The Honourable Army Doc (8 page)

As her excitement continued to build Ali knew Quinn would be able to bring her to her peak just like this, but she wanted the whole experience. She wanted the whole of him.

Physically she knew she was healed, both internally and externally. Her scars had faded. Quinn would never notice. She needed to test the waters.

Physically she was ready, more than ready, and emotionally she needed this.

She was ready for Quinn. It was now or never.

She wrapped her hands around the back of his arms. His triceps were solid and tense from supporting his weight and they felt like stone under her touch. Warm stone. She pulled against him, urging him to lift his head, bringing him up to her.

‘I want to feel you inside me,’ she told him.

Quinn

H
IS BRIGHT AZURE
eyes watched her closely and the deep blue rings around the outside of his irises were almost black as he asked the silent question.
Are you sure?

Ali nodded. She’d never been more certain of anything. She knew she couldn’t stop now. Neither could she let him stop. She was ready to explode and she wanted to explode while her body was wrapped around his. While her legs were wrapped around his waist and while he was deep inside her.

He reached into the drawer beside the sofa bed and retrieved a foil packet. Ali watched as he ripped the little packet open with his teeth. She took the condom and rolled it along his shaft, her fingers firm with pressure as she protected them both before she guided him inside her.

She exhaled as his length filled her, arching her hips again to take as much of him inside her as she could.

She relaxed as he entered her. Her body may have
let her down in the past but as he plunged into her she knew she was made for this. Made for him.

Quinn moaned and buried his head into her neck as his hips thrust against her. She timed her movements to match his, making sure their rhythms were in tune.

She pressed her lips against his shoulder. He smelt of soap but tasted salty. The heat that was building between them had brought out small beads of sweat on his skin. She licked the salt from his body as she ran her hands down his back to cup his buttocks, keeping him buried within her.

She felt his lips around her nipple as his mouth found her breast again. She heard herself cry out as all the nerve endings between her breasts and her groin exploded to life.

‘Now,’ she gasped, ‘I can’t wait any longer.’

Quinn increased his intensity just a fraction and that was all she needed to push her over the edge, to move her on from desire and into satisfaction. His cries joined hers as they climaxed together. United in pleasure until they were breathless and spent.

They lay entwined as they caught their breath until eventually Quinn eased himself from her and rolled onto his back. He pulled Ali over so she was lying on her side with one leg draped across his stomach. It was just as well he was strong enough to move her, her limbs were heavy and she doubted she could have moved herself.

She closed her eyes, happy just to lie beside him as she listened to the beat of his heart and the deep, steady sound of his breathing.

She felt good. In equal parts relieved, sated and contented.

She heard Quinn’s breathing slow and felt him relax under her. She propped herself on one elbow to look at him. The lines of tension had disappeared from his forehead and with his eyes closed, hiding the intensity of his blue gaze, he looked completely relaxed. His breaths were even and deep—he’d fallen asleep.

Their lovemaking appeared to have helped him to forget his troubles, even if only temporarily. At least now, she thought, he might be able to sleep soundly and wake up refreshed and ready to face tomorrow and whatever it might bring.

Ali knew she should leave. She couldn’t stay and risk being caught in flagrante delicto with Quinn but she couldn’t resist just sitting and admiring him while he slept. His body was firm, he had no visible body fat but his sculpted muscles were rounded, which stopped him from looking hard. He looked like a warm Adonis. He reminded her of a Renaissance figure but made of a richer, darker marble. The only thing he needed to complete the picture was a typical Roman nose.

She lifted one hand but resisted the temptation to run her fingers along his nose. She wondered if it had once been aquiline, back before it had been broken in the sparring incident he’d told her about. She didn’t care that the bridge was now slightly flattened and a little crooked, she loved his nose. Everything else about him was faultless but his damaged nose stopped him from being too perfect, without detracting from his looks. In her opinion it added to his air of ruggedness and was
one of his nicest features, after his incredible eyes, of course.

Her eyes travelled south. Back over his chest and his abdomen, retracing the path her fingers had traversed just minutes ago. Down to the line of blond hair below his navel, which now disappeared under the sheet that was draped across his hips.

