A Baby to Care for (Mills & Boon Medical) by Lucy Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

are fine, thank you very much, and I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty of finding someone to relieve your muscular aches and pains. Just ask one of those lovely ladies who were impatiently standing in line to kiss you last weekend.’
    Dex watched as Iris shifted in her seat and couldn’t believe he’d made her uncomfortable. It certainly hadn’t been his intention to offend so what had he done now? He hadn’t kissed her. He hadn’t proposed to her. All he’d done was hint at getting her to massage his shoulders because they were sore…and because usually his charm worked on almost everyone he met. Almost. His new colleague, however, appeared very stand-offish and it made him wonder what had happened in her past to make her that way.
    When he’d tried to link arms with her at the fair last weekend, she’d been as stiff as a board yet trying very hard to be polite and keep him at a distance. When he’d attempted to kiss her…well, even though she’d shocked him by slapping him across the cheek, it had brought a smile to his face every time he’d thought of it. She had spirit and she intrigued him yet Dex was picking up a strong sensation that she wanted to keep a firm distance away, not only from him but from everyone else in the town as well.
    She hadn’t mentioned her marriage or anything to do with her husband during the past week, not that he’d had the chance to have any conversations with her. Every time he’d walked into the kitchenette in the clinic, if he’d found Iris in there on her own, she’d quickly excused herself and disappeared into her consulting room. Unable to ask her directly, Dex had been so interested he’d checked her résumé and discovered she was a widow.
    It had helped him to fill in a few gaps and explained why sometimes, when he’d been watching her, he’d sensed a deep loneliness about her. Yet at other times, like this eveningwhen she’d been around Melissa, he’d seen her laughing brightly, her eyes sparkling as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
    However, despite the different sides of Iris he’d managed to glimpse so far, the one he liked best was when she’d been watching him stretch. He hadn’t intentionally stretched his muscles to show off his body—he stretched his muscles because they were tense. He’d been out helping a mate put up a back fence yesterday afternoon and his muscles were sore. He’d stretched—and Iris had looked.
    What Dex hadn’t expected was that he’d liked her visual caress more than he’d care to admit. The woman had plagued his thoughts quite a bit during this past week and he wasn’t used to that at all. He didn’t mind the fact that he was interested in her but he was wary that he’d had a difficult time wiping her from his mind, especially at night-time.
    When he’d discovered she was indeed available, he’d been secretly pleased but then he’d started asking himself why. Why should he be pleased? Iris was just another colleague. Just another woman and a woman who appeared to have quite a few things she needed to work out in her personal life. He knew Didja would help her—it was the magic of the outback—but as far as he was concerned, he needed to keep his distance from the gorgeous woman sitting beside him. But for some strange reason thoughts of Iris persisted.
    He wanted to ask her questions, to listen to her talk, to hear her laugh, to watch a smile play about her lips. It had been made abundantly clear to him that he was definitely attracted to her but he knew the attraction would never last. It never did. People changed. They moved on. And he had locked his heart away, determined it would never get hurt again.
    Iris shifted in her chair again, putting her hand onto her wineglass as though getting ready to make her escape. Dex didn’t want her to leave, not yet. He tried to think of the lastthing she’d said. That’s right, she’d made some comment about women standing in line for him.
    ‘You do