Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page B

table nearest the door. The other room was smaller and, being internal with no windows to the outside, darker, but at least it wasn't opposite where she'd be able to see him whenever their doors were opened between patients. Besides, she refused to add to his entertainment by asserting her right to the room they were in now. 'If you've any questions, please, don't hesitate...'
    He seemed to find the way she let the words trail off amusing. His mouth quirked. 'I won't,' he said quietly.
    'Then I'll leave you to it.' The door behind her was still half-open but now she pulled it wide.
    'When did you cut off your hair?'
    She froze momentarily, then turned slowly back to him, one hand lifting self-consciously to the now almost brutally short, silky red strands behind her ear. Luke had liked her hair long. He'd loved grabbing great fiery handfuls and twisting their bodies in it until they were bound together.
    The memory of the way he'd liked to make love to her like that brought hot colour surging up from her chest to her face.
    She was used to herself with short hair now. She still had a photograph at the house of herself with it long, but these days the sight of her hair falling below her waist, the way she'd worn it in her years with Luke, invariably startled her. 'Six years ago,' she said thickly, meeting the calculating regard with which he watched her flush with as much insouciance as she could manage.
    'Interesting.' Despite that, he sounded bored. 'And do you dress like this regularly now, Annie, or is the big cover-up routine strictly for my benefit?'
    Annabel, still flushing, pulled the lapels of her white coat together clumsily over her dress. It wasn't worth it, she decided numbly. It wasn't worth it, protesting about her name. Even if hearing him say 'Annie' grated across her nerves like slow sandpaper. 'I'm older,' she stated nervously, referring to his comment about her clothes. 'I prefer a more suitable hairstyle and clothes—'
    'Not that much older.'
    'When I was young I wore young clothes. Now I'm old—'
    'You're still a young woman.'
    She swallowed heavily. 'What I choose to wear is none of your business.'
    He lifted one broad shoulder in a careless movement that seemed to her intensely male and very Luke. 'I didn't say it was,' he said coolly. 'I was simply curious about why a woman who loved cosmetics, tight sweaters and short skirts now turns up two days in a row with a bare face and wearing a shapeless dress down to her ankles.'
    'I've work to do.' Her hands shaking now, she walked out quickly, and pulled the door shut behind her.
    It was deliberate, she thought sickly, stumbling into the office next door. Either for his own...sadistic amusement or out of some belated need for revenge for past sins, he was deliberately trying to unsettle her.
    What was it he wanted from her? Did he want them to fight? Surely there'd been more than enough arguments during their marriage to mean he should be welcoming with relief her desperate attempts at a mature, professional coexistence?
     

CHAPTER THREE
    'You don't mind, Annabel, about me putting Professor Geddes next door?' Wendy Dogherty, the charge nurse in Outpatients, came racing into Annabel's room before she'd even had a chance to sit down. 'I am sorry, I know you do like to work in there, only...well, we weren't expecting him.'
    'It's all right, Wendy. I don't mind.' Annabel excused herself the lie because to admit anything else would have worried Wendy even more, and it already looked as if Luke's arrival had sent the normally composed nurse into something of a tail-spin. She could understand that. Luke had done something similar to her for years. He was still doing it now. 'He is the new big chief, after all. He should have the best room.'
    'Well, that's what I thought—' But Wendy broke off, her pale complexion flushing. 'Well, the truth is, Annabel, we didn't know what to do with him. The girls are in a tizzy over him turning up. But he has been very good.