One Night...With Her Boss. Annie O'Neil

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СКАЧАТЬ scraped a hand along his stubbled jawline.

       Harmony?

      Who was he kidding? The only way he could describe his response to Ali Lockhart was Class A caveman. And that wasn’t going to work. Not here. His reputation went hand in hand with the team’s. Work and emotions weren’t things he mixed. Ever. His annual fortnight of charity work in the Pacific Islands was an upfront-and-center reminder of that. Five years on and he still hadn’t shed a tear. Maybe he never would.

      “Are you all right for me to do the stitches?”

      Ali appeared by his side with a suture kit in her hands.

      “Go ahead.” He nodded in Chris’s direction without looking at her. Those blue eyes spoke volumes and he couldn’t go there. Not now. “Do the concussion tests again before you okay him for play.”

      “Would you rather do it?”

      “You’re getting paid to look after these boys. You go on ahead.”

      He kept his eyes on the field, arms tightly crossed over his chest as he watched the players get into formation at the referee’s whistle. It might look like mayhem to some, but he liked rugby. There was a system. A playbook. Rules.

      He liked order, and Ali’s presence here was bringing nothing but chaos.

      Ali wished she could scrub away the crimson heat racing into her cheeks. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like an underling.

      The cheek! Her hands flew to her face. Her cheeks! Aaaargh!

      She huffed out a sigh and started swabbing at Chris’s mud-and blood-covered forehead.

      Working with Britain’s premier sports physician was meant to be professionally rewarding. Trying was more like it! On multiple levels.

      “Ouch! Easy, Harty.”

      “I thought you were a roughtie-toughtie?” Ali gave Chris an apologetic grin and tried to lighten her touch.

      She couldn’t let Aidan get to her. Not on a professional front, anyway. Her job was the one thing Ali knew she excelled at, and she was not about to let some perfectly gorgeous chippy doctor from up here in the hinterlands boss her about. Even if she had spent several hot and steamy, never to be repeated, perfectly delicious hours of lovemaking with him.

      She rubbed a numbing agent on Chris’s forehead, quickly put in the stiches and gave him another run through the concussion exam. She wasn’t one hundred percent convinced—not enough to prove to Aidan, anyway—so told him he’d have to sit out the rest of the game, and then she’d do the tests again.

      “Safety first!” she quipped with a Doris Day grin. Or at least that was the look she was going for. Chris stuck his tongue out at her in response. Child …

      Maybe coming here had been a mistake. Already she was getting attached to these big old lugheads, and that hadn’t been part of the plan. Not by a long shot. Nor had sleeping with her new boss, but it seemed that had happened, too. This was all going swimmingly!

      Aidan Tate was The Suit.

      Who would’ve believed it?

      She’d been a secret admirer of his expertise for years. He’d sounded so caring and professional in the medical journals he was regularly published in. And he’d been oh, so very tender and attentive at three, four and five in the morning, when neither of them had felt the need to sleep. Humph! Double-humph!

      She grabbed her phone from her coat pocket and did what she always did when things started to get emotional. She bashed out a message to her former mentor from dance school.

      What’s the protocol on breaking my contract?

      Her mentor had been wise and sage, had had hair like Einstein and—also like Einstein—he had known everything. At least about her. The one person on the planet who had. He’d helped her move on. Just as she had when her mum had died. Just as she had when she had learned she would never dance again.

      Then she deleted it. He was gone now—some ten years ago—and she wasn’t a quitter. Never had been. Except when life had forced her to … to alter her course. That was how she preferred to see things. Taking matters into her own hands.

      She took her cap off and ran her hand through her hair. Platitudes. Handy when you needed them, trite when you didn’t.

      She tried to focus on the stands, the players, the flashing billboards—anything to keep her eyes from the unmoving figure of Aidan Tate. But no matter where she looked her internal camera kept imposing Aidan everywhere. On the big screens, on the looping advertising banners encircling the pitch … even the close-ups of the players showed those flashing dark eyes and that thick black hair she’d so enjoyed running her fingers through as she—ahem—had behaved distinctly unlike her old self.

      Aidan had quite obviously been behaving out of character, as well. Caring and studious? Ha! Cranky control freak was more like it. It appeared looks weren’t the only things that could be deceiving.

      She tipped her head back and forth in the hope that some answers might fall out. If she’d learned anything in the past few years, it was that most situations were definitely not what they seemed to be. She needed to get out of there.

      She watched as the players hurled themselves around the field.

      No.

      She didn’t.

      She owed it to these guys to stick around.

      She’d made an oath. An oath to protect and care for her patients. And there they were—all cauliflower ears, biceps bulging, thigh muscles like logs, all gussied up in their unmistakable red-and-black uniforms. The North Stars.

      As the cool air swirled around her play intensified and the crowd audibly kept pace with the action. She couldn’t have felt further away from home. Not that she had one to go back to anyhow. Which was the whole point, wasn’t it? Being here. Now.

      The past is where it belongs, she reminded herself. You’re safe here.

      Ali couldn’t help letting a burble of giggles escape her lips. Safe here? On the sidelines of one of Britain’s most brutal games?

      That’d be about right.

       CHAPTER TWO

      SWITCHING ON THE overhead lights to her warehouse loft flat, Ali felt the adrenaline from the day’s match drain away. The adrenaline from finding out The Suit was her new boss …? That little nugget was keeping her pulse-rate a bit high.

      She kicked off her shoes. They landed one by one with a satisfying thunk-thunk on the far side of the flat. She was giving “bachelorette pad messy” a whirl, and it was fun. More fun than watching Aidan sort out the day’s steady stream of cuts, abrasions and strained muscles. She thought she’d earned some Brownie points with her treatment of Chris’s cut, but he’d hardly let her so much as swab a skinned knee after that. So much СКАЧАТЬ