‘WHERE are you going?’ Jess murmured as Adam eased away from her sleepy form an hour later.
Adam looked over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to check on Lai Ling and my other patients. We don’t all have a couple days off, little Miss Sleepyhead.’ He smiled.
He rose from the bed before her pretty pink pout, tousled hair and wandering gaze convinced him to stay a bit longer.
Jess yawned and stretched. ‘I can’t help it if you’re insatiable.’
Adam watched as her nude body rippled with the stretch like a contented feline. Her shoulder blades came together, arching her back, undulating her breasts and belly. Her legs and toes elongated before curling back towards her body.
His loins stirred and his nostrils flared as she stared at him with eyes that told him she knew exactly what she’d done and what effect it had on him.
He chuckled. ‘Well, isn’t that pot calling the kettle black.’
Yesterday Jess would have blushed. This morning, after being thoroughly loved by Adam and loving him back, she proudly owned her part in their sleepless night.
She sighed and shut her eyes, snuggling into the pillow. ‘I’m going to be waiting for you when you get back.’
She kept it deliberately light, playing on her sleepiness but inside she was a tangle of nerves as she awaited his reply. Would he say no? Tell her to leave? She held her breath, waiting for the rejection, for the excuses.
For him to point to the revolving door.
Adam swept his gaze down her naked body, knowing he should tell her to go but knowing he wanted more. Knowing he was far from done.
Strangely enough, it didn’t even terrify him.
And what the hell, he’d already crossed the line. ‘You’d better be,’ he growled, reaching down for the sheet and throwing it over her to quell the impact her nudity and that sexy little stretch had on his body. ‘Or I’m going to come and hunt you down.’
Jess kept her eyes shut but inside her chest her heart bloomed and a trill of excitement lit her insides. She fluttered her eyelashes open as the cool sheet fell lightly against her heated flesh.
‘I won’t move a muscle,’ she murmured.
Jake clenched his fists as her gaze wandered over his body, lingering at the juncture of his thighs. He felt himself twitch beneath her sleepy appraisal.
‘Jess.’
‘Hmm?’ she asked innocently, suppressing a grin at the note of warning apparent in his husky voice.
Adam took a step towards the bed. How could he want her again so soon?
His gaze fanned over her, taking in the bedside table behind her and his alarm clock. He pulled himself up short, cursing under his breath.
‘God, is that the time?’ He shook his head to clear it of the fog of lust that was clouding more than just his vision. ‘I have to have a shower and get going. My round is supposed to start in half an hour.’
Jess watched him stalk off to the en suite and smiled. She hugged herself under the sheet. He found it hard to leave her. And he wanted her in his bed when he got back.
It wasn’t a wedding ring but it was more than she’d dared hope for.
She heard the water turn on and images of a wet and slippery Adam filled her head. An insidious voice that Adam had woken last night whispered, Shower sex. She’d seen it in movies and read it in books but never experienced it.
It took less than five seconds to kick off the sheet. And in ten she was sliding the shower door open.
‘I thought you weren’t moving a muscle,’ Adam said as she fused herself against his unprotesting body and kissed him deep and wet and hungry.
‘Shower sex,’ she murmured against his mouth.
It took Adam no time to boost her up the tiles. And no time for her legs to automatically circle his waist and lock tight.
‘I’m going to be so late,’ he groaned as his gaze zeroed in on a rosy nipple and his head descended.
Ruby was in the kitchen when Adam strode out of his bedroom twenty minutes later. He faltered slightly at the sight of her, his broken promise suddenly weighing heavily on his conscience.
‘There’s no coffee,’ Ruby grumbled, staring at the empty coffee pot in her hand.
‘Good morning to you too,’ Adam murmured.
Like his sister, he needed a coffee before heading to work as well but this morning he was running on sex.
‘There’s always coffee,’ Ruby continued. ‘Tilly or Jess always have one going by now.’
Adam ignored his sister. She wasn’t a morning person at the best of times and night duty did not bring out her sunny side. He didn’t think explaining to her that Jess hadn’t started the coffee this morning because she was sleeping very soundly and very, very naked in his bed would improve her mood.
‘Why don’t you just go straight to bed?’ he asked as he quickly popped two slices of bread into the toaster. He was already running late—he didn’t have time for his sister’s mood.
Ruby shook her head. ‘Not without a coffee.’
Adam sighed as Ruby looked at the pot like she didn’t know what to do with it. She was so not a night-duty person. He took the pot off her and busied himself with the percolator.