Ali sighed as she fought the urge to wake him up and have her way with him all over again. She wasn’t inexperienced but she had never had sex that good before and she was eager to try it again.

But she would have to wait.

She climbed out of his bed. She was careful not to disturb him as she knew he was exhausted and needed his sleep, although to look at him she suspected that a bomb could go off without waking him.

Quietly she gathered her clothes and got dressed. She found a piece of paper and scribbled a note. Even though she assumed he’d figure out why she couldn’t stay, she didn’t want him to wake up and find her gone with no explanation.

She kept it simple.
Thank you, sleep tight
. That was all she wrote before she folded it and left it propped on the bedside table.

She opened the door and ducked into the family room, hoping that Helen had stuck with her plan to stay at the hospital as she certainly didn’t want to bump into her as she sneaked out of Quinn’s room at this late hour. The coast was clear, the house was sleeping, so she took a moment to tidy away any evidence. She put the bottle of wine back on the kitchen bench and rinsed
and dried their glasses before putting them into the cupboard and letting herself out.

Her muscles ached as she walked to her car but it felt good to have used them.

Maybe their paths had crossed for a reason. Maybe her life was about to turn around. Maybe they could be good for each other.

In an ideal world she would find a man who loved her despite her faults. Despite all the things she couldn’t give him.

Maybe Quinn could help heal her.

Maybe Quinn could be the right man.

She felt as though she had been waiting for him all her life. She knew she could fall in love with him. She thought perhaps she already had.

Maybe he could be the right man. He already had children, maybe he wouldn’t need more. But she wouldn’t know until they had that conversation. She wouldn’t know how he felt until she told him the truth. And she couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she couldn’t have children. Not yet.

The external scars had only just faded and, after tonight, she knew that physically she had recovered, but emotionally it was a different story. She wasn’t ready for that discussion. Not yet.

Maybe he was the right man for her but Ali knew this wasn’t the right time.

Quinn had existed on the bare minimum of sleep over the past week. It had been like his intern days. He put his hours in at the clinic, then picked the girls up from
school and took them to see their mother, then home for dinner, a bath and a bedtime story as he tried to maintain some sense of routine for them all. Helen was spending most of her day at the hospital with Julieanne. That was her choice and Quinn didn’t begrudge her that, but he was aware enough of his own limitations to realise he wouldn’t manage without the help of Ali and the girls at the clinic who had become willing babysitters, not to mention the help he was also getting from the school mothers.

Ali’s parents had returned from their trip and Malika was due to be back in the clinic at the beginning of next week. She had offered to come back early to leave him free to spend his days at the hospital but Julieanne was sleeping twenty-one hours a day and the girls were at school. If he didn’t go into the clinic he would have nothing to do for the majority of the day. He thanked her but declined her offer. He preferred to be busy.

But being busy didn’t leave much, or any, time for Ali. He was too tired to do anything other than collapse into his bed at the end of the day. He would have loved to have her there with him, he knew he would sleep better if she was beside him, but it wasn’t possible. Not with the girls there too. He knew they still thought of their parents as married. Quinn and Ali had been very careful not to let the girls see any show of affection between them and they certainly didn’t need another thing to deal with.

His schedule meant he was lucky to catch a glimpse of Ali in the clinic between patients and they hadn’t had a moment alone since they had shared his bed. The
memory of that night was helping to sustain him but he knew it wouldn’t last for ever. He was desperately trying to work out how they could be together again but he feared there wasn’t going to be an easy solution.

He was just finishing the paperwork for his final patient before his lunch break when his mobile phone beeped with an incoming text message. Fearing the worst before realising the hospital would hardly text with bad news, he picked up his phone. The message winked at him.

A flash of red caught his eye as he read the message. Through the window in front of his desk he could see out to the garden. Ali, wrapped up like a Christmas present in her red coat, was sitting at the outdoor table with two steaming bowls of leftovers in front of her. She saw him looking through the window and she smiled and waved and gestured at the food.

He nodded. He didn’t need to be asked twice and grabbed his jacket from behind his door. The early spring sun was starting to get a little bit of warmth but it was still cool enough to need an extra layer even in the middle of the day.

