loved her quaint sayings, her quick laughter, her reliable good sense, quiet irony and ruthless honesty: a refreshing reality check in the world of me-first rockers. He loved her curvaceous figure in a world of women who believed half-starved scrawniness meant beauty. Even the way her cute little John Lennon glasses perched on her nose had always turned him on …
But what hadn’t done it for him was the way she’d always looked at him—like he was one species removed from a cockroach. Even four weeks ago, at Billy and Nicole’s wedding, tearing his gaze from her had been an effort—but after the cool “hello to an old friend” hug, whenever she’d caught him staring her return glances had held amused disdain.
So why was she camped on his doorstep? And why right now, when his brain was so fuddled with exhaustion he couldn’t find his defenses if they screamed in his ear?
And why was it still Mia that turned him upside-down and inside-out when he got a dozen offers a day even now, if a female patient or relative recognized C.J. Hunter of End Game as the exhausted doctor holding the patient notes? Other women made it clear they found him attractive, whether they knew his name or not.
And still it was Mia …
He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked toward her. She was sitting on the top step of his half-renovated old house in Sydney’s inner west: as good a hiding place as any, and light-years from his life of fame. “Well, this is a turn-up for the books. Mia Browning’s actually sitting on my doorstep.”
Mia uncrossed her legs from their odd, intricate weaving that always fascinated him, reminding him of a contortionist, and stood. Damn, how did that little half-smile of hers—like she had a delicious secret she wouldn’t share—still make him think of all the things he shouldn’t?
“Hi, C.J. Hope I’m not intruding?”
His mother would be horrified if he uttered one of the ungracious sentences that sprang to his lips. So he did the polite thing—or as polite as a man could be when firing on half a cylinder. “I was about to make coffee.” Before bed. Lots of bed.
Bed and Mia. Not good in the same sentence.
He led the way into the house and straight to the still-ugly-from-the-70s kitchen. But for once he didn’t think of the renovation work to come. A massive caffeine hit was his only hope of sanity. Maybe when he had it he’d wake up and realize she was nothing but a mirage.
Mia put down the duffel bag she’d brought inside and said, “So, how’ve you been since the wedding, C.J?”
Just hearing her voice, soft and pretty, with that tiny slur on her “s”s, gave his fingers that old itch—the one he’d never been able to scratch. Not to mention that she was so close to him her breath touched his skin—
Don’t look at her.
He filled the kettle, set out mugs and cleaned the plunger from two- or three-day-old grounds, fervently hoping the milk hadn’t gone off. He’d slept at the hospital the past two nights. “I’m fine, thanks. And you?”
“I’m fine—but Dad isn’t.”
At that C.J. swung around, spilling the coffee from the scoop. “Billy? What’s the matter with him?”
Mia took the scoop from his hand, brushing his fingers as she did. “Sit. You’ve had a long shift, by the looks of you. Have you had breakfast?”
Grateful, cross-eyed, and too damned turned on for his level of exhaustion, he sat at the dining table. “Sort of.”
“Don’t tell me—a donut grabbed out of last night’s box at five a.m.?”
“Pizza—and four a.m.,” he corrected, rubbing his hand over his two-day growth of stubble. Wondering what she thought of him. Wondering why he cared after all this time.
But he knew why. Just like four weeks ago, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her thick fall of straight black hair, her curvy body, the way she tossed a quick smile over her shoulder, still did things to him he couldn’t say out loud. Not to mention that she still had the sweetest butt he’d ever laid eyes on. Why couldn’t she have put on twenty kilos and be all dimpled with cellulite?
“How old was the pizza?”
Her glasses slipped down her nose as she worked around the kitchen—the same glasses that always made him ache to kiss that slightly stubby little nose … and the rest of her … “Huh … what?” He rubbed his forehead. Right. Pizza. Age of pizza. “I’m not sure.”
He reared back when she crouched in front of him, her face filling his line of vision with its little crinkle between her brows that sent a shaft of unwanted tenderness through him. So serious, so practical, and somehow so adorable—and he was the same sucker for her he’d been a decade ago.
“The doctor needs someone to look after him.” She touched his hand, and the whole dizzy-and-inarticulate thing got worse—he was an incoherent wreck. “Coffee will be ready in twenty—along with a decent breakfast. Go shower, shave, and change into something ready for sleep. You know you want to,” she added with a glimmering smile over her shoulder as she stood again and turned back to the kettle.
She really shouldn’t smile like that at a guy with little to no control over his body’s responses. “Thanks.” The word was like a growl. Man, he hoped she thought it was tiredness. Because if she gave him that ol’ cockroach look …
She took his hands and lifted him from the chair. “You’re really exhausted. Go sleep, C.J. Shower and eat when you wake up. We’ll talk later. I’ll still be here.”
“That’s supposed to help me sleep?” he muttered. He lifted a hand when he saw her mouth fall open in obvious surprise. Mia’s open lips acted on him like Mia and bed in one sentence, and he was way too tired for this. “Scratch that. I’m going.”
At the door, memory—and curiosity—returned. “I won’t sleep until I know. How’s Billy—and why are you here? A call would have sent me to visit him.”
She knew that. How many times had she called him in the past, only to see him running? And not only to see Billy, if only she knew it. Any chance to just look at her, to have her smile at him because he’d put himself out for Billy again, gave him a combination of soaring higher than on any medical substance he knew and weeks of frustration, because it never went further than a single smile. He’d lived on her last hug for weeks.
What a sucker.
She turned back from the coffeepot, and gave him the serious look he still adored after all this time. “Dad’s got Hep B.”
C.J. closed his eyes for a second. It didn’t need deciphering—not with Billy’s age and years of body abuse factored in. “He never took the vaccines I recommended?”
She shook her head. “He thought cleaning up his act was good enough. Dad and needles never got on.” Her smile was rueful, accepting.
“What’s he on?” He named the newest wonder-drug for treatment of the disease.
“He’s on all the best cocktails. That’s not the problem. He needs months of total rest—and since his wedding to Nicole …”
Again,
