Read the book: «Waking Up With Dr Off-Limits»

CHAPTER ONE

THE last thing Jessica Donaldson expected to find in her bed on a stinking hot morning was a naked man. And certainly not this particular man—the source of every one of her feverish fantasies for the last three and a bit years.

Dr Adam Carmichael—occasional housemate, surgeon extraordinaire, playboy incarnate.

For a moment she wondered if her sleep-deprived brain had conjured him up. Was she that tired after her midnight call-in and subsequent eight hours of surgery she’d actually imagine a man in her bed?

And not just any man but Adam?

Wasn’t he operating in some Third World country or schmoozing bigwigs at The Hague? She shut her eyes, shook her head to clear the fog of fatigue and opened them again. Nope. Still there. And still most definitely Adam.

Jess stood in the doorway, wrapped in nothing but a towel, droplets of water clinging to her undried skin. Suddenly she was very awake. A frigid blast of air from the wall-mounted cooling unit enveloped her, soothing a fiery blush.

The sheer perfection of his body momentarily distracted her from the fact that he was in her bed.

Asleep.

Naked. She’d never had a man in her bed, naked or otherwise, and her breath quickened that the first time it had happened fate had delivered her the man of her dreams.

Would it be wrong to look her fill?

Jess prided herself on having a strong moral code. There’d never been a cause to question it before.

But.

The morning sunlight poked insistent fingers into the darkened room from around the edges of the blackout blind, illuminating his deep golden tan to perfection.

And he was in her bed.

So … she looked her fill.

Adam lay on his stomach, his sandy blond head turned away from the window. Both arms were spread out, easily reaching the sides. His back was a tantalising palate of planes and angles, broad across the shoulders, tapering down to the dip of his back and the rise of his bottom.

The floral sheet had been pulled up to his hips. One leg was firmly entangled but the other had freed itself, causing the sheet to slip slightly and partially reveal a glimpse of naked buttock in all its tanned glory. It was firm, well defined, despite his slumber, and, she noted, the same nut brown as the rest of his body.

He obviously sunbaked naked as well.

Her gaze continued down his exposed leg. It was firmly muscled and deeply tanned. A covering of blond hairs added to its masculinity and Jess followed its length right down to the toes that stuck out over the end of the bed.

She drew in a ragged breath. How was it possible to look so masculine amidst floral sheets?

She knew for a fact he had navy satin sheets on his bed. She’d seen them hanging on the line once. Her dreams had featured an awful lot of satin ever since.

Adam chose that moment to move and Jess froze like a deer caught in headlights. What if he woke and caught her ogling him? But she just didn’t seem able to stop. She watched in fascination as the previously dormant muscles in his back and arms tensed and rippled, assisting the move onto his back.

Jess held her breath.

Luckily, his subconscious chose to roll the way it did as his entangled leg dragged the sheet across his hips and legs, concealing his modesty from her gaze. But that still left a whole lot of male flesh on view.

One arm, bent at the elbow, was flung above his head, emphasising a taut bicep. His strong jaw sported a sprinkling of dark blond three-day growth as her gaze traced the fascinating contours of his full mouth.

A thatch of soft-looking underarm hair barely registered as the firmness of his beautifully tanned, smooth chest drew her gaze lower. It tapered down to a set of abs that would have been perfectly at home on a Rodin statue.

A trail of darker brown hair bisected his six pack. Jess’s throat felt as dry as two-minute soup mix.

She didn’t dare look any lower.

Not that she was any stranger to naked men. As a nurse, it was an occupational hazard. And as a country girl, nature, in all its forms, had infused her life.

But he wasn’t one of her beloved patients. Or a prize-winning bull.

He was an entirely different proposition.

And this was voyeurism. Jess mentally shook herself. What the hell was she doing? The man was twelve years older than her and a total sex god. He was completely out of her league.

Not to mention Ruby’s brother.

Oh, and her landlord!

But what the hell was she supposed to do now? He was in her bed.

Her bed. A bed that she would very much like to be in herself, getting some much-needed sleep.

