it be so terrible to have sex with someone you really fancied even if it was going absolutely nowhere?
Stop it, she told herself as she drove to work.
Just stop it right there!
Of course the second she walked into work she saw Ethan. She tried to douse the fire in her cheeks, only it wasn’t working—he was dressed in scrubs and very unshaven. He was scowling at the bed board and had clearly been up all night.
‘Good sleep?’ His voice was wry.
‘Fantastic.’ Hers was equally wry as she walked past, because she’d be lucky to have slept for more than a couple of hours, though she was glad now that she hadn’t accepted the consultant’s position. There was no way she could have juggled it all, she would not have coped if she’d been called in last night and had still been expected to work through the next day.
Penny got through the busy morning, doing her best to avoid him, and she had a feeling Ethan was trying to avoid her too. Both were trying to pretend that the near miss last night hadn’t happened.
She headed to the lecture theatre and set up her computer, nodding a greeting as her colleagues filed in. She wasn’t nervous as she was a very good public speaker, but her heart was fluttering as Ethan walked in. He’d been firing on coffee all morning but from his yawn as he took a seat in the lecture theatre for her presentation, she wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he fell asleep midway through.
Penny had decided not to present about Heath, the young man with the head injury, and instead spoke about the renal patient who had come in with cardiac failure. She went through it all—the medication, the dosages, admitted to her own hesitation—suggesting a protocol sheet be implemented, and Ethan didn’t fall asleep as she spoke. Instead, he watched her.
Watched her mouth move and speak, but hardly heard a word, his mind more on her pert bottom as she turned and pointed to the whiteboard. All he wanted to do was go home—why did he have to fancy Penny?
He knew that the extra jewellery and make-up and heels were not for his benefit. It was the way Penny was and she was always going to make an extra effort for this type of thing. Except he could see the flash of lace on her cami and he wanted the effort to have been for him.
Then his eyes lingered on the tie of her dress and his mind wandered as to how he was going to get it off, or up, and it was then that she caught him looking. Her voice trailed off and they both just stared.
Really stared.
Ethan clamped his teeth together because he was incredibly tempted to silently mouth something really inappropriate to her, just to see those burning cheeks flame further.
‘Penny?’ Mr Dean asked when the silence dragged on. ‘You said he was then given a bolus?’
‘That’s right.’ She snapped back to her presentation and apart from that, apart from nearly jumping off the stage and straddling Ethan, Penny got through the rest of her speech really well. Attempting to be normal, Ethan congratulated her a little while later.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you that day. I didn’t mean to just walk in and take over.’
‘But you didn’t offend me.’ Penny frowned and then remembered. ‘I was having a hot flash, Ethan.’ She watched his face break into a smile. ‘It was the drugs—that was a glimpse of menopausal Penny.’
‘Well, remind me, if we’re both still working here then, that it’s time for me to look for another job,’ Ethan said laughingly.
‘Are you heading off, Ethan?’ Mr Dean walked past. ‘You were here all night.’
‘Soon,’ Ethan said, then he looked at Penny. ‘If I go home now I’m going to crash and I won’t get back.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He really did look exhausted.
‘I’m going to go into the on-call room and sleep,’ Ethan said. ‘Get everything ready and then come and get me at five to six.’
‘Thanks.’
She tried to ignore the on-call room, but every time she walked past, the thought of Ethan lying in there asleep flashed like a strobe light in her mind. If she was like this now, what the hell was she going to be like after the embryo transfer? She might be needing that straitjacket after all.
Penny set up her needle and swab and had it all laid out in her office and then, because she could at times be nice, she made Ethan a coffee before she knocked on the door of the on-call room. He was so zonked she could actually hear the low sounds of snoring.
‘Ethan.’ She knocked again and put her head around the door. ‘Ethan, it’s nearly six.’ He sat up and sort of shook himself awake.
‘Can you bring it in here?’ He just wanted to get the injection over and done with and then go back to sleep but then he changed his mind and with good reason. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘I brought you a coffee.’
She walked over in the darkness and he got a waft of her scent. He heard the slight rattle as she put his coffee down on the bedside table and it was right that her hand was shaking, Ethan thought, because she was seconds away from being pulled into his bed.
‘Thanks,’ Ethan said. ‘I’ll be there soon.’
He had to get himself under control—physically and mentally—before touching her.
Hurry home, Jasmine.
He’d never met Jed, let alone his mother, but he wished her the speediest, most uneventful of recoveries from her stroke. Ethan gulped his coffee and splashed his face in the sink and then walked to Penny’s office.
‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’ She was fiddling with the tie of her dress and he could hear her starting to cry, just sort of breathy sobs that she was trying to keep in.
‘Okay, then.’ He walked towards her, and she was a mess, a hot mess at that, Ethan thought as he looked at her eyes. They showed a mixture of fear and lust and if she said no to the injection this time, he would drop the needle.
He didn’t want her to do this.
He wanted her to stop so that they could do what people who fancied each other did.
A lot.
He wanted to go out and have more dinners and have nachos himself next time and go far too far in a car park and then go even further back home.
‘No.’ She pushed at his hand as it reached for her dress tie, and he was breathing very hard now—tired, turned on, pissed off. He didn’t want to do this either.
‘What do you want, Penny?’ He forgot he wasn’t supposed to ask, he was supposed to go ahead and give her the needle. Her hands were on his arm and he tried to ignore the feel of her fingers on his skin. He tried to undo the tie for her as if he hadn’t been thinking about doing just that all day.
She had on silver-grey knickers and a matching cami, and through the silk he could tell her chest
