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

His gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth. Something shifted in the pit of her belly as his eyes meshed with hers once more. Their dark glittering intensity triggered a primal response she had no control over. Fluttery fairy-soft footsteps of excitement danced along the floor of her stomach at the thought of him pressing that sinfully sensual mouth against hers, having his arms go around her and crush her to his hard tall frame, feeling his arousal potent and persistent against the yielding softness of her body. She drew in a little shuddering breath, wondering if he could sense how deeply affected she was by him.

But of course, she thought.

He was a practised flirt. A charmer—a playboy who loved nothing better than indulging the flesh without the restraints of a formal relationship—a born seducer who loved and left his partners without a second thought.

Falling in love with him would be the biggest mistake of her life. She knew it and yet there was something about him that drew her inexorably to him. She felt the magnetic force of him even now. The way his gaze tethered her to him, those ocean-blue depths communicating without words the desire that crackled like an electrical current between them.

‘I find out just about all I need to know about the other person with the first kiss,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’

‘You’d be surprised how much information that reveals.’

Kitty gave him an arch look. ‘You mean other than the flavour of their toothpaste?’

He smiled that glinting smile. ‘Having dinner with them is another revelation,’ he said. ‘Picky eaters tend to have body issues. A healthy appetite is a good sign, but someone who is keen to try different cuisines or exotic flavours gets my attention every time.’

Kitty felt heat rise up from the soles of her feet to her face. What would he think of her cardboard meals of late? ‘You seem to have it down to a science,’ she said.

‘Hey, Jake!’ A stocky blond-haired man came over with a twinkling smile on his face. ‘A cosy, romantic table for two?’

Kitty gave Jake a look. ‘How many times have you been here?’

‘Lost count,’ Jake said, and grinned at his mate. ‘How’re you doing, Brad? Hot in the kitchen?’

‘That’s why I’m out here,’ Brad said, and smiling at Kitty added, ‘So this is…?’

‘Dr Kitty Cargill,’ Jake said.

Brad’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Bringing work home with you, Jake?’

‘It’s not what you think,’ Jake said.

‘Sure,’ Brad said with a grin. ‘Follow me. I have just the table for you.’

Once Brad had left them settled with drinks, Kitty met Jake’s gaze across the small intimate table that was positioned in the quietest part of the restaurant. ‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘At about ten p.m. or so a woman will come past the table selling roses.’

He gave her a slanting smile. ‘Do you want one?’

‘Certainly not!’

He reached over to top up her water glass from the frosted bottle on the table. ‘So, tell me about Charles.’

Kitty watched as the bubbles from the mineral water rose in a series of vertical lines like tiny necklaces to the surface of her glass. ‘There’s not much to tell,’ she said. ‘We grew up together. I can’t think of a time in my life when Charles hasn’t been a part of it. We did everything together. I thought we’d continue to do everything together.’ She released a little sigh and met Jake’s gaze. ‘I was so busy planning our future that I didn’t notice what was going on in the present.’

‘Do you still love him?’

Kitty looked at the bubbles again, her finger tracing the dew on the outside of the glass. ‘I think there’s a part of me that will always love Charles,’ she said. ‘I loved his family too. I liked that they were so…so normal. I felt at home with them. I blended in as if I had always been there.’

She looked up to find his dark blue gaze centred on hers. He had a way of looking at her that made her whole body break out in a shiver. She became aware of every cell of her skin, from the top of her tingling scalp, right to the very soles of her feet.

She gave herself a mental shake and reached for her wine glass. ‘What did your brother want when he came to the unit today?’ she asked.

A mask slipped over his features. ‘I thought we were talking about you,’ he said.

‘We were,’ she said. ‘But now it’s your turn to talk about you.’

‘What if I don’t want to talk about me?’

‘Then talk about your brother.’

He frowned as he reached for his own wine glass, but he didn’t drink from it. He just sat there twirling the stem round and round between his finger and thumb. ‘I hate talking about my brother,’ he said. ‘Talking doesn’t change anything. He’s a fully-grown adult and yet just lately he’s been acting like a kid. He used to have a part-time job to fund his way through university, but he lost that over some run-in with the boss. He’s been putting the hard word on Rosie and Jen for money and when he’s really getting desperate he comes to me.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In some doss house in the inner city,’ he said, scraping a hand through his hair. He made a despairing sound. ‘My kid brother bunks down with every other desperado on the streets. My mother is probably spinning in her grave.’