A bed she’d been daydreaming about all the way home as each footstep down the hill from the hospital had brought her closer to home.

A bed she could almost feel beneath her as she’d pushed open the front door and headed straight for the shower, dunking herself quickly under the cool spray to remove all traces of hospital. Why the hell was he in her bed?

He had a perfectly good one of his own. She’d never seen it, never even peeked inside his bedroom, but it was there, opposite the kitchen door, always taunting her.

When he was away, which was often, the door was always shut. When he was home it opened and shut with monotonous regularity as a procession of women came and went.

He really should just install a revolving one and be done with it.

So, why was he camped out in hers?

She should wake him, demand to know what he was doing.

But … how? Call his name? Shake his shoulder?

Touch him?

Her breath caught in her throat as the thought shocked and tantalised in equal measure. Her pulse had doubled just scrutinising the man in her bed—what the hell would happen to her if she should actually touch him?

Touch a naked shoulder?

She recoiled from the very idea, her fingers curling into her palms. It was too much to even contemplate.

She sighed. There was nothing she could do. Ruby and Tilly had both finished night duty this morning and would be snoring their heads off in their beds. And Ellie was on afternoon shift and wouldn’t be up yet.

It wasn’t fair to disturb any of them.

She was going to have to go and sleep on the couch. In the non-air-conditioned lounge room. On a day that was tipped to reach forty degrees. And already felt like double that.

While Adam Carmichael slept in temperature-controlled comfort.

In her bed.

If she didn’t have a massive crush on him and wasn’t such a goody two shoes she’d have tossed him out on his ear. But he looked so peaceful. Not to mention sexy as hell. And at least she’d have actual fodder for her fantasies now instead of just a series of creative imaginings.

The image of him tangled in her sheets was going to stay with her for ever.

But she needed her clothes and they were in her room. Jess sighed. There was only one thing for it …

She dropped her bag quietly just inside the door and checked that her towel was firmly tucked. The last thing she wanted was to have a wardrobe malfunction—one naked person in this room was enough!

Jess tiptoed into the room, unable to drag her eyes from the steady rise and fall of Adam’s chest.

That was her first mistake.

She promptly tripped over one of the numerous embroidered throw cushions that usually sat on her bed and which Adam had obviously tossed on the floor. She clutched at her cleavage where the towel end was firmly tucked as she stumbled perilously close to the edge of the bed before righting herself.

Her heart hammered wildly in her chest and she didn’t move for a full minute in case just disturbing the air currents around the bed might cause him to waken. Finally, convinced he was sleeping soundly, she forced herself to watch her step instead of Adam as she continued towards her goal.

There were no built-in wardrobes in her room, just an old-fashioned art deco one that stood against the wall next to the bedside table. It belonged to her grandmother who’d insisted she bring it with her to the big smoke to remind her of home. It was beautifully crafted from dark wood with curved top edges and a full sized bevelled mirror between the two polished doors. Jess reached it without further incident and held her breath as she turned the key in the lock. The quiet scratch of metal on metal seemed amplified tenfold and when the door opened it creaked like a coffin lid in a horror movie.

Jess froze behind the door, waiting for Adam to stir, but a quick peek confirmed the noises hadn’t disturbed him.

That was her second mistake.

As he slumbered blissfully on, his lips snagged her attention. They were full, parted slightly and looked, oh, so soft. The stubble that framed them looked deliciously scratchy and she wondered how the soft/rough combination would feel against her own mouth? Jess swallowed.

How would it feel to be the one allowed to kiss that mouth?

Adam shifted slightly and she ducked behind the wardrobe door again like a nervous Victorian maiden. But not before she noticed her pyjamas peaking out from the pillow beneath his head.

Great.

Cowering behind the door, her heart fluttered ten to the dozen as she actually considered, for one crazy second, trying to retrieve them.

But that would be a third mistake.

And there were plenty of things she could wear right here in her wardrobe. Her hand shook as she slowly pulled open a drawer and extracted a pair of white cotton knickers and a white cotton, knee-length nightie. Her mother had embroidered tiny yellow daises around the modest neckline.

