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Waking Up with Dr Off-Limits
Jess’s
Diary: At least catching my housemate Dr Adam Carmichael – bachelor,
sex-god, and my secret crush extraordinaire – in my bed means he
finally knows my name! For years Adam’s been 100% off-limits (if
ever a man needed a revolving door on his bedroom…), but there’s no
harm in dreaming of more…is there?
It’s their last summer of being single! Off duty, these three
nurses, and one midwife, are young, free and fabulous – for the
moment…
Excerpt
She sighed inwardly as she shut the
draw carefully and then reached for her deodorant. Her
still trembling fingers fumbled it and it thunked
against the shelf. She made a grab for it as it rolled
off the edge but it was already falling. It landed on
the polished hardwood floor at her feet with a crash
loud enough to wake the dead.
Or the devil anyway...
Adam sat bolt upright
in bed, the sheet ruching around his waist. “What the
hell?”
Jess opened her eyes
and poked her head around the edge of the door. “Sorry,”
she apologised. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh
dear.
He was utterly
magnificent.
His sandy blonde hair,
beyond messy, somehow cornered the market on sexy. His
chest and six pack were beautifully delineated. He
looked like he’d just come from riding waves in Hawaii
instead of another humanitarian mission.
Jess hastily averted
her eyes chiding her lack of decorum. He was a brilliant
surgeon doing vital work. Not a male centrefold.
Adam frowned his brain
heavily mired in the sticky web of jet lag. He really
was getting too old for continually mixing up his time
zones. Too old for running away.
“Jess?”
He blinked in case he
was imagining her because this was not the Jess he
remembered. Sweet Jess with the cute ponytail. Jess of
the bare feet, jeans and tee.
He’d never seen her
with her hair all loose around her shoulders like this.
Or in nothing but a
towel for that matter.
What the hell was she
doing in his room? “What are you doing here?”
Jess swallowed as he
pinned her with his lapis lazuli gaze. It was too dark
to see them but she knew from detailed memory that the
blue was flecked with golden highlights. He rubbed at
the tantalising stubble at his jaw line. The delicious
rasping noise sent Jess’s stomach into free fall as the
image of him scraping it against her belly took hold.
“Err...” Jess felt
unaccountably nervous and hopelessly gauche in the face
of his potent male virility. Which was utterly
ridiculous. Adam was hardly leering at her. In fact he
was frowning at her like she was an annoying little
insect that had dared to wake him up.
Instead of an almost
naked, fully-grown, nearly twenty-four year old woman.
She’d seen the way he
looked at women. He was not looking at her like that.
He’d never looked at her like that.
She doubted her chastity was under threat.
Jess cleared her
throat. “Ah...this is my room.”
Adam’s frown deepened
as her response registered. He looked around. Too small
bed, scatter cushions all over the floor, floral sheets.
Romance novel on the bedside table.
Then it all came
flooding back to him. The air-con in his room deciding
to chose this sweltering day to break down. One on a
list of many ailments suffered by his poor, neglected
house.
The repairman not being able to get here until ten. His
overwhelming weariness.
Adam ran a hand through
his hair as the cogs slowly started to turn. “I thought
you were on an early today? That’s what the fridge
calendar says.”
Early on in their
cohabitation the girls had devised a colour coded system
to keep track of each other. With four people coming and
going on shift work it made things much easier. Her
roster was in yellow.
Jess frowned wishing
his logic was as easy to follow as the flex of his
bicep, the path of his fingers. “So you decided to...try
out my bed?”
Her heart beat double-time at the illicitness of her
suggestion.
Adam pressed the pads
of his fingers into his eye sockets. “So the calendar’s
wrong?”
“No. It’s right. I was
called in last night though...I only clocked off half an
hour ago.”
“Oh...” Adam felt his
interest pique despite the heavy cloak of fatigue.
“Anything interesting?”
Jess couldn’t believe
she was having this conversation.
In her room. In a
towel.
With Adam. In a sheet.
“Liver transplant.”
"Ah...”
Jess waited for something more forthcoming
but Adam collapsed back against the mattress, his abs
unfurling like flower petals, his eyes closed.
Oh brother! He really
did look centrefold material now reclining in her bed as
if he owned it.
“Adam!” she hissed,
still not game enough to touch him.
Adam, already falling
back into the blissful folds of sleep prised his eye
open. He raised himself slightly on bent elbows. “What?”
he demanded crankily.
It hadn’t been her plan
to wake him up but now he was he could damn well vacate
her bed. “Why are you in my bed?”
He watched her mouth
move but it took a moment for the words to compute. He
hadn’t noticed how pink Jess’s mouth was before. Like
fairy floss. Was it lipstick or natural? It was a little
too dark to tell. “Hmm?”
Jess noticed his
heavy-lidded gaze on her mouth and almost lost her train
of thought. She scrambled hard to get it back again.
“You’re. In. My. Bed.”
He hadn’t noticed how
her hair flicked up at the ends like that when it was
freed from its ponytail or even that it was so long. It
brushed her shoulders and fell forward over well defined
collar bones.
Had it always been so
blonde?
“Ah but Goldilocks," he
teased lightly a smile spread across his full lips.
"Your bed was just right."
From
"WAKING UP WITH DR OFF-LIMITS" by Amy Andrews
Mills and Boon® Medical Romance™ Oct 2011 ISBN:
978-1-742-880259
Copyright: © 2010 Amy Andrews ® and ™ are trademarks
of the publisher. The edition published by arrangement
with Harlequin Books S.A. For more romance
information surf to:
http://www.eHarlequin.com
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Review
Waking Up with Dr Off
Limits by Amy Andrews
Category: Medical Romance
Rating: 4 1/2 stars
" Operating theatre nurse Jessica Donaldson has loved world-famous surgeon Adam Carmichael since she first met him three years ago. His recent work saving lives in third world countries has only made him more desirable. However, Jessie doesn't think she will ever have a chance to be with him because Adam is the older brother of Jessie's best friend. But when Jessie is assigned to help Adam with a surgery he is performing in their local hospital, it gives Adam the chance to see Jessie as a woman and professional, not just as his sister's friend. Little does Jessie know that Adam is attracted to her, but he has promised his sister that he will never date Jessie or break her heart. Despite all of the obstacles standing in their way, the pair embarks on a whirlwind romance. But will their differences tear them apart? This is a steamy tale that sizzles with passion, drama and sensuality. Amy Andrews will thrill readers with this fast-paced novel about love and medicine."Nas Dean
Romantic Times
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