> Only in those late-night dreams, which she’d pretended she didn’t really have, had she imagined the two of them ever being this close again.
‘Right,’ she managed hoarsely. ‘But even though The Island Clinic is renowned for its A-list patient base—from the NFL to Hollywood, and from Aruba to the USA—he also ensures locals have full use of the facilities if they need it.’
‘I thought the clinic was known as a place for the elite, where they could be assured of utter discretion as they benefited from the absolute gold standard of medical care, with the best medical professionals?’
‘It is,’ she confirmed. Could he hear her heart thundering on her chest wall? To her, the sound was almost deafening. ‘It’s a place where A-listers like Violet Silnag-Wells come, whose daughter, Lucy, is your new patient and who needs a full atrial arch reconstruction. But Nate also uses the helicopter pad to fly locals here if St Vic’s can’t meet their needs. He really cares about patients in both the clinic, and St Vic’s Hospital. Every single one of them matters to him and I knew that was something you, of all people, would understand.’
Liam jerked back. She actually saw the minute movement as he moved away from her. As though he hadn’t been expecting her to say anything like that. To compliment him.
Instinctively, Talia pressed home whatever advantage she might have.
‘It was no wonder Nate practically bit my arm off after I told him about Duke’s rising star, Heart Whisperer. But for the record, Liam. I’m not on the trial team. I never was. So this couldn’t possibly have been about you and me working together again.
‘It only later occurred to me that if you came here, we might end up face to face,’ she choked out. At least, that was the story she was sticking to. Even in her own mind. ‘Which is why I asked for a month-long transfer. I thought that if I was at the hospital, it would be better all round.’
For one long moment neither of them spoke. And then, abruptly, Liam took a step backwards. And even though there was no reason on earth for that to make her feel it like a loss, Talia felt bereft.
‘Fine,’ he ground out, his tone a mixture of irritation, displeasure and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. ‘That’s a solution I can live with.’
Then, before she could even formulate the words for any kind of response, he was gone. His shoes echoed down the corridor, haunting her long after he’d disappeared from view.
* * *
What the hell was the matter with him? Liam berated himself furiously as he stalked through the indecently opulent corridors of The Island Clinic. This was his penance for searching her out. Yet what choice had he had? He’d been drawn to seek her out the moment Nate had confirmed that Talia had been the one to recommend him.
Fury, and something else he didn’t care to identify, pounded inside him. It thumped along every inch of his skin, bubbling and exploding in his veins, and making him...feel things that he had precisely zero interest in feeling. As though he had no control whatsoever of his own body.
He, who prided himself on never letting anything, anyone, rile him. Ever.
Yet if he hadn’t walked out of that room at that moment, he feared he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from hauling Talia into his arms and taking that one last truth that existed between them to use it to show her up for the liar that she was.
Because whatever other tales and falsehoods had ever fallen from her mouth—including the lie that she hadn’t even realised he was coming to St Victoria—there was one area in which she had never been able to deceive him.
That attraction which had always fizzed and arced between them was no fabrication. It never had been. Perhaps it was the only real thing the two of them had ever shared, but that didn’t make it any less effective.
He’d read it in every line of that sensual body of hers. Every shallow breath. Every darkened regard. Whatever else she might want to pretend, she couldn’t fake disinterest in him.
And what perturbed Liam the most...was that neither could he.
He could tell himself that he was shocked at seeing Talia again. He could claim that it was seething rage that drummed through his body. But, deep down, he knew it was something far more potent than anger.
It was desire. And it galled him beyond all measure to have to admit it.
He wanted her just as he had always wanted her; from the very first moment he’d laid eyes on her with her bubbling laughter and killer body. Sex—incredible sex—had never been one of their failings. Quite the opposite, in fact. The sex had always been intense. Exceptional.
Then on top of that his attraction to her had swollen tenfold when he’d seen how focussed and skilled she was in the operating room.
The whole package.
But there were some things more intimate than sex even. And if he’d ever stood a chance of opening up to any woman on a more intimate level he’d considered that maybe it would have been with Talia.
Instead, she’d left. Without a word.
Which was all the more reason why he had to stay cool and detached. He had to. Because if he didn’t—if he’d stayed in that room with her just now—he was terribly doubtful that he could have controlled that...thing from heating up between them all over again. Drawing him in. And he wouldn’t have realised until it was too late and the flames were licking around him—like the fable of the boiling frog.
And Liam decided that he had no intention of being like any such member of the amphibian family.
He, who was renowned for his cool head and soothing composure under even the most stressful emergencies.