Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper. Debbie Johnson

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       Chapter 9

      Jeez, thought Marco, as he listened to that damn nurse go through his ‘patient aftercare checklist’ for the third time. The man needed to take a chill pill. He’d gone on and on and on. Explaining the meds, explaining the chair, explaining the warning signs. When to up the dosage. When to call the doctor. When to bring him to the emergency room. He talked about him as though he wasn’t there, wasn’t sitting right in front of him, wasn’t ready to stagger straight out of this nifty gadget of a recliner and whack him over the head with his crutches.

      He’d had broken bones before. It was no big deal – it hurt like hell, but he’d heal. This guy, though – he was talking to Maggie as though she was about to take on the care of whole platoon of war veterans. The poor woman was looking more flustered by the second as she tried to take it all in.

      He hadn’t even wanted to come here. He understood that Leah and Rob needed to leave, but he saw no reason why he couldn’t have simply gone back to his own flat. He’d have been far more comfortable with some hired help. Then, if the mood took him, he could swear, curse, bully, and generally misbehave with no consequences at all other than a mild dose of self-loathing afterwards.

      He couldn’t behave like that with Maggie – it just wasn’t in him. Considering the fact that he’d only met her twice – and that on one of those occasions he was distracted by the business of going unconscious – he cared just a little bit too much about what she thought.

      Even when he was lying in the hospital bed doped up on morphine, he’d been concerned about her. Worried about her injury. Mildly embarrassed that she was seeing him flat out and vulnerable. It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to see her again.

      That first time, in the wedding dress store, he’d felt how nervous she was around him. Maybe she was like that with everyone – or maybe it was just him. He didn’t know, but the effect was the same: it brought out his inner he-man. Made him feel strangely protective towards her; made him want to wrap his arms around her and keep her from the rest of the world.

      It had been a strange mix of physical attraction and her attitude – a mix that made him want to both hide her away and, if he was honest, torment her a little bit himself.

      The women he usually socialised with didn’t have that effect on him. They were usually successful, tough, professional women who used him with as much carefree attention as he used them. Friends with benefits – shallow but satisfying.

      In fact the only other woman who had ever made him feel that protective before was Leah – back in those awful, messy days in Chicago, when Rob was behaving like a grade A ass towards her. It felt like a million years ago now, but it had been hard – seeing his brother’s pain plunge them all into a black hole of emotional hell.

      He’d felt protective towards Leah – but in the way he always imagined a big brother would feel towards a little sis. This was different. His first thought when he met Maggie had been that she was a looker, without even knowing it. His second had been that she came across a little bit shy, a little bit scared. His third had been less wholesome – he’d started to wonder, as they chatted over Luca’s bouncing head, how much fun it would be to see what would happen if he pushed, if he provoked; if he managed to coax out some of that fire redheads were supposed to have.

      So he’d flirted, made eye contact, lingered there a few moments more than he should have – just to see what might happen. To see if she felt any of that attraction at all, or if it was all on his side. He wasn’t arrogant, but he didn’t struggle with women – and this one intrigued him right up until the point where Luca’s toilet habits had interrupted. He needed to have a word with his nephew about mentioning doo-doo in front of hot women. It just wasn’t cool.

      He’d thought about making up some excuse to see her again. He was in Oxford for the next few weeks anyway, and it’d be nice to have some company. Especially company that was tall and curvy and had crazy red hair you could imagine spread out all over a pillow.

      But before he even had time to consider doing that, fate had stepped in – and he found himself reduced to a pile of rubble in front of the woman he’d been hoping to impress. Once a chick’s seen you in a hospital gown, he suspected, there’s no going back – you can never be alpha male again…and now, thanks to Leah and Rob’s insistence, here he was. Sitting in her shabby chic front room, being treated like a naughty child by Nurse Attila the Hun.

      “She gets it,” he said, interrupting the nurse mid flow. “She’s not an idiot – she gets it. We have the meds. We have the numbers. Now for God’s sake, get lost, will you?”

      Both the nurse and Maggie stared at him, looking shocked and horror-struck in the way only the English can at bare-faced rudeness – even when it is deserved.

      Maggie frowned at him, her knuckles whitening as she clutched the typed-up contact list a little too tightly.

      “Don’t be so rude,” she said, “or there’ll be no beer before bed time for you, Mr Cavelli.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