From habit she sank her face into it. It smelled of sunshine and home and a fierce shaft of nostalgia pierced her right through the heart. For a moment she wished she was back there. Where things were simple.

Where Adam couldn’t possibly be in her bed.

No matter how many times she’d fantasised about waking up with him, in her childhood bedroom, unchanged since she’d been seven years old, and her desires had been as innocent as Black Beauty wallpaper.

There was nothing innocent about her desires now.

She sighed inwardly as she shut the drawer carefully and then reached for her deodorant. Her still trembling fingers fumbled it and it thunked against the shelf. She made a grab for it as it rolled off the edge but it was already falling. It landed on the polished hardwood floor at her feet with a crash loud enough to wake the dead.

Or the devil anyway …

Adam sat bolt upright in bed, the sheet ruching around his waist. ‘What the hell …?’

Jess opened her eyes and poked her head around the edge of the door. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

He was utterly magnificent.

His sandy blond hair, beyond messy, somehow cornered the market on sexy. His chest and six pack were beautifully delineated. He looked like he’d just come from riding waves in Hawaii instead of another humanitarian mission.

Jess hastily averted her eyes, chiding her lack of decorum. He was a brilliant surgeon doing vital work. Not a male centrefold.

Adam frowned, his brain heavily mired in the sticky web of jet lag. He really was getting too old for continually mixing up his time zones. Too old for running away.

‘Jess?’

He blinked in case he was imagining her because this was not the Jess he remembered. Sweet Jess with the cute ponytail. Jess of the bare feet, jeans and T.

He’d never seen her with her hair all loose around her shoulders like this.

Or in nothing but a towel for that matter.

What the hell was she doing in his room? ‘What are you doing here?’

Jess swallowed as he pinned her with his lapis lazuli gaze. It was too dark to see them but she knew from detailed memory that the blue was flecked with golden highlights. He rubbed at the tantalising stubble at his jaw-line. The delicious rasping noise sent Jess’s stomach into freefall as the image of him scraping it against her belly took hold.

‘Er …’ Jess felt unaccountably nervous and hopelessly gauche in the face of his potent male virility. Which was utterly ridiculous. Adam was hardly leering at her. In fact, he was frowning at her like she was an annoying little insect that had dared to wake him up.

Instead of an almost naked, fully grown, nearly twenty-four-year-old woman.

She’d seen the way he looked at women. He was not looking at her like that. He’d never looked at her like that.

She doubted her chastity was under threat. Jess cleared her throat. ‘Ah … this is my room.’

Adam’s frown deepened as her response registered. He looked around. Too-small bed, scatter cushions all over the floor, floral sheets. Romance novel on the bedside table.

Then it all came flooding back to him. The air-con in his room deciding to choose this sweltering day to break down. One on a list of many ailments suffered by his poor, neglected house.

The repairman not being able to get here until ten. His overwhelming weariness.

Adam ran a hand through his hair as the cogs slowly started to turn. ‘I thought you were on an early today. That’s what the fridge calendar says.’

Early on in their cohabitation the girls had devised a colour-coded system to keep track of each other. With four people coming and going on shift work, it made things much easier. Her roster was in yellow.

Jess frowned, wishing his logic was as easy to follow as the flex of his biceps, the path of his fingers. ‘So you decided to … try out my bed?’

Her heart beat double-time at the illicitness of her suggestion.

Adam pressed the pads of his fingers into his eye sockets. ‘So the calendar’s wrong?’

‘No. It’s right. I was called in last night, though … I only clocked off half an hour ago.’

‘Oh …’ Adam felt his interest pique despite the heavy cloak of fatigue. ‘Anything interesting?’

Jess couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

In her room. In a towel.

With Adam. In a sheet.

‘Liver transplant.’

‘Ah …’

Jess waited for something more forthcoming but Adam collapsed back against the mattress, his abs unfurling like flower petals, his eyes closed.

