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‘Talia...’ This conversation was hardly helping him keep his libido in check.
Talia had always found it far too easy to affect him like this. He wondered if she’d ever realised it.
‘Only I understood this was about giving in to that attraction between us. No romance, no dating. And what you’re describing sounds lovely and all, but it also sounds an awful lot like the latter.’
‘What would you have preferred, Talia?’ he asked, struggling to keep his tone light. ‘A text instructing you to come straight to my hotel after your shift finished for a quick booty call?’
‘Isn’t that what the other night was about?’
‘Whatever I say here, I’m damned, aren’t I?’ he acknowledged wryly. ‘I wanted to take you out on a date. But what can I say, Talia? If you just wanted the sex, what do you think I’d have said? At the end of the day you’re a stunning woman and I’m still a red-blooded male.’
She eyed him for a moment before dropping her head back and letting out a clear, slightly wicked laugh that licked up his sex as surely as if she’d been using her tongue.
‘Good to know...’ She lifted one smooth, bare shoulder, then dropped it. ‘So why are we sitting here discussing dessert when there are far more tempting choices on the menu?’
Her eyes gleamed mischievously, and Liam found himself struggling to clear his suddenly parched throat.
‘You want to leave?’
An impish smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she made a show of smoothing down her sundress.
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
He should have resisted. He wanted to. At least a part of him wanted to?
??the logical, rational part of his brain.
Sadly, right now he realised that his brain wasn’t the bit of his anatomy that appeared to be in control. Not when a woman like Talia was casting him such decidedly wicked glances.
Forget the woman like. Only Talia could unbalance him like this.
He paid the bill as quickly as he could without his haste appearing unseemly, and then he slid his hand to the small hollow of her back—a gesture which she’d always loved—and guided her outside.
The joyful sounds of a street party slammed into them both, as did a swell of undulating bodies.
‘Down this way.’ Talia laughed, grabbing his hand and pulling him down a narrow street.
‘A shortcut?’
‘Geographically, it’s the long way round...’ she laughed again ‘...but tonight, yes, it’s a shortcut.’
‘The parade would be that difficult to navigate?’
She looked suddenly sheepish.
‘That, and the fact that my brothers are in there somewhere. Fate means they would inevitably spot me with you.’
‘And that’s a problem because...?’
She only hesitated for a fraction of a moment, but he didn’t miss it.
‘Because they’ve only just forgiven me for not being there earlier for Mama. If they see you and me together, knowing you’re from Duke’s too, they might start...jumping to conclusions.’
Did she mean they blamed him for Talia not being in St Victoria?
Why wasn’t he surprised? His father was right, he seemed to ruin everyone who got close to him. Except for his patients, and surgery of course. That was the only thing he had ever really had.
But he thrust that aside for now. Just for tonight, he told himself as they moved quickly down the cobbled alleys, ducking washing and dodging kids playing football. Even getting an odd look from an elderly woman sewing and overseeing her grandchildren from her chair in a nearby doorway.
