Tempted by Dr. Daisy Read online

  ‘Ben…!’

  ‘I’m right here, Daisy,’ he grated, his breath heaving, his heart trying to escape from his chest, and her hands were on him, pulling his shirt out and flattening her palms against his ribcage, gasping as he tugged down the zip of her jeans and eased them over the ripe, sweet swell of her hips so he could cup her bottom and drag her up against him.

  Oh, lord, she was going to go up in flames! His skin was hot, taut over the muscles beneath. She wanted more, wanted to feel the rest of him, wanted to touch him, hold him, look at him, but her fingers were struggling with his belt, and she was whimpering with frustration. If she couldn’t get his belt undone—

  He swatted her hands aside gently and ripped the shirt off, dealt with the belt and the stud and the zip and shucked the lot in one hasty and desperate movement, and her legs buckled.

  She gasped as he pulled her back into his arms and their bodies came firmly into contact from top to toe. Well, knee. Her jeans were still there, but not for much longer, apparently. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, dropped her into the middle of the bed, stripped off her jeans and came down beside her, the condom in his hands.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, taking it from him with her trembling, uncoordinated fingers. The first intimate touch of her hands made him suck in his breath in a shuddering groan, and then he was rolling her under him and sinking into her, filling her, and her scream cut through the air.

  He shifted up a gear, drove into her and felt her rising to meet him, her body straining against his.

  ‘Ben, please! I need…’

  ‘I’m here,’ he growled. ‘I’m right with you, Daisy. Come with me—please, come with me.’

  He felt her body tighten, heard her breath catch as she bucked against him, and then he was lost in a climax so devastating that he thought he might have died.

  As the last shudders faded from their taut, sweat-slicked bodies, he rolled them to their sides, gathered her into his arms and closed his eyes.

  He felt in shock. Never before. Not like that. He heard her breathing slow, and then another shudder, a tiny one, almost a sob, ran through her and he cradled her gently against his heart and held her while the last of the emotions roiling through them faded to a more manageable level.

  Then, and only then, did he open his eyes and move his head so he could see her face.

  It was streaked with tears, her eyes soft and luminous, her mouth swollen and rosy from his kisses, and he brushed his knuckles lightly over her cheek.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he murmured.

  ‘I think so. Not sure. If you let me have my brain back, maybe I can work it out?’

  It was so ridiculous he started to laugh, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. Neither could she, and they lay there all but sobbing with laughter as the last dregs of emotion ebbed away. Then she lifted her hand and touched his face, her fingertips brushing lightly over the tiny cut above his eyebrow.

  ‘That was amazing, Ben,’ she said softly, and her eyes were so nakedly revealing he felt guilt tear through him, because he shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have touched her, held her, taken that sweet, precious gift she’d offered.

  They were destined for disaster. What the hell had he been thinking about?

  He closed his eyes and rolled away from her. ‘I need to deal with this,’ he said, and headed for the bathroom, leaving her lying there feeling a little foolish and vulnerable in the aftermath of so much raw emotion. She scooted under the quilt and sat up, hugging her knees, waiting for him to come back from the bathroom and tell her it had all been a mistake.

  As if she didn’t know that!

  Or she could get up, put on her dressing gown and go downstairs and clear the dining table.

  ‘Daisy.’

  Damn. Too slow.

  She looked up, her eyes lingering on his body, making an inventory, storing up the memories. This wouldn’t happen again. She knew that. He was about to tell her that, just as soon as he’d pulled on his clothes and that beautiful, perfectly honed body was hidden from her eyes.

  Or partly. Dressed only in the jeans, he sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand, pulling it away from its death-grip on the quilt and folding it inside his own.

  Here we go, she thought. The gentle put-down.

  ‘That was incredible,’ he said softly. ‘And I want to stay, to make love to you all night, but it isn’t going to happen. It can’t happen. I’m going home to get a decent night’s sleep, and in the morning we’ll go to work and act as if nothing’s changed, and then afterwards we’ll talk about it, OK?’

