‘So the girls have a room at their house and just sleep over when necessary?’
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Something like that.’
‘Jasper, you’re being coy.’
‘Coy?’ He laughed at that. ‘Men aren’t coy. Only women are coy. I’m being…deliberately evasive.’ He shook his head and chuckled. ‘Coy. What a word. You do make me laugh, Jennifer.’
‘I think that’s a compliment.’
‘It is.’ His tone and his look were equally as expressive. He stared at her for a moment, as though not sure what to say next.
‘Oh.’ Jennifer wasn’t used to getting such direct compliments. In fact, she wasn’t used to getting compliments, full stop.
‘And if you must know,’ he continued, ‘my parents live with us.’
‘You still live at home?’ She was surprised at that, her lips twitching with amusement.
‘No. No,’ he said firmly. ‘I said my parents live with us. There’s a difference.’ He looked around them but there was no one else about. ‘I’ll have you know that I moved out of home a long time ago. I bought my own house, got married, had a couple of kids, then when Elisha died, I remodelled the house so that my parents could sell their big rambling home and move in. It’s an arrangement that works well for everyone, especially the girls.’
‘Fair enough.’ She was touched that he’d explained because it showed her he really was willing to cross that line between the professional world and the personal one they were both so desperate to keep separate. Jennifer knew she’d been crossing the line more often than not of late and to know he was willing to do it too made her feel a little more comfortable.
‘So are we going to get this next patient done so we can both go home?’
‘I guess so but honestly, Jasper, you can go now and—’
‘Paper beats rock.’ He took her hand in his, wrapping his fingers loosely around hers again, watching the way her eyes flared with a spark of excitement before it was quickly veiled. ‘Remember?’
Jennifer’s breath caught in her throat not only at his touch but at the look in his eyes. It was deep, rich and seriously intimate. Where his touch had been mildly playful before, this time it was as sensual as if he’d brushed a thumb across her lips. His body was close to hers, closer than before, and as her heart rate increased, she found it was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe.
‘Jasper?’ His name was a confused caress on her lips and as his eyes dipped to take in the lush fullness of her mouth, her breath caught in her throat. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you make me sizzle and I don’t know how to deal with that.’
‘Sizzle?’ His resolve to keep things light, to keep on ignoring the enormous tug he continually felt towards her, was beginning to crack. He’d felt the tug of something new and exciting between them since the first moment they’d met—even before they’d discovered their external connection—and he’d worked extremely hard to ignore it. So, it seemed, had Jennifer. When she said things like that, it was enough to make his logical thought processes shut down and instinct take over—and his instinctive reaction was to press his mouth firmly to hers and show her what it would really feel like to sizzle.
The phone on the wall rang and both of them sprang apart, startled and jumpy. They stared at the inanimate object for a moment before Jasper snatched it up. ‘Eddie,’ he said into the receiver.
It was the distraction Jennifer needed and she quickly walked from the room, heading to Theatre One, hoping Jasper would change his mind and decide not to join her because right now she wasn’t sure she could deal with him being so close when she was supposed to be concentrating on a patient.
Never before had she had this problem. Never had she been unable to focus her mind on her work, as she’d experienced a few times thanks to Jasper Edwards and his overwhelming, enigmatic presence.
She’d scrubbed and had just started working when he entered the room. Again she felt him before she saw him and was surprised at her own intuitiveness where he was concerned. She found it difficult to meet his eyes and so simply kept her gaze down and on the job, wanting to get this night over and done with so she could sneak quietly into Sara’s house, wrap herself up in her blankets and just disappear.
Thankfully, at some time during the two hours they spent working on their patient, Jennifer began to relax and realised that as there was currently nothing she could do about the obvious attraction she felt towards her handsome colleague, she’d do well to simply push it aside.