Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,31

think so?’ he asked, watching an obviously distant Finn.

Carl took a swallow of his beer. ‘Oh, yes.’ He tapped his nose three times with his index finger. ‘I’ve been around long enough to tell when there’s hanky-panky going on between the staff.’

Luca felt Mia’s thigh tense beneath his palm and he grinned. ‘Really?’ he murmured as he resisted Mia’s sudden attempt to remove his hand from her thigh.

He easily won the necessarily subdued struggle.

Carl nodded. ‘Of course. I picked Luke and Lily long before anyone else did. And this bloke …’ he jerked his thumb towards Charlie. ‘… is virtually an open book.’

Charlie looked affronted. ‘Me? What about him?’ Charlie pointed to Luca. ‘His reputation preceded him.’

‘Ah, well.’ Carl laughed. ‘That’s true.’

Luca laughed good-naturedly. ‘And what about Mia?’ he enquired innocently, daring to stroke his fingers closer to the apex of her thighs. He didn’t even wince when his ankle suffered a short, sharp jab from a hard pointy toe. ‘Any gossip on her?’

Carl shook his head with a faux crestfallen look. ‘Oh, no. Mia informed me a long time ago that fooling around with someone from work was a recipe for disaster. I think they were the words, right, Mia?’

Mia nodded her head graciously. She’d told Carl that most emphatically one day just after he’d tried to come on to her. And she meant it as much now as she had then.

So why the hell was she sitting at a booth with an Italian devil who was practically bringing her to orgasm in front of two oblivious colleagues?

Surely Carl could see the pheromones wafting off her body?

‘What?’ Luca feigned shock, looking down into Mia’s face, gratified to see heat shimmering in her eyes like a mirage as his finger found her inner seam. He noticed her knuckles whiten as her grip on the edge of the table tightened. ‘There’s been no work flirtations?’

‘Oh, no,’ Carl answered for her. ‘As far as I can tell, there’s been no one. And I have a pretty good radar,’ he added, tapping his nose again and smiling at Mia.

Luca flicked a finger across the seam that ran down from the bottom of her zip where it joined the two inner thigh seams. He felt her resistance melt to nothing as her legs eased apart a little and he thought, Carl, you are a fool!

Mia knew she shouldn’t. They were in a public place, for crying out loud. A place that was crawling with staff from The Harbour. But his fingers were creating such delicious havoc … and no one could see …

She spread her legs a little further and smiled at Charlie as she changed the subject.

Evie was late to Pete’s but that was the nature of the job. A last-minute patient had kept her involved for a while, which had been fine by her. Becoming absorbed in her work had helped keep her mind off Finn and what had happened between them today.

Because, whether he liked it or not—whether she liked it or not—something had happened. She’d had a glimpse of his humanity and no matter how many patients she’d seen since, she just couldn’t banish that from her head.

And that brief moment when he’d leaned into her … It had felt like some kind of … surrender.

She’d never seen Finn emotionally vulnerable but today had been different. Today he’d leaned on her. Actually let himself go for once and trusted her enough to drop the cantankerous-but-brilliant-surgeon facade and just be a doctor who’d lost a patient. Be human. Be a man.

She could still feel the imprint of him against her. The flat of his shoulder blade against her cheek, the warm, solid roundness of his shoulder beneath her palm, the press of his broad back against her chest, their hearts beating almost as one.

She wasn’t stupid enough to read anything into it. But she was intrigued. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know what had happened in his past to make Damien’s case so personal to Finn. So personal that he’d let his guard down to her, of all people. Let her touch him. Let himself touch her back.

You were brilliant today, Evie.

Those words had meant more to her than any compliment she’d ever received-professional or personal. She hugged them to herself as she crossed the road to Pete’s.

If Finn was at Pete’s, she was going to repay the compliment. She was going to buy him a drink, tell him he was brilliant and badger him until he talked.

Staff