Playing the Playboy's Sweetheart by Carol Marinelli

eyes as she recalled how easily people that she had been told to love, to treat as family, to care for had been removed from her life. ‘It was just the start of it. After Katrina, Dad met someone else and then someone else, then it was Donna and the twins...’ She gave a tight smile, as she recalled that Hugh knew about that. ‘You get the drift.’ She didn’t want to go on but Hugh persisted.
    ‘Your dad’s getting married again?’
    Emily nodded.
    ‘Do you see the twins?’
    ‘Not really. I send them presents and things and they might be there at the wedding but Donna has majority access and...’ She shook her head. ‘I’m over talking about it.’ Emily looked around the staffroom that was emptying as everyone headed back. ‘I’d better go...’
    It was very possibly her last shift—Emily didn’t know if she’d be coming back and if she did she wasn’t sure if her notice would be served out here or in Theatre.
    It was very possibly the last time she would sit chatting to Hugh.
    ‘I really am sorry for what I said on Friday night...’
    ‘If you’d just told me the truth then it would have been fine.’
    ‘Yeah, well, don’t buy me champagne and then demand common sense.’
    The opportunity to ask her out was there again.
    He could ask her, they both knew it, except Hugh didn’t go for a second try. Instead he gave her a thin smile and Emily walked off.
    What was it with Emily that had Hugh pondering calling her back and asking her out again?
    In that moment he took a very honest inventory of himself and maybe Olivia had been right to be concerned. No, he’d never have cheated but there was something about his feelings for Emily that sat in a place marked unresolved.
    There were many women he fancied and he had many women who were friends.
    Sometimes the boundaries merged but never more so than they did with Emily. Hugh considered her a friend, though Emily had kept it pretty much at colleague level, yet there was no one he spoke more readily with, no one who got what he was saying even before the sentence had finished...
    As for attraction.
    Always.
    Absolutely.
    Yes.
    He saw the tension in Emily’s shoulders as she headed out of the staffroom and, no, he wasn’t going to call her back and make an idiot of himself again.
    * * *
    Emily knew that too.
    She’d left things on such a bad note that she’d probably lost her friend anyway if she quit working here, Emily realised. It was a terrible way to end three years of working together, but Hugh would be a very silly reason to stay.
    Tears were starting again as she walked back to work but at the last minute she turned around, about to make her way back to the staffroom, but then she saw Alex walking in.
    Yes, she did like Hugh in every way.
    Maybe this way, maybe if they followed Hugh’s way, she could get the best of both worlds—time with the man who made her heart flutter, safe in the knowledge it would end soon. Maybe it would be easier to get a little bit more involved knowing from the start that they had a use-by date on the box.
    She could handle that, surely?
    As for sex?
    There was an unfamiliar shiver in her stomach as she thought of it. No, it would be a terrible idea and yet...
    Emily wasn’t completely closed to it either.
    No.
    If she was going to do this then sex had to stay off the agenda. She was doing this to cement her friendship with Hugh out of work.
    A structured timeframe, company at her father’s wedding, a few Saturdays shared and then a very neat ending.
    And it would be neat because, after today, she might not be back at the hospital.
    Yes, it might be nice to have some time with Hugh and then a more natural break-up away from prying eyes, because she doubted she would be working here by then.
    She could do that, Emily decided.
    She would do that.
    Emily walked into the staffroom, out of the corner of her eye she could see Alex at the urn, making a drink, and it would be very easy for Emily to think she had Hugh in