Oh, brother! He really did look centrefold material now, reclining in her bed as if he owned it.

‘Adam!’ she said, still not game enough to touch him.

Adam, already falling back into the blissful folds of sleep, prised his eye open. He raised himself slightly on bent elbows. ‘What?’ he demanded crankily.

It hadn’t been her plan to wake him up but now he was he could damn well vacate her bed. ‘Why are you in my bed?’

He watched her mouth move but it took a moment for the words to compute.

He hadn’t noticed how pink Jess’s mouth was before. Like fairy floss. Was it lipstick or natural? It was a little too dark to tell. ‘Hmm?’

Jess noticed his heavy-lidded gaze on her mouth and almost lost her train of thought. She scrambled hard to get it back again. ‘You’re. In. My. Bed.’

He hadn’t noticed how her hair flicked up at the ends like that when it was freed from its ponytail or even that it was so long. It brushed her shoulders and fell forward over well-defined collar bones.

Had it always been so blonde?

‘Ah, but, Goldilocks,’ he teased lightly, a smile spread across his full lips, ‘your bed was just right.’

Jess felt her knees go weak as the smile warmed his face, taking it from sexy-but-tired to steal-your-breath sublime. She reached for the nearby wardrobe door and held on tight.

‘Adam …’

He sighed. ‘Sorry.’

His exhausted body protested as he curled into a sitting position again.

‘The air-con in my room is on the blink. A fix-it guy is coming at ten.’ He shrugged. ‘Your room was empty. And air-conditioned. I checked the calendar. Sorry … I’m just exhausted, I guess.’

He rubbed his right eye with his hand. It felt gritty and unfocused. ‘I think I’ve been in four different time zones in the last week.’

Jess felt everything solid inside her melt to liquid. He looked completely done in. She wanted to go to him, pull him down beside her, cradle his head against her breast, stroke his hair till he slept, hush him, tell him she was there for him.

Oh, God. She still had it bad.

‘I thought you were in the wilds of Asia for three months? You’ve still got another few weeks left, haven’t you?’

She couldn’t help it. She always knew where he was. Would count down the days. His comings and goings were also marked on the calendar in black and she absorbed it like the big fat Adam sponge that she was.

Maybe groupie was closer to the mark.

‘There was some unrest in the last province when we first arrived,’ he said. ‘The department of foreign affairs ordered us out. So I’ve spent the last week talking with international funding bodies, trying to organise for the patients to come to us.’

Jess felt ill at his casual reference to unrest. She certainly forgot all about the fact that they were both essentially naked and this was probably the longest conversation they’d ever had.

She knew he went to some remote places in his crusade to bring equality of healthcare to all but there’d never been any trouble before.

The mere thought of it had her heart palpitating wildly.

It was no secret she had the utmost respect for what he did. In fact, her housemates often teased her about her hero-worship. But, hey, the man could be making squillions of dollars as a plastic surgeon doing boob jobs and lipo like his esteemed father. Instead he’d chosen to help horrendously disfigured people that no one in the world cared about, have a shot at a normal life.

He could easily have been a playboy.

But he wasn’t.

Frankly, it got her hot just thinking about it.

‘Unrest?’ she squeaked.

Adam waved his arm dismissing the threat. ‘Local warlord stuff. We were fine. Just the government being cautious.’

Local warlord?

Dear God, was his work dangerous? What if … what if he went away one time and didn’t come back? What if she never got the chance to …?

Adam studied Jess intently for an age. She was chewing on that pink, pink mouth and he found himself suddenly wondering what it might be like to run his tongue along those lips and soothe them from her savaging.

The insidious thought that she was naked beneath her towel hit him from out of the blue. He’d never thought about Jess like that before. Not about her mouth. Or what was under that towel. She was a friend of his little sister.

She was twenty-three, for crying out loud.

He was thirty-five.

And she read romance novels.

Time to leave. Way past time to leave.

Jess watched as he shifted, the muscles of his naked arms and chest rippling as he began to pull the sheet aside. ‘Stop,’ she squeaked. ‘What are you doing?’

