* * *
This was torture.
Demeaning and ridiculous. He should have just put his foot down and excused himself instead of being sucked in by the plea in his mother’s face. Hadn’t he grown up enough to realise that pleasing himself was more important than pleasing a parent?
Apparently not.
It wasn’t the best mindset to be in for following the directions of a girl who seemed to have life organised to deliver precisely what would please herself more than anyone else.
She was just so damn…joyful.
She wasn’t required to wear a uniform in this new position of hers and right now she was wearing some rather tight-fitting jeans and a white top that looked like it belonged to a gypsy. All ruffles and elastic, including a tight line under her breasts and a ruffle around the neckline that did nothing to hide her cleavage. She didn’t have to confine her hair either, but at least it was half-up and not that uncontrolled cascade of curls that had made his fingers itch the first time he’d seen it.
Or maybe it wasn’t any better. As Oliver gritted his teeth and followed the stupid stepping and clapping instructions, Bella suddenly whirled a quarter turn and her hair swirled with her. At least half of it was scraped back loosely from her face and pinned high on the back of her head with a sparkly clip. All Oliver could think now was how much better it would look if someone pulled that clip out and let the whole lot ripple over her shoulders and down her back. The back of that top was just as low as the front. He could see an expanse of smooth, golden-brown skin.
‘You forgot to clap,’ Bella admonished him with a grin. ‘On every count of four, remember?’
Oliver froze mid-step. He hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place. He needed time to himself to unwind and enjoy being in his own home, doing what he chose to do.
He really didn’t want to be dancing – if this silly stepping really counted as such an activity.
He also really,reallydidn’t want to be aware of any physical attraction that his mother’s nurse might possess.
And now he was being told he wasn’t doing it right? That he wasn’t performing up to expectations? Did Bella share his mother’s opinion that he was stuffy? The way she was smiling right now suggested that something was certainly amusing her.
That did it. With a look that had been known to send junior nurses fleeing his operating theatre in tears, Oliver turned on his heel and left the room.
* * *
‘Forty-nine…fifty…’ With an agonised grunt, Oliver let the weights on the bench press drop with a resounding clank.
He was dripping with sweat. He’d put the weights up on every machine and driven himself harder than he ever had, but the tension he was feeling hadn’t gone away one bit.
Maybe a run would do the trick. The state-of-the-art treadmill in the corner of the gym could be adjusted in both speed and incline until it felt like you were trying to run up the side of a cliff. It was also positioned so that you could look out at the sea while you were running, but Oliver wasn’t even aware of the glorious view this evening.
He was still angry at having been pushed so far out of his comfort zone.
He’d hated it.
Or maybe he hadn’t and that was the real problem here.
Did he really come across to everyone as being stuffy?
Did he care?
Maybe he did. Bella was the opposite of stuffy. She was the kind of person he’d always envied when he’d been at school. The popular type who always seemed to be having fun. Normal rules didn’t seem to apply to those golden people. They were the rebels that got away with breaking the rules. The ones who seemed to lead a charmed life.
Oliver’s breath was coming in such short, painful gasps he was forced to reduce the incline on the treadmill.
The only rebellion he’d ever attempted had been to go to medical school instead of the position waiting for him in one of his father’s über-successful businesses. That had nearly been enough to make public the sham of the Dawsons’ happy family image, so the pressure had been on to prove himself after that. Not only to succeed but to do it so well that nobody could point a finger and say that his father had been right in his opposition.
And that had meant keeping himself apart from the other medical students. The ones that got drunk and partied to relieve the stress. The ones that competed to see who got the prettiest nurses first.
Nurses like Bella.
With a groan, Oliver let the treadmill wind down. He stripped off his sweat-sodden T-shirt, his trainers and his socks but he left his boxer shorts on. A few rapid strides and he could dive into the welcome coolness of the indoor pool. When he surfaced, he immediately began a strong overarm stroke that pulled him quickly to the other end of the pool. Then he ducked and rolled, using his feet to push him off the side to begin the next length.
And still the tension bubbled inside his head.
