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All Tia’s fears flooded back. Was Luca interested in the woman? She was certainly attractive and she was totally ignoring Tia.
On impulse she slipped an arm through his. ‘Hurry up, darling,’ she whispered in her sexiest voice. ‘I’ve been waiting to go home with you all day.’
Luca went still and she saw surprise flicker briefly in his eyes. And she could hardly blame him for that! She was pretty shocked herself. Whatever had possessed her? One minute she was keeping him at arm’s length and the next she was ready to claw Dr Ford’s eyes out…
Embarrassed and confused by her own behaviour, Tia gingerly released his arm and shrank quietly into the background as Luca turned back to the SHO, scribbled somethin
g on the chart and issued some brief instructions.
As Dr Ford walked back across the car park, Luca turned to her, his gaze uncomfortably penetrating.
‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’ Still feeling embarrassed, Tia yanked the car door open so hard that she nearly removed it from its hinges.
One eyebrow swooped upwards. ‘I need to spell it out?’
Tia glared at him. ‘She was drooling all over you, Luca.’
He turned his head to watch the retreating woman and then looked back at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘Dr Ford? You’re imagining things.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Had he really not noticed? ‘She’s crazy about you and she’s only just met you and she’s probably the first of many. I suppose the whole hospital will be drooling over you by the end of the week.’
‘Drooling?’ The expression in his dark eyes was stunned. ‘I’m a doctor, Tia, not some sort of sex symbol.’
Tia bit her lip. How had Sharon described him? Sex on legs.
Did he really have no idea how attractive he was to women?
‘Think about it, Luca,’ she mumbled. ‘Was that really an important question she asked you or was she finding reasons to speak to you?’
He opened his mouth and closed it again, staring at her thoughtfully. ‘She’s my SHO, Tia.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ Tia gritted her teeth. ‘She’s been ogling you all afternoon.’
‘Ogling?’ His face was blank and suddenly he sounded very Italian. ‘What is ogling?’
Tia tipped her head back. ‘Staring at you, making eyes at you, flirting.’
‘You’re imagining things.’ His tone was calm but his gaze was speculative as it rested on her face. ‘She is my SHO. We have to speak to each other. We certainly weren’t flirting.’
Had he really not noticed? ‘She couldn’t take her eyes off you, Luca.’
‘And you were jealous.’ His quiet statement was more than a little smug and her chin lifted.
‘Jealous?’ She gave a short laugh that sounded false even to her ears. ‘Are all Italians as arrogant and self-confident as you? I wasn’t jealous, Luca.’
Being jealous would mean that she wanted him—and she didn’t, did she?
‘You have no reason to be jealous,’ he told her, carefully ignoring her comment about Italians.
She slid into the car and waited for him to start the engine.
‘When you are angry, your eyes turn a very interesting shade of green,’ Luca observed mildly, pulling out of the car park and onto the main road. ‘I noticed it the first night we met when I made the mistake of trying to tell you that you shouldn’t be hanging around a bus station at night.’
‘I shouted at you, didn’t I?’ Tia shot him a sideways look that bordered on the apologetic. ‘I’m not very good at being told what to do,’ she confessed grudgingly, and he gave a laugh of genuine amusement.
‘So I am beginning to learn.’ An unbearably sexy smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he glanced towards her. ‘It certainly makes for an interesting and unpredictable relationship, cara mia.’
