Do Opposites Attract? by Kathryn Freeman Read Free Book Online Page B

it to her. ‘Just what was needed, after all,’ he remarked dryly.
    Not wanting to turn down his gesture of friendship, Brianna took hold of the bottle, brought it to her lips and took a sip. Used to drinking whisky out of a crystal tumbler, she found it hard to judge how much of a mouthful she was taking and ended up spluttering. Calmly Mitch took the bottle back from her. Though his face was expressionless, she felt sure his brown eyes were laughing at her.
    He gestured for her to sit on the chair while he went to lie on the bed, rubbing at his face and eyes as if to wake himself up.
    ‘Rough night?’ Brianna asked.
    ‘You could say that.’
    Seeing his shattered face she felt a sharp pang of guilt. ‘Mitch, I’m sorry for what I said in the meeting. I’m sure you did all you could to save him.’
    Mitch glanced at her, his dark eyes holding hers. ‘Yes, we did. But maybe you were right. Situations like this occur far too frequently and we start to treat them as normal, using phrases we shouldn’t. I never meant the child’s life wasn’t worth it.’
    ‘I know,’ Brianna admitted quietly. And she did. He might not be crying, shouting, or wearing his emotions on his sleeve, but the man in front of her was suffering because he’d lost a patient. ‘It must be hard, watching a patient die like that. It’s the first time I’ve done it and I don’t think I could bear to do it again.’
    ‘Watching them die isn’t the hardest part. It’s feeling so damned useless that tears at you.’ He shrugged awkwardly then, as if embarrassed to have let slip that little morsel about himself.
    ‘How long have you being doing this job?’ she asked, partly because she was interested and partly to get them talking about something less harrowing.
    ‘With Medic SOS? Three years.’
    She thought of what she had already seen in the short time she’d been here. ‘How do you stand it?’
    ‘What, the primitive sleeping conditions? The cold river water shower?’
    She glared at him, not sure whether he was joking with her, or mocking her. His face was so flipping hard to read. ‘I meant how can you stand seeing suffering on such a scale?’
    Mitch drew himself further onto the bed and lay back against the pillow, putting his arms behind his head. ‘I guess, like most things in life, you get used to it after a while. It doesn’t make it easy to live with, but you aren’t shocked any more. Before working with Medic SOS I was in the army, so I’d already seen some pretty grim stuff.’ Abruptly he stopped, turning the tables on her. ‘What about you, Brianna? Why is someone like you spending a week here?’
    At his use of the words
like you
, she bristled. ‘Look, I know you’ve got me pegged as a spoilt rich bitch and maybe you’re right,’ she conceded crossly. ‘But I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to spend my life falling out of clubs drunk on champagne.’
    ‘Doesn’t sound too bad to me,’ he drawled. Then he smiled. Just as the laugh had earlier, the smile transformed his features, warming his dark brown eyes, smoothing the harsh planes of his face. If she was poetic she’d have said it was like a glimpse of sun on a cloudy day. It made her very much aware of him as a man, and not just an irritating person she was forced to temporarily put up with.
    Of its own volition, her body responded to him, her blood feeling warmer, her stomach all fluttery. Please no. She didn’t want to be attracted to this man. Hastily she turned away, pretending an interest in the floor. Anything to stop looking at him. ‘Well, I want to do something more with my life,’ she finally stated.
    When there was no reply, she stole a look at the bed. He was fast asleep. She watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest with a strange sort of relief. At least she could now escape his scrutiny. Hopefully, by the time she saw him again, she would have this crazy desire back under control. They’d just watched a patient