‘Won’t it keep you awake?’
Ruby snorted. ‘A brass band playing at the end of my bed wouldn’t keep me awake.’
He pressed the on button. ‘Coffee in two minutes,’ he announced.
Ruby sat at the kitchen table. ‘Thanks,’ she said as she flipped through the mail that someone had left on the table. There was one addressed to both Adam and herself and even as she opened it she knew it was from their parents.
‘Oh, hell,’ she grumbled as she opened and scanned the elegant, thick card. ‘Dad’s holding another one of his dreadful dinner parties.’ She passed it to Adam.
Adam looked at it with distaste. The very last thing he wanted was to spend an evening listening to his father being pompous and self-important in their pretentious house at Whale Beach while his mother ran herself ragged, trying to be the perfect hostess.
Something which his father never appreciated and only ever noticed when she was too busy with some stupid finicky detail to be by his side, stroking his ego.
Little wonder he chose to spend as much of his time out of the country as possible.
‘We’ll have to go, of course,’ Ruby sighed.
Adam tossed the card on the table. ‘Of course.’
He and Ruby couldn’t leave their poor mother to face something like that alone. She was a wonderful, warm, giving human being who deserved a medal for putting up with his father’s rubbish over the years.
She sure as hell didn’t deserve her husband.
But even after all these years she was still besotted with him.
‘Cort’s invited, I see,’ he said as he poured two cups of coffee.
‘Yes.’ Ruby stared morosely at the table. ‘Just as well he loves me.’
Adam plonked a coffee in front of Ruby and sat down opposite her in a gesture of silent solidarity.
What the hell, he was already late.
Ruby took a couple of sips of her coffee, inspecting the invitation again. ‘You’re a plus one, I see.’
‘Not going to happen.’ Adam’s thoughts slid to Jess curled up in his bed. The last time he’d brought a girl home it had been Caroline and his father had been an overbearing brute. The mere thought of subjecting Jess to the chief, to his parents’ screwed-up dynamic sent an itch up his spine.
Ruby rolled her eyes. She let the invitation slip from her fingers. ‘So how was the party last night? What time did it wind down?’
Adam looked into his coffee, avoiding his sister’s gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ he said evasively. ‘Pretty late. It was still going when I…went to bed.’
‘Jess was pretty high. I bet she lasted until the end. It might also explain why she’s not up yet. Normally she would have been up flitting around happy as a lark a couple of hours ago.’
Adam kept his gaze firmly fixed on his coffee as he toyed with being noncommittal. Saying something vague and getting the hell out of the house. But the truth was going to come out soon enough.
Especially as he intended spending more time in bed with Jess.
And this was his house. He wasn’t going to sneak around in it like a teenager.
He was thirty-five years old, for crying out loud.
Telling Ruby the truth in her current tired and grumpy state probably wasn’t the best timing but he had an opening.
Adam placed his mug on the table and looked at his sister. ‘She’s not up yet because she spent the night with me.’
Ruby blinked. ‘What?’
Adam stood, picking up his coffee. ‘You heard me,’ he said as he walked to the sink.
‘Adam! You promised,’ Ruby spluttered, also standing.
He kept his back to her as he took a couple of mouthfuls of his coffee. ‘I don’t have time for this now.’
‘You promised,’ Ruby repeated.
Adam turned, feeling guilt and exasperation in equal measure. ‘I don’t have to account for my actions to you, Ruby, and I’m not seeking your approval. I’m just letting you know because Jess and I are going to be spending a lot of time together.’
Ruby frowned. ‘What? But…you don’t do that.’
Adam understood her confusion. It was rare for him to spend more than a couple of nights with one woman. But there was something about Jess that made him want more.
‘Maybe I’ve changed.’
Ruby quirked an eyebrow. ‘Are you still leaving for God knows where in a matter of weeks?’
‘Of course.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re going to break her heart.’
‘She knows.’
‘Yes, but does she? Really?’ Ruby demanded.
Adam opened his mouth to tell his sister to stop being so damn theatrical and to mind her own business. That he and Jess were adults and that he’d talk to her about expectations. But his pager beeped.
He knew what it was about without having to pull it off his belt and look at the message. ‘I’m running late,’ he said impatiently, turning back to the sink and tipping the dregs of his coffee down the drain. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He didn’t give her a chance to reply, heading straight for the door and banging out of the house.