  She swallowed. ‘It’s OK, Ben, I know it was a mistake.’

  His thumb stroked her wrist. ‘It was, but we’ve done it now, and it’s changed things, and I don’t think we can really just put them back the way they were. We have to find a way to move forwards from this.’

  She nodded. They did, but she couldn’t imagine how. She didn’t know what she wanted, she just knew nothing so special had ever happened to her and she was in no way finished with it, but of course nothing had really changed. It was just different, but it still had no future, and a feeling of impending loss settled over her.

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll cook for you.’

  ‘No. It’s Friday tomorrow, isn’t it? Damn. I’m at Jane’s with Florence, and Jane might have plans to go out. It’ll have to be Sunday night, after I’ve put Florence to bed and come home. We can get a takeaway or something.’

  ‘I can cook, you know,’ she said, finding a smile from somewhere.

  He smiled back, his eyes troubled and yet tender. ‘I’m sure you can. Don’t go to a lot of trouble, I don’t know how late I’ll be. Jane’s away for the weekend and I can’t leave till she’s back.’ He sighed softly. ‘I have to go now, it’s getting really late and if I don’t leave I’ll end up staying and I don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’ll see you in the morning. Maybe we can grab a coffee.’

  He leant over and kissed her, his lips tender and lingering, and then he straightened up, gave her a tiny, slightly sad little smile and then went out, and she lay and listened as he closed her front door behind himself, opened his own, went up the stairs and into his bedroom.

  She heard him moving around, then he went still, and she could swear she could hear him breathing on the other side of the wall.

  ‘Goodnight, Daisy,’ he said, his voice soft but clear in the quiet.

  She didn’t answer. She was too busy wondering what the future held. She didn’t have a clue, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it…

  They didn’t have time for a coffee on Friday morning, and they didn’t have time for lunch, either.

  He disappeared off her radar that afternoon to see Florence and reappeared on Sunday night at seven, by which time she’d had plenty of opportunities to think about their relationship and where it was going. And she’d come to exactly no conclusions.

  ‘You look bushed,’ she said, letting him in, and he gave a tired laugh and hugged her.

  ‘I am. Florence was exhausted, too, that’s why I’m so early. We’ve had a busy weekend, and she crashed at six, and Jane was back so I thought I’d get away.’ He sniffed the air and smiled. ‘Something smells tasty.’

  ‘I made a casserole. I just have to heat it up when we’re ready.’

  ‘Great. Stick it on now, I’m ravenous. And then maybe we can talk.’

  They needed to. There was no way she’d intended to go to bed with him on Thursday night—or any other night, come to that. Her boss, her neighbour—and another divorced father? No way. But that night—that night had been something she’d had no defences against, and she didn’t think he had, either, thinking back. And she’d had all weekend to do that.

  What to do?

  ‘OK, fire away,’ she said after she’d switched the heat on under the casserole.

  ‘You aren’t going to make it easy, are you?’ he said wryly, meeting the challenge in her eyes.

>   ‘I need to know, Ben,’ she said softly. ‘I need to know where I stand with you. I know we shouldn’t have done it, but as you said, we have now. So where do we go from here? I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it all weekend, and I wondered—maybe if we had some kind of framework,’ he suggested.

  ‘What—like rules?’

  He felt himself frown. ‘I don’t like the word rules. Parameters, maybe.’

  ‘Such as?’ she asked, trying to be rational because the idea of never holding him again was hard to take, however sensible it might be.

  ‘Separate compartments,’ he said honestly. ‘I have to keep Florence out of my private life, for everybody’s sake. You won’t ever see her—well, not in any relationship context, anyway. As far as Florence is concerned, you’ll be my neighbour. That’s all. The lady next door. Not Aunty Daisy. But she isn’t what this is all about. This is about two consenting adults who’ve both been hurt in the past, having a relationship with clearly understood boundaries, and Florence doesn’t come into it at all.’

