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‘If you don’t need me here, I’ll go and start setting up, sir.’
‘That’ll be fine,’ Fitz confirmed smoothly, watching Elle twist her hands in discomfort.
This was the moment to put into practice what he’d been thinking. To keep himself at arm’s length. To walk away. To let Elle walk away.
He didn’t move.
Neither did Elle.
They both knew what was coming. It was inevitable. And unavoidable. They’d fallen into working together with incredible ease but they couldn’t ignore their shared night. And, worryingly, he found he didn’t want to. So much for it being a one-night stand; he needed to hear her talk about it, to know that she found it as unforgettable as he did. Which only made him all the more irritable.
Fitz waited until Carl had rounded the corner before he began speaking.
‘You told me you weren’t military.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ She shook her head miserably. ‘I told you I was a doctor, I
omitted to say I was an army trauma doctor.’
‘Yet you knew I was a colonel in the army.’
What was wrong with him that he was blaming her?
It was as though the more frustrated he felt at his own inability to walk away from her, the angrier he felt, and he turned it onto her in some misplaced effort to keep his distance. To stop himself from hauling her into his arms and kissing her senseless. Which, at this instant, was the only thing he ached to do.
Ached.
He’d never wanted anyone like this. Never. It made no damned sense.
‘Yes, but I didn’t think it would matter.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Listen, I understand this isn’t the most ideal development to our...one-night stand.’
His whole body balked at the sound of the words on her lips. It was exactly what that night had been and yet, ludicrously, it seemed a wholly inadequate description.
The ache became a crushing need, the likes of which he’d never experienced.
‘Not the most ideal development hardly even begins to describe what this is, wouldn’t you agree?’
In his effort to stay distant his voice sounded harsher, uglier than he’d like, and she jerked her head up in shock. But he was fighting to make sense of the maelstrom in his head. In his chest. He suspected that if he didn’t push her away he might end up kissing her. And he could hardly do that.
‘Not ideal, no,’ she agreed slowly, tightly. ‘But you’re acting like it’s a scourge on you or something. It isn’t. We haven’t contravened a single rule. We’re both commissioned officers and you aren’t my boss. There’s no rule against us having slept together.’
‘Not here,’ he silenced her, glancing hastily around, his tone even more brusque than the jerk of his head.
There was no one about but, still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. He strode angrily back to the set of buildings, barely pausing to throw a final command over his shoulder.
‘My office.’
Chapter Seven
THERE WAS NO mistaking the barely restrained fury in his glower. Wordlessly she followed him to the main building, her heart detonating in her chest.
Guilt poured through her.
Wait, was he somehow blaming her for the unforeseeable turn of events?
Disappointment crashed over her, almost painful as it burned within her chest and swamped out everything else. All of the fantasies she’d so absurdly cradled this past week, all of her memories, were torn down in a single instant.
What a fool she was, building him up in her head into a perfect, unrealistic image of a man who had shown her such generosity and selflessness that night together, faultlessly anticipating her needs, and then exceeding them, over and over again.
