Sydney Harbour Hospital: Luca's Bad Girl
‘The baby,’ Luca demanded, and the midwife leapt forward, snatching the squalling infant.
‘Go easy,’ Luca ordered as the guards hauled a now passive Stan away. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked switching his attention to Mia.
She nodded automatically as the baby, now safe in his mother’s embrace, began to settle. ‘I’m fine.’ Even though the hand that had instinctively covered the wound to apply pressure was sticky with her own blood. It had quickly oozed through the material of her cotton shirt.
Luca looked at the dark red blood running down her arm and shook his head. Most women he knew would have been hysterical by now. But not Mia. She’d kept her head in the face of an emotionally overwrought father with a knife and had dismissed what looked like a substantial wound as if it were a paper cut.
‘Go to the minor ops room, I’ll take a look at it.’
‘It’s fine, just superficial,’ she said dismissively.
Luca pointed. ‘Blood is running down your arm.’
Mia looked down at the thick trickle, surprised to see it. ‘I’ll get Evie to look at it.’
‘I sent her home.’
‘Dr di Angelo?’ Caroline interrupted them. ‘The psych reg is on the phone. He wants to speak with you.’
Luca quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘I can’t have one of my staff expiring from blood loss. It wouldn’t look very good. Minor ops. Now. I’ll be along after the call.’
Mia watched him go, a well of resentment rising in her. She’d been looking after herself for a lot of years, she didn’t need Mr Tall Dark and Handsome pulling the boss card and she certainly didn’t need him fussing over her.
No one had ever fussed over her. And that was just the way she liked it.
A couple of steri-strips and she’d be fine.
A few minutes later, Mia pushed into the on-call room and plonked herself down at the table in the kitchen area, spilling her supplies on the cluttered top. Her arm hurt like hell and all she wanted to do was crawl into one of the private rooms off to her left and collapse on one of the pull-out beds.
The adrenaline had worn off and her earlier tiredness had taken hold and intensified.
And if she was asleep, the memories that Stan’s actions had unleashed tonight couldn’t bother her.
It was quiet in the room as she fumbled one-handed with the buttons of her blouse. The sleeves had a firm cuff that sat snugly around her biceps and couldn’t be rolled up enough to gain a good visual of the damage. She winced as she slipped the blouse off, every movement jarring though her lacerated deltoid.
She tossed it on the floor—that was going straight in the bin.
She inspected her spaghetti-strapped top, pleased to see that no blood had seeped into it. This kind of undergarment was a permanent fixture beneath whatever shirt she was wore on a night shift. The hospital air-conditioning seemed to reach freezing point at around four in the morning and, even in summer, the extra layer helped.
Mia was especially grateful for it tonight.
She looked down at the wound on her upper arm. The blood had dried and crusted, making it difficult to tell the extent of the laceration. It looked ugly, though, as she gently probed it with her index finger. It was quite long and for a moment she let herself think about what could have happened had Luca not pulled her out of the way.
She noticed her hand was trembling and she dropped it from the wound, clamping down on her thoughts.
She hadn’t been stabbed in the chest. She hadn’t died.
Luca had pulled her out of the way.
But it didn’t stop the trembling from spreading to all her limbs and then to her insides. She took a couple of deep breaths, desperately trying to quell the outbreak.
It was a reaction, that was all. It would settle.
But the longer she sat, trying to get control of her breathing and the shaking, the more vulnerable she was to her emotions and thoughts. And she hated that—she’d learned long ago they didn’t get you anywhere.
But tonight she didn’t seem to be able to stop them.
Was that how her own father had felt when he’d found out about the paternity of her stillborn sister? Like Stan? Desperate and enraged? If there’d been a knife or a gun handy, would he have used it on her mother?
He’d walked away from them that day but she hadn’t known why until years later. Years of blaming him for abandoning them, years of hating him, only to find out that it had been her mother’s infidelities that had driven her father away.
Mia shook her head. Stop it. Stop it!
This situation tonight had come too close to home but there was no need to fall apart. She wasn’t ten years old any more. She was an adult.
Clean yourself up and get back out there again!
