CHAPTER 31
They lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, their chests still heaving. Poppy’s naked leg was draped over James’s like it was the most natural thing in the world. It felt like an appropriate time in life to start saying crikey. As in: That sex! Crikey!
James began to laugh quietly to himself.
‘What?’ asked Poppy, smiling.
‘I didn’t come over here to seduce you. I actually charged the drill.’
Poppy grinned and glanced down at his naked body. ‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Very funny.’ He slung a lazy arm across her waist.
‘Well, now that you mention it …’ Poppy twisted to look at her bedside clock. ‘The shelf isn’t going to fix itself and it’s only two thirty, so …’
James propped himself up on his elbow to look at her. ‘It’s sitting pretty low on my priority list,’ he said, skimming his hand across the dip of her waist, sending shivers down her spine.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yep. My current priority is checking you out.’
Poppy blushed and tugged a sheet around herself. No-one looked at her naked body anymore, not even her.
James smiled and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. ‘Too late,’ he whispered, his nose touching hers. ‘I have committed every inch of you to memory.’
Poppy smiled into him. ‘I actually have no idea what just happened.’
‘Would you like me to explain it to you?’ he teased.
‘I mean, I don’t know how we ended up here. Like, it’s you.’
‘And what? You hate me?’
Poppy shrugged. ‘I definitely considered kicking you in the balls at least once.’
James grinned. ‘Foreplay. This was always going to happen.’
‘Um, as if,’ retorted Poppy, feeling a familiar pang of irritation at his Smuggy McSmugface.
‘Well, I wanted it to happen,’ admitted James.
Whaaaaaaat?!
‘Since when? The Block ?’ (This was unexpected and startlingly good news.)
‘Nah, before that,’ said James. ‘Or maybe … I dunno.’ He flipped onto his back to stare at the ceiling again. ‘Even when we first met—even before you’d had Maeve—I just had this feeling you were …’
‘What?’
‘I dunno. You were … different … cool.’
Poppy crinkled her nose. ‘Please tell me you’re not some sicko who gets off on pregnant women or something weird.’
James laughed and wove his fingers through hers. ‘I didn’t mean I had the hots for you then, dumb-arse. You just made me feel …’
‘Enraged, irritated, maniacally defensive of a crappy old car space?’
‘All of the above, actually—and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.’
Poppy chewed her lip. He kind of made sense. But really, he didn’t.
‘I think you must be a sicko.’
James chuckled, his fingers still intertwined with hers. ‘Can I please make it clear that I am not a sicko? Work is work, pregnant women are pregnant women, and women who turn up at my family Easters looking stupidly hot in footy jumpers are in another category completely. I have lots of boxes in my brain where I keep things nice and separate, and Poppy-the-patient fits in the work box, while Poppy-in-front-of-me is in another box entirely. There is no overlap.’
Poppy’s heart was fluttering way too embarrassingly at the stupidly hot comment. ‘Are you breaking the Hippocratic Oath by being naked in my bed?’
‘Nope.’ James grinned and rolled over to face her.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I checked my textbook.’
Poppy raised an eyebrow.
‘There’s a bit on dating patients. Well, it’s a case study about a consultant who starts dating this nineteen-year-old stripper, and long story short, it’s fine because he only saw her in ED for half a day, and by the time they ran into each other at the strip club six months later, there was no longer a patient–specialist relationship and a very low chance she’d be an ED patient again—unless she had another pole-dancing injury.’ His tone was pragmatic. ‘So if they were fine, I figure we’re fine too.’
Poppy snorted. ‘I don’t see many similarities between that situation and this.’ She waved her hand around the clothes-strewn room to remind him of what this was.
‘You’re not a stripper?’
‘That. And we’re not dating.’
James cocked his head. ‘True,’ he said slowly. ‘But that wasn’t my point. It’s more that you’re unlikely to be my patient again.’
Poppy swallowed, the tiniest speck of something like disappointment settling in her chest. So he’d dodged the mention of dating. Totally fine. She didn’t need any commitment. She already had a significant other: Maeve. If he didn’t want to talk about dating, neither did she. She was a modern woman who used contraception and had consequence-free sex that did not lead to childbirth. Hurrah!
She smiled, trying to channel her inner bravado outwards. ‘So if the old guy and the stripper can date, no-one will care we had sex on a random Thursday?’
James studied her, his eyes darkening. ‘Something like that,’ he said eventually.
Poppy willed herself not to overthink that almost unnoticeable shadow that had swept across his features.
‘I also made sure I was extremely professional around you when you were in my care,’ James continued. ‘And for another six months after that, just to be safe.’
‘Professional?!’ cried Poppy, remembering his refusal to smile in her presence. ‘Is that code for soulless?’
