Page 61 of Just One Look

She looked up at him and smiled. “That’s not when I start work. I’ll be at the hospital before seven for rounds, and the residents will be there earlier than that. The need for sleep gets trained out of you pretty fast, or you go into something else. Dermatology, maybe. Pathology. How about you? When does your day start?”

“Eight. But I do need sleep.”

“Mm. Very important for healing the microtears in the muscle fibers, not to mention that disc. Healing’s hard work. We won’t keep you up, then.”

He wanted to keep her up, but he wasn’t going to say that. What he actually said was, “Give me that bag with the scent.”

A long moment while she hesitated. Was she going to say no? Finally, though, she reached down without comment, came up with it, and handed it over.

So many steps. Take the box out of the bag. Take the plastic off the box. Open the box and pull out the bottle, then put all the rubbish back into the bag. While he did it, she didn’t talk about Piper or Sofia or rugby or brain surgery. She sat and watched him, the same way she had in the waiting room with Marko. He held the heavy bottle of faintly pink liquid in one hand, pulled off the crystal stopper, and said, “You have a way of sitting still and being with a person that makes them feel better. The competence is there to see, and the caring as well. When you’re telling yourself your story, maybe you should tell yourself that.”

The blue eyes widened, and he smiled at her in a way that nearly hurt and said, “Give me your hand.”

She did. No nail varnish, and the nails were short and neat. They’d have to be, he guessed. She was a curvy woman, but her fingers were long and slim, unadorned by rings. He turned her hand over—no calluses, the opposite of his—and said, “Funny that our hands are so important to what we both do. Reckon yours could tell a story.”

She said, getting that breathless quality in her voice that he’d noticed during the scent-shopping, “I was thinking that about yours. About all the muscles and tendons in the hand, and how strong yours are. How much you will have worked to get them that strong, and how much work they have to do out there. All that passing and catching.” A pause. “Tackling, too. That takes some strength.”

“How long do yours have to work during the day?” He sprayed the perfume onto her wrist and enjoyed the fresh, floral scent. “Give me the other hand.”

She said, “My record is fourteen hours on a single surgery. We won’t get into how many hours total if I’m on call. Call it ‘days.’ My hands are strong, too, but it’s a different kind of strength, more about endurance and steadiness. Brains are complex and fragile, and I spend most of my time there. It’s an almost magical place, the brain, but you need exceptional fine-motor control to work there. That would be the opposite of what you do.” She gave him the other hand, and he sprayed that wrist, too. When he was done, he let her hand go, and she lifted her wrist to her nose and inhaled.

“I still love it,” she said.

He said, “So do I.”

He walked her to her car after a dinner during which neither of them had said much, but he’d noticed everything, waited while she tossed her things into the passenger seat, and said, “We didn’t do your shopping.”

“No,” she said, “and that’s too bad, because I’d have liked your help picking out those casual clothes.”

“I don’t actually know much about clothes,” he said.

“Oh?” She hadn’t got into the car, was standing with the passenger door open. “Does that mean you don’t want to come?”

“No,” he said. “I want to come.”

She stepped into him, put that sensitive, careful hand on his cheek, and said, “We could make another non-date. I could text you when I’m free and see if you are.”

“Mm. You could.” He had his own hand on the curve of her waist, the other one smoothing back the hair he’d taken out of the ponytail, all of him remembering the charge it had been to rumple her up, to help her slow down and be the sensual woman she was underneath all the knowledge and all the competence. “I could leave a ticket for the game Saturday at Eden Park, too. If you wanted to use it, that’d be good. I’ve seen what you do. Maybe you’d like to see me in action as well. If you’re working, though … no worries.”

“I’m not scheduled for Saturday night,” she said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean much.”

“I’ll have them leave a ticket for you at the Will Call, then, shall I?”

“Just so you know I could be late. I’m on call tomorrow night, and scheduled for Saturday until five. With the way weekends tend to be … I can’t promise. Can you live with that?” She was looking up at him, her heavy lids half-closed under the slanting dark brows. It was a complicated face. A voluptuous face. A face you could drown in.

“I won’t know if you’re late,” he said, “and I won’t care. I’ll be happy if you come.” And kissed her.

Her mouth was warm and wide, and when his lips touched hers, she drew in a breath. Her hand slipped around to the back of his neck, and when he lifted his mouth from hers, her hand tightened. So he kissed her again. Hotter this time, and better, the flame leaping up in him. The warm, spicy scent of her surrounding him, his fingers tunnelling through the waves of her hair, holding her head. His hand tightening at her waist, and her hand on his shoulder, clutching him hard. He kissed her mouth, and then he kissed her cheek, then all the way to her ear, where the scent from earlier still lingered. He held her head against him, felt her soften against his body, and didn’t know what to say.

He was a man who knew what to say. He was a man who knew what to do.

She whispered against his neck, “I want more than this.”

He said, “You can have more than this.” And lifted her hair the same way he had when he’d sprayed her with scent, so he could reach the spot under her ear where her pulse beat. He kissed it, and she sighed.

“I can’t,” she said. “Not until I talk to Piper. Anyway, if this is a fantasy, my teenage fantasy … I don’t want to ruin it, not when it just got better.”

“Your teenage fantasy?” He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to take her clothes off. Very slowly.