Prognosis Christmas Baby - Amy Andrews Page 0,54

finally returned from the dance floor after what seemed like hours.

‘Yes. Me and Nash.’ She hoped she didn’t sound as depressed as she felt.

‘You kept that quiet.’

Maggie shrugged. ‘It wasn’t anything, really. Just a fling.’

‘Friends with privileges?’

Maggie nodded, looking down at the starched white tablecloth. ‘Something like that.’

‘Except...’

‘Yes. Except.’ Their fling had yielded some pretty serious consequences.

‘Is he still going to London?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you love him?’

Maggie looked up at her friend. ‘Yep.’ What was the point in hiding it?

‘Oh, Maggie.’

Linda gave her shoulder a squeeze and Maggie shrugged it off. She could hear the pity in her friend’s voice. Even Linda knew the folly of falling for Nash. ‘It’s okay.’

‘C’mon,’ Phil said, tugging on his wife’s hand. ‘There’s still another hour to go before the band finishes.’

‘Are you going to be okay?’ Linda asked, resisting the pull.

‘Of course. Go. Don’t be silly.’ Maggie plastered a smile on her face. ‘Go!’ she insisted again when Linda seemed hesitant.

Ten minutes later, Maggie was yawning as a sudden wave of exhaustion crept over her. She hated to admit that Nash was right but maybe the best place for her was home in bed. The band struck up a familiar tune and Maggie felt an awareness surround her like an aura.

Two hands slid down her bare shoulders from behind and a raging inferno spread through her veins like quicksilver. Nash leaned down, his lips close to her ear. ‘They’re playing our song, Maggie May. Dance with me then I’ll take you home.’

‘Thought no dancing was part of the deal.’

‘I’m making an exception.’

Maggie was too everything to resist. Too tired. Too needy. Too in love. She just turned and he pulled her chair out and helped her to her feet.

The band started to sing the Rod Stewart classic as he twirled her onto the dance floor. He held her close but not too close, aware of the speculation on the faces of their fellow dancers. Their secret was well and truly out and he’d fielded quite a few questions over the course of the evening, but it was important to him as he held her that everyone realised Maggie was more than just a conquest to him.

He slid his hand to the centre of her bare back, resisting the urge to slide it down to her cute derrière and pull her hips closer. She swayed against him to the music, his body tightening everywhere, the movement and the bare skin of her back erotic beyond words.

There was a strange constriction in his chest as her perfume - her essence - washed over him. Something shifted inside him, trampled by a surge of feelings that couldn’t be contained.

‘Have I told you how beautiful you are tonight?’ he murmured, looking down into her face as the blinking, colourful lights from the stage played across her cheekbones.

Her eyelashes, thick and luscious with mascara, drew him in deeper, closer. There was a swelling in his chest that was growing by the second.

Maggie could barely breathe at the intensity of his gaze. It was making her dizzy. ‘You scrub up pretty good for a country bumpkin yourself.’

He grinned at her. ‘I feel like an undertaker.’

She shook her head. ‘You look like a movie star.’

Nash tightened his hand against her back as his chest filled to bursting with an emotion that was scaring the life out of him. ‘So do you.’ And then he dipped her quickly because he didn’t know what was happening.

Maggie gave a startled cry and grabbed hold of his shoulders. When he hoisted her back to her feet it hit him like the proverbial tonne of bricks.

He loved her. He was in love with Maggie Green. The mother of his child.

Nash dropped all pretence of distance and pulled her closer as he processed the realisation that had come out of left field. She didn’t protest, just laid her cheek against his chest, and his stomach fluttered like a bloody teenager.

How had he been so blind?

Especially now he could pinpoint the exact moment he’d fallen for her. At the cafeteria that day, the first day he’d met her. She’d knocked him back and from that moment he’d been hooked. But it hadn’t been until yesterday, seeing her lying in that pool of blood, facing those few awful seconds when he’d thought she was dead, that he’d been shaken out of his comfortable existence enough to start examining things.

He’d stupidly mistaken love for his ingrained sense of duty and honour. Telling himself instead that she was his responsibility. She and