Adam flipped open his mobile as his long stride ate up the incline between the house and the hospital. He dialled the number on his pager and let his team know he was going to be another fifteen minutes.
Ruby’s accusation taunted him all the way up the hill.
You promised.
Does she? Really?
Guilt revisited. But, hell, it wasn’t like he’d deliberately planned it. Or that he hadn’t had every intention of keeping his promise.
It was just…life.
Sometimes the best-laid plans went awry.
For God’s sake, it wasn’t as if they were kids and they’d pinkie-promised or made some kind of blood oath. This was the real world. And in the real world promises got broken.
He was still mulling over it when he strode through the front entrance of Eastern Beaches to find his team waiting for him in a huddle.
‘Here he is,’ Paula teased. ‘Getting too old to party?’
Adam, who had no intention of explaining why he was late, chuckled. ‘I see you all pulled up okay. What time did it finish?’
‘I was one of the last ones to leave about two,’ Shamus said. ‘But you’d know that if you hadn’t piked.’
Adam smiled. ‘Too late for me.’ Even though he’d been awake, wide awake, long past that. ‘So,’ he said, taking the top chart from Shamus’s arms. ‘How are our patients this morning?’
With the subject smoothly changed, Adam shut everything from his mind—Ruby’s censure and Jess’s come-back-to-bed eyes—and got down to business.
Their first stops were the two surgical wards, male and female, where the eight surgical cases they’d done on Monday and Tuesday were recovering. Eight faces beamed at him and his team and despite the language barrier Adam felt their emotional gratitude right down to his toes.
He was pleased with all eight’s progress and was happy for them all to be discharged to their host families later today.
Host families had been arranged by one of the charities as a friendly, restful environment for the patients to recover in for a couple of days before flying back home. Big, modern hospitals were far from ideal places to convalesce for people who came from comparatively primitive circumstances.
Adam would see them all just prior to them flying home and again at the end of next month when his scheduled mission took him near their homes.
Next they made their way to the ICU to see Lai Ling. Adam had chosen to visit her last because he knew that the ICU round would be finished and he could consult with the on-coming intensivists.
Lai Ling was asleep when he approached her bed after talking to Dr Diane Cleary, the ICU consultant.
‘How’s our champion?’ Adam asked the bedside nurse, who happened to be someone he’d spent a night or two with a couple of years back.
She smiled at him and said, ‘Good morning, Doctor.’
Adam nodded, noting the fluttering eyelashes, the well, hello there look in her gaze, the flirty smile on her heavily painted mouth.
It did absolutely nothing for him.
‘Lorraine,’ he acknowledged. ‘Any issues?’
‘A slight fever overnight otherwise everything stable.’
Was it his imagination or had Lorraine put slight emphasis on the word fever? ‘We’ll keep an eye on the temperature,’ he said briskly. ‘She’s on triple antibiotics so she has pretty broad cover.’
He walked over to the bedside. Lai Ling was wired to a monitor and looked like a little girl instead of a nineteen-year-old woman amidst all the medical equipment.
‘Minimal ooze,’ he noted as he inspected the dressings.
Lai Ling’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled at her and, after a couple of seconds where she seemed momentarily confused, she smiled back.
‘Okay?’ Adam asked, aware that Lai Ling had only rudimentary English and there was no interpreter currently around.
Lai Ling smiled and nodded. She looked around at all the people surrounding her bed then looked back at Adam. ‘Jess?’
Adam felt that one soft enquiry sucker punch him unexpectedly as images from last night assailed him. He’d managed to put Jess from his mind for a little while but she was back—front and centre.
Sweet, sweet Jess. Home, waiting for him in his bed.
Naked.
Then Ruby’s Does she, really? rudely pushed its thorny finger into the lovely little bubble.
‘You’ll see her in a couple of days,’ Adam said, holding up two fingers.
Lai Ling smiled and nodded and promptly fell asleep again. Adam chuckled then looked up at his team. ‘Okay, so the ICU team is happy for her to be discharged to the ward some time today.’
‘How much longer do you think she’ll need to be an inpatient?’ Shamus asked.
‘’Bout five to seven days, I guess, depending on her progress,’ Adam confirmed. ‘Then she’ll go to a host family for a few more weeks, where we can do some regular follow-up. She should be able to fly home after that if all goes well.’
The round ended and his team scattered to deal with their regular patient loads. Adam went to his temporary office to review all the notes and jot down his own observations. He made some phone calls and attended a meeting with Gordon Meriwether to keep him up to date.