A tiny crease appeared between his brows. ‘I needed to keep my distance.’
‘You could have been friendly.’
‘But I couldn’t,’ he said intently. ‘I was scared of … I dunno … it’s like you got under my skin somehow. I’d spent my whole life thinking people are either good or bad, and then you accuse me of being a goody-two-shoes and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore.’ James sighed and rolled back to stare at the ceiling. ‘You’d think I’d be stoked to never see you again, but it didn’t work like that and I was so confused. Like, was I accidentally riling you up for my own warped enjoyment? I couldn’t understand it and I didn’t want to do anything irrational, so I forced myself to stick to the guidelines by the letter. I guess I did it to protect myself.’
Poppy felt her face flush. ‘I felt like you were always either ignoring me or laughing at me.’ She hadn’t meant that to sound so vulnerable but she realised she didn’t care.
James twisted onto his side to face her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I didn’t mean to come across that way. I was never laughing at you. If anything, I was laughing at myself. Every thought in my brain felt so ridiculous around you. And the whole time—the car park, the supermarket, even with Mary’s stupid conversation starters—I was trying to do the right thing. I like doing the right thing. It just came out all wrong.’
His expression was so earnest, Poppy felt her self-consciousness fizzle. She inched closer to smile against his skin. ‘It’s because you’re a robot,’ she whispered.
James’s hands suddenly grasped her waist. With one deft movement, he flipped her onto her back and shifted on top of her. ‘You wanna test that theory?’ There was a wicked glint in his eye, and her body was suddenly aflame again. Before she could remind herself to breathe, and verbalise that yes she was one hundred per cent open to testing that theory —especially since they were already dressed for the occasion—James laughed and fell back beside her.
Poppy exhaled and laughed too, her mind racing. Their first impressions, their impulsiveness around each other, the whisper of something else darting around her consciousness: he’d researched this in advance?
‘Why are you single?’ she blurted.
James raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s complicated.’
Now it was Poppy’s turn to look sceptical. One second ago she hadn’t even meant to ask that question, but now, after that kind of response, she was ravenous for details. ‘That sounds like a cop-out.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I don’t know how to talk about it.’
‘So try,’ Poppy urged, realising the fact he was single had been making her feel anxious for weeks. Surely he had to be hiding a problematic gaming addiction or some kind of perverted gambling habit? Maybe he was one of those deadbeats who watched cockfights on YouTube.
‘I was engaged, we were together for four years, we broke up last October, she took my dog. End of story.’
‘Oh gosh.’ Poppy exhaled. She had not been expecting that. Four years—and an engagement. That was baggage. (And she could say that because takes one to know one .)
‘I’m still not over it.’
‘Oh … okay,’ Poppy stammered. She hadn’t been expecting that either. Was this a blatant declaration she was a rebound? God, how embarrassing. And also, could he be less of a dick about it?
‘What?’ asked James, seeing her expression. ‘You asked.’
‘You’re so annoying.’
James shuffled closer to her. ‘I can’t help it around you, McKellar.’
Poppy rolled her eyes.
‘It’s something cerebral,’ James continued. ‘Or physical. Or both.’
‘Ha!’ said Poppy. ‘I think you’ll find the layman’s term for that is lust.’
‘There’s definitely that,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her neck. ‘But I think it’s something more chemical, something neuro-endocrinological.’ He shifted his body to prop himself above her and Poppy felt herself slacken underneath him. His kisses moved down from her throat to her breasts, light as butterflies.
‘If you’re trying to impress me with some BS medical term’—she wanted to roll her eyes again, but they were locked behind her eyelids, letting her body fulfil the sensory obligations on their behalf—‘you’re seriously misunderstanding what impresses me.’
It was ridiculous that she was trying to string sentences together when she could hardly keep herself from shivering in pleasure. She didn’t need words; she needed his hands, his lips, all over her, everywhere, now. Again.
James stopped kissing her and looked her square in the eyes. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to impress you. It’s like you make my brain short-circuit. With you, I hear the words coming out, and think, Why did I say that? I just can’t help myself. It’s like the moment I see you, I shed this skin I didn’t realise I’d been wearing and I’m just my real, idiotic self.’ He smiled and moved his lips back to her stomach. ‘So I say the dumbest things to you and you say the dumbest things to me and yet here we are,’ he murmured, trailing his lips over the curve of her waist.
Poppy’s ribs were vibrating now as his chin moved over her hip bones. ‘I don’t say dumb things,’ she whispered.
‘Yes you do.’
His kisses were circling her inner thighs now, the pressure and want in her building to an almost painful crescendo. ‘You’re going to pay for that,’ she murmured.
‘I intend to,’ he replied.