At His Service: Her Boss the Hero: One Night With Her Boss / Her Very Special Boss / The Surgeon's Marriage Proposal. Alison Roberts
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if it didn’t? What if nobody knew about it except us?’
‘It’s way too risky. What if it turned to custard and you took your revenge by failing me?’
‘It wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re not talking real here, that’s why not. We’re talking sexual attraction. At least, that’s what it is for me. I know it’s inappropriate and I’ve tried to ignore it, but it doesn’t seem to be going away. Quite the opposite.’ He sighed, an eloquent admission of defeat, and when he spoke again, his voice was husky. ‘I want you.’ His lips were close to Mikki’s again and she felt his words right through her body. ‘And I think …’ He paused to brush her lips very softly. ‘I think you might feel the same way.’
‘Mmm.’ The sound was strangled. Embarrassingly close to a moan, really.
‘So maybe we should just get it out of our systems. Deal with it. Unresolved sexual tension could lead to frustration that might interfere more with your training than your imagined fallout that’s not going to happen because we’re not going to have a real relationship. We can’t, can we? You’re not even going to be around for long enough.’
‘That’s true. A couple of months at the most, if you do your job properly.’
‘So there you go. We’re talking a few weeks. We don’t even need to think that far ahead. This could be a one-off situation. A kind of debrief. A way of defusing tension.’
‘A one-off?’ Mikki didn’t like that idea. It was too casual. Cheap.
‘Theoretically. I guess what I’m saying here is that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. We know what we want and there’s no real reason why we shouldn’t go there and then take it one step at a time. See what happens. I reckon we could make it work.’
‘And nobody would find out?’
‘Not from me, they wouldn’t.’
‘And you wouldn’t let it interfere with work? With my training?’
‘That would be unethical. I’m not an unethical person, Mikki, I promise you that.’
He’d used her name again.
And he’d made a promise she knew instinctively she could trust. Just like she was trusting him to get her through this survival training.
‘Think about it,’ Tama said. He let his breath out in a sigh and pulled her even closer. ‘Right now, we should sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.’
Think about it, he’d said.
He’d meant for Mikki to think about it, but in the bright light of the new day, it was all Tama could think about himself. He’d dreamt about it, with his arm holding Mikki’s body against his while he’d slept.
He’d wanted to kiss her the moment he’d opened his eyes to find her still snuggled against him. He’d wanted to breathe warmth into her body in case she was as chilled and stiff as he felt.
Instead, he’d made breakfast. Hot porridge and strong coffee. And he’d talked about the programme for the second day of training. How they would leave the snow and head for a river crossing and into the bush. How she would learn to make a shelter from brushwood and a fire from scratch.
He didn’t mention a thing about that intimate conversation in the dark. The ball was in Mikki’s court and it would be her choice whether she picked it up or not. However badly Tama wanted it, he wasn’t going to influence her decision. If she was going to come to him, she had to want to.
If this was going to work, she had to want him as badly as he wanted her. And the ground rules had to be sacrosanct.
He hadn’t said a word.
All day.
Either he’d lost interest or he was leaving the decision entirely up to her.
Mikki thought about those kisses and knew he wouldn’t have lost interest any more than she had. She liked it that he wasn’t putting any pressure on her. That he was giving her the choice. But it also made her feel curiously shy.
To come right out and say that, yes, she’d given it some thought and decided it was a great idea seemed way too brazen. She couldn’t think of a way to say it with just the right degree of lightness so she ended up saying nothing about it at all. Just like Tama.
She listened to her mentor and asked questions about what he was teaching her, and she followed him and did everything she was instructed to do.
They worked their way carefully down a slope with patches of icy snow between clumps of tussock. They chose a safe crossing place for the baby river and Mikki crossed her arms and held hands with Tama to give them greater weight and stability as they negotiated the shallow but fast-moving water.
They pushed their way into the bush and Mikki learned about which plants were edible and which were poisonous. They discussed the effects of Giardia parasites and how to treat water to make it safe to drink.
As promised, Tama showed her how to make a fishing hook and line when they came across the larger river they would follow downstream, but they didn’t try their luck fishing for long.
‘We’ve got enough food for tonight and there’s a fair way to walk yet. You tired?’
‘A bit,’ Mikki admitted. ‘It’ll be nice to stop.’ She was tired of walking with wet and squelchy boots and she was tired of trying to interpret every glance or touch from Tama to gauge what he might be thinking. Whether what had happened between them last night was on his mind as much as it was on hers.
But even when they stopped walking, she couldn’t find a way of steering the conversation to anything really personal. It was far easier to stick with the teaching session and learn how to gather brushwood and join it together to make a shelter. How to find small twigs for kindling and then to light the fire by using a magnesium fire-starter.
‘Shave pieces off one side with your pocket knife,’ Tama instructed. ‘And then you make a spark using that piece of flint embedded in the other side.’
Hot food, as daylight faded, was again very welcome. The warmth from the fire was wonderful but Mikki eyed the narrow space beneath the shelter she had constructed dubiously.
‘It’s still going to be cold tonight, isn’t it?’
‘Yep. Usually is, outside like this.’
Too cold to take their clothes off, then. Mikki’s nod was resigned but her heart rate picked up. If she was going to say anything, this was her chance. She swallowed. Then she cleared her throat. ‘It would be silly to risk hypothermia.’
‘It would.’ But Tama was smiling. He was reading the direction of her thoughts easily and his smile was enough to give her a lot more courage.
‘Shame,’ she murmured.
They sat in silence for a minute.
‘There is a hut,’ Tama said.
‘What?’
‘I told you this route was carefully chosen. There’s a hut about half a mile away. We needed one available as a precaution, in case someone got injured on a training exercise or the weather turned nasty. It’s got a clearing beside it which is where the chopper’s going to pick us up first thing in the morning.’
‘So why are we out here instead of in a nice, warm hut?’
‘Because it’s part of the training. You needed to learn to make a shelter.’
‘I’ve done that.’
Tama glanced over his shoulder. ‘So you have.’
‘If we happened to be near the clearing a little earlier than expected, no one would need to know why, would they?’
‘No.’