Australian Affairs: Claimed: Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty / Countering His Claim / Australia's Maverick Millionaire

Once she got back to the town house she changed into her one-piece bathing costume and some casual separates and headed straight for the beach. The sting of the sun had eased now it was early evening. The iconic arc of Bondi Beach was still heavily dotted with bodies making the most of the long, hot summer. Dozens of fit-looking surfers were out at the back of the swell, waiting for the perfect wave. Kitty couldn’t help envying their agility and grace. She had never been all that confident around water. She could swim…well, maybe that was stretching it a teensy bit. She could get from one end of a very short pool to the other. The ocean was another thing entirely. She had been to the beach plenty of times, but gentle, bay-like ones—ones with shingle or pebbles, not sand as fine as sugar and a swell that was rolling in with a roar that sounded like thunder as each wave crashed against the shore.

Kitty laid out her towel on the sand, anchoring the four corners with each of her flip-flops and two shells. She carefully tucked her keys inside her hat, along with her sunglasses, before she walked down to the water’s edge between the lifesaver patrol flags.

The water was warmer than she was used to and yet refreshing as she let it froth over her ankles and shins. She went in up to her knees and stood there watching as children half her height went out further, shrieking and squealing in delight as they jumped over or dived under the waves.

The lowering sun was like a warm caress on her back and shoulders, easing some of the tight golfball-sized knots that had gathered there.

‘Watch me, Uncle Jake!’ A young boy’s voice rang out over the sound of the surf.

Kitty felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and the golfballs in her shoulders knock together.

How many Jakes were there in Sydney and at Bondi Beach on this particular evening?

She looked to her right and saw Jake Chandler—the Jake Chandler—standing watching as a young boy bodysurfed a small wave.

Her heart tripped.

Her belly hollowed.

Her mouth watered.

Jake was standing less than a metre away from her. He was naked from the waist up. He was wet. He was tanned. He was lean. He was muscular in all the right places.

He was gorgeous.

‘Why is that lady staring at you, Uncle Jake?’

Kitty blinked herself out of her stasis, embarrassed colour shooting to her face as Jake’s blue gaze turned and met hers. ‘I’m not staring…’ she said, and stared.

Jake’s thick dark lashes were spiky with seawater. He had a lazy smile playing about his mouth. He had a day’s growth of sexy stubble. His black hair was wet. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow. His abdomen washboard-flat, his groin—

Kitty swallowed and blushed some more as she dragged her gaze back to his. ‘I didn’t know you were an uncle,’ she said, in a paltry effort to cover her mortification.

Jake put his hand on his nephew’s wiry shoulder. ‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet a new member of my staff at the hospital. This is Dr Cargill.’

Kitty smiled at the child, who looked about nine or ten years old. ‘Hi. I’m pleased to meet you, Nathan.’

‘You talk funny,’ Nathan said, screwing up his face.

‘It’s called the Queen’s English, Nate,’ Jake said. ‘You’d do well to learn it—and some manners while you’re at it.’

The boy wriggled out from under Jake’s hand. ‘Can I surf some more?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, but stay between the flags,’ Jake said. He turned and looked at Kitty again. ‘Sorry about that. He’s a good kid but he needs a bit of polish.’

Kitty tried not to stare at those long spiky eyelashes. ‘He’s very like you,’ she said.

His brow came up in a sardonic arc. ‘You think I need a bit of a polish too, do you, Dr Cargill?’

She felt her cheeks burn as she fought to hold his gaze. ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ she said, with as much composure as she could muster whilst standing partially naked before him. ‘I meant you’re like him in looks. Your eyes, your hair—that sort of thing.’

Jake returned his gaze to the waves, where his nephew was bodysurfing with varying degrees of success. ‘He’s a handful,’ he said. ‘I try and wear him out for my sister Rosie.’ He glanced at her again. ‘That’s whose party it was the other night. As a single mum she doesn’t get to kick up her heels much.’

‘Oh.’ Kitty caught her bottom lip with her teeth.

‘Nathan’s father shot through before he was born.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘She’s not,’ Jake said, swinging his gaze back to hers. ‘She’s better off without him.’