Adam frowned. ‘It’s okay,’ he assured her, consulting his watch, ‘I’ve had a couple of hours. I’ll be fine now till the air-con guy gets here.’ Even though he felt like his eyeballs had been rolled in shell grit.

‘Adam …’ She shook her head. ‘You haven’t got a stitch on under that sheet.’

It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to tell her she didn’t have a stitch on under her towel either but then another thought struck him.

‘Well, now,’ he drawled as he leaned back on his splayed palms. ‘And you would know that how, Jessica Donaldson?’

Realising her gaffe, Jess blushed furiously. A more sophisticated woman may have been able to come up with some witty reply but Jess was mortified.

‘You were peeking at me,’ Adam stated and seeing her cheeks grow an even more fetching shade of pink—as pink as her mouth—he laughed.

The rich, deep sound filled the room and Jess felt her skin break out in goose-bumps.

She really must turn the air-con down.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she blustered. Her heated denial only seemed to deepen his mirth and she glared at him impatiently, waiting for his laughter to subside.

‘You were covered by the sheet,’ she blurted out. Mostly.

Adam laughed again, enjoying the way she blushed and looked like she wanted aliens to swoop in and abduct her.

‘Well, as I walked naked from my room to your room I don’t have anything to cover me.’

Of course he had.

Any normal person would have taken the time to throw on some undies or sling a towel around themselves but Mr Centrefold had preferred his birthday suit.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you throw me that towel you’re wearing? That ought to do it.’

Jess felt her cheeks grow even hotter. Her heart drummed a heavy beat in her ears. She swallowed hard. Her nipples tightened and she was pleased for the thickness of the towelling as she imagined standing before him with nothing on.

Naked in front of a man.

In front of Adam.

‘Would you like a hand?’ he teased as Jess’s fingers clutched ever tighter at the fastening of the towel. Jess frowned as a heavy fog of confusion muddled her brain. He was smiling, his voice was light and teasing. She risked a brief glance at his face—there was a glint in his eyes.

Was he flirting with her?

But why?

He never flirted with her. Hell, he barely contained himself from ruffling her hair and patting her on the head on those rare occasions he was home and graced the rest of the house with his presence. Instead of being holed up behind closed doors, going for gold in the sexual Olympics.

He must be jet-lagged. And she was obviously delirious!

It would be foolish to read too much into any of these crazy last minutes.

Although dropping the towel just to wipe the smug smile off his face was exceedingly tempting.

She dropped her gaze instead. To the floor. Desperate to gain some composure.

Who knew she’d actually find her salvation?

She smiled and then squatted down, picking up two of her throw cushions and lobbing them at him. ‘These should do the trick.’

Adam caught them automatically as they hit him square in the chest. They’d been an irritation a couple of hours ago when he’d been trying to off load them so he could get horizontal as quickly as possible. Like an insurmountable mountain.

‘Look at that,’ he murmured, his gaze locking with hers. ‘They do serve a purpose.’

And then, his eyes never leaving her face, he rose in one fluid moment, one cushion clutched to his front, the other to his back.

Jess took a step back as his superior height overwhelmed her. At five-six in her bare feet she wasn’t exactly short—but she felt positively diminutive in the presence of his all-encompassing maleness.

‘Sweet dreams.’ He winked and turned on his heel, sauntering out.

Jess followed his retreat, amazed that somehow he still managed to look one hundred per cent male even with a purple cushion covering what she knew to be one hell of a swagger.

Not even her door shutting quietly, blocking her view, was going to be enough to erase that image from her brain. Groaning, her heart tripping, her hands trembling, Jess collapsed on her back on the bed.

She picked up her pillow and plonked it over her head. Adam’s edgy masculine scent filled her nostrils and she sucked in big, deep lungfuls of him. She threw it aside in disgust, rolling onto her stomach.

The same tantalising aroma wafted up from the sheet wrapping her in Adam.

She couldn’t decide if it was heaven or if it was hell.

She did know she was never going to wash these sheets. Ever again.