Scandal In Sydney. Alison Roberts

‘Sorry, Lily, but I can’t handle your reputation.’

      ‘You mean my mother’s reputation? My mother’s behaviour makes me a whore, too?’ Her voice had risen … maybe more than she’d intended.

       ‘No but people look at you. I’m not sure I can handle that for the rest of our lives; people expecting you to turn out like your mother.’

      She’d thrown something at him. Something large and unwieldy that had just happened to be full of water and half-dead Christmas lilies. It had been a satisfactory moment in a very unsatisfactory interview, one that had left her feeling sullied. Mostly because she’d thought she’d loved Charlie and he’d loved her, and how could she have loved someone who thought her mother’s reputation was more important than their relationship?

      But her mother’s reputation was important. It made a difference. Like her reputation was important now, if she was to continue working at the Harbour.

      She was only at the Harbour for four weeks. She could handle this.

      ‘I need a favour,’ Luke said and sat on her bed.

      His bed. She inched back on the pillows.

      She’d held this man, why?

      She knew why she’d held him. It had been the culmination of an appalling time, an appalling emotion. She’d felt a matching need in him and their mutual need had exploded.

      There was no longer mutual need. They were strangers. There wasn’t even attraction.

      Um … yes, there was. He was rumpled after a long day at work. He’d hauled off his tie and his top shirt button was undone, revealing a hint of lean muscle underneath. His dark eyes were shadowed with weariness, and his five o’clock shadow was toe-curlingly sexy.

      If he leaned forward and touched her …

      She’d be out of here so fast he wouldn’t see her go. What she was feeling scared her witless.

      She was not going to become her mother.

      What had he said? I need a favour.

      ‘I don’t owe you,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Or not very much. I mean … it was lovely that you helped me this morning, and you gave me a gorgeous bed to sleep in for the day, but—’

      ‘I’d like you to sleep in it for a month.’

      That was enough to take her breath away. A girl could be properly flummoxed with a statement like that.

      ‘No,’ she said.

      ‘No?’

      ‘It’s a very nice bed,’ she managed. ‘But despite all evidence to the contrary, I keep myself nice.’

      ‘I’m not propositioning you. I have a sofa bed in the living room. This apartment has two bathrooms. This bed can be yours for a month.’

      ‘I have a bed of my own.’

      ‘You’re not going back to that doss house.’

      ‘It might be a doss house,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘but it’s a prepaid doss house. It’s okay. My bedroom’s almost clean.’

      ‘There are bedbugs.’

      ‘Nonsense. I would have been bitten by now.’

      For answer he tugged her arm forward, slid her sleeve to her elbow and exposed a cluster of red welts. They both looked down at them. Irrefutable evidence. ‘I saw these this morning,’ he said. ‘I rest my case.’

      She stared down at the welts, perplexed. Bedbugs. She had been itchy, she thought. She’d just been too preoccupied to notice.

      ‘Yikes,’ she muttered. ‘And double yikes. I’ll buy insect spray.’

      ‘You don’t get rid of bedbugs with inspect spray. You get rid of them by moving out.’

      ‘Not an option.’

      ‘You have an option. Here.’

      ‘I’m not in the market for a relationship,’ she snapped.

      ‘I told you, I have a very comfortable sofa bed. I’m not in the market for a relationship either.’

      ‘I didn’t even mean to kiss you.’

      ‘Neither did I.’

      They were glaring at each other. He was still holding her arm. A frisson of something … electricity? … was passing between.

      She couldn’t figure it out.

       Why had she kissed him?

      She wanted, quite fiercely, totally inexplicably, to do it again.

      Get a grip, she told herself frantically. Even if her body was operating at ten per cent capacity, she had to think.

      She was so tired. She wanted to go back to sleep.

      But a woman with no money, a woman who was dependent on her next pay cheque, a woman like her, couldn’t sleep.

      She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. She was due back at the hospital at eight. She went to toss back the covers and then thought better of it. Her nightgown wasn’t all that long. She didn’t intend to make this situation more personal than it already was.

      ‘I need to get to work,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She glanced at her suitcase in the corner. ‘Thank you for bringing my stuff. Would you mind giving me some privacy while I get dressed?’

      ‘You’re not getting dressed.’

      ‘Says who?’

      ‘Me. And there’s no need. You’re not required at work again until Monday.’

      ‘Monday!’ She gasped. ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ve signed on for four weeks. If I don’t go to work tonight, I’ve broken my contract. No pay. Do you know what that means?’

      ‘The hospital’s paying,’ he said. ‘Their barrier nursing clearly isn’t working; they took out the controls too soon. The least they can do is pay you while you’re sick. I’ve already organised it. Standard leave for this bug is four days—barrier nursing requires it. They don’t want you back there before Monday but you’ll be paid regardless.’

      Whoa.

      No work until Monday.

      Four days with pay.

      She could sink …

      She couldn’t sink. She was in this man’s bed.

      ‘You’re looking paler every minute,’ he said conversationally. ‘You don’t want to be sick again. Put your head down and sleep.’

      ‘No!’ It was practically a wail.

      Why did he want her here? She was starting to feel like a white slave trader was standing at the end of her bed. His bed.

      ‘I’m not holding you here against your will,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, you are.’ She was having trouble making herself speak. ‘If you won’t let me get dressed …’

      ‘Your baggage has been cavorting with bedbugs,’ he said, prosaically. ‘I’ll take it down to the basement and fumigate it while you sleep.’

      ‘But why?’ It was a wail this time—she was reaching the point where the world was starting to blur.

      He knew it. He took her hands in his before she could resist, his strong fingers holding hers. The strength of him was infinitely … masculine. Infinitely seductive and infinitely comforting.

      How long since someone had held her to comfort her?

      He