Two hours later he’d done all that had to be done. And it was time to go home. To Jess.
But.
Ruby’s voice hadn’t let up. It was on continual loop in the back of his head. He knew he was going to have to talk to Jess. To establish the boundaries of whatever the hell they were doing. To make sure she knew that he was out of here in a handful of weeks and would be gone for a couple of months.
He’d never had to do that with women like Lorraine. Women who played the game as hard as he did and knew the score. It was just unspoken.
But Jess was different.
It wasn’t a conversation he relished. Hell, it wasn’t a conversation he’d even had to have since Francine all those years ago.
He’d made sure of that.
No one was around when Adam opened the front door, for which he was grateful. He’d been practising his spiel all the way down the hill and he just wanted to get it over with. Not even the sound of gulls or the ocean roaring in the distance had been enough to distract him.
He crossed to his bedroom and quietly turned the doorknob. He felt a brief confusing moment of panic that she might not be there, which was quickly dispelled as his gaze connected with her slumbering perfection.
She had her back to the door and her legs curled up. The sheet was anchored under her arms, covering her front and her legs, but had slipped low on her back, just revealing a tantalising glimpse of the rise of her bottom and the slope of one sweet cheek.
Shafts of strong midday sun bathed her body in a golden spotlight. Her blonde hair shone like a halo. It was as if she’d been delivered by the gods, laid out for his pleasure.
Half-unwrapped.
He wanted nothing more than to shuck off his clothes and join her. Slide his legs in behind hers, glide a hand up her ribs and down her belly.
He gripped the doorknob hard. This was not helping. He shut the door and strode towards the bed, sitting down gently beside her. Her eyelashes fanned her cheeks and he could smell soap and shampoo. And sex.
She was close. So close.
The temptation factor increased tenfold.
‘Jess,’ he whispered. She didn’t stir. He reached out a hand to shake her shoulder but withdrew it—once his fingers hit her skin he doubted he’d have any kind of control over them.
He leaned forward instead and dropped a light kiss on her shoulder. It was logistically easier to control his mouth than the long reach of his arms near all that tempting naked flesh.
‘Jess,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘Wake up.’
Jess stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open and Adam came into focus. Her heart did a crazy tap dance in her chest. ‘You’re here.’ She smiled.
Adam returned the smile. ‘I am.’
Jess shifted slightly so she was on her back, the sheet pulling across her body. ‘How’s Lai Ling?’
‘Asking about you.’
Her smile widened. ‘Really?’
Adam chuckled. ‘Yes really.’
His laughter reached deep inside her and oozed into all those places that had harboured doubt as she’d drifted off to sleep.
He was wearing the same clothes he’d left the room in. Dark grey trousers, an aubergine business shirt and a diamond-patterned dark green tie. He was incredibly sexy.
But way too clothed. She raised a hand to his face and stroked her fingers across his mouth. ‘I missed you.’
Adam’s breath hitched as his gaze searched her face. The sheet covering her slipped a little, exposing the slopes of her breasts. Her fingers toyed with his mouth and he pressed his lips against them before pulling back slightly.
‘We need to talk,’ he murmured.
Jess felt her heart skip a beat at the sudden seriousness clouding the golden flecks in his lapis lazuli gaze.
No. No, no, no.
Not yet. Not so soon.
Okay, so this was vintage Adam. After years of watching women come and go, she knew his pattern. Love them and leave them. But it was too soon. She wanted another night.
Hell, she’d settle for one more time in his arms.
She sat, letting the sheet fall to her waist, sliding her arms around his neck and leaning forward to press a kiss to his mouth. ‘Later,’ she whispered against his mouth.
Adam inhaled, his nostrils filling with her scent as her lips teased his. ‘Jess…’
‘Shh,’ she murmured, moving forward, rising to her knees, their lips still locked, throwing one leg over his lap until she was straddling him.
She swayed against him and Adam grabbed her hips to steady her.
Big mistake.
Because now his hands were full of her sweet, soft flesh and she was anchoring her arms around his shoulders, her breasts crushed to his chest, pressing kisses all over his face.
He could feel himself harden as he ran his hands up her naked back then back down to cup two glorious cheeks. There was something exceedingly erotic about having a completely naked woman plastered against his fully clothed body.
‘The things you do to me,’ he whispered.
