Just like Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart.
“Yeah, you’re right. Early to bed sounds good. In fact...” she glanced at her watch “...time’s a-tickin’. Best get cracking!”
An image of Raphael tangled up in her sheets flashed across her mind’s eye as the rest of her barely functioning brain played a quick game of catch-up.
“Wait a minute. Did you say you were coming to work tomorrow?”
“Oui. Didn’t I tell you?” His brows cinched together in concern.
Again the nervous laughter burbled up, scratching and becoming distorted as it passed through her tight throat. “Well, yeah, I knew you were coming. My boss told us about it the other day. But I didn’t—” She stopped herself.
She’d thought she’d have more time to prepare. To become more immune to the emotional ramifications of working with the one man she’d imagined having a future with. In Paris. On a surgical ward. In a marital bed. Together.
“Maggie, if you do not want me working at your station...”
Raphael pulled out the vowels in her name, making it sound as if she were some sort of exotic bird or a beautiful length of stretchy caramel.
Quit staring at the gorgeous man and respond, Mags.
“No. That’s not it at all. I’m totally on board with it. You’ll be amazing. Everyone will love you. I must’ve gotten muddled. It’ll be nice for you. To hit the ground running, I mean.”
“Absolutement.” Raphael nodded. “I am completely ready to be a true Australian.”
Maggie couldn’t help herself. She sniggered. Then laughed. Then outright guffawed. “Raphael, I don’t think you could be a ‘true Australian’ even if you paddled backwards on a surfboard, dropped snags down your throat and chased them up with a slab of stubbies, all with a school of sharks circling round you. You’re just too...” She held her hands open in front of him, as if it was completely obvious.
“Oui?” Raphael looked straight down that Gallic nose of his, giving her a supercilious look.
Had she taken the mick a bit too hard and fast?
“What is it that I am too much of, Maggie?”
“Um...well... French.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “You know... You’re just too French to be Australian.”
The warm evening air grew thick. Whether it was an impending rainstorm or the tightening of the invisible tension that had snapped taut between them, she wasn’t sure. Her body ached to step in closer. To put her hands on his chest.
“I suppose I will have to rely on you to help me,” he said.
Whether he meant it or not was hard to tell.
“No wuckers, Raph,” she joked, giving him a jesty poke in the ribs with her elbow, trying to defuse the tension. “I’ll give you training lessons on Aussie slang and you can help me with my...um...”
Her vocabulary deserted her as her eyes met and locked with Raphael’s.
“Francais?”
It would be so easy to kiss you right now.
“Maggie?”
Oh, God. She was staring. Those eyes of his...
But, again, the bright blue was shadowed with something dark.
What’s happened to you since we last met?
Something about the slight tension in his shoulders told her not to push. He had his reasons for giving up his surgical career and zig-zagging around the world, only to land here in Oz. The last thing she was going to do was dig. Everyone had their “cupboard of woes,” her mother had often said. And no one had the right to open them up and air them.
Just chill, Mags.
He’d spill his guts when he felt good and ready. Listening to people’s “gut-spills” was one of her specialties. But when it came to spilling her own guts...there was no way she was going to unleash that pack of writhing serpents on anyone.
When they reached the aisle and began walking side by side the backs of their hands lightly brushed. Another rush of goose pimples shimmied up her arms, ultimately swirling and falling like a warm glitter mist in her tummy.
She was really going to have to train her body to calm the heck down if she was going to be his shoulder to cry on. Not that he looked even close to crying. Far from it.
Had she stuck her foot in it with the whole “you’re too French” thing?
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I really enjoy working on the ambos, and the fact you have extra language skills is great. Work is different every day. And it was an amazing way for me to get my bearings when I moved to Sydney.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be at the wheel. I haven’t qualified for driving yet. All I know is I’m going to be working on an MIC Ambulance.”
Luckily Raphael missed her wide-eyed No! That’s what I do! response as he scanned the area, then turned towards the main bus stop outside the Botanical Gardens as if he’d been doing it every day of his life. He’d been born and bred in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities—acclimatizing to another must be a piece of cake.
“I was actually surprised by how easy it was to get my working papers. Something about a shortage of Mobile Intensive Care paramedics?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Maggie nodded, her brain more at ease in work mode. “They’ve really been struggling over in Victoria. Well, everywhere, I think. The most skilled mobile intensive care paramedics seem to be running off to the Middle East, where the pay is better. Well, not all of them. And it’s not because working here is horrible or anything... I mean it’s actually pretty great, when you consider the range of services we provide to the community—and of course to the whole of New South Wales when they need it. Like when there are forest fires. Or big crashes out in the back of beyond.”
She was rambling now. And in serious danger of sending Raphael packing.
He was one of the only people in her life who had known her before her mum had passed. There was something about that link that felt precious. Like a tiny priceless jewel she’d do everything in her power to protect.
Maggie looked up, her eyes widening as Raphael’s expression softened into an inquisitive smile. The trees behind him were laced with fairy lights and the buzz and whoosh of the city faded into a gentle murmur as her eyes met with his.
A flash of pure, undiluted longing flooded her chest so powerfully that she had to pull in a deep breath to stave off the dizzying effect of being the sole object of those beautiful blue eyes of his. The ache twisting in her lungs tightened into a yearning for something deeper. How mad would the world have to become for him to feel the same way?
Slowly he reached out his hands and placed them on her shoulders. The heat from his fingers seared straight through her light top, sending out a spray of response along her collarbone that gathered in sensual tingles along
