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As the door closed with a soft click Evie stared into her lap, waiting for the inevitable questions.
‘You’re still...attracted to me?’
He actually sounded surprised, and a little put out, and for a moment Evie forgot her embarrassment. She jerked her head up to stare at him. The man did look in the mirror, didn’t he?
‘Yes,’ she answered slowly. ‘I can’t help that you don’t feel the same. My kidney...situation is hardly a turn-on, but you don’t have to act as though I’m so completely undesirable as a woman. You were attracted to me, too, once.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘That you were attracted to me?’ Evie was confused.
‘No—’ he actually clicked his tongue at her ‘—that I don’t find you desirable.’
She barked out a humourless laugh.
‘I think the fact you walked out on me the other day, whilst I was lying practically naked on the bed, is pretty much all the evidence I need.’
‘Because I thought I was taking advantage of you,’ he exclaimed in a low voice. ‘You’re only a week post-op. A major op, I should add, and you needed my help to even wash your hair in the shower. And there I was, reacting to you. I thought you felt somehow...obligated to me.’
Obligated? Evie’s head raced. No wonder he’d looked so disgusted. But not at her, as she’d assumed. At himself.
A bubble of happiness wound its way up inside her chest.
‘So you don’t find me undesirable? Unattractive?’
‘I think our curtailed week last year makes it clear just how desirable I find you,’ he refuted, his voice thicker than usual.
But any response died on her tongue as the door opened up again and the surgeon walked back in.
So, Max had wanted her?
Had he really walked out because he was disgusted at himself, wanting her the way she’d wanted him? Had he really stayed away because he hadn’t been sure he could control himself around her and not, as she had surmised, because he had abandoned her?
She chanced another look at Max, who was now also toying with the pamphlet the nephrologist had placed on the table.
A grin played at the corners of her mouth.
She wondered if it was time for a bit of fun. Everything had been so serious lately. Fears weighing so heavily on her, between her own health and Imogen’s. And the shock of finding out he had a daughter must have been incredible for Max. But what if they could rediscover some of the fun they’d once shared? The wild side they’d seen in each other during their brief fling.
Yes, the sex had been incredible. But they’d also had fun, laughing and joking in such a way that any outsider would have thought they were in a relationship rather than just indulging in a brief fling before Max disappeared overseas.
Was it possible? Or was it a foolhardy idea? There was only one way to find out.
It was like a switch clicking in Evie’s brain as a cheeky thought slid inside.
‘I didn’t lose interest in sexual intimacy.’ She met her nephrologist’s eye boldly. She couldn’t risk looking to her side. ‘I still thought about it, even if I didn’t have the opportunity I’d had before my daughter was born. I thought about it a lot, in fact. Especially in the beginning, and then again in the last week before my operation.’
When she’d moved in with Max. Let him work that one out. In her peripheral vision, she could see his head twisting around to look at her, but she didn’t dare acknowledge him for fear of laughing.
‘That’s interesting,’ her surgeon noted, oblivious to the significance of the statement. ‘And did you feel able to act on it?’
‘Not really,’ she answered honestly. ‘Having an infant isn’t exactly conducive. And then there was the dialysis as we talked about before. Although they weren’t the only factors.’
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘Now?’ She affected an air of nonchalance. ‘I feel very much back to my old self already.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ Max’s deep voice reverberated around the room.