  She was relieved about that, but in another way gutted, because there was a quantum leap from what he was offering her now and the way she was starting to feel about him. That little flicker of hope that maybe, finally, her luck was changing.

  Stupid. She knew perfectly well it wasn’t. They’d talked about that, about the fact it was going nowhere, long before they’d scrambled their brains and ended up in bed.

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’ she asked a little warily. ‘We just—’ she shrugged ‘—carry on?’

  ‘If you feel we can. But I don’t want anyone knowing about it at work. Not about this. I want them kept utterly separate, to protect both of us when—’

  He left it hanging, but she knew what he was saying. When it came to an end, which it would. Of course it would. But maybe not for years. She was only twenty nine. She could afford to take time out to dally with a man who made her feel like no man had ever made her feel before, but not an indefinite amount unless she wanted to give up all hope of having a family of her own one day. And Ben—well, Ben hadn’t wanted this. Not with her. Too messy, in so many ways.

  Oh, lord. It was all her fault. If only she hadn’t kissed him. If only she’d kept her hands to herself, not held them out to him in that blatant invitation—

  She shut her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken you upstairs.’

  ‘Let’s not play the blame game, Daisy,’ he said softly. ‘I kissed you first, on Monday night. I couldn’t help it. And I couldn’t help it on Thursday either. I needed you, and I think you needed me. And we still do. Well, I do, anyway. And it is about more than just sex, much more, but we can’t let it grow into anything dangerous. You just have to understand that this can never be anything other than what we had the other night, no matter how amazing it was. If you can accept that, then we can carry on.’

  ‘As what? Lovers?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you like. Lovers, friends. It would give us someone to do things with—have dinner, go to the cinema, chill out in front of the telly—just ordinary stuff, but not alone. I’m sick of being alone, Daisy, of having no one to share things with, nobody to tell a joke to or unload on at the end of a rough day. And I would very, very much like to do that with you, but it’s your call. If you tell me to go to hell, I’ll quite understand, and you don’t need to be afraid that it’ll affect our relationship at work. I wouldn’t do that to you.’

  She held his eyes, saw the regret, the need, the sadness, and felt her eyes fill. She was lonely, too, and having someone to share the little things with would be wonderful.

  And even though she knew it was the stupidest thing in the world, the last thing she should be doing, she nodded.

  ‘OK. But only so long as Florence is right out of the picture. I can’t lose my heart to another little girl, Ben. I’ve done it before, and I swore never again. Mike’s girls came to us every other weekend, and for holidays. And when he went back to his ex, I lost contact with them. And I vowed never again—not a man with children.’

  ‘Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry,’ he said softly. He could see the hurt in her eyes, the wariness, the soul-deep pain the breakup had caused her. ‘I had no idea you were in so deep.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said with a brittle laugh. ‘So if we’re going to do this, well, just keep her away from me, please.’

  ‘I will. So—do we have a deal?’

  ‘What—fun dates, hot sex and no complications?’

  He winced. ‘Daisy, don’t,’ he said softly, but she wasn’t in the mood to be toyed with.

  ‘It’s the truth, Ben. If we can’t have anything else, then let’s for God’s sake have that.’

  ‘OK,’ he said softly, after a silence that had stretched on altogether too long. ‘Fun dates, hot sex and no complications. And one more rule. No using the “L” word.’

  She swallowed, nodded, then tried to smile. ‘Done,’ she said. ‘So—is eating a complication, or a fun date? Because I’m starving and that casserole must be warmed through by now.’

  He started to laugh, then pulled her gently into his arms and hugged her close. ‘Oh, Daisy. I’m starving, too, and it smells fantastic. Actually, I’ve got an idea. Can we take it with us next door? I’ve got one or two things I have to do, and I’ve got a nice bottle of wine in the fridge and half an apple pie.’

  ‘Home-made?’

  He winced. ‘Yes. By me and Florence, so it’s not amazingly elegant, but it’s tasty.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Tasty sounds good. Lead the way.’

  They ended up in his bed.

