Mr. Right All Along. Jennifer Taylor
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and healthy and so incredibly attractive, even to her jaundiced eyes, that she gulped.
She didn’t need this! She had allowed physical attraction to dictate her actions once before and look how it had ended, with her life in tatters and her spirit shattered. All she wanted now was to pick up the threads and weave them together, attempt to get back what she had lost and by doing so find herself. No matter how attractive Ryan was, she wasn’t going to get involved with him. Ever.
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ she said in a cool little voice that was totally at odds with how she felt. She glanced deliberately at her watch and shrugged. ‘Is that the time? I’ll have to go.’
‘Me too.’ He treated her to one of his wonderfully warm smiles and Eve had to force herself not to respond. There was no point encouraging him, after all.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she called, hurrying away. She rounded a bend in the path and slowed, aware that her heart was racing. The one thing she had never allowed for was that she would be attracted to another man but there was no point denying it. She was attracted to Ryan and she had to keep well away from him …
She groaned when it struck her how difficult it was going to be. Avoiding Ryan wasn’t possible when they had to work together but somehow she had to keep a rein on her feelings. The thing she mustn’t do was make another mistake.
Ryan did his best not to think about his encounter with Eve on the riverbank but failed. Miserably. As the week wended its way towards the weekend, he found himself returning to those minutes they had spent together far too often. Maybe Eve hadn’t said anything but he’d have needed to be deaf, dumb and blind not to have noticed her reaction. She had looked at him and he’d known that it had been a lightbulb moment for her the same as it had been for him. Because if Eve had suddenly realised he was a man, he had definitely realised that she was a woman. A very attractive woman too.
Saturday rolled around and he thanked merciful heaven that he didn’t have to go into work. He had the weekend off, forty-eight hours completely Eve-free. If he didn’t manage to sort himself out then it wouldn’t be for want of trying, he decided as he slotted bread into the toaster for his breakfast.
Once he’d eaten, he intended to go for a run and after that he’d do a few dozen laps of the local swimming pool. After that, maybe a little weight training would jolt his mind back into the sensible lane. If that didn’t work either he would think of something else, although it was doubtful if he’d be fit to undertake any more exercise. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Eve that he had let his training lapse of late …
Eve.
Eve.
Red-gold hair.
Grey-green eyes.
Luscious curves.
Ryan cursed roundly as he exited the kitchen. Forget breakfast; he was going running now. And somewhere along the way he was going to outrun these thoughts that plagued him.
He followed the same route he had taken that night too, working on the principle that lightning didn’t strike twice. It didn’t either because he had rounded the bend when he spotted Eve coming towards him. He slowed down, hurriedly debating his options. Should he turn around and head back the way he’d come or would that be too revealing? If he’d spotted Eve, she was bound to have seen him and he didn’t want her to think that he had a problem with her even if he did.
One stride, two, and that was it; the decision was out of his hands. Ryan came to a halt, breathing far more heavily than the effort he’d expended warranted. It was just that seeing Eve made him feel breathless and giddy and all sorts of things he didn’t normally feel. He groaned under his breath. Hell and damnation. He had a really big problem, Houston!
Eve came to a halt, her heart beating in rapid little jerks. She could lie to herself but what was the point? She had chosen to walk by the river because she had thought … hoped … that she might see Ryan here. That was the truth, although it wasn’t all of it. She wasn’t ready to work out why she’d wanted to see him when she had decided to keep well away from him. She would start with the easy bit and work up to the difficult bits later … Possibly.
‘We meet again.’ She gave a little laugh, wincing when she realised that it sounded like a rusty nail being scraped down a blackboard. Ryan was jogging on the spot, obviously keen to keep up the momentum, and she felt a spurt of irritation strike her. He could at least pretend to be pleased to see her, couldn’t he?
‘Looks like it.’ He grinned at her, his handsome face breaking into the same wonderfully warm smile he’d treated her to the other night, and Eve was instantly mollified and smiled back.
‘You’re obviously a glutton for punishment.’
‘Or desperate.’ He laughed, a soft rumble emerging from his powerful chest. ‘Can you imagine how mortifying it will be if I have to drop out after I’ve persuaded everyone else to take part in this challenge?’
He rolled his eyes and Eve laughed more naturally this time. ‘It wouldn’t look very good.’
‘Too right it wouldn’t.’ He chuckled. ‘Marie, for one, would never let me live it down,’ he said, referring Marie Thomas, the paediatric unit’s redoubtable ward sister.
Eve’s brows rose. ‘Is Marie taking part?’
‘Yep. She’s raised almost three hundred pounds in sponsorship pledges too.’
‘That’s fabulous!’ she exclaimed, genuinely impressed.
‘It is. We’re on course to raise almost ten thousand pounds all told, which is a lot of money.’
‘It certainly is. You’ll have to put me down as a sponsor. Will fifty pounds be enough? I’ve no idea what the going rate is.’
‘That would be brilliant. Thank you.’
He touched her hand in a spontaneous gesture of thanks and Eve did her best not to react, but it was like trying to turn back the tide. A rush of panic engulfed her and she gasped. Ryan bent and looked into her face, looked deep into her eyes, into her soul even, and she could see the anger burning inside him.
‘I don’t know who’s responsible for the way you’ve changed, Eve, but whoever it was, he did a real number on you. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do but if there is, you only have to ask.’ He stepped back and his face was set. ‘I want to help you, Eve. If you’ll let me.’
WHAT WAS SHE doing here?
Eve’s head spun as she stared around the kitchen. There was so much colour in the room that her eyes were dazzled. Deep yellow walls, bright blue cupboards, multicoloured china stacked on the shelves. The kettle was red, the toaster purple, the washing-up bowl an eye-watering green. It was like finding herself slap-bang in the middle of a rainbow and she felt disorientated, confused. Her life was all shades of grey, from washed-out silver to deep, dark charcoal. Colour was something she couldn’t handle. Colour hinted at extremes, at passion, at desire, at all the things she didn’t want to experience.
Colour scared her too because it reflected her feelings for Ryan. She couldn’t see him in terms of black and white or even charcoal and silver. He was imprinted in her head in glorious Technicolor exactly like this room.
‘Sorry about that. It was my mother. She seems to have a knack of phoning when it’s least convenient.’
Ryan came back into the room and Eve forced herself to concentrate. He’d put on a track suit over his running clothes, plain black, unadorned and mercifully lacking in colour. She watched as he headed to the gleaming red kettle and flicked the switch. She could hear the water hissing as it came to the boil, hear it getting louder and louder, and her senses were assaulted once more, only by noise this time. If she didn’t do colour then she didn’t do noise