Jess, balanced on Adam’s lap, pulled back slightly and smiled, dropping a kiss against his temple. She felt his grip on her bottom intensify, holding her fast. ‘I think we can get rid of this,’ she said, loosening the knot of his tie and pulling it off him with a satisfying slither of fabric.
Then she kissed him. Deep and hard. ‘And this,’ she said, pulling away again as her hands grabbed at his shirt and pulled it free of his waistband. Then she kissed down his neck as her fingers went to work on the buttons.
When she’d undone the last one she pushed the shirt off his shoulders, exposing his chest and abdomen. He slammed his mouth against hers and she revelled in the harsh suck of his breath as he dragged air in and out of flared nostrils. She felt a hand slide to the small of her back and haul her closer.
Her hands trekked down his bare sides, feeling the dip of his ribs then the contraction of his flanks. When she reached his waistband she followed it around to the zipper and then down to the bulge in his trousers.
Her hips, almost of their own volition, ground down against it. The rough fabric of his trousers abraded in all the right places and she gasped out loud as the pads of his fingers dug into her back and his groan thundered through her ears.
She pulled back, her lungs desperately sucking in more air. ‘You like that?’
‘God, yes,’ Adam whispered against her mouth.
And when she did it again he plundered her mouth, pushing a hand up into her hair and forcing her mouth nearer, wider, deeper.
Jess fumbled for the zip, found it, yanked it down, felt his hardness straining to be free, reached for it, liberated it.
‘Ahh,’ Adam groaned as Jess’s hand enveloped him.
‘You’re so hard,’ she whispered, palming his wonderfully naked length—one stroke, two. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more. Needed to feel him against her. In her.
She released his girth and rocked her pelvis along all his meaty hardness. It was hot and slick down there and a delicious friction built, stoking an even greater ache.
Adam nostrils filled with the scent of them and he dug his fingers into the flesh of her bottom as his pelvis thrust against hers. ‘Now, Jess, now.’
Jess gasped as she felt him press urgently against her. She rose on her knees to accommodate him. His hands held her hips steady as she reached for him, guiding him to her entrance. She felt his girth nudge her and then she sank down on to him in one slick, sure movement.
‘Ahh,’ she cried out as she gripped his shoulder hard. He filled her so completely it was as if he was made for her.
‘Jess?’ Adam breathed hard, fighting the wild call of his body to pull out and plunge in again as all her sweet, wet heat gripped him in a tight velvet glove. ‘Are you okay?’
Jess nodded as a ferocious tingling infused her pelvis. It prickled and burned, spreading ripples of heat and pleasure to every cell in her body. A shockwave of lust.
‘I’m fine,’ she murmured against his temple as she flexed her hips and undulated internal muscles, feeling every inch of him rammed to the hilt inside her. ‘Perfect,’ she sighed as she lifted a little then sank down a little.
Adam sucked in a breath. ‘Yes, yes.’
Jess lifted a little higher and sank down a little further.
‘Oh, God, yes.’
Jess lifted all the way until she could feel him at her opening again then sank back down until he was snug to the hilt.
Adam stifled a groan, plundering her mouth. His hands slid up her back, his fingers hooking over her shoulders and anchoring there. Her body lifted again and their kiss broke. He shut his eyes as her internal muscles grabbed him hard and pulsed around him like a thousand massaging fingers.
His forehead fell against her chest as she set a rhythm that took him closer and closer to the edge. Her breasts bounced in his face and he nuzzled one, sucking a rosy nipple deep into his mouth.
When she cried out he sucked the other one.
Harder.
Jess’s head lolled back as the pleasure intensity spiked to a new high. Her nipples pebbled tight and the sensation arrowed straight to her core. She clutched his head to her chest, keening her pleasure as he lavished her breasts with attention.
When his teeth grazed a sensitive tip her orgasm hit warp speed, rushing forward, hurtling from her centre, twisting and swirling, burning and tingling, destroying everything in its path.
‘Adam,’ she cried out, clenching down hard as every muscle tightened to an unbearable tension. ‘Oh, I… It’s…’
Adam clamped her against him hard, gripping her shoulders tight, bucking his pelvis, taking over the rhythm from her, feeling his own climax begin to spiral out from his loins as she milked his length with her tight velvet walls.
He whispered, ‘Yes, yes,’ against a breast as his climax trembled through him, shaking him like a leaf, shaking him right down to his core.
He threw back his head in a primal roar as everything imploded and a mighty orgasm engulfed him. It fanned the dying embers of hers and he held her as she cried out again.