Mia forced herself to action. To tend to the wound. Open the dressing pack, pour in some antiseptic lotion, pick up the gauze, work away at the dried blood.
It was awkward and hurt like the blazes but she welcomed the distraction from her thoughts and her shaking hands settled with a familiar routine.
Two minutes later Luca strode through the door. Mia glanced up at him, feeling strangely naked with her blouse discarded. Which was ridiculous—she was more than adequately covered. She ignored him, returning to the task at hand.
Luca lounged against the table and smiled to himself as Mia barely acknowledged his arrival. ‘You’re making a mess of that,’ he mused.
Mia glared at him. ‘It’s a little difficult.’
‘I do believe I told you I would attend to your wound.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘But you don’t like asking for help, do you, little Mia?’
His slight accent gave his deep baritone a very sexy edge as it rolled over her. ‘It’s Mia, or Dr McKenzie. Please refrain from addressing me any other way.’
Luca chuckled as he pushed off the bench. ‘Okay, Mia.’ He sat on the chair next to her. ‘Allow me,’ he said as he picked up some gauze and dabbed at the wound.
Mia didn’t protest—she was making a hash of it anyway. His touch was gentle as he coaxed the dried blood from the cut and she shivered. His fingers were dark against her paler skin and long.
Her father had long fingers. A pianist’s hands. He was tall too, like Luca. He’d told her he was her prince and she was his princess and they’d be together for ever.
And then he’d left.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop it. Stop it.
Luca watched her. It was the first time he’d spent any length of time in her company and he was curious. He’d already noticed on their brief acquaintance she was a good-looking woman with a cute mouth and a sassy swagger.
But up close she was really quite exquisite.
Her face was long, as were her eyelashes. A frown appeared between her brows and her lips parted. She looked in pain.
‘Am I hurting you?’ he murmured.
Mia’s eyes fluttered open. How had he got that close? She could see the individual whiskers making up the smooth blue-black of his jaw and just make out the black pupil in the middle of his bottomless brown eyes. His hair, as dark as his eyes, was thick with a slight wave that brushed his forehead and the tops of his ears.
And his mouth. The full curve to that bottom lip was wicked.
His fingers stroked gently over her skin as he cleaned the wound and it reminded her it had been a while since a man had touched her.
She lowered her gaze to the column of his throat. ‘No.’
Luca was captivated by the slide show of emotions in her large blue eyes as magnificent and as transparent as a stained-glass window. The husky timbre of her voice wove between the bands of steel around his heart. ‘Are you okay?’
Mia nodded, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on his throat. The long tanned column of his neck was also shaded in blue-black smoothness. She remembered how she’d loved the sandpaper roughness of her father’s neck as he’d cuddled her close to read to her at night.
Damn it! She gripped the back of the chair hard. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You’ve been through an ordeal tonight. That knife came very close to—’
‘I said I’m fine,’ Mia interrupted, raising her face to scowl at him. ‘Just clean the damn wound.’
CHAPTER TWO
LUCA paused in his ministrations for a moment, the blue of her eyes frosty now. He’d only known her for a few short weeks and while he’d been impressed with her empathy for patients and her good rapport with her colleagues he’d also sensed she was a woman who preferred to keep herself pretty much to herself.
But she’d always been polite about it.
Something was definitely eating at Mia McKenzie tonight.
He shifted his attention back to the wound.
‘It’s borderline,’ he mused, looking at the clean ten-centimetre laceration. ‘It’s deeper laterally, could probably do with a couple of sutures there.’
Mia nodded to the pile of medical supplies on the table. ‘Steri-strips there somewhere.’
‘Sutures would be better.’
‘Steri-strips will be fine.’
‘The scarring will be worse if we use steri-strips.’
Mia shrugged. ‘I don’t care about a scar.’
Luca looked at her for a moment then fished around for the strips. ‘Most women would,’ he murmured when he located them. He doubted he’d ever been with a single woman who didn’t obsess over the slightest blemish.
‘I’m not most women.’
Luca chuckled. ‘Yes. I think you are right.’
