Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,30

slid over as Mia approached, a sense of inevitability taking hold. What was it about this woman that made him want more? Her complete lack of sexual inhibitions or was she just a novelty, something familiar for a change instead of just another pick-up?

Or maybe it was her emotional unavailability? Knowing that she wanted the same thing he did—no commitments, nothing but a good time.

He watched the tame swish of her ponytail as she came closer, knowing what that hair looked like loose and wild and knowing from the heat in her gaze that tonight was going to get very wild indeed.

Mia refused to look at Luca as she slid in beside him. She didn’t want to alert the two other occupants to what was going on between them. She and Luca were sex—just sex—and she didn’t want the others to get the wrong impression.

She greeted Charlie Maxwell, the orthopaedic surgeon who had operated on the partially severed leg earlier, and Carl Todd, the anaesthetist. They were chatting about the bomb blast at Douglas and the two operations that had followed.

‘He’s not out of the woods yet,’ Charlie said, taking a mouthful of his cola. He was on call and could well be called back to amputate the leg. ‘We managed to save it but I’m not entirely convinced it’ll be viable in the long term. There was extensive blood loss and a lengthy ischaemic time.’

Mia was always surprised whenever Charlie was serious. The lovable, laid-back, ex-pro surfer with his shaved head and wicked sense of humour gave new meaning to the Aussie word ‘larrikin’. It was hard to tell at first glance that beneath it all he was a dedicated and committed professional.

‘The trip from the army barracks isn’t exactly short,’ Mia mused. They were the nearest tertiary hospital to the barracks but in a situation where every second was vital, it was just a little too far away.

‘Absolutely,’ Charlie agreed. ‘You guys did a great job getting him to me as quickly as you could.’

They chatted about the procedure for a while and Mia was pleased to hear that the patient was still stable in ICU with good pulses when Charlie rang to get an update.

Working on saving the leg today with Luca had been an exhilarating experience, and it was good to know that their efforts had contributed to the thus far positive operative outcome.

She glanced at Luca and felt her breath hitch as he chose that moment to glance at her. Heat surged up the side seam of her jeans where their legs touched. Under the table, his hand slid onto her thigh.

She felt her breath seize in her lungs. But, as his fingers started to smooth the fabric of her jeans in light patterns, she didn’t remove it.

‘Well, at least you had better luck than Finn,’ Carl commented, dragging Mia’s attention back to the conversation. He inclined his head to indicate the man in question, who was sitting at the bar by himself, staring into his Scotch.

‘He worked like a demon, trying to save the other soldier. It was like he was possessed or something.’

Even knowing how much Carl liked to embellish things, Mia was startled by the anaesthetist’s description of the frantic efforts in Finn’s theatre that afternoon—no wonder Evie needed to debrief.

‘Evie’s pretty wrecked,’ Mia commented when Carl finished.

‘She’s in the wrong specialty. She’d make a great surgeon,’ Carl mused. ‘Kept her head no matter how testy Finn got.’

Mia glanced at Finn again just as Suzy plonked herself down in the chair next to him. The theatre nurse was a regular at Pete’s and Mia had seen her flirting with Finn here before, but a blind fool could see that Finn was not in the mood for company.

He gave her one of those polite frozen smiles she’d seen Finn give once too often to hapless medical students or to Eric Frobisher in particular, but Suzy seemed as oblivious or impervious to Finn’s signals as Eric did.

Luca’s signals, however, as his fingers continued to brush against her thigh, were loud and clear. Mia fought the urge to turn her body towards him, raise her mouth to his.

Carl looked over his shoulder again. ‘Well, well, well. Looks like Finn’s found a little distraction for the night.’

Mia just stopped the eye-roll. Carl was a top-class anaesthetist and still fancied himself as a bit of a ladies’ man but he obviously wasn’t a student of body language—he was way off the mark.

Luca winked at her. ‘Oh, you