sighed. ‘All right, all right. If you’re going to be boring, I’ll get us both coffee.’
And she fully intended to do just that, but when she stood up a rush of blood suddenly sped from her legs to her head and before she knew what was happening she’d pitched forward onto the carpet, missing the coffee-table by inches.
‘Nell, are you all right?’
Jonah’s voice was anxious, tense, and she rolled over onto her back and stared fuzzily up at him.
‘Of course I’m all right. Except what are you doing up there while I’m down here?’
He shook his head. ‘I think it’s time you were in bed,’ he said, and she fluttered her eyelashes at him.
‘Ooh, Jonah, that’s the best offer I’ve had in ages.’
With a sigh he reached to help her up, and she waited for him to put his back out when he tried to lift her, but he didn’t. Never before had she felt small and fragile, but somehow Jonah managed to make her feel both as he lifted her effortlessly up into his arms.
‘My hero.’ She hiccuped as he carried her out of the sitting room. ‘Superman in a white coat. Where are you taking me, Mr Superman?’
‘To your bedroom, if I knew where it was,’ he said.
‘Second door on the right,’ she replied, waving an unsteady hand down the hall. ‘You know, you have lovely hair, Jonah,’ she added, nuzzling her nose into the side of his neck. ‘I never realised you had such lovely hair. Soft, silky. Smells nice, too.’
‘Don’t do that, Nell.’
His voice sounded strained, constricted, and she tickled the hair at the nape of his neck with her fingers and giggled.
‘Why not? It’s nice. You’re nice.’ He muttered something she didn’t catch, and she planted a kiss at the base of his throat, only to feel him jerk his head away. ‘You’re my knight in shining armour, Jonah. My true-blue, always-there knight in shining armour.’
A knight in shining armour who was going to leave, she suddenly realised when they reached her bedroom and Jonah gently began to lower her onto her bed. But she didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want to lie there all alone, remembering she’d been dumped. She wanted to feel desired, attractive, and before she could rationalise her thoughts, or Jonah could straighten up, she flung her arms around his neck and pulled him down on top of her.
‘Nell, what the…?’
‘Stay, Jonah,’ she whispered. ‘Stay with me.’
He shook his head, his face unreadable. ‘Nell, you don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘I do,’ she insisted. ‘I do. Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.’ And as he opened his mouth, clearly intending to protest, her lips met his and silenced him.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS the insistent ringing of her alarm clock that woke Nell with a start. A ringing that went straight through her skull with all the force of a dentist’s drill.
Gingerly, she tried to sit up, only to lie down again swiftly with a groan as the contents of her stomach lurched up into her throat. She’d never been a drinker and now she remembered why. Two glasses of wine were her limit and she couldn’t begin to count how many she’d had last night. Too many, if her throbbing head and churning stomach were anything to go by.
With an effort she turned on her side, and froze. Two aspirins and a glass of water were sitting on her bedside cabinet. Two aspirins and a glass of water she knew she hadn’t put there yesterday.
Jonah.
‘Oh, God, tell me I didn’t,’ she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as memories of last night began creeping into her mind. ‘Tell me what I’m thinking happened didn’t happen, and it was just a bad dream.’
But it wasn’t. When she lifted her duvet she could see she was still wearing her bra and knickers. At least it was her halfway decent bra and knickers, as opposed to some of her threadbare and tatty underwear, but that didn’t alter the fact that she was still wearing them. That Jonah had taken one look at her all too curvaceous curves and decided he wasn’t interested.
A sob rose in her throat and she put her hand to her mouth to quell it. If there was one thing more humiliating than waking up after a drunken one-night stand, it was waking up to remember that the man you’d thrown yourself at had rejected you.
And she had thrown herself at him. Her brain might be fuzzy but it wasn’t fuzzy enough for her to forget that it had been she who had dragged Jonah down on top of her when he’d lowered her onto her bed. She who had pulled off her shirt and trousers despite his best efforts to prevent her, and she who had kept repeating, ‘Make love to me, Jonah. I want you to make love to me,’ before she’d passed out.
Oh, God.
On the Richter scale of embarrassment it was worse than coming out of the loo not realising you’d tucked your skirt into your knickers. Worse even than asking the man you’d been dating for a while whether your relationship had moved into commitment and realising from the stunned look on his face that it hadn’t.
How was she ever going to be able to face him? For two years they’d been such good friends. They’d laughed together, commiserated with each other, and once she’d even cried on his shoulder after a really bad day, but now…In the space of twenty-four hours she’d not only been dumped by her fiancé she’d also made a complete and utter fool of herself with the one man who had always been there for her in the good times and the bad.
A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away angrily. She’d got herself into this mess, and somehow she had to get herself out of it.
‘I was drunk, Jonah, and didn’t know what I was doing,’ she said out loud, then shook her head, wincing as she did so.
That was insulting. So insulting.
‘Brian had dumped me, and I needed to feel wanted, and I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, so I…’
Worse, that was worse. Neither his pride nor their friendship would survive that amount of honesty.
Somehow she had to come up with a convincing explanation for her behaviour, but what?
Right, Nell thought, taking a deep breath as the elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor of the Belfield Infirmary. It’s plan A. You don’t refer to last night and Jonah will think you don’t remember it, and because he’s a gentleman he won’t remind you. End of story.
It sounded good. Sort of. At least it was better than plan B.
‘Hey, what happened to you last night?’ Fiona called as Nell tried to sneak past her office. ‘One minute you were in the function suite with Liz and me, and the next you were gone.’
‘I was feeling a bit rough so I decided to go home,’ Nell muttered, and Fiona frowned at her.
‘You still don’t look very great,’ she observed, ‘but
