His Longed-For Baby. Josie Metcalfe

been to bed with a woman since he’d met Maggie was no excuse either.

      As if she was picking up the intensity of his thoughts, Maggie began to stir, her silky flesh sliding over his rougher planes with a thoroughly arousing friction as she woke.

      ‘Mmm, nice,’ she murmured huskily against his throat as she angled her hips against him, clearly only too willing to continue where they’d left off when she’d finally fallen asleep.

      His soul-searching ground to an instant halt. Gone were all thoughts of telling her that this couldn’t happen again when it obviously was.

      Without him even having to think about it, his hands were already cupping her, stroking her, positioning her for his—

      ‘Jake?’ Suddenly, she was stiffening against him. ‘Is that your pager?’

      He’d been totally deaf to anything but her soft murmurs and the blood pounding through his veins, but now he could hear the wretched thing, too.

      ‘I don’t believe it!’ he groaned as he dropped his head back on the pillow, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the enticing view.

      ‘It can’t be mine,’ she reasoned. ‘I didn’t bring one home with me because I’m not on duty for two weeks.’

      ‘Well, I’m not due on for hours yet,’ he growled in frustration. If this was all he was ever going to have of Maggie, he really didn’t want anyone or anything interrupting…

      The ringing of Maggie’s phone halted his unhappy thoughts.

      ‘We’ll just have to remember where we were, so we can take up where we left off,’ she suggested with a fascinating blush—a blush that amazed him when he remembered all the things the two of them had done since he’d joined her in the shower last night. He’d never had such a generous lover before, or such an eager one, and if he allowed himself to think about all he would be missing for the rest of his life without Maggie in it, he would probably want to slit his throat.

      He would just have to settle for slitting the throat of whoever had misread the on-duty roster and dialled his number instead.

      He padded across the room to retrieve the insistent thing from his trouser pocket.

      ‘Whoever this is, I’ll get them off the line as soon as possible so you can make your call,’ Maggie said, modestly tugging the duvet over herself with one hand as she reached for the phone with the other.

      When he saw her disappear behind thoroughly rumpled cotton Jake stifled another groan. The mood had been well and truly broken now, and that dreaded ‘this shouldn’t have happened’ conversation was suddenly imminent.

      ‘Hi, Karen!’ Maggie said, and he grimaced at the thought that he was probably going to have to work out what to say to Maggie’s friend, too. After all, Karen knew that he’d intended speaking to Maggie last night, and if she found out that he’d spent the night…

      ‘No, you didn’t wake me. What can I do for—? Oh, no!’ she exclaimed suddenly, dragging him out of his tangled thoughts. ‘Of course I’ll come in—I’m not doing anything important today after all. I should be there in twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.’

      ‘What’s going on?’ Jake demanded as she cut the call and handed the phone to him, apparently unaware that she’d let the bedclothes fall to her lap during her phone call. He was so busy admiring her sweet curves that he almost missed what she was saying.

      ‘Major incident—traffic pile-up on the motorway. Multiple traumas on their way in so they’re rounding up all the staff they can reach,’ she added with a nod towards his pager.

      It didn’t take long for Jake to confirm that he too would get to the hospital as soon as he could. If the estimates for the number of casualties were right, this was going to be a day in hell.

      He reached for his clothes, sparing a longing thought for the luxury of a long hot shower. Unfortunately, there was going to be no time for that, and certainly no time for that serious discussion he’d been going to have with Maggie.

      ‘Did you walk or drive last night?’ she asked suddenly.

      ‘Walked,’ he called back as he scrabbled around in the bathroom, trying to find his other shoe. Thank goodness he would be able to change out of his wrinkled clothes as soon as he reached the hospital. A night on a damp bathroom floor hadn’t done them any favours. ‘Liam insisted he was going to buy me a drink.’

      ‘And you never drive after you’ve had alcohol,’ she finished for him, something they’d long ago discovered they both believed in. ‘Drat! I forgot that. I was hoping you could give me a lift, for speed.’

      ‘We’ll just have to run to save time,’ he said distractedly, wondering how his second shoe had ended up by the fridge. He was certain he’d been wearing both of them when he’d walked into the bathroom last night, and he definitely hadn’t bothered walking around her flat with a shoe in his hand since then. He’d had far more interesting things to—

      That was enough!

      The night was well and truly over now, all bar the post-mortem. There was no point in tormenting himself with full-colour replays when he was going to need every scrap of concentration to help his patients.

      ‘Ready to go?’ he called, checking that he’d put his pager back in his pocket just as Maggie emerged from the bathroom fully clothed and obviously set for action.

      At the last moment Maggie suddenly worried that it might not be a good idea for people to see her arriving for work with Jake. The last thing she needed was to give the hospital grapevine something else to get their teeth into. At least Jake could blame the state of his clothes on the downpour outside.

      In the event, the whole department was already working to such a pitch that the only notice anyone took of the two of them was to set them to work the moment they arrived.

      ‘Thank God you’re both here!’ Senior Sister Lina Mackey said when she caught sight of them. ‘Can you go to Resus Two? We’ve already got three beds going in One and another ambulance due any second with a tension pneumothorax on board.’

      ‘Can you give us thirty seconds to change into scrubs?’ Jake asked, his long legs already taking him towards the locker room at a rapid clip.

      If she’d had her way, Maggie thought as she pulled the faded green cotton top over her head and tightened the baggy drawstring waist on the matching trousers, she wouldn’t have been working in the same room as Jake. She’d barely had time to draw breath since she’d woken up this morning and it didn’t look as if it was going to get any better. Even so, working in the close proximity that such a multiple trauma scenario demanded wouldn’t give her the space to put her thoughts and feelings into order.

      What on earth had possessed her last night? She’d never been so brazen in her life. Even now, remembering the way she’d given up on taking his coffee-soaked clothes off his body and had dragged him fully clothed to join her in the shower cubicle made her whole body grow hot.

      And this definitely wasn’t the time or the place for such thoughts, not when their patients were going to be fighting for their very lives.

      The fact that she and Jake had spent the night together mustn’t be allowed to interfere with the way the two of them worked together.

      Both of them reached Resus Two before their first patient, but only just.

      Swiftly, she grabbed two disposable plastic aprons and thrust one in his direction before pulling hers over her head and wrapping the ties around her waist. She reached for the box of small disposable gloves, her hand colliding with Jake’s as he reached across her for the larger size.

      ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, horrified to feel a sudden wash of heat surge into her cheeks. For heaven’s sake! What was the matter with her? They’d been brushing against each other over and over again for the last two years without a problem. Was she going to blush every time now?

      Concentrate!