Valentino's Pregnancy Bombshell Read Online Free PDF Page B

before.
    Valentino nodded. ‘Harry contacted me in the early hours of the morning and asked me to fill in. I got the five a.m. flight out of Melbourne.’
    â€˜Oh.’ So they’d be working together too. This wasn’t how it was supposed to pan out. None of it was. But, then, when had her life gone according to plan over the last three years? Bitterness rose like bile in her throat. Wasn’t it her turn to catch a break?
    Valentino pushed off the bench opposite, which he’d propped himself against, and took three paces until he was standing in front of her. ‘Watch me today, Paige,’ he murmured. ‘Then we’ll talk.’
    Paige felt his husky tones wash over her, soothing the burn and the knot of worry that sat like an iron fist deep in her gut.
    And before she could refute him, rebuff him again, he turned away and she watched as he exited the anaesthetic room.
    So much for feeling positive. How could her day have gone to hell so early?
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    It took about ten minutes into the first surgery to convince Paige of Valentino’s capabilities. He was, indeed, an extremely good surgeon. Efficient, steady, sure and capable. Methodical in his approach, supremely knowledgeable, unfailingly polite and, despite the mask and being covered head to toe in green, devilishly charismatic.
    There wasn’t one nurse he didn’t flirt with, including Di Hamilton, who’d been married for thirty-five years and had twelve grandchildren. It was obvious he adored women and Paige watched as every female fell under his spell.
    But he was a man’s man too. From the nervous surgical resident who was assisting to the orderly adjusting the theatre light, he won them all over, talking football and Australian beers and the price of petrol.
    They all loved him. Paige wished she could say the same. Between concentrating on her job, the thoughts circling in her head at a thousand miles an hour and the cataclysmic brush of his arm or fingers as she passed him an instrument, she was totally over him by the end of the day.
    Every breath, every move, every chuckle or low request for something stroked along her pelvic floorand took her right back to that night. Being under him. The way he’d felt inside her. Which only agitated her even more. She had bigger things to worry about. Like poor Harry and his grandson. And McKenzie.
    It was like she was in a bubble with him, just the two of them, everyone else fading into insignificance. She knew that was the way it often was between surgeon and scrub nurse, requiring a special kind of synchronicity. But it was more than that and she knew it. She’d anticipated Harry’s every move in Theatre for the last two years but had never felt this more base reaction.
    She just wanted out. To get as far away from St Auburn’s and Valentino Lombardi as possible. To hug McKenzie and remember what was real in her life and what was fantasy.
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    When the last op was finished, Paige couldn’t get out of her gown quickly enough. Thankfully Valentino had left the theatre to go and do post-op checks in the wards and she was able to breathe again. To function without a pulse that kept racing and a stomach that wasn’t looping the loop. To clean up. To do her job.
    She was back in the audiology department thirty minutes later, making notes in patient charts, very aware that she had the next six weeks off and conscientious enough to ensure everything was up to date on today’s operative cases.
    â€˜Here you are. Gloria said you’d be here.’
    Paige’s heart gave a jolt and she braced herself as she looked up from her chart. He was lounging in thedoorway in trousers and business shirt, open at the neck and turned up at the cuffs, looking dark and tousled and incredibly sexy.
    â€˜You have hat hair,’ she commented, before casting her eyes downwards again.
    Valentino chuckled, ruffling his locks. ‘Yes.’ He guessed that was one