Kitty put out a hand and touched his arm. His muscles flexed then stilled under her touch.

After a long moment his eyes met hers. ‘Do you know what gets me?’ he asked. ‘He had everything going so well. He was a straight A student. He was up for a university prize in engineering. He’s so damn bright—much brighter than me. I’ve had to work damn hard to get where I’ve got. But he’s thrown it all away. It’s such a damn waste.’

‘Is he doing drugs?’ Kitty asked.

He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I don’t know if he’s touched the hard stuff. He says not, but how can I trust him? He probably doesn’t remember from one day to the next what he’s been doing.’

‘What about rehab?’ she asked.

His eyes hit hers. ‘You think I haven’t tried that?’ he asked. ‘I even paid up-front for a private clinic, but he didn’t show up on admission day. I couldn’t find him for a fortnight. The clinic had a waiting list a mile long so I couldn’t get him in even when I found him.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard for family members to be the ones to help,’ Kitty said. ‘You’re too close and they don’t always want to listen.’

His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. ‘The sick irony is I’ve spent the last twenty-four years of my life being a substitute father for my sisters and brother,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong—I was glad to be able to do something. My mother wanted each of us to have better opportunities than she’d had. It was up to me to see that her vision for us as a family was fulfilled.’

‘That’s why you’ve never travelled, isn’t it?’ Kitty asked.

‘I had a ticket booked once.’ He gave her a brief glance before focussing on the contents of his glass. ‘I had all my siblings sorted, or so I thought. I was going to head off to Europe for a couple of months. Kick my heels up a bit, have a life, have some fun without the pressure of responsibility.’

‘What happened?’

He looked at her again, the line of his mouth grim. ‘Rosie came to me late one night and told me she was pregnant. She’d known for weeks but had been too scared to tell me. She was just nineteen years old. Still a kid herself. I couldn’t leave her to deal with that, even for a couple of months. I didn’t want her to feel pressured into a termination. I wanted her to feel supported in whatever she decided to do. Her boyfriend was useless. And what sort of brother would I be if I just flew out of the country at a time like that?’

‘From what I can tell you’ve been an amazing brother and uncle,’ Kitty said. ‘Look at the way you gave that party for her. And then you took your nephew surfing, on top of a full day at work.’

‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘I can’t be there all the time.’

‘I’m sure no one expects you to,’ she said. ‘You’re entitled to your own life.’

His eyes came back to hers, a wry smile kicking up the corners of his mouth. ‘That’s one very soft shoulder you’ve got there, Dr Cargill,’ he said.

Kitty smiled back. ‘Glad to be of service.’

It was close to eleven when Jake walked Kitty to the door of her town house. A light sea breeze had come in and taken the stifling heat out of the evening, bringing with it the tang of brine from the ocean.

She stood fumbling with her keys in the lock, conscious of him standing behind her, his tall frame within touching distance of hers. She could smell the hint of lemon in his aftershave. She could even hear his breathing—steady and slow, unlike hers, which was skittering all over the place.

‘Do you want me to unlock it for you?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m fine…Oh, damn,’ she said as she dropped her keys with a loud clatter to the tiled floor.

He bent down, scooped them off the floor and handed them to her. His fingers brushed against her open palm, sending electric shocks right up her arm. ‘You don’t need to be nervous, Dr Cargill,’ he said.

‘Nervous?’ Kitty tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her tongue sneaking out quickly to moisten her mouth. ‘Why on earth would I be nervous?’

He smiled at her. It was the tiniest movement of his lips and yet it unravelled her insides like a skein of wool thrown by a spin-bowler. ‘When was the last time you asked a man in for coffee?’ he asked.

She tore her gaze away from his sexily slanted mouth. ‘When I was in junior high,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t for coffee. It was for orange juice.’

‘Cute.’

Kitty unlocked the door and then faced him. ‘I have coffee if you’d like some,’ she said, waving a hand in the vague direction of the kitchen.

His sapphire gaze glinted. ‘Got any orange juice?’