She tugged at her lip some more. ‘I mean I’m sorry about complaining about the music the other night,’ she said. ‘It must have seemed so…so petty.’

He checked on his nephew again before turning his gaze back to her. ‘You don’t like being out of your depth, do you?’ he asked.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You’re only wet up to your knees,’ he said. ‘We usually have to drag overseas tourists unconscious from this beach. A lot of them dive in without checking the conditions first.’

‘I don’t like leaping before I look,’ she said.

‘Can you swim?’

Kitty flashed him an affronted look. ‘Of course I can swim.’

‘Give me a shout if you need a hand with some stroke correction,’ he said.

‘No doubt breaststroke is your particular specialty?’ she said with an arch look.

His lips curved upwards in a sexy smile, but not before his glinting eyes had dipped to the hint of her cleavage first. ‘How’d you guess?’ he said, and then before she could think of a return he had joined his nephew in the rushing waves.

CHAPTER THREE

KITTY went back to her towel. Resting her chin on her bent knees, she concentrated on watching the surfers further out, but her gaze kept drifting back to where Jake was coaching his nephew. He looked so magnificently male, so vital and fit and healthy. She couldn’t help thinking of Charles, with his fair skin, his slight paunch and his receding hairline.

She pulled her thoughts back into line. She wasn’t the shallow looks-are-everything type. She was attracted to depth of character, to strong values and dedication and ambition, to caring for others…

She chewed at her lip as she watched Jake scoop his nephew out of a particularly rough wave, holding him steady against him until Nathan got his breath back and found his feet.

He would make a wonderful father.

Kitty felt ambushed by the errant thought. What did she care what sort of father he would make? It had nothing to do with her. What right did her belly have to give a soft little flutter at the thought of him holding a tiny baby in his large masculine hands?

She got to her feet and shook the sand off her towel, frowning as she folded it into a neat square. It might be close to seven-thirty in the evening but she’d clearly had way too much sun.

‘Leaving already?’ Jake asked as he came towards her across the sand.

Kitty drank in the sight of him. How could anyone look that good after a twelve-hour day at work and an hour of kid-sitting at the beach? ‘I—I have to wash my hair,’ she said, flustered, putting a hand to her hair.

‘You didn’t even get it wet,’ he said.

She ignored his comment and looked past him. ‘Where’s your nephew?’ she asked.

‘My sister collected him a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I would’ve introduced you to her but she was in a hurry.’

Kitty hugged her towel against her chest as if that would stop her heart from beating so erratically and so fast. His skin glistened with droplets of water, and she watched in spellbound fascination as they rolled like a row of glittering diamonds down over his muscled chest. He smelt of the sea, with a grace note of something else—perhaps a lingering trace of his citrus aftershave or shampoo.

He was standing close enough for her to feel a tiny shower of water drops land on her skin when he finger-combed his hair back off his face. She didn’t understand how such a sensation could have a disturbing undercurrent of intimacy about it, but it did. Her skin shivered as if he had slowly run his long tanned fingers down the slim length of her bare arms. She moistened her lips and tried to get her brain to work.

‘I have to get going…’ she said, but her feet didn’t move. It felt as if the sand had suddenly turned into quick-setting concrete.

‘I’ll go in with you if you like,’ he said, nodding towards the ocean. ‘Just till you get your confidence. Your first time can be a bit scary.’

Kitty’s breath stalled. It was tempting. It was hot, and the water felt marvellous around her knees, but what if he touched her? What if those strongly muscled arms actually held her? ‘You don’t have to babysit me,’ she said with icy hauteur. ‘I’m perfectly able to take care of myself.’

He took the towel she was holding like a lifeline and tossed it to the sand at their feet, his dark blue eyes never once leaving hers. ‘Prove it,’ he said.

Kitty put her shoulders back and her chin up. ‘All right,’ she said, and spun around and made her way to the water. She splashed through the waves until she was in up to her waist before she turned to look at him. But he wasn’t watching from the beach. He had followed her in. He was less than half a metre away. Did he think she was that hopeless?

She gritted her teeth.

She would show him.

‘Watch out!’ he said suddenly.