  Not then, not until they’d eaten the casserole on their knees in the sitting room—the only room apart from his bedroom that was in any way in order, if you didn’t count the dangling ceiling paper.

  He opened the wine he’d had chilling and poured it into champagne flutes, ‘All I seem to have left,’ he told her wryly, and they toasted his house, and the plumber’s health, which made her laugh.

  And then, when they’d eaten her casserole and the endearingly inelegant and tasty apple pie, he pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Come to bed,’ he said softly, and her breath lodged in her throat as she followed him up the stairs and into his room. He undressed her slowly, his hands sure and gentle, but then she met his eyes and saw the fire blazing in them and realised he was hanging by a thread, holding onto his control so he didn’t rush her.

  He didn’t need to bother, but it was an interesting notion. She returned the favour, unbuttoning his shirt with agonising slowness, driving him to fever pitch. She slid the shirt off his shoulders, and as it fell to the floor, she looked past his shoulder to the bedside table and saw the picture.

  A little girl with a tumble of dark curls, a tiny turned-up nose and laughing eyes.

  Her father’s eyes.

  She turned her head back and unfastened his belt, then the stud of his jeans, then the zip, tooth by tooth.

  Florence was nothing to do with them. This was about them, not her. Fun dates, hot sex and no complications, remember, Daisy? And absolutely no ‘L’ word.

  Taking care not to look at the photo again, she moved into his arms and lifted up her face to his kiss.

  She didn’t stay.

  ‘The plumber’s coming at seven thirty tomorrow,’ he reminded her, ‘so I need to empty the airing cupboard and sort some stuff out.’

  She wanted him to ask her to stay, wanted to tell him she’d help him sort it out in the morning, they could do it together, but that was crazy, and she was still trying not to let herself fall for him. And she certainly wasn’t going to beg for crumbs.

  ‘That’s fine, I’ve got things to do as well. Feel free to use my bathroom while yours is out of action,’ she offered instead, and he nodded his thanks and dropped a slow, lingering kiss on her lips as she left.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he groaned, dragging himself away. ‘I have to get on. I’ll see you tomorrow at
work.’ She nodded, and he kissed her again.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ he murmured as he let her out, and she went home and made a cup of tea and took it to bed, reading her book and listening to the sound of him shifting things around next door, emptying the airing cupboard and moving the boxes off the landing, and she lay there and tried not to feel cheated.

  ‘Oh, stop it! You knew the rules,’ she reminded herself, and clearly spending the night with her came under the heading of complications. She would soon get used to the routine.

  And as routines went, it sounded pretty straightforward. If she was in, and he was in, they’d see each other. If not, they wouldn’t.

  Wednesday evenings with Florence, he’d told her, were utterly sacrosanct, and from Friday to Sunday nights he would have her to stay, once the house was ready, but until then he’d stay with his ex at the weekends, as he had this weekend.

  She tried not to imagine them together. It had been plaguing her all weekend, but he said she’d been away, so they couldn’t have spent the weekend in a passionate clinch. Unless he’d lied? He’d seemed keen enough to make love to her after supper, but he hadn’t wanted her to stay the night, and her old insecurities came back to haunt her.

  Was monogamy one of the rules?

  Not that she was about to ask, but it was hard telling herself it was none of her business, because for all they had very strict rules, that was surely one of them?

  It hadn’t been for Mike. He’d been sleeping with his wife off and on the whole time they’d been together, she’d eventually discovered. And he wasn’t Mike, she reminded herself fiercely.

  Whatever, on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings he’d have Florence, and on all the others he’d be free—free, and ready for some adult conversation and recreation. Especially the recreation, she thought with a twinge of sadness.

  And that was all she wanted from him, she reminded herself sharply. No complications, no painful, heart-wrenching involvement with little children who’d been so easy to slot into her life. No ‘L’ word. She didn’t want declarations of undying love, like she’d had from Mike, followed by the inevitable excuses and gradually cooling and then the bombshell, just when the children had started calling her Mummy Daisy.