‘Fresh or reconstituted?’

‘You can’t beat fresh,’ he said as he closed the door behind him with a soft click. ‘It tastes completely different.’

‘I can never tell the difference,’ she said, with a huskiness that was nothing like her usual dulcet tones. ‘But then, I guess I’m not much of an orange juice connoisseur.’

The space in the foyer seemed to shrink now that he shared it with her. The air seemed to tighten, to crackle and vibrate with an energy that made the hairs on her head push away from her scalp. The skin on her arms went up in goosebumps and her stomach pitched and tilted as he closed the distance between them with a single step.

His hooded gaze zeroed in on her mouth as he planted a hand on the wall beside her head. ‘This is the part where you’re supposed to ask me what the hell I think I’m doing,’ he said in a gravel-rough tone.

‘I am?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But since you missed your cue maybe we can jump ahead to the next bit.’

Kitty’s heart flapped like a shredded truck tyre on tarmac. ‘What’s the next bit?’ she asked in a soft whisper.

His warm minty breath caressed her parted lips as he inched closer and closer. ‘Why don’t I show you?’ he said, and then he sealed her mouth with his.

CHAPTER EIGHT

KITTY felt a shockwave ripple through her body when his lips made that first contact with hers. His lips moved against hers in a slow, sensual manner, tasting, teasing and tempting her into a heated response that made the base of her spine melt like butter and every hair on her head tremble with delight. His kiss was soft and experimental, a tantalising assault on her senses that made her skin tauten all over in fiery response.

He threaded his hands through her hair, his fingers splaying over her tingling scalp as he scorched the seam of her mouth with the bold stroke of his tongue.

She opened to him and the world exploded in a burst of colour and leaping flares of searing heat. His tongue tangled with hers in a sexy dance that made her heart race and her belly flip and then flop.

This was no tame boy-next-door kiss. This was a man’s kiss—the kiss of a full-blooded man who wanted sex and wanted it now.

Kitty felt the ridge of hard male desire against her quivering belly. She felt the instinctual, primal tug of her flesh towards it. She shifted her body against his, her heart skipping a beat when she heard the deep sound of male approval come from his throat.

Her breasts were jammed up against the hard plane of his chest. She had never been so aware of them before. They swelled and strained behind the lace cage of her bra, hungry for more intimate contact.

She shivered when his hands went to her hips, holding her closer to the cradle of his pelvis. Every delicious male inch of him was imprinted on her flesh. She felt the pounding roar of his blood through his clothes. It echoed the rampant need that was surging inside her.

His mouth continued its fiery exchange with hers, his tongue calling hers into a brazen tango that mimicked the need charging through his body as well as her own.

He shifted one of his hands from her hips to the small of her back, the subtle pressure sending her senses into a crazy spin. Desire licked along her flesh like a trail of racing flames, her need as insistent as a tribal drumbeat deep inside her body.

His hand on her hip moved upwards in a slow-moving caress that stopped just below her right breast. She felt her nerves tighten in awareness. The tingling and twitching of her flesh was almost unbearable. She pressed herself against him in a silent signal of female want, a desperate plea for him to satisfy the deepest yearnings of her body.

Kitty kissed him back with brazen hunger. Her lips nibbled and nipped at his. Her tongue swirled and circled and swept against his in a sensual combat that made her spine turn to liquid. He fought back with another deep groan of approval and pulled her even closer to the rampant need of his body.

She fisted a hand in his shirt and he plunged deeper into her mouth, his strongly muscled thighs moving against hers to nudge her back against the wall. The body-to-body contact fuelled her desire to an unmanageable level. She pushed herself up on tiptoe so she could feel more of his hard heat against her feminine need. Her insides melted and pulsed with longing. Desire was like a runaway train. It was flashing past every station, siding or level crossing of caution and common sense she had erected in her brain.

Jake lifted his mouth off hers and looked down at her, his expression darkly satirical. ‘Well, I guess that clears up that little detail,’ he said.

Kitty blinked herself out of her sensual daze and stepped out of his hold. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, feeling gauche and flustered. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said.

His mouth kicked up in a wry smile. ‘You’re not the shy, uptight type after all, are you?’

Kitty pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you you’re a very good kisser.’