Kitty turned just as a bigger than normal wave smashed into her. She felt as if she had been thrown into a washing machine on a rapid wash cycle. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stand up even if she had known which way was up.

Suddenly a strong hand gripped one of her arms and hauled her upright. She blinked the briny water out of her stinging eyes and looked up at Jake’s face. Her body was pressed against the rock-like wall of his by the force of the water. Every hard plane of his body was imprinted on her softer ones. Her breasts were pushed up against his chest, her belly against his washboard abdomen. One of his arms was like a band of iron behind her back; the other was holding her hand in an equally firm grip, his long fingers entwined with hers. His strong legs were slightly apart to brace against the undertow of the water, and the cradle of his pelvis against hers reminded her shockingly, alarmingly, deliciously of all that was different between them.

She felt a flickering between her thighs, like a thousand tiny wings beating inside a cramped space. Electricity shot through her veins, sending sparks of reaction up and down her spine, through every limb, even to the very ends of her fizzing fingertips and her curling toes.

Her eyes went to his mouth. She couldn’t stop staring at the rough stubble that surrounded it. The desire to reach up and trace that sexy masculine regrowth with her fingertips was almost overwhelming. Her hands were splayed against the hard wall of his chest, and that electrifying sensation was passing from his body to hers through the sensitive pads of her fingers. She could feel the thudding of his heartbeat drumming into her palm.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this close to a man…Well, she could, but that final goodbye hug from Charles hadn’t felt anything like this.

‘You’re way out of your depth,’ Jake said, with an unreadable expression on his face.

Kitty couldn’t get her breathing to steady, but it had very little to do with the water she’d inadvertently swallowed. ‘A little…perhaps…’

He braced her against him as another wave bore down on them. ‘Hold on,’ he said.

The crazy water swished and swirled around them but Kitty barely noticed. She was acutely aware of his body pressed against hers, from her soft breasts to his hard chest, from her smooth slim legs to his strong hair-roughened thighs. She felt the imprint of his arousal against her belly. That starkly primal instinctive reaction of male to female sent her senses into a madcap frenzy. His body seemed to thicken and harden as each heart-stopping second passed. She felt his heartbeat pick up under her hand. It was just a hint of escalation, but it relayed a message that was older than time itself.

Their gazes locked for a moment.

The sound of the ocean and people bathing around them faded. It was like being in a vacuum where no one else existed.

It was just the two of them: a man and a woman, male and female—alone.

Jake’s gaze slipped to her mouth, those dark blue eyes perusing it for long pulsing seconds as if memorising every tiny crease and line of her lips. ‘Time to get you out of danger,’ he said, blinking a couple of times. ‘You don’t want to get dumped unexpectedly again.’

Kitty ran her tongue over her mouth, tasting the ocean and a need so strong she felt it tingling under the surface of her lips. ‘I thought it was supposed to be safe between the flags,’ she said.

‘It depends,’ he said as he led her by the hand to shallower water.

She flicked her wet hair back over her shoulders and glanced at him as she sloshed through the lace-like foam of the shallows, trying not to notice how his fingers were so warm and strong where they were curled around hers. ‘On what?’

‘On whether you can handle the conditions,’ he said, releasing her hand once she was steady on her feet. ‘Swimming in a pool is not the same as swimming in the ocean. Every day at the beach is different. You never know when a bigger than normal wave is going to come unless you have experience at reading the swell.’

‘Maybe I’ll stick to the paddling pool for the time being,’ she said. ‘At least there are no sharks there.’

His dark blue eyes glinted down at her. ‘I think you’ll be fine once you gain your confidence,’ he said. ‘In no time at all you’ll be riding those waves like the best of them.’

Kitty had a feeling he wasn’t talking just about the ocean. But she wasn’t sure if he was talking about gaining confidence at work or in her private life. Was he warning her about getting involved with him? Letting her know the rules from the outset? Her instincts warned her that a relationship with him would not be a safe but boring mechanical lapping of a municipal pool. It would be diving head-first into a surging tide of deep rushing water that carried a constant threat of imminent danger.

She’d be best to stay well clear of it.