Held her like he never wanted to let her go.
Adam collapsed back on the bed a minute later, dragging her down with him. Their breathing was loud, laboured in the silence, and neither spoke as they struggled for control of their breath.
Adam’s hand sat firmly in the middle of her back as he heaved air in and out of his lungs. Her skin was covered in a fine sheen of sweat and she was warm against his chest.
He grimaced. They must look a sight. She, stark naked sprawled over his chest. He, clothes askew, partially undressed. Just barely on the bed, his feet on the floor. Puffing and panting like they’d just run a marathon.
Another minute later, his pulse and breathing near normal, Adam said, ‘Can we talk now you’ve finished ravaging me?’
Jess smiled as his voice rumbled up through his rib cage, connecting with the ear she had pressed to his chest. Even knowing what he was about to say, she was too spent to stop him. Or her brain cells were still too post-coital to give a damn.
At least she’d had her one last time.
She eased off him, her insides giving a delicious shudder, rolling onto her back, her legs also hanging over the edge of the bed although not quite reaching the floor. She followed Adam’s example and stared at the ceiling. ‘I can’t promise I’m too coherent,’ she said.
Adam chuckled. With his own brain currently oozing out his ears, he could relate. He sobered again, fixing his clothing. Somehow it didn’t seem right to have this conversation with his trousers half pushed down, his underwear askew.
Even if she was stark naked.
‘Ruby knows.’
Jess lifted her head off the bed and stared at him. ‘What?’
‘She was in the kitchen this morning, moaning about the coffee not being ready and speculating what was keeping you in bed past your usual early hour. And…I told her.’
Jess fell back against the mattress. ‘How did you tell her?’
‘I said you’d spent the night with me.’
Jess blew out a breath, disturbing a strip of fringe that had half fallen across her eye. ‘It might have been better coming from me.’
Adam rolled his head to face her. ‘She’d have still been angry with me. I promised her I’d stay away from you.’
Jess rolled her head to face him. ‘You did?’
He nodded. ‘And I had every intention of doing just that.’
Jess grinned. ‘That didn’t really work out, did it?’
Adam smiled back. It faded quickly though as he scanned her lovely face. He hadn’t expected to be so totally blind-sided by someone he’d known for three years and had never thought of as anything other than his little sister’s friend.
‘How was I supposed to know your chocolate-cake kisses were so hard to resist?’
There was humour in his voice but his blue, blue gaze was serious. The last thing Jess had wanted was to become a bone of contention between two people she loved. ‘I’ll talk to her.’
Adam shook his head. He didn’t need a champion. But he did need to establish some boundaries. For the first time in a very long time he wanted more than a quick roll in the hay with a woman. But it couldn’t last.
His lifestyle just wasn’t conducive to relationships. And he didn’t let anything distract him for his work.
‘She thinks you don’t know that I’m only in town for a matter of weeks and that whatever we have going on has a very short shelf life.’
And there it was. The crux of the matter. Jess kept her face completely neutral, masking the hammer blow to her stomach as all the delicious post-coital glow fizzed.
She swallowed. ‘I know that.’
‘Do you?’ he asked, repeating Ruby’s question. ‘Because this is my life, Jess. I’m a gypsy. I travel around the world. I go where I’m needed.’
Jess felt an absurd urge to cry. What if she needed him to be here? She quelled it. She didn’t do teary and emotional—that wasn’t her style. But neither was she going to meekly accept his narrow life parameters.
Keeping her voice non-confrontational, she said, ‘So you’re going to do that for ever?’
Adam opened his mouth to confirm it but suddenly for ever stretched out bleakly in front of him and he recoiled from it. Thinking about how jet-lagged he’d been this time around, the prospect of putting his body through that at sixty was very unappealing.
He shrugged. ‘It’s who I am.’
Jess lifted a hand to his face and traced her fingers along his mouth. ‘No, Adam, it’s what you do.’
She wanted to say so much more. That he was living only half a life if he defined himself only in relation to his occupation. That family and friends and the hobbies you indulged in and the sports that you played, the books that you read, the movies you saw and the place you called home were the things that defined you.
But she’d spent less than twenty-four hours in his bed and just because she loved him it didn’t qualify her to dish out home truths. She certainly didn’t want to annoy him with her opinions. That was relationship territory and she didn’t want to scare him away.