‘You pack a pretty awesome punch yourself, Dr Cargill,’ he said.

She tried to act casual about it, affecting a pose of indifference that belied the turmoil she felt inside. ‘Do you still want coffee?’

He reached out and passed one of his bent knuckles over the curve of her cheek in a light caress, his eyes so dark she couldn’t tell where his pupils began and ended. ‘You don’t really think I came in here for coffee, do you?’ he asked.

Kitty swept the tip of her tongue over her kiss-swollen lips, her heart skipping all over the place. ‘I guess not…’

He held her gaze captive for a long heart-stopping moment. ‘I want you.’

The blunt statement shocked and yet thrilled her. Charles had waited years before asking her to sleep with him. ‘But for how long?’ she asked.

‘That’s not a question anyone can answer specifically,’ he said. ‘Relationships run their course. Some last days, others weeks, others years.’

She toyed with a button on his shirt rather than meet his gaze. ‘Yours don’t last years, though, do they?’ she said.

It seemed a long time before he answered. ‘I’m not promising anything long-term, Kitty. You’re only here until the end of April. It wouldn’t be fair to pretend this could turn into an affair of a lifetime.’

Kitty raised her eyes to his. ‘Because you don’t want to fall in love.’

‘You don’t have to be in love with someone to have great sex,’ he said. ‘Aren’t your parents proof of that?’

Her shoulders went down on a little sigh as she moved away. ‘I’m not like my parents,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live the way they do. I don’t want to play musical beds with faceless strangers. I want security. I want love. I want marriage and babies and happy ever after.’

He gave a cynical crack of laughter. ‘You want a fairytale that doesn’t exist in the real world. Fifty percent of marriages end up in divorce. The other fifty live snappily ever after.’

She threw him an exasperated look. ‘There’s no point arguing with you. I can see you’ve collated enough evidence to support your cynical take on things. But there are plenty of relationships that last the distance. I see them all the time in A&E. Old couples who’ve spent a whole lifetime loving each other. I want that. I want to be with someone for my whole life—not a month here or there or a measly week or two.’

‘Then I’m not your man,’ he said, his expression stony, his voice even harder. ‘I’m happy to have a bit of fun, but don’t expect anything else from me.’

Kitty held that steely blue gaze. ‘I feel sorry for men like you, Jake. You have plenty of fun now, but what about later? What about when you’re old and sick and no one wants you any more?’

A muscle flexed in his jaw. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

‘You’ll end up lonely and alone,’ she said. ‘You’ll have no shared memories of the phases of life you’ve journeyed through. No children to share your genes. No grandchild—’

‘Look,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘I get what you’re saying. Do you think I haven’t thought through all of that? Of course I have. I just can’t make promises I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep.’

Kitty nailed him with a flinty look. ‘You don’t want to make promises.’

He held her gaze for a second or two before he blew out a breath on a long exhale. He tipped up her chin using two fingers, while his thumb moved back and forth over the cushion of her bottom lip. ‘It wouldn’t work, you know,’ he said. ‘You. Me. Us. You’re too innocent for someone as hard-boiled as me. I’d end up walking all over you.’

‘I know how to take care of myself.’

‘Do you, Kitty?’ he asked looking at her intently. ‘Do you really?’

Her heart tripped as his gaze centred on her mouth. Heat pooled in her belly and her legs felt that betraying tremble again. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

He brushed an imaginary hair away from her face. ‘Even big girls can get their hearts broken.’

‘So can big boys.’

He gave her a twisted smile as he reached for the door. ‘Not this big boy.’

‘You’re not truly alive if you don’t allow yourself to be open to happiness and to hurt,’ she said. ‘It’s what makes life so rich and rewarding—the highs and the lows and all the bits in between.’

‘Goodnight, Dr Cargill,’ he said. ‘Sweet dreams.’

Kitty blew out a breath when the door clicked shut behind him. ‘Watch it, my girl,’ she said in an undertone. ‘Just watch it, OK?’

* * *

‘Where’s Kitty?’ Gwen asked, looking past Jake’s shoulders when he arrived at the new staff welcome drinks on Friday night. ‘I thought she might be coming with you.’

Jake took one of the light beers off a tray that was being handed around by one of the interns. ‘Then you thought wrong,’ he said.

