scrubs.’
He leaned one shoulder against the wall in a relaxed slouch, a smile playing around his mouth. ‘Gorgeous, eh?’
Sadie flushed and his stare softened slightly, although Sadie might have imagined his empathy, because he continued, ‘But you think it’s inappropriate for us to socialise, so why your sudden change of heart?’
Despite his justified objections—she had made him sweat earlier—he infuriatingly tilted his head in that distracting way she remembered from Vienna when he’d been playful and flirtatious and seductive, the look in his eyes doing things to her body she’d thought were impossible after the physical ordeals of pregnancy and birth and the fatigue of new motherhood.
Sadie chewed her lip, wishing that she’d prepared better for both his up-close hotness and his understandable resistance.
‘You said it yourself.’ She shrugged, hoping he couldn’t sense her desperation. ‘We’re colleagues.’
Sadie wasn’t ready to be completely honest and vulnerable with this cool and aloof version of Roman. It would be hard enough to tell him that they’d made a baby together.
Instead she smiled sweetly. ‘It makes sense for us to clear the air, after...you know.’
She whispered the last two words, heat scalding her neck. She didn’t want to talk about the amazing sex where they could be overheard by other hospital staff. She didn’t even want to think about the amazing sex given there was now no chance of a repeat. But all she could think about was the amazing sex and how it would be criminal to waste the opportunity to see if it was just as good a second time.
The seconds ticked while he watched her with narrowed eyes.
The longer they stood here arguing, the greater the risk that she would be spotted by someone she knew, someone who might ask after the baby.
His baby!
The last thing she wanted was for him to find out about their daughter inadvertently.
‘So, are you in or out?’ She backed up towards the exit, trying to keep the emotional maelstrom taking place inside from her expression. She was close to begging, fearful of his eventual reaction and desperate to escape his magnetism, which only seemed to be growing stronger the more time they spent together.
Her rampant hormones were torturous. And her tingling breasts told her that she needed to get home to feed Milly.
Roman held up his hands in supplication, stepping closer so they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Look, Sadie, I’m a simple man. I’m just here to do my job for the next three and a half weeks, and then I’ll be moving on. I don’t want to get involved in anything...complicated. I thought you understood that in Vienna.’
Sadie forced the frozen smile to remain on her face, aware that what he wanted—no strings, no ties, no roots—was irrelevant. A child was the ultimate in complications. He might be the same man she’d met in Vienna with the same priorities, but for Sadie, everything had changed since then, for the better.
But his reminder of his footloose and fancy-free attitude mocked her for the idiotic fantasies she’d indulged since seeing him again. Her hope that they might once more become temporary lovers, or find an amicable way to co-parent, shredded like sodden paper. She should have known not to trust her instincts when it came to men. Mark’s cruel betrayal had taught her that valuable lesson.
A dull throb pounded at her temples.
‘So you need to make up your mind,’ he continued, his arms crossed, ‘to be sure of what you want. Because I’m not into playing games.’
‘I am sure,’ Sadie said, growing increasingly frantic inside. If she’d agreed to go for a drink when he’d issued the invitation, she wouldn’t need to grovel now. ‘I just want us to talk, in private, away from the hospital.’
This was ridiculous. She was practically begging him to meet her for a purely platonic drink, when in reality she still wanted to tear his clothes off and could do no such thing.
The universe clearly hated her...
Still he made her suffer, his expression unconvinced. ‘I’ll be honest—you seem like a completely different woman from the one I met in Vienna. Evasive, hard to pin down, uncertain of what you want...’
Sadie gaped, horrified that he saw her most telling traits so clearly. But she was different. She was a mother now. To his daughter.
‘I’m the same person, just a year older and wiser.’ She hadn’t lied to him that night, either. Yes, their chemistry fried her brain, but she wasn’t looking for a relationship either.
He frowned. ‘Earlier on the ward,’ he said in that low, calm voice that was starting to irk her, ‘I sensed some...what’s the word in English...?’ He glanced at the ceiling while he searched his vocabulary then clicked his fingers as he found the right word. ‘Hostility from you.’
Sadie’s jaw dropped. ‘Hostility?’
He nodded, inflaming her further. ‘I thought we could behave like adults, but one minute you’re dismissing my invitation, the next changing your mind.’
‘I was not being hostile. I think the word you actually mean is “circumspection”. I was being respectful of our working relationship.’
But of course, she had dismissed him, out of fear and nerves and sheer panic, everything all at once conspiring to throw her into a state where all she’d been able to offer were blabbered excuses.
He stared, his lips twitching with amusement. ‘I’ll look up the meaning of that one while I’m also looking up “gadding”.’
Sadie tried to stay aloof with him, but the absurdity of their bickering finally registered and she laughed it off with a shake of her head.
When she looked up he was smiling.
‘So, will you meet me for a drink or not?’ she asked, dragging in a shuddering breath, because this Roman was the man she’d flirted with in Vienna. A straight-up, say-it-like-it-is, intelligent and funny guy who would surely react positively to the news that he had a daughter.
Wouldn’t he...?
But what if, for him, Milly wasn’t wanted, even though for Sadie their daughter was a treasured miracle?
Well, if that was the case, it would be his loss. His disappearance from their lives would even be convenient, given that Sadie couldn’t seem to switch off her attraction to the exasperating man.
He inched closer, his smile fading. ‘How could I refuse such a romantic invitation?’
He looked up from staring at her mouth and their eyes met.
Sadie held her breath, trapped in his magnetic force field the way she’d been when she’d lost her battle with the stubborn office door earlier.
‘Thank you.’ With trembling fingers, she took a piece of paper from her pocket and thrust it his way. ‘Here’s my number. There’s a bar not far from here. I won’t be at work tomorrow, so text me what night works for you.’
With a nod and an inscrutable look, he slid the piece of paper into the breast pocket of his scrubs.
Just then, a surgical technician appeared and interrupted them so they moved apart, once more at a respectable distance.
‘We’re ready for you, Doc,’ the man said to Roman.
‘I’ll text you,’ he said to Sadie, the intense and searching look he shot her before walking away setting off another cascade of hormones that left her weak-kneed and emotionally drained.
She waited until he was out of sight before she sagged against the wall, exhausted, all her adrenaline used up. This infatuation was bad. Worse than she’d expected. Because no matter how rampant their persistent chemistry, she needed to see him as a colleague, and a co-parent and nothing more. No lusting, no kissing and, categorically, no more amazing sex.