Mia sat still as he opened the packet and secured the wound edges together, applying firm tension through each sticky strip. Then he applied an adhesive dressing over the top. She watched as he absently brushed the pad of his thumb back and forth over the dressing as if he were a parent, rubbing a boo-boo better.
Just like her father had done.
‘You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,’ he murmured.
Unfortunately, he was right. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her father since Stan’s episode. It had probably been the first time ever she’d been confronted with how emotionally untenable it had been for him to stay.
‘It’s busy,’ she said brusquely, rising from the chair and clearing away the detritus from her dressing and tossing it in the bin. ‘We can’t just skulk in here all night.’
‘The team have got it covered. And you’re not going back out there until you’ve had a break. Try and get some sleep.’ She opened her mouth to protest and he stood. ‘That’s an order.’
Great! What in the hell was she going to do alone in here with a bunch of unwanted memories that wouldn’t quit? Things she just wanted to forget.
‘What if a bus crash comes in?’
Luca grinned. ‘I’ll come and wake you.’
Mia felt the grin right down to her toes. It twinkled in his eyes and gave the devil a whole new degree of wicked.
The fact that she noticed his twinkling eyes rankled. ‘Are you flirting with me?’ she demanded, crossing her arms.
Luca chuckled. She didn’t beat around the bush. ‘Would it be a bad thing if I was?’
‘Yes,’ she said. Something told her he wouldn’t be an easy man to walk away from. Not disposable, like the others. ‘Stop it. I have no desire to become a notch on what I understand is your very crowded bedpost.’
Luca regarded her for a moment. In her top and jeans, arms crossed, a frown knitting her brows, she looked quite fierce. But Luca knew women. He knew them well.
And Mia McKenzie was definitely protesting too much.
His gaze slipped to her mouth. ‘Are you sure?’
Mia felt her lips tingle beneath his heated stare and felt her resistance ebb. Now, he was something that could make her forget for a little while.
Luca grinned, pleased to have discomforted her. ‘Goodnight, Mia. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’
By four a.m. Luca was ready to head home. The craziness had settled and things were quiet—for now anyway.
He’d checked on the MVA from earlier—the laparotomy had found a perforated bowel. Stan had been admitted to the psych unit on a ninety-six-hour hold. The baby was settled into the special care nursery for overnight monitoring.
And his paperwork was up to date.
Just one last thing to do—check on Mia.
He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob of the on-call room. Prickly little Mia probably wouldn’t appreciate being checked up on.
Her prim I have no desire to become a notch on what I understand is your very crowded bedpost, had played on his mind ever since she’d uttered it.
She obviously disapproved.
What the hell was wrong with indulging in a little flirtation here and there? Spending an enjoyable few hours with a woman who was fully aware that one night was all he was interested in?
He was always open and honest about his intentions. And he never made the mistake of giving false hope by going back for seconds. He knew his limitations where relationships were concerned—had learned them at a very early age.
Best not to set expectations—that way you couldn’t let anyone down.
He loved women—bronzed, natural, fun-loving Australian women in particular—and they loved him. And he was a healthy adult male.
Still, Mia intrigued him. Her resistance even more so. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want her.
He twisted the knob and opened the door. She wasn’t around and the light had been turned out. Sleeping room one had its door shut and he padded over to it, knocking lightly when he reached his destination.
No reply was forthcoming. He hesitated again before gently twisting the knob and opening the door a crack—checking on her was the right thing to do.
The sight stopped him in his tracks.
She had fallen asleep in a semi-upright foetal position on the triple-seater couch. Her head was snuggled against the fat cushions of the sofa, her spine propped up against the squishy arm, her legs, tucked in close to her bottom, had fallen sideways to rest against the back of the couch.
She’d taken her hair out of its clasp and it fanned around her shoulders and the couch cushions. Her feet were bare. A medical journal lay open on her chest.
The lamp on the table beside the couch illuminated her relaxed profile in a warm yellow glow. His gaze tracked the outline of her nose, the slope of one cheekbone, the plump fullness of her mouth.
He was satisfied to see the journal on her chest rise and fell in a regular rhythm. His eyes dropped to the white dressing covering her upper arm and he absently noted there was no fresh ooze.
