she found out that she had conceived,’ Sev dropped in grittily. ‘I have a lot of ground to make up.’
Amy didn’t sleep much that night and wakened early, glancing round the small room that had become her home and feeling sad that she had to leave it. For years though her life had been subject to sudden moves and changes. There had been the move into a council-run children’s home from her mother’s apartment, followed by her passage through several foster homes before she had made the wonderful move to Cordy’s cosy house. Ultimately that stability had been wrenched from her again and she had ended up in the surgery’s store room, simply grateful for the free roof over her head.
Amy was masking a yawn with an embarrassed hand as she climbed into Sev’s limo. He was working on a laptop and when he immediately flipped it shut, she flushed uncomfortably and said hurriedly, ‘Oh, don’t stop working on my account... I’m half asleep anyway.’
Even so, her drowsy eyes clung to him while he worked, lingering on the dark down-bent head with the wonderfully glossy black hair that she remembered running her fingers through that night, the chiselled perfection of his strong profile. Colour heightening as a wave of guilty heat engulfed her, Amy dredged her attention off him again and sat face forward instead, but the image of him lingered, sleek and sophisticated even in tailored chinos and a casual jacket teamed with an open-necked green shirt. Fabric sheathed his long powerful thighs, shaping lean hips and a narrow waist as effectively as fine wool defined his broad shoulders. And beneath the clothes, he looked even better, she found herself thinking, recalling the lean, taut golden musculature of his chest and taut stomach and quivering inside her skin. At that point she wanted to slap herself to somehow suppress the steady march of mortifyingly sexual reactions he awakened in her. It was like a hunger that never quite quit, a hunger she hadn’t known until she met him, and it embarrassed her to death.
‘Why do you have to move from above the surgery at such short notice?’ Sev enquired abruptly, endeavouring not to stare at her soft full pink lips and imagine what she could do with them, but evidently his body hadn’t got that message. Even when she was casually garbed in the same shapeless black sweater and jeans, there was something spookily sensual and appealing about Amy and she didn’t need to bare an inch of flesh to exercise that power over him.
‘I don’t have the right to expect much notice,’ Amy explained. ‘It was an unofficial arrangement that I could use a storage room to live in until I finished my course.’
‘A storage room?’ Sev cut in, his astonishment palpable. ‘You’re living in a storage room? I thought you were using a caretaker’s flat on that floor.’
‘No, there’s only storage upstairs. My boss was doing me a real favour,’ Amy informed him. ‘I don’t earn enough to pay a decent rent. I’ve been comfortable enough staying there. I have a mini oven in my room and use the surgery washroom downstairs.’
‘Paying you a living wage would have been the better option,’ Sev commented drily, believing that her employer had been taking advantage by keeping her conveniently on site, while being equally aware that she would not accept that view.
‘My boss is already paying for a full-time nurse. I’m not able to do much more than grunt work until I qualify,’ Amy retorted wryly. ‘Everything was easier when Cordy was alive because I wasn’t paying rent to live with her, but after she passed, I had to move out and London rents are extortionate. There was nothing within my budget.’
‘And yet you told me that you didn’t need my financial help?’ Sev censured.
‘I was managing fine until all this happened. Everything going wrong at once hasn’t left me any choices or much time, and the chances of Harold finding me a placement with another vet at this time of year are slim to none, never mind where I would find to rent with my budget.’ She sighed. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere in the country that has space for the rescue animals as well.’
Amy sat bolt upright in the seat beside him, her triangular face lighting up with sudden intense interest, and he almost laughed, not at all surprised that she was more concerned about the animals than herself. ‘Seriously? All of them? Where? How?’
‘It’s a country house