for the way she’d forced it on him.
But she’d never expected it to earn uppercase status in his mind. The Kiss. And she’d really never expected him to raise it so openly.
She struggled for the right words. ‘That was my fault, Sam.’
‘I wasn’t chasing an apology. But I think we need to talk about it. Get it out of the way.’
Really? She just wanted to pretend it had never happened. ‘I’m not sure examining it is going to explain it. I was overwhelmed with fear and you were the one keeping me sane. I just needed the … human contact.’
Did she get any points for half-truths? Or did she lose one for the half she was hiding?
‘Aimee, you don’t need to justify why you did it.’
She frowned. ‘Then why raise it?’
He glanced around them at the half-empty plane and then leaned in. ‘Because it’s stayed with me.’
She stared at him, her breath thinning. Her mental oxygen mask dropped down. ‘Stayed?’
‘I was on the job. You were hurting. I totally understand why you did it. But what I don’t understand …’ his blue eyes pierced hers ‘… is why I let you.’
Her tongue threatened to stick so firmly to her palate that it would be impossible to speak. She was sitting on a plane, heading for a hotel in a different city with a married man she’d non-consensually kissed, taking about said kiss….
She squirmed. ‘I didn’t really give you much option—’
‘You were tied to your seat. I could have moved out of your reach easily. Why didn’t I?’ His stare burned into her. ‘And why haven’t I forgotten it?’
It was hardly going to be uncontrollable lust—for a woman covered in blood and dirt and soaked in her own urine. She stared at him and shook her head: silent, lost.
The chief steward’s even tones streamed out of the overhead speakers, advising passengers that they were commencing their descent into Melbourne. She had no idea what he expected. So she did the only appropriate thing.
She brushed it off with a hollow laugh.
‘A mystery for the ages!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘It doesn’t bother you?’
Time to lie! ‘It bothers me that I did it. I’m embarrassed, of course.’
‘But that’s all?’
Time to run! She unclasped her seatbelt. ‘I’m just going to … Before we land. I’ll be right back.’
But before she’d made it to the next row she heard him behind her. ‘We’re going to have to talk about it at some point, Aimee.’
She fled. Down the aisle and into the toilet before the seatbelt light came on. She made the most undignified exit of her life from the most excruciating conversation of her life about the most unforgettable kiss of her life.
She slid the ‘engaged’ knob into place as if it would save her life.
Sam watched the little unisex toilet symbol flick from green to red and he sighed. Pretty appropriate, really. The little man represented him and the little woman represented Aimee. It only took one conversation to push the two of them from an amiable green to a cautionary red.
Red for embarrassment. Red for anger. Red for incendiary.
Take your pick.
The two of them existed perpetually on the edge of an inflammatory zone. His pulse was still pounding. The chemistry between them hadn’t eased off since that day at the awards ceremony. He rubbed his thigh where it tingled from pressing against hers. All that unspent tension had to go somewhere.
Even after weeks apart it was still live.
Simmering. Just waiting for an excuse to flare up.
Enough to rattle both of them. Enough that he’d forgotten himself and started a conversation that he’d have been better off not having. So why had he started it? Was he so desperate to forge a connection between them? Or was it because it was the only legitimate way he could relive that moment? The moment on the rock-face when Aimee went from being his patient to something more meaningful.
Something she wasn’t asking to be.
Something he couldn’t let her be.
But he did enjoy riling her. The colour that flared in her cheeks … The glitter of her eyes … The defiant toss of her hair …
He adjusted his position in the cramped economy seat as his body celebrated the image.
Or maybe he just regressed to being nine years old in her presence and stirring her up was the equivalent of pulling her plaits to get noticed.
Maybe he really was that lame.
Either way, he needed to get a handle on it. They had three intensive days of promotion to get through, and they weren’t going to be any easier if he kept teasing her into hiding. They were both adults, and now colleagues. This was officially a work trip. Attraction or not, if he couldn’t count on his own best judgement then he’d have to count on his professionalism to get him through.
He glanced at the little red symbol above the bathroom again.
Assuming she ever came out.
AIMEE curled up in the comfy corner of the L-shaped sofa in her hotel suite at the end of their first long day in Melbourne and let her head fall back on a laugh. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Right in the solar plexus.’
‘And she was how old?’
‘Eighty-two. She had the bone density of someone two generations younger.’
‘Sam Gregory taken out by a great-grandmother.’ A frightened, bewildered great-grandmother, who’d had to wrestle with a young bag thief until Sam intervened. ‘Can’t you go anywhere without rescuing someone?’
‘She was doing a great job of holding onto her bag against a pretty big kid. I just evened up the odds for her.’
‘And got punched for your trouble.’ She laughed again. ‘You were supposed to be walking off the craziness of the day. Not hanging out in a police station making a report.’
They’d both run from point to point like mad things since the moment they’d set foot in Tullamarine Airport that morning. Two school appearances, then out to a rescue centre at the foothills to have the same conversations, answer the same questions. To go over and over the events of that night on the A10 in excruciating detail.
‘Were you scared?’