She was obviously fine.
As he watched, a little frown wrinkled her forehead and a soft mew escaped her mouth. He wondered what she was dreaming about. Her near-death experience? The flash of a blade? The bawling of a baby?
His question—are you sure?—from earlier?
She mewed again and he realised he was staring at a sleeping woman who would most definitely not appreciate the attention. He left the door ajar and turned away.
Mia was trapped in a dream she didn’t seem able to fight her way out of. It was one she hadn’t had since she’d been a little girl but it was disjointed, jumping back and forth between now and then. Between Stan and her father. Each slash of the knife through the air shunting the dream to the other person, to another time.
Her mother was there too somewhere, holding a wrapped bundle that Mia knew was her stillborn sister. Her mother was sobbing those deep, gut-wrenching sobs that had been indelibly woven through the fabric of Mia’s life.
She was holding her father’s hand, her little ten-year-old fingers tugging at his long ones, asking him not to go. And then Stan would yell to get back, get back as the knifepoint came ever closer.
Daddy, don’t go. Don’t go.
Slash. Back, get back. Slash.
Please, Daddy, don’t go.
Slash. Slash. Back! Get back!
Daddy!
‘Daddy, come back!’
Luca was almost at the door when he heard her cry out. Without thinking, he hurried back to her, pushed open the door and strode over to the couch as Mia cried out again, flinging her head from side to side. The journal had already fallen to the floor.
Luca took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake, mindful of her injury. ‘Mia! Mia.’
Mia heard a voice. A different voice. And the urge to run towards it, to run away from the feelings of hopelessness, was overwhelming.
Luca? Luca?
‘Mia.’ He shook her again. ‘It’s Luca. Wake up. Wake up.’
Mia’s eyes flew open. Luca? Luca was here?
The mellow lamplight bathed his strong masculine features, softening them—his jaw, his cheeks, his mouth—and he finally looked like that angel. She blinked away the crazy thought as tendrils of dread clung to every heartbeat.
Mia tried to sit up but her limbs wouldn’t co-operate and her arm throbbed. ‘Luca?’
‘Shh,’ he murmured, the pads of his thumbs absently stroking her shoulders. Her large blue eyes reflected her confusion. ‘It’s okay, you were having a bad dream.’
Mia nodded. ‘It was … there was …’
‘Your father?’
Mia blinked up at him. He pronounced the th softly, giving the word a gentleness it hadn’t had in the dream. Her head was crowded with memories. One after the other, battering her brains and beating against the locked door to her heart.
Old and long forgotten. Supposedly.
She had to make them stop.
‘Are you okay?’ Luca asked.
She looked at him, into eyes so deep and brown it was like falling into a well.
He could make them stop.
‘Mia?’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ But she would be.
Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
Luca stilled at the tentative touch. He pulled back and searched her eyes. ‘Mia?’
She shook her head and, supporting herself on her good arm, leant in close, locking her gaze with his. ‘Kiss me,’ she murmured, her mouth a whisper from his.
In fact, she was close enough that Luca could almost feel those two little words branding his lips from the sudden heat rising between their bodies. He dropped his gaze to her mouth—so near, so luscious—and he was instantly hard.
‘What happened to not wanting to be a notch on my bedpost?’
‘Stan,’ she muttered.
After that Luca wasn’t sure who closed the hair’s-breadth between them. But he did seize control.
His mouth opened over hers and demanded she follow suit. And follow him she did, opening to him eagerly. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and the little whimper at the back of her throat implored him to keep going.
He tunnelled his hands into her hair, angling her head back to accommodate more, and the kiss escalated. Got deeper, wetter, hotter. His body moved over hers, forcing her knees down, crowding her back against the cushions, imprisoning her against the couch, her head falling back over the arm.
His hand brushed the side of her breast and she moaned deep and low. He drew it lower, to her waist, her hip as his mouth broke from hers to ravage her neck, stretched out before him, the pulse at the base beating as madly as his own.
Mia felt the memories disappear into the ether as a veritable storm of sensations swept through her body.
Yes, yes, yes.
