off at the knees.
“Thanks. I will.”
Watching her drive away, he wondered if he’d ever be able to have her in the immediate vicinity and not feel like someone had cut off his oxygen supply.
Chapter Six
Naomi barely had a chance to give the two men from the hotel a thought over the following two days, due to the imminent arrival of a medical student looking for work experience in a general practitioner surgery. Plus, she’d been kept busy planning for extra work after talk of a flu epidemic was apparently about to hit the population. Added to which, the heating system at the medical center had just gone into meltdown and engineers were crowding the place, trying to get it fixed before health and safety closed them down.
Anyway, Tynan was rarely out of sight, and she knew he had her back. He’d been a regular visitor to the medical center and the hospital, his visits almost always coinciding with her schedule. According to one of the receptionists, he’d been checking and rechecking the computer system, adding firewalls and updating the data protection system. Then he’d checked the whole thing over and over again, looking for glitches. He was thorough, Naomi would give him that.
She couldn’t help but wish he’d do whatever he needed to do when she wasn’t actually on duty. That way she’d be spared her inappropriate reaction whenever she saw him.
It wasn’t enough that he set her hormones racing with just one glance, but he’d set off something far more disturbing. Her memories. She couldn’t reconcile the man who accelerated her pulse with the boy who had taken her virginity and then rejected her.
Unconsciously, her hand went to her abdomen, and she closed her eyes. She’d long since given way to hope that the pain would ever diminish. She had days now where she could go hours without the sharp bite of reality squeezing her heart. Work helped, of course. Plowing energy and heart into helping others was the best way she’d found of dealing with her own loss. But there were moments when the pain hurt so much that she feared for her own sanity.
Lately, those moments had been returning with frightening regularity. She supposed it was having Tynan at the forefront of her mind again. Hardly surprising, seeing he was there almost every time she turned around.
But she wasn’t the only one who had experienced loss. Like her, Tynan lived with a constant reminder of what they’d done. After their conversation at his house, she realized he had no idea that her father was behind his accident. Bob Tucker might have been instrumental in having Tynan clear the traps, but he and her father were thick as proverbial thieves. She had absolutely no doubt her father had arranged the whole thing.
As soon as he’d realized she was pregnant, he’d banished her to London to live with his sister to make sure her shame didn’t reflect on him. After which, he’d set about making Tynan pay in the cruelest way imaginable.
Her father would have known what an injury like this would do to someone with Tynan’s pride and sense of destiny. Had Tynan been a different man, she knew her father would have had no compunction about beating him within an inch of his life. Instead, he’d hit Tynan where it really hurt.
God . At some stage, she would have to tell Tynan that she suspected her father was behind his accident. He had a right to know. But just not yet.
First she had to stabilize her feelings toward him. At the core was a straightforward physical response to his masculinity. What woman wouldn’t react to such a fine specimen of man? But at the heart was a sense of the unobtainable. The untouchable. She couldn’t have him, so she wanted him. It was that simple. And that complicated.
She could never risk getting close to a shifter male who wanted the happy-ever-after and little versions of himself running across the moor in some future reality. Never be with one who would seek to mate, to mark her as his. Nathan was
“Thanks. I will.”
Watching her drive away, he wondered if he’d ever be able to have her in the immediate vicinity and not feel like someone had cut off his oxygen supply.
Chapter Six
Naomi barely had a chance to give the two men from the hotel a thought over the following two days, due to the imminent arrival of a medical student looking for work experience in a general practitioner surgery. Plus, she’d been kept busy planning for extra work after talk of a flu epidemic was apparently about to hit the population. Added to which, the heating system at the medical center had just gone into meltdown and engineers were crowding the place, trying to get it fixed before health and safety closed them down.
Anyway, Tynan was rarely out of sight, and she knew he had her back. He’d been a regular visitor to the medical center and the hospital, his visits almost always coinciding with her schedule. According to one of the receptionists, he’d been checking and rechecking the computer system, adding firewalls and updating the data protection system. Then he’d checked the whole thing over and over again, looking for glitches. He was thorough, Naomi would give him that.
She couldn’t help but wish he’d do whatever he needed to do when she wasn’t actually on duty. That way she’d be spared her inappropriate reaction whenever she saw him.
It wasn’t enough that he set her hormones racing with just one glance, but he’d set off something far more disturbing. Her memories. She couldn’t reconcile the man who accelerated her pulse with the boy who had taken her virginity and then rejected her.
Unconsciously, her hand went to her abdomen, and she closed her eyes. She’d long since given way to hope that the pain would ever diminish. She had days now where she could go hours without the sharp bite of reality squeezing her heart. Work helped, of course. Plowing energy and heart into helping others was the best way she’d found of dealing with her own loss. But there were moments when the pain hurt so much that she feared for her own sanity.
Lately, those moments had been returning with frightening regularity. She supposed it was having Tynan at the forefront of her mind again. Hardly surprising, seeing he was there almost every time she turned around.
But she wasn’t the only one who had experienced loss. Like her, Tynan lived with a constant reminder of what they’d done. After their conversation at his house, she realized he had no idea that her father was behind his accident. Bob Tucker might have been instrumental in having Tynan clear the traps, but he and her father were thick as proverbial thieves. She had absolutely no doubt her father had arranged the whole thing.
As soon as he’d realized she was pregnant, he’d banished her to London to live with his sister to make sure her shame didn’t reflect on him. After which, he’d set about making Tynan pay in the cruelest way imaginable.
Her father would have known what an injury like this would do to someone with Tynan’s pride and sense of destiny. Had Tynan been a different man, she knew her father would have had no compunction about beating him within an inch of his life. Instead, he’d hit Tynan where it really hurt.
God . At some stage, she would have to tell Tynan that she suspected her father was behind his accident. He had a right to know. But just not yet.
First she had to stabilize her feelings toward him. At the core was a straightforward physical response to his masculinity. What woman wouldn’t react to such a fine specimen of man? But at the heart was a sense of the unobtainable. The untouchable. She couldn’t have him, so she wanted him. It was that simple. And that complicated.
She could never risk getting close to a shifter male who wanted the happy-ever-after and little versions of himself running across the moor in some future reality. Never be with one who would seek to mate, to mark her as his. Nathan was
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