He was outside in a matter of seconds, eager to make the most of this opportunity. It was the first chance they’d had to be alone in five and a half days. The first moment they’d had alone since he’d woken up after making love to her and found her note beside his bed.

He was grinning like the village idiot as he sat down opposite her. He wanted to gather her into his arms and kiss her senseless, but while his consulting room and Ali’s both overlooked the side garden so did the nurse’s. Who knew who might be looking their way.

‘You have perfect timing,’ he told her.

Ali blushed and Quinn knew she was thinking back to Saturday night. He felt a stirring in his groin as his mind replayed the evening too.

‘I meant with lunch,’ he teased.

‘Oh.’ She grinned as her blush deepened further. ‘That just took a bit of forward thinking. I had to shuffle my diary three days ago to match up our lunch breaks. I’m amazed it worked.’

Quinn was touched that Ali had changed her schedule just to be able to share some time with him. Until Ali had come into his life it had been a long time since anyone had done anything just for him. He’d grown accustomed to his solitary lifestyle and more recently to trying to take care of Julieanne and the girls, and he’d forgotten how nice it was to have someone do something for him just because they wanted to. His life was rapidly becoming divided into two parts—Before Ali and After Ali.

‘Thank you,’ he said, thinking what an inadequate attempt at expressing his gratitude that was. Maybe he could express his thanks in other ways later? Next time he had a spare hour maybe, whenever that might be.

He resisted the temptation to lean across the table and kiss her and instead bent his head over his bowl and
picked up the fork that lay beside it. ‘This smells fantastic. I can’t remember the last time I sat down to eat.’

‘Have things been that bad?’

Quinn nodded, his mouth full of lamb curry. He chewed and swallowed the tender meat before replying. ‘I haven’t been ignoring you, it’s been completely crazy. I have a whole new respect for working mothers and single parents.’

‘How is Julieanne?’ Ali asked. ‘What did the specialist say about the Avastin?’

‘Have we not even had that conversation?’ He was so tired and frantic that he couldn’t remember what he had and hadn’t been doing half the time.

Ali shook her head.

‘According to the specialist, Julieanne is living on borrowed time and there’s nothing else he can do,’ he told her, ‘but I’m not sure I would call lying in a hospital bed and sleeping for ninety per cent of the day living.’

‘So this is it?’ Ali’s voice was soft and gentle. She knew the answer already.

‘She won’t be coming home,’ he said. ‘Every time the phone rings I expect bad news.’

‘And what about you? How are you coping?’

‘I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m just doing what I have to for the girls’ sake but I do feel guilty.’

‘Guilty? What about?’

‘About everything,’ he admitted. ‘I feel I should be doing more of something but I don’t know what. I feel I should be doing more with the girls, or spending more time at the hospital or comforting Helen, but I’m not
sure that any of that would make a difference. We’re all just biding our time, Julieanne, Helen and me.’

‘Do you want to hand over your hours at the clinic? I’m sure Mum would come back to work early. She’s due back next week anyway.’

Quinn shook his head. ‘That’s not the problem. She’s already offered to come back early but with the girls at school and Julieanne sleeping most of the day I don’t actually know what I’d do with myself. It’s not that I’m short of time, it’s just that I’m not used to having to work to other people’s schedules. At the moment I have to factor in so many other people’s needs and it’s becoming quite a juggling act. One I don’t feel I’m getting right, and that’s why I’m feeling guilty. I feel like I’m letting people down.’

Ali reached across the table and squeezed his hand, knowing once again just when he needed to feel that connection to her. ‘I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You have to prioritise and, right now, work is something that can come way down your list. You don’t have to try to do it all.’

He smiled. ‘I know, but I like having something in my day that I feel I’m doing well. I know what I’m doing when I’m at work. I spend so much of the day feeling out of my depth that it feels good to come to work, it gives me a sense of achievement.’

‘But you need to give yourself some time too. You’ll get sick if you overload yourself and being sick is the last thing you can afford right now. I suppose you’re going straight to the hospital from here tonight?’