‘Yes,’ she cried out as Luca licked along her collar bone. ‘Yes,’ as he nipped at the base of her neck. ‘Yes,’ as his hand squeezed the exact spot where, beneath her jeans, butt met thigh.
One-handed, she pulled his polo shirt out of his jeans and ruched it up his back, his skin hot and vibrant beneath her palm. She kept pulling till it was past his shoulders and gave a triumphant cry when Luca ducked his head through the opening and she pulled it off him entirely.
His smooth chest was totally bare to her touch and she pressed a kiss to a flat brown pec, then his collarbone, then the hollow at the base of his neck.
She breathed him in, his scent intoxicating. Potent. Virile. Male. It filled up her senses. Like a drug.
And left her wanting more.
He claimed her mouth again, pressing her deep into the cushions, and she revelled in his weight, in the tangle of his legs, in the oh-so-right angle of his pelvis.
Luca felt the agitated circling of her hips and ground himself against her. He swallowed her gasp, making her moan more deeply as his hand travelled back up her body, pushing beneath her top. He needed to touch her breasts. To see them. Taste them. To feel them rubbing against his chest.
He pushed the fabric up, his hand filling with soft, delectable female. Satin, lace and heaven all in one sweet handful. He rubbed the hard point with his thumb and she gasped.
Luca broke away from her mouth, his lips instinctively following the dictates of his body as his tongue stroked down her neck, over her collarbone, the slope of her breast then finally her nipple. The lace was rough against his tongue as he sucked the tip right through the material of the bra.
Mia’s breath hissed out as her back arched involuntarily. It jarred painfully through her sore arm and she cried out in pain this time, her eyes squeezing shut.
‘Mia?’ Luca broke away. ‘Oh, sorry, did I hurt your arm?’
Mia shook her head, her eyes still shut. ‘It’s okay, it’s settling.’
Luca groaned, dropping his forehead onto her chest. Her heart beat frantically there as her ribcage heaved in and out. His own breathing was loud and ragged in the silence.
Mia’s eyes slowly fluttered open as the pain ebbed. She looked down at his head, his thick wavy hair tousled from their ministrations. It was suddenly absurdly funny and she felt a bubble of laughter rise in her chest. She bit down on her lip to stop it from spilling out.
But her ribcage shook with the effort to keep it in and it bubbled up anyway.
Luca felt the vibration against his forehead and glanced up just as she laughed. Their breathing was still erratic, they were both half-undressed and thoroughly bedraggled, he had a raging hard-on—and she was laughing.
It was absurd. So he laughed too.
‘You’re crazy,’ he said after their laughter had died down.
Mia shook her head. ‘This is crazy.’
Luca had to agree. Even if his hard-on didn’t. ‘You want to stop?’ he murmured.
His husky voice thickened his accent and a surge of lust welled deep down low in her. Mia shook her head. She couldn’t have stopped now even if a bus had crashed right through the walls of the on-call room.
She was a healthy adult woman, and it had been a couple of weeks since her last liaison. ‘That would be even crazier.’
Luca grinned, dropping his mouth to her chest, running his nose lightly along the slope of a breast and upwards to nuzzle her neck. ‘Pure insanity.’
She stretched her neck to give him better access. ‘Certifiable,’ she agreed.
Luca laved the pulse half way up her neck with his tongue. ‘Utter lunacy.’
‘I think we should get the door, though,’ she managed through the haze of lust descending on her.
Luca’s head snapped to the doorway. He swore softly against her neck at its partially open state and was rewarded with another throaty laugh. He kissed her hard on the mouth.
‘Take your clothes off,’ he said, before pushing off her, padding over to the door and locking it.
‘You do realise this is a one-off, right?’ she said as she tried to wiggle out of her jeans essentially one-handed.
Luca turned and watched her. He could clearly see her nipples through the lace of her bra and it made him harder.
He undid his zip and peeled off his jeans. ‘Of course. My bedpost is littered with one-offs. Or hadn’t you heard?’
Mia went to grin but it died on her lips as the pure male beauty of his physique was fully exposed to her. Long, lean legs, dusted with black hair. Flat, flat belly. Broad in the shoulder, narrow in the hip.