She reached for her towel and wrapped herself in it even though she wasn’t in the least bit cold. In fact she felt hot, both inside and out. Her skin still tingled and fizzed where he had touched her. And those tiny wings were still beating a soft but insistent rhythm deep inside her every time his eyes met hers, with that ancient primal message of male and female attraction virtually impossible to ignore.

Like right now.

Kitty suppressed a shiver as those blue eyes—as dark and deep as the ocean that surged and pulsed behind him—held hers.

The raw energy of his body reached out in invisible waves to wash over her, mesmerising her, tantalising her, consuming her. She felt the magnetic force-field of his tall masculine frame standing in front of her.

If she took a step forward she would be able to touch him. The temptation to do so was almost overwhelming. She wanted to place her hands on that muscular chest, to slide her palms over that damp hot skin, to feel those hard planes and contours, to look up and see the answering attraction in his eyes. But somehow she scrunched her fingers into her palms and stepped back instead.

‘I have to get going…’ she said, and almost tripped over her own feet in the loose sand in her haste to escape.

One of his hands shot out and steadied her, his fingers wrapping around her wrist like a steel bracelet. ‘Careful,’ he said.

Kitty swallowed as she glanced down at his fingers overlapping each other on the slender bones of her wrist. They looked so exotic and dark against the creamy paleness of her skin. Her pulse hammered beneath his touch. It felt as if a hummingbird was trapped inside her veins. She wondered if he could feel it. Was that why he had not let her go even though she was no longer in any danger of tripping?

She gave him a sheepish look. ‘You can let me go now.’

He slowly unwound his fingers, his eyes still meshed with hers. ‘I guess I’ll see you around,’ he said.

‘Yes, I expect so,’ Kitty said. She waited a beat before adding, ‘Thank you for the…rescue.’

He flashed a brief on-off smile. ‘You’re welcome.’

And without another word he ambled off to where he had left his towel further along the beach, turning every female head as he went.

Kitty slowly released a breath and only just resisted the urge to fan her face with one of her hands. ‘Way too much sun, my girl,’ she said under her breath and, trudging through the sand, headed home.

* * *

As soon as Jake walked into the A&E unit the next morning Gwen and a nurse and a resident who were in the office went silent, just as if someone had flicked a volume switch to mute.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I have to check some bloods,’ the resident said, and dashed out.

‘Er…me too,’ the nurse said, and quickly followed the resident.

Jake eyeballed Gwen. ‘What gives?’ he asked.

‘You were seen canoodling with Dr Cargill,’ Gwen said as she folded her arms across her ample chest. ‘Apparently it’s all over the hospital.’

Jake frowned. ‘Canoodling?’

‘Yes,’ Gwen said in mild reproach. ‘I thought you liked to keep your private life separate from your professional one—or are you making a special exception this time?’

‘Canoodling?’ he said again. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘You know exactly what it means,’ Gwen said. ‘What are you thinking, Jake? You know how awkward it gets when staff members have flings with each other. It’s bad enough when they work in separate departments, but on the same unit? Everyone feels the fall-out when it’s bye-bye time.’

‘I am not involved with Dr Cargill,’ he said. Yet, he tacked on silently. ‘Who the hell put that rumour out there?’

‘You work together,’ Gwen said. ‘Word has it you live in the same town house block, and now we hear you’re playing together.’

He looked at her blankly. ‘Playing together?’

Gwen gave him a look. ‘On the beach,’ she said. ‘In full view of everyone.’

Jake barked out a laugh. ‘I was teaching her to swim…or sort of.’

Gwen rolled her eyes. ‘Well, whatever you were doing with her has been witnessed and reported. I thought you should know.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Jake said, grinning. ‘Does Dr Cargill know we are now an item?’

‘Not yet,’ Gwen said with grim foreboding. ‘But I hope I’m not around when she finds out.’

CHAPTER FOUR

KITTY was examining a patient with a mild blunt force trauma to his forehead in Cubicle Four when she overheard two junior nurses talking as they changed the linen in cubicle three.

‘Talk about a fast worker,’ one of them said. ‘She’s only been here a day or two and she’s already got her hooks into him.’

