Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,42

find her friend walking towards her. At least she finally looked interested in something else other than overdosing on salt and vinegar chips and Boston pub life.

‘Nothing,’ Mia said, recovering sufficiently to withdraw into the warm apartment and shut the door.

‘Didn’t look like nothing to me,’ Evie mused.

‘It is now,’ Mia assured her.

For five days and nights, despite her every effort not to, Mia thought of Luca constantly. Her feelings fluctuated wildly from complete understanding and agreement with their decision to walk away from each other, to worry about how it was all panning out in Marsala, to an uncharacteristic yearning for something she couldn’t even put her finger on.

Add to that a healthy dose of sexual frustration from vivid dreams and Mia was a wreck.

The dreams were the worst.

Happily-ever-after fantasies—erotic one moment, white-wedding poignant the next. They woke her often, rendering her perpetually tired. And cranky. The staff avoided her. Her patients asked the nurses their questions. Even Evie stayed out of her way.

In fact, by day five her best friend was suggesting she burn off some of the bitch with a good old-fashioned bar pick-up somewhere.

Then, on the sixth night, Luca came striding into the department at almost midnight. His luscious wavy hair, speckled with raindrops from the stormy weather outside, looked like it had hadn’t seen a comb in a while and it was the first time she’d seen him unshaven.

He looked like hell.

And her body responded with a primal lurch.

If anything, with the heavy growth of blue-black stubble and the wicked way he filled out a pair of jeans, he looked more like the devil she’d first pegged him as than ever before.

But she knew him much better now.

Well … better than she had, anyway.

‘Luca?’ Her heart pounded in her chest. Damn it, this wasn’t how she’d planned on greeting him on his return. Where was her polite smile and cool nod? ‘You’re not due back until tomorrow!’

Luca ran a hand through his already unruly hair. She was a sight for sore eyes. It had been a harrowing time in Sicily and even though they weren’t together—had never really been together—he wanted to drag her to the on-call room and get lost in her for a little while.

Just one more time.

‘I couldn’t sleep and I heard the ambulances.’ He shrugged. ‘Thought I’d drop by and see if you guys needed a hand.’

Mia saw the flash of desire in his deep dark eyes, like a candle in a well, and felt it slug her right in the belly. She was grateful for the bustle of the department around them. If he’d come to her door, she’d have been lost in a look like that. Their parting conversation from six days ago smothered by a fierce surge of lust and a strong urge for privacy.

She blinked, taking a mental step backwards. ‘You look tired. Are you up to it?’

‘I’m fine.’

Mia raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look it.’

Luca waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’m exhausted and my body clock’s screwed up but I’m not sleepy. In fact, I’m buzzing. I’m good to work.’

Mia scrutinised him for a moment but that was just plain dangerous. Besides, she understood how jet-lag could mess with your body but have the opposite effect on your brain. And they were pretty slammed at the moment.

‘Okay, sure. There was an industrial fire with several burn victims, we’re down a couple of nurses and Evie’s attending an arrest on one of the wards. It’s bedlam.’

He nodded. ‘Okay.’

She waited for him to move on, brush past her, leap into action, but he didn’t. He just stood looking at her, weary and subdued. ‘How … how was it?’

Not that she cared. Not that she wanted to know.

Luca rubbed at his stubble. ‘Bad.’ A nurse bustled past them.

Mia heard the low accented rumble right down to her toes. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

What the hell?

She didn’t want him to talk about it. She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to know. The only thing she was interested in was the magic he could wreak on her body.

And even that was now off limits.

His life was none of her damn business and she liked it that way!

Luca shook his head. He didn’t. He really, really didn’t. Three days of dealing with family history had been enough to bear, without rehashing it. What he wanted was to forget it. Lay her down and let their magic take him somewhere else.

A place where he wasn’t a hormone-driven, starry-eyed sixteen-year-old. Where