here.’
The idea of him walking her home thrilled her. She didn’t want to part company with him yet. But she didn’t want to do this alone. Just in case. He could be anyone.
Hannah offered to accompany them for safety. Her friend lived in the block opposite her own. As good as his word, Ben carried her all the way back, telling them jokes and making them laugh, paying attention to both women fairly, though it was clear his interest was in her. And when he gently set her down on her feet, her soles pressed against the chilly pavement, she impulsively offered him a coffee or a nightcap, not yet willing to say goodbye.
He’d smiled. ‘Coffee would be nice.’
Hannah waved them both goodbye, giving Leah a big thumbs-up sign in secret, when Ben wasn’t looking.
She smiled and fished her keys out of her bag.
What am I doing? I don’t do this. I don’t invite random guys back!
But another voice in her head said, Go for it! When are you going to get another chance?
So she made him coffee. And they sat together on the couch, drinking it until it was gone, and the tension in the room was palpable.
‘I should go.’ His voice was loaded with regret. ‘It was lovely spending a few hours with you, but I have an early start in the morning.’
She nodded. ‘Me, too.’
She wasn’t kidding either. She started a new job tomorrow. Going to the club had been in celebration of that.
He stood up and she stood with him. They were so close! Millimetres apart. Leah gazed up at his face, his mouth, and then he pulled her gently towards him and lowered his face to hers.
The kiss was perfect. Gentle.
Soft.
And then...
And then it wasn’t. And they couldn’t remove their clothes fast enough.
The touch of a finger trailing the length of her spine in a sinuous, serpentine stroke was enough to jerk her from the depths of a wonderful sleep to the stark, shocking reality that she was waking up with someone else in her bed.
Dr Leah Hudson’s eyes blinked open in an instant as recollections of the previous night poured in, and in a panic she grabbed the duvet to her chest and leapt from the bed, dragging the quilt around her naked body, stumbling over it as she turned to see the man she’d left behind in the bedsheets.
Ben. Handsome. Fit—even with bed hair and a shadow of early-morning stubble. The man who had known his way around the female anatomy very well indeed, as it turned out.
Her naked male companion had woken at her sudden movement, and now lay propped up on an elbow, smiling at her in an irritatingly charming and attractive way, the curls that only last evening had been perfectly tamed now wild and tangled. In no way did that diminish his appeal. Somehow it increased it. And he didn’t make any move to cover himself up. Deliciously confident man that he was. And she couldn’t stop her gaze from travelling down...down...
Red-faced, she looked up again.
She envied him his confidence in his body. Hers had always let her down.
Ignoring the pleasant tingling she could feel from their combined fun last night, she felt her cheeks flush with heat. What must she look like? She’d gone to the club with Hannah and the others in full-on partying mode—mascara, lipstick, glittery eyeshadow, for goodness’ sake! And after meeting the Adonis who now lay luxuriantly upon her comfiest blue cotton bedsheets she had brought him back to her place with the promise of a coffee or a nightcap and they had fallen into bed together without her having time to remove any of the muck from her face!
Did she look like a panda?
This was not like her at all. She wasn’t a woman who did this kind of thing—one-night stands. Not that there was anything wrong with it, if it suited the people involved. But she’d always imagined herself as the going-steady type, waiting before she’d allow anyone the intimacy of her bed. That might be boring to some, but it had suited her perfectly until last night. It had given her a standard to uphold so that she didn’t make her life complicated. Not letting anyone in because, really, what was the point? Life was complicated all on its own.
Now he lay on her bedsheets. Still here. The next morning! He wasn’t meant to have stayed.
‘Didn’t I say you had to go? Remember? Just after midnight?’
‘You exhausted me. I must have fallen asleep.’
He seemed oblivious to the fact that she wanted him out of there. Gorgeous or not. Seemed content to stay in her bed.
Leah clutched the quilt even tighter and glanced at her alarm clock beside the bed. Seven thirty-two a.m. She had slept with a strange man for over six hours, and him lying there looking like a wonderful breakfast delicacy was not helping. She had a new job to get to. An important job. Lives that might need saving.
Thinking about it, she really ought not to have agreed to going to the club.
‘Look, last night was great, but—’
‘Don’t say but. Nothing ever great happens after someone says but.’
She smiled. ‘But I’m going to take a shower, and when I get out of the shower I don’t want to find you’re still here. You need to...’ her gaze travelled along his wonderful torso, eyeing the hunk of gorgeousness she’d allowed herself last night ‘...put some clothes on and leave. Is that understood? You get what I’m saying, right?’
He nodded and smiled. ‘Seems a shame to end something so great.’
Embarrassingly delighted, she smiled back. ‘Maybe so, but that’s the way it’s going to be.’
She saw his trousers and designer underwear discarded on the floor of her living room, exactly where she’d torn them from his body, and picked them up, threw them at him.
‘Start with these.’ She gave him a broad, embarrassed smile. “It was a pleasure knowing you.’
Leah opened the shower door and listened for any strange sounds. The flat sounded pleasingly empty, so with one towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair, she unlocked her bathroom door and stepped out, listening once again just to make sure.
All she could hear were outside noises—singing birds, the odd car driving by. Nothing internal.
Thank God he’s gone!
What had she been thinking? To do such a thing! Sleep with a stranger! Was that the behaviour of an expectant mother? Okay, to be fair, she wasn’t the one expecting herself. She had a surrogate. Sally. Who was pregnant with Leah’s baby.
Perhaps that’s why I did it? One last mad fling? And I did choose a very nice candidate!
She smiled to herself. She would never find a guy like that in real life. And even if she did he’d probably run a mile