Adam considered her statement. As far as he was concerned his job was his life—one didn’t exist without the other. But it was novel to realise that for some people it was just part of who they were. One component.
How could he want her so badly when she was practically his polar opposite? His lips tingled where her fingers had trailed moments before.
‘Is this about her?’ Jess asked into the growing silence. ‘The woman who broke your heart?’
Adam frowned. ‘Caroline?’
Caroline. The woman who had ruined him for all others.
‘This is nothing to do with Caroline.’
‘Except she’s the only woman you’ve ever committed to and since she broke your engagement you haven’t had a significant relationship with anyone.’
Adam shook his head. Ruby was too damn chatty. ‘I loved her, yes, and I’ll admit that her leaving did screw with me for a while.’ He’d been mad as hell at his father for three years. ‘But, Jess, that was a decade ago. I’m totally over her.’
‘So you’re not still in love with her?’
‘No,’ he denied. God, no. He hadn’t thought about Caroline in years even if their break-up had subconsciously coloured every relationship since. He’d heard that she’d got married a few years back and he’d felt nothing other than happy for her.
‘Definitely not.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not still pining for her deep, deep down, Jess. Trust me, my reasons for not forming significant relationships with women have nothing to do with a long-forgotten fiancée. I just don’t have the time for relationships. My work is totally consuming. That would just be selfish of me.’
Jess looked at the ceiling too as relief coursed through her body. His voice was full of conviction and she believed him. ‘Okay.’ It was good to know she wasn’t competing with a ghost. That her love just might stand a chance.
But.
How could she hope to reach a man whose one true emotional connection was with something as functional as his job?
Adam turned his head back to face her. ‘You and I are very different. We want different things.’
Jess nodded. They most definitely were. But that didn’t have to be bad. Opposites were supposed to attract, were they not? He was looking at her like she was a puzzle he could figure out if he just looked at her long enough. But there was no puzzle with her—she knew what she wanted.
He was the one hiding from life.
‘What do you want, Adam. Right here, right now, what do you want?’
Adam blinked. He hadn’t known what her comeback would be but it wasn’t this. It had been many years since he’d had a proper conversation like this with a woman in his bed. He doubted any of his bed partners since Caroline had cared about what he wanted unless it had a sexual connotation.
It was so startling he didn’t even think about ducking the question
‘I want to keep doing this, you and me. Until I head overseas again.’
Jess could see sincerity blazing from the golden flecks in his eyes and hear it in the steady timbre of his voice. It never occurred to her to deny him. ‘Well, all right, then.’
Adam shut his eyes briefly. ‘No, Jess, it’s not all right. You told me on the beach that morning that you’d want everything. But I can’t offer you that. I’m going to be gone for a couple of months. I’m always going to be gone somewhere for a couple of months. All I can offer you is these next few weeks.’
Yes, she had said that. Yes, she did want everything. She loved him. She wanted his ring and his name and his children. She wanted to grow old with him.
She wanted the fairy-tale.
And he didn’t.
But something told her he might. If she just persevered. If she showed him what he was missing. If she gave without expectation, if she loved him in silence.
And even if he never did want the things she wanted she knew in her bones she was willing to sacrifice the fairy-tale, what she wanted, to be with him here and now.
Until this moment she never would have believed it.
But she knew with utter certainty that she’d take whatever he was willing to give for as long as he would have her.
Because she loved him.
‘I can’t make you give me everything, Adam. But I can make the most of what you’re willing to offer.’
Yes, she was going to get her heart broken but her grandmother had always said it took courage to love. ‘I’ll take these next few weeks and cherish them for the rest of my life.’
Adam rolled on his side, supporting his head on his palm. She was gloriously naked stretched out before him.
He already wanted her again.
He looked down into her face, inspecting it for signs of artifice. Her answer had quickened his pulse. He wanted so much to believe it but it was a big ask to go from everything to just a few weeks. ‘Why?’
Because I love you.
Because I want to love you so thoroughly you’ll want the fairy-tale as well.
‘Because you only live once. Because I’m twenty-four and when I’m old and grey I want to be able to scandalise my grand-kids with stories about the surfing surgeon I had a wild, passionate fling with.’
He gave a throaty chuckle and her heart swelled with its resonance. ‘And because you asked me.’
Their gazes locked and neither of them said anything for a moment or two.
‘Don’t go falling in love,’ Adam said.
He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was talking to her or himself.
Jess nodded. ‘Roger.’
If only it wasn’t too late.