And it would. There was no need to be sad about a tiny computer just because it signalled what she knew already—that anything more than a professional relationship between them was a total impossibility.
Mark grinned. Suddenly he was back to his old self: cheeky, confident … impossible. Ellie picked up a cook’s knife and went back to chopping something—anything—to keep her mind occupied and her pulse even. But after a few moments he walked over to the chopping board and looked over her shoulder. Ellie fanned her face. It was very warm. Had he closed the window? She glanced over at the French doors, but the embroidered muslin panels were still billowing gently.
‘What are you cooking?’
Ellie put the knife down a little too quickly. It clattered on the worktop. Despite the fact her brain told her the crush she had on Mark was pointless, the neural pathways carrying that information to her body seemed to have gone on strike.
‘Vietnamese salad,’ she said, the words tumbling out.
‘Which is—?’ He waved his hand in a circular motion as her mouth moved soundlessly.
‘Chicken and noodles and a few vegetables, with a sweet chilli dressing,’ she replied, a wobbly finger pointing to each of the ingredients in turn.
Great! Now she was babbling like a bad TV chef.
His cheek twitched, yet his face remained a mask of cool composure. ‘Hot stuff, then?’
Under different circumstances, Ellie would have thought he was flirting with her. Heat licked at the soles of her feet. She swallowed. ‘It depends on the size of the chilli.’
The look her gave her was positively wicked. ‘And you girls try and tell us boys that size doesn’t matter.’
Ellie almost choked.
Mark picked up the half-chopped chilli from the chopping board. ‘How hot is this one?’
Ellie tried very hard to focus on the bright red chilli and not on Mark’s warm brown eyes.
‘Medium, sort of. The small ones are the hottest, funnily enough.’
Stop babbling! He already knows that. Everybody knows that!
She bit her lip and turned to peel the outer stem off a stick of lemongrass.
‘Do you want this back?’
She felt Mark’s breath warm on the back of her neck as he stood close behind her. She failed to still the tiny shiver that rippled up her spine as she turned slightly to take the chilli back from him.
‘Thank you.’
She carefully eased it from his grasp, avoiding brushing his fingers, and offered up a silent hallelujah as Mark stepped back and headed for the door.
‘I’m going for a shower.’
‘Okay. Let me know if you want any of this when you come out.’
He ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the corner of one eye with his thumb. That early-morning start must be catching up with him.
But then she realised what he was about to do. ‘Don’t put your—’
Mark yelped, screwed his eyes shut tight and slapped his hands to his face. She rushed over to him, wincing in sympathy. She peeled the hand from his face and led him over to one of the breakfast stools, where she ordered him to sit down. His right eye was squeezed shut and watering.
‘Try and open your eyes,’ she said gently.
‘Very funny!’
‘I mean it. If you can manage to open them and blink a bit, the eye can do its job and wash the chilli juice away. It works a lot faster than sitting there with your fingers pressing into your eyeballs, making it worse!’
Mark groaned again, removed his hand and attempted to prise his watery eyelids apart.
‘Wait there!’ she ordered, dashing to the sink and washing her hands vigorously with washing-up liquid and scrubbing under her nails with a little brush.
‘Here, let me see.’
She moved in close and delicately placed a thumb on the smooth skin near Mark’s eye. He flinched.
‘Sorry! Did I hurt you?’
‘Um … no, it’s okay.’
She gently pulled downwards, helping to open his eye. ‘It looks a bit pink. Is it still stinging? Try blinking a few more times.’
‘It’s fading now, thank you, Nurse. How did you know what to do?’
She blushed. ‘You think with a memory like mine that I haven’t done this to myself a million times?’
Mark’s laugh was deep and throaty. He blinked a few more times, opened his good eye, then attempted to do the same with the other, but it stayed stubbornly at half-mast.
Ellie’s partial smile evaporated as she became conscious of the warmth radiating from him. They were practically nose to nose. He was sitting on the stool, one long leg braced against the floor, the other hooked on the bottom rung. She was standing between his legs, only inches from his chest. She knew she should move. Mark was looking back at her through bleary eyes. She picked a spot on the floor between her feet and stared at it.
‘You’re lucky,’ she said, succeeding in inching backwards slightly.
Try not to look at him.
‘You only touched the chilli briefly. It would have been much worse if you’d been chopping them …’
Mark caught her hand as she attempted to shuffle back further. She made the mistake of looking up. A soft, tender look was in his eyes, despite the fact that one eyeball was still pink and watery.
‘Thank you, Ellie.’ The sincerity in his tone was making her feel all quivery.
She managed to shift her gaze to her hand, still covered by his. Static electricity lifted the hairs on her arm.
‘That’s—that’s all right,’ she stammered. Her hand jerked from his as she shook herself loose. She turned and headed for the door. ‘I’ll go and have that shower now, then,’ she added.
Perhaps a cold one.
She started to scuttle off down the passageway.
‘Ellie …?’ he called after her, a laugh underscoring his words.
The urge to keep going was powerful, but she turned and popped her head back through the open door. ‘Yes?’
Mark was grinning at her. She had the sudden sinking feeling she didn’t want to know why.
‘I was going to have a shower, remember? You were cooking.’
Ellie