Gwen angled her head at him. ‘What’s going on with you two?’

‘Nothing.’ He took a sip of froth off the top of his beer.

‘You had dinner with her,’ Gwen said. ‘Brad told me when I had lunch with my daughter at the grill yesterday.’

He shrugged. ‘So?’

‘Don’t break her heart, Jake.’

‘I have no intention of doing any such thing.’

‘She’s not your type.’

Jake frowned as he put his beer on the chest-high drinks stand beside him. ‘That’s surely up to her to decide, isn’t it?’

Gwen lifted her brows. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Then don’t,’ he said, shooting her a look.

‘How is Robbie?’

He shifted his gaze, his left hand tightening to a fist inside his trouser pocket. ‘I’d rather not talk about my brother right now.’

‘You never want to talk about him, Jake,’ Gwen said. ‘You used to chat about him all the time. How well he was doing. How nice it was to have him drop by with his friends. What’s going on? Is he in some sort of trouble?’

Jake glared at her. ‘Leave it, Gwen, OK? I don’t want everyone talking about what a crap job I’ve done of watching out for my brother. He’s an adult. I can’t control him any more.’

‘No one could possibly criticise you for what you’ve done for your family, Jake,’ she said gently.

He let out a weary breath. ‘Sorry, Gwen,’ he said. ‘I know you mean well. It’s just that things are pretty tough right now. Robbie’s being so irresponsible. I don’t know how to handle him any more. It’s like I’m dealing with someone else entirely.’

‘Jim and I had a rough trot with one of our boys a few years back,’ Gwen said. ‘Matt gave us a couple of years of hell but he eventually grew out of it. Maybe Robbie’s just going through a similar thing.’

Jake looked at her. ‘When he first started acting up I thought he was sick or something,’ he said. ‘It was so out of character for him to be partying hard and neglecting his studies.’

‘Did he see a doctor?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I sent him to his GP for a battery of tests.’

‘All clear?’

‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘He didn’t show me the scans. He said the GP told him there was nothing wrong. It was a long shot in any case. I’ve met stacks of parents of wayward kids who’ve insisted there must be something clinically wrong. It’s the first thing you think of. No one wants to think their kid or brother or sister wilfully chooses to go and stuff up their life.’

‘It’s a stage a lot of young people seem to go through these days,’ Gwen said. ‘They like to kick up their heels before they settle down. Robbie’s a good lad. You’ve always done the right thing by him. Hopefully he’ll sort himself out before too much longer.’

‘Yeah,’ Jake said on another sigh. ‘That what I’m hoping.’

* * *

‘Aren’t you supposed to be at the drinks thing tonight?’ Cathy Oxley asked in A&E.

Kitty leafed through the blood results she had been waiting for. ‘Yes, but I got held up with a patient.’

‘All work and no play,’ Cathy said in a singsong voice.

Kitty’s gaze narrowed in concentration as she looked at the white cell count in front of her.

‘Is something wrong?’ Cathy asked.

Kitty lowered the sheaf of papers. ‘Lara Fletcher,’ she said. ‘The twenty-four-year-old in Bay Four with breathlessness and swollen ankles. She’s been back and forth to her GP for months with a host of vague symptoms. Not once has he or anyone else ordered a blood test. She’s been fobbed off by two other medical clinics. One of them even gave her antidepressants, telling her she was depressed.’

‘You found something?’ Cathy asked, looking over her shoulder.

‘Aplastic anaemia,’ Kitty said heavily. ‘How could that have been missed for all this time?’

‘Not everyone is as meticulous as you.’

‘All it took was a blood test.’

‘Tell that to Jake Chandler next time he bawls you out for over-testing the patients,’ Cathy said with a little wink.

‘I will,’ Kitty said.

* * *

‘I didn’t realise you were working this weekend,’ said Trish Wellington, one of the more senior A&E specialists, when Jake came on duty on Saturday evening.

‘I’m just doing a fill-in shift for David Godfrey,’ Jake said. ‘He’s going to his sister’s wedding.’

‘Well, how about that?’ Trish said with a speculative smile. ‘Kitty Cargill’s doing a double tonight. Mike called in sick at the last minute.’