‘Yeah, well, she certainly got his attention by turning up in that hooker costume the other night,’ the other one said. ‘Do you reckon it was staged?’

‘Must’ve been,’ the other one said. ‘What a slut.’

Kitty’s heart slammed into her breastbone. She broke out in a sweat, her cheeks firing up and her skin prickling all over in outrage.

‘Is everything all right?’ the patient lying on the bed asked worriedly. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’

Kitty forced a cool professional smile to her stiff features. ‘No, Mr Jenkins,’ she said. ‘You have a small haematoma that will take a day or two to subside. The skin isn’t broken, so there’s a slim to none chance of infection. You’re not showing any signs of a concussion, but you need to take things easy over the next day or so. Don’t drive, operate heavy machinery or consume alcohol for the next twenty-four hours.’

‘Thanks, Doctor,’ the man said. ‘The wife will kill me if I cark it now. We’ve got a cruise booked for next month. We’ve been saving up for it for five years.’

‘You’ll be fine by then,’ Kitty said, patting his arm before she left the cubicle.

During her lunch break Kitty went in search of Jake Chandler, but he wasn’t on the floor or in either of the doctors’ rooms. He was in his office. She felt every eye following her as she made her way through the unit. She had been the subject of hospital gossip before. Her break-up with Charles had done the rounds. It had been excruciating to know everyone was talking about her private life in such lurid detail. She had felt so exposed; so raw and vulnerable. She knew it would only have got worse after Charles’s wedding so she had decided to take herself out of the picture. But it seemed that even on the other side of the world people with pathetically small lives thought it sport to speculate on the lives of others. She didn’t have the option of running away this time. She would have to face it and deal with it.

She took a calming breath and rapped firmly on the door.

‘Come in, Dr Cargill.’

Kitty’s hand stilled where it rested on the doorknob. So he had been expecting her, had he? What was he playing at? Was this his idea of a joke? Did he have nothing better to do than make a laughing-stock out of her?

She pulled her shoulders back and kept her chin up, and turned the knob and entered the office, closing the door with a resounding click behind her. ‘I hate to interrupt you when you’re busy, but—’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve ordered the invitations, and I know a really cool florist who’ll do the flowers for mate’s rates, not retail.’

Kitty blinked. ‘Pardon?’

‘The wedding,’ he said indolently, swivelling his office chair from side to side.

‘Wedding?’ She frowned until her forehead ached. ‘What wedding?’

His blue eyes shone with amusement. ‘Ours,’ he said. ‘Apparently we’re engaged and expecting triplets.’

She felt her jaw drop. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

He smiled a breath-stealing smile. ‘Gossip,’ he said. ‘You only have to look at someone around here and people start planning the guest list for the wedding.’

Kitty opened and closed her mouth, totally lost for words.

‘Apparently we were caught canoodling,’ he said.

‘Canoodling?’

He gave her a been-there-asked-that look. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I looked it up in the dictionary. It means to kiss and cuddle amorously.’

‘But we didn’t do any such thing!’ she blurted.

He lifted one of his broad shoulders up and down in a casual shrug. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It looked like it. That’s enough to set the tongues wagging around here. No one believes me when I tell them I was actually saving your life.’

‘You weren’t saving my life,’ she said, sending him an affronted glare. ‘I wasn’t drowning.’

‘And I wasn’t kissing and cuddling you amorously, but there you go,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done.’

Kitty clenched her fists by her sides. ‘Then it will have to be undone,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want people speculating on my private life.’

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘They’ll find someone else to talk about soon enough.’

She strode over and slammed her hands on the desk in front of him, leaning forward to drive home her point. ‘Relax?’ she said. ‘How can I relax? I heard two nurses talking about me in the next cubicle while I was with a patient. I was totally mortified. They called me a slut. They said I’d staged it the night I brought my cousin into A&E just to get your attention.’

His eyes took their merry time meeting hers, taking a sensual detour to the shadow of her cleavage, which she had inadvertently exposed to him. She quickly straightened, but it was too late. She could see the gleam of male appraisal in the depths of his dark blue gaze as it met with hers. The temperature of her skin went up to blistering hot and a hollow feeling opened up in her stomach.