standing close. Her elbow occasionally came into contact with his shirt and she seemed to be tuned into his every move, every breath.
‘Thank you…’ Nash looked at the nametag clipped to his assistant’s collar. She had a smiley-face sticker over her picture and a red heart sticker covering her surname. ‘Maggie. Thank you, Maggie.’
Her hands stilled as his voice washed over her like warm treacle.
She chanced a look at him and immediately wished she hadn’t. He was smiling one of those hey-baby smiles and she was equal parts turned on and annoyed. Annoyed won out.
Some men were just too charming for their own good. Some men just didn’t know how to turn it off. She aimed for nonchalance with her shrug. ‘Just doing my job.’
‘Ah, but you do it so well.’
Maggie felt things shift inside at the suggestive quality of his low, sexy voice. She sniffed, not at all comfortable with shifting innards. This man was too young and too sure of himself by far. ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I have been doing this for a very long time.’
Nash chuckled at the emphasis. He got it—she didn’t approve of him flirting with someone of her years. ‘I love experienced women.’
Maggie refused to be flattered by such a consummate flirt. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Only experienced women?’
He grinned. ‘Okay, you got me.’
‘Nash?’
He looked away from Maggie reluctantly. ‘Yes, Zoe?’
‘Can you assess the kid in cube two for me? I think he can progress to hourly nebs now.’
‘Sure, be right there,’ Nash said. He turned back to Maggie. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Maggie.’
She sent him a stiff smile. Not if she could help it.
Maggie finally got to lunch at two o’clock. The day had been crazy-busy and everyone’s lunch-breaks had been pushed back. She found an isolated table in the almost empty canteen, glad she didn’t have to spend her thirty minutes making small talk with anyone. She cracked the lid on her calorie-laden fizzy drink and sank her teeth into the divine-smelling hot meat pie.
A pair of freakish blue eyes rose unbidden and she shook her head to dispel them from her mind. There’d been no time this morning to think about her weird response to Nash Reece and she was damned if she was going to spend her precious break thinking about him either.
‘Now that’s a nice healthy lunch.’
And sometimes the universe was just out to get you.
Maggie tensed as the voice behind her took form and shape in front of her. Hunky, sexy form and shape.
‘May I join you?’
Maggie looked around at the other empty tables. ‘Plenty of places to sit,’ she said pointedly.
Nash suppressed the urge to chuckle. He liked a woman who could hold her own with him. She reminded him of the females he’d grown up around. His five sisters, his mother, his cousins. Country women were no shrinking violets and although he’d spent his life perfecting how to twist them around his fingers, he admired the hell out of their spirit.
‘Ah, but this is my favourite table.’ Nash grinned and pulled up a chair.
‘Gee. Lucky me.’
‘We haven’t formally met.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Nash Reece.’
No way on earth was Maggie going to touch him. If he could unsettle her with his mere presence, God alone knew what would happen if she allowed her skin to come into contact with his. She took another bite of pie, feeling an instant revival to her flagging blood-sugar level. ‘I know who you are.’
Nash chuckled at her deliberate snub. ‘Ah, my reputation precedes me, I see.’
She looked at his totally unrepentant face. ‘Try to look as if it upsets you,’ she said derisively.
He grinned at her. She had the deepest brown eyes he’d ever seen. They reminded him of his grandmother’s double chocolate fudge brownies. And, man, he was suddenly ravenous for them.
‘So…Maggie? Maggie who?’
She took a swig of her drink. ‘Maggie from ICU.’
He quirked an eyebrow. Maggie from ICU was playing hard to get. Well, there was a first time for everything. ‘So, Maggie from ICU, are you doing anything tonight? Do you fancy getting a bite to eat with me?’
Maggie almost inhaled her drink into her lungs his question startled her so completely. She coughed and spluttered so much that in a final humiliation Nash reached across and belted her between the shoulder blades a couple of times.
His hand moved to her shoulder and he grinned. ‘You okay?’
Not remotely. She shrugged his hand away. ‘Fine.’
He gave her a few moments before he asked again. ‘Well?’
Was he serious? She looked at him—yep, he was. It had been three years since she’d been on a date. And certainly a good decade since she’d been with anyone whose age fell in the thirties. ‘No.’
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘No.’
Nash shrugged. ‘Well I’m easy—’
‘Clearly,’ she interrupted.
Nash grinned and continued. ‘I can fit in with you.’
Maggie shook her head, exasperated by his persistence. He had his elbows on the table, emphasising his wide shoulders. He was big and broad and loomed at her from the opposite side, taking up all the space. ‘You don’t like to take no for an answer, do you?’
‘Why ignore what’s going on between us, Maggie? I’m attracted to you.’ He watched her pale and her wide brown eyes practically double in size. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re attracted to me. Why should we pretend otherwise?’
Maggie stared at him. Was he insane? He reminded her of a kid expecting instant gratification in that infantile egocentric way of theirs. But they weren’t kids.
They were grown-ups and adults were supposed to be a little more cautious. There were rules and etiquette.
‘How old are you, Nash?’
Ah. ‘I don’t care about the age difference.’
‘How old?’ she insisted.
‘Just turned the big three zero.’
Maggie nodded—just as she’d suspected. She wished for a brief second she was thirty again. But then reality invaded. She’d been a mess at thirty. She’d been dealing—very badly—with the heartbreak of her infertility and the ink had still been wet on
