Page 54 of Doc Defence

She hesitated but still didn’t look back at him. “The early. I’ll need to be in at eight.” Hel groaned. She wasn’t a morning person and hated the early shift.

Frost must have heard her groan as he laughed and said, “You’re not an early bird?”

She huffed and turned back around to face him. It would be rude to keep talking with her back to him. This time, she made sure she didn’t make eye contact. Her gaze locked on his lips—nope, that wasn’t any better. She settled for a point next to his head, which meant she wasn’t tempted to look at the tattoo snaking up his arm and over his left shoulder. Or look at his biceps, which flexed and relaxed in a very appealing way.

Hel hoped her voice sounded normal to him when she answered, although she detected a slight squeak. “No. It’s my weakness. I make plans to wake up and have plenty of time to eat breakfast and mainline coffee. But then I start to snooze the alarm and inevitably don’t have time to eat.”

“Is there food at work?”

Why was he asking her all these questions? She needed to go outside to settle her racing heart and let the flush she could feel building fade.

Taking a slow, deep breath, she replied, “Not that I have time to buy. I’ve eaten an embarrassingly large number of chocolate bars from the vending machine for breakfast. I imagine it’s a little different to the morning routine of a professional athlete?”

Oh my god, why couldn’t she stop talking? She needed to get away from him, and instead, she was admitting to a chocolate addiction and asking about his diet, which she was sure was a lot better than hers. Sometimes, her mouth ran away from her.

Frost chuckled comfortably, seemingly unaware of her inner turmoil, “You’re not wrong. I have a nutritionist, and the team I played for had catering we could access whenever we wanted. You burn so many calories training and playing, it’s very necessary. You eat the wrong food, and you flake out.”

“Yeah. I can imagine. Slightly less of a performance environment in the Emergency Department. If you took our sugar and caffeine off us, the whole place would fall apart.” A massive yawn split her face. “And now, I really do have to stash your booze and go to bed.”

“Okay,” Frost replied.

Hel gathered all the bottles of booze and ferried them out to the car. She would drop them over to Clara’s and put them in their wine cellar for safekeeping.

When she was done, she walked back through the house and said goodnight to Frost without even looking at him.

His reply of, ‘Goodnight,’ echoed after her as she climbed the stairs.

At the top, Hel forced herself not to even look at his room. She entered the guest suite, dropped her bag onto the floor and firmly closed the door.

Hel groaned when her alarm went off, and she reached out for her phone. Nope, nope, nope, nope. It was not time to wake up. It couldn’t be time to wake up.

She had spent far too much of the night tossing and turning, listening to every little creak in the house and imagining it was Frost.

She hit the snooze button on her phone and fell back asleep.

The alarm rang through the air again, and she groaned, “Nooooooo.” And hit the snooze button.

When it went off the next time, she threw her covers back and again fell instantly asleep.

The fourth time the alarm went off, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat there groggily. Running her hand through her wild curls, she checked the time on her phone.

“Shit,” she grumbled loudly. It was seven fifteen, which left her twenty minutes to get ready for work and leave the house.

Hustling, she dashed into the bathroom, had a quick shower and got dressed into her hunter-green coloured scrubs. When she checked her phone again, she had five minutes to get out of the house and still be on time for work.

She grabbed her work bag—which was currently a reusable shopping bag, as her nice one was now ash from the fire—and tiptoed out of her room, closing the door gently and creeping down the stairs.

“Morning,” Frost called from the kitchen.

Hel screamed in surprise and dropped her bag. Her plastic water bottle—again, her nice one was gone—rolled out and across the floor, disappearing under the sofa.

“Shit,” Frost swore. “Are you okay?”

Hel breathed deeply, clutching at her chest. For some reason, she hadn’t imagined she would see him in his own kitchen in his own house, which was ridiculous as he obviously lived here. And for a second, when she had heard his voice, she thought all the imagining of him she did in the night had somehow manifested him, and it scared the crap out of her.

“Yeah. Sorry. That was a total overreaction.” Hel risked a glance over at him, unsure if she was relieved or disappointed to see him dressed in a short-sleeved t-shirt and track pants.

In her imagination, during the night—while she should have been sleeping—she walked in on him without his shirt on. He strolled over to her, looked down at her, and said—. She put the brakes on the thought but couldn’t control the slight flush rising on her cheeks.

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