Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,23

monitors seconds ago, there was now absolute quiet.

Luca glanced at Mia watching Stan disappear down the corridor with a look on her face he couldn’t quite work out.

He put his arm around her shoulder. ‘He’ll be okay,’ he said, even though he had no earthly idea why he’d said it and absolutely no way of knowing how true it was.

Mia nodded. Physically, sure … maybe. After an extended recovery period and if they could control the bleeding and get him through about a hundred complications that could arise.

But mentally?

Would Stan ever be the same again? Was her father?

For a few insane seconds she leaned into the hug, soaking up the comfort, surprised to find that she needed it as a block of unexpected emotion lodged in her chest, invading her throat, threatening to choke her.

And she hated it.

She pulled away, stripped off her plastic gown and peeled off her gloves, disposing of them in an overflowing bin.

‘I’ll follow up with John,’ she said.

And left Luca behind in the bay.

Later that evening, Mia accompanied Evie to the party. She’d finally caved to her friend’s relentless insistence that she go. Stan’s case had been playing on her mind all afternoon and she knew she wouldn’t be able to settle to a book. She needed a distraction and there was no doubt Luca distracted the hell out of her.

That brief comforting hug had been playing on her mind too but she pushed it aside. The distraction she needed from Luca did not involve anything as nurturing as comfort. She needed hard and ready. Hot and sweaty. Down and dirty.

And since she knew he gave it better than anyone else—could obliterate everything else from her brain—only he would do.

The party was in full swing when they finally stepped inside two hours late. Familiar faces milled in groups all around Luca’s apartment and greeted them enthusiastically, despite their tardiness. Shift workers accepted that shift times varied and punctuality was fluid.

Mia felt Luca’s eyes on her instantly and looked directly at him. Neither of them smiled as music pulsed around them and their gazes ate each other up.

Luca, surprised to see her, devoured the sight of her as she shrugged out of her leather jacket and made her way over to Luke Williams, one of The Harbour’s plastic surgeons specialising in burns, and his partner, Lily, a nurse at SHH.

Mia was wearing a tight denim skirt that didn’t quite reach her knees, a pair of long rainbow-striped socks that ended in little bows just below her knees and a singlet-style shirt that did up snugly across her front with corset-style lacing.

Thank goodness his apartment was centrally heated.

Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and an image of him removing that lacing with his teeth surrounded by the curtain of her golden hair wreaked havoc in his groin.

His gaze drifted to the reddish-pink scar on her upper arm visible from all the way across the room. It reminded him of that night and what had happened.

It reminded him of today. Of anguish so familiar he had recognised it immediately. Of those brief few seconds with Mia after Stan had left for Theatre when he’d felt a strange moment of solidarity, of connection.

He pushed the thought aside. Stan had made it out of surgery and was stable in Intensive Care. And Mia had stepped away from him.

Work was work.

This was a party.

He took a swig out of his long-necked beer, his eyes never leaving her. She laughed at something Luke said and shook her head, her hair swinging enticingly around the cleavage barely contained by the faux corset top.

She glanced at him and their gazes locked, the message in her eyes heating his loins. He took another pull from his beer, keeping up the eye contact, matching her frank, unwavering stare. If she wanted to play chicken, he was up for it. He smiled to himself as Lily said something to her and Mia was forced to break contact first.

Why had she come when she’d been so adamant she wouldn’t?

Just for the sex she was patently up for? Or was there something more to it? Had Stan rattled her again? Or maybe that moment they’d shared had? Had she come to prove it hadn’t? Or to explore if it had?

The thought alarmed him and Luca served himself up a mental slap. What the hell business was it of his? Her motivations? He knew what he wanted and it didn’t involve second-guessing a gorgeous woman who had come here