He looked like he knew what he was doing. What he wanted and where he was going. He looked dominant and in command.
Laughing again, he jumped back on his board and Maddy recognised something else about him. He looked like he knew how to have fun. To laugh at the world and himself.
Also how to kiss a woman. How to pleasure one.
She shivered and turned the air-con down. Kiss? Pleasure?
Where the hell had that come from?
OK, it had been a while. Seven weeks since she and her fiancé had split up, and several months more since they’d last been intimate. But hell, that had never really been the focus of their relationship and re-establishing the family practice had taken up all her time and energy over the last two years, anyway.
She hadn’t had time for carnal thoughts. Neither of them had.
They’d barely seen each other for months, with her work and his long shifts at the hospital and studying for his exams. Him calling the engagement off in the middle of it all had been just one more thing on her plate. She’d been confused when he’d said he needed time apart.
How much more apart did he want?
But she doubted it would be permanent — a decade of history was hard to walk away from forever.
Skater boy laughed again and oozed sex appeal all over the park. It brought her temporarily out-of-order relationship with Simon into sharp contrast. Frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, just looking at Simon had made her think sexual thoughts.
Maddy shook her head - it was just jet lag responsible for these uncharacteristic thoughts. Sex and sexual urges had never ruled her life. She’d been thrown one too many curve balls to be a free-loving kind of girl. For goodness sake! She was a thirty-year-old doctor, she’d seen more naked men in her life than she’d had hot dinners.
Why would looking at barely-dressed skater guy have any effect? Why did his chest and his thighs and his laugh make her want things she’d never wanted before?
A car horn blasted from behind and Maddy was relieved to see the sign had been turned to the yellow ‘slow’ side. She accelerated away probably a little more quickly than the sign had indicated but she was grateful for something else to do, some respite from her jumbled jet-lagged thoughts.
But it didn’t prevent her from catching one last glimpse of the man in her rear-view mirror. Prevent her from feeling another twinge of discontent.
Damn him. Her life was just fine.
Just. Fine.
Madeline pulled up outside work a few hours later. She’d unpacked. She’d had a shower. She felt slightly revived. But the fog of fatigue still clung to her and she’d known she’d had to get out of the house before she’d succumbed to her bed and the seductive lure of sleep.
It was way too early to go to bed despite her exhaustion. If she went now she’d be awake at three in the morning with no hope of going back to sleep. So a quick catch-up trip into work late on a quiet Saturday afternoon was the perfect diversion.
She noticed the next-door shop, which had been empty when she’d left, was in the process of a fit-out. A painter was admiring his handiwork, putting the finishing touches to the signage on the glass sliding door.
Dr Marcus Hunt. Natural Therapist.
Madeline stared at it for a few moments, repeating it over and over in her head until her sluggish brain computed the full implications. She felt the slow burn of rising anger.
Over her dead body!
There was nothing quite like anger to wake a person up and Madeline felt it white and hot and burning in her gut. She was more than awake now - she felt alive again. The fog cleared from her brain and the weariness that was deep within her bones dissipated in an instant.
How many patients had she fixed up after they’d seen alternative medicine characters? People who had let their conditions and diseases run out of control while some charlatan had used voodoo or a spell book and given them false hope?
And then there was Abby.
Maddy shook her head – no freaking way. Brushing abruptly past the painter, she slid back the door and entered. It was dim in stark contrast to the glare of summer afternoon sunshine and she removed her sunglasses. The chemical smell of paint assaulted her nostrils as she quickly scanned the room littered with boxes and painter’s trestles.
‘I’m sorry, we’re not open for business until next week.’ A deep, masculine voice drifted towards her from somewhere beyond the clutter of the immediate surroundings.
It resonated around the room and goose-bumps broke out on her arms despite the stuffiness of the room. His voice made Madeline think of the guy at the skate park and she gave herself a mental shake as he entered from a doorway to the right and leant lazily against the jamb, filling the space easily.
Madeline blinked. What the hell? Skater boy was smiling at her, pinning her to the spot with his laughing blue eyes and boyish dimples.
At least he was dressed this time. Well...mostly, anyway. He was sort of wearing a shirt. White, long-sleeved but, completely unbuttoned, revealing that perfectly muscled abdomen. The impulse to touch that stomach, to run her fingers down the dark trail of hair and watch his abdominal muscles twitch beneath her nails was shocking.
In his right hand he held a well-used paintbrush and she thought absently that she’d been wrong about his employment status. He did have a job. A painter, or decorator, or something similar. There were flecks of paint in his hair and the desire to touch them, too, was compelling.
She couldn’t help but compare him to Simon
