The Magic of Christmas by Sarah Morgan Page B

Christmas list, Dr Blake?’
    â€˜Top of my list is a decent nanny. The current one has turned up to work five days in succession so that’s a start. If she turns out to be Mary Poppins then I’m going to have a happy Christmas.’
    â€˜That doesn’t seem like a very exciting Christmas present for you.’
    He studied her face for a long moment. ‘I don’t need exciting. What I need is to not worry about my children when I’m working.’
    â€˜Yes. I can see that must be a worry. In fact, the whole thing must be a worry. ‘Do you know what you need, Christian?’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜Fun.’ She tilted her head and looked at him with laughter in her eyes. ‘You look like a man who is taking life much too seriously at the moment. What you need is fun.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    F UN ?
    Why was everyone suddenly so obsessed with him having fun?
    First Chloe, now Lara. Only, coming from Lara, the word fun took on an entirely different meaning.
    When Chloe had used the word, he’d immediately thought of rowdy games of catch in the park, sledging in the snow on Hampstead Heath, playing Monopoly in front of the fire, with Aggie cheating. When Lara had used it, entirely different images had filled his brain.
    Dangerous images .
    He remembered her legs in the fairy costume, long and slim, her body slender but with curves in all the right places.
    She was getting under his skin, Christianthought grimly, struggling against the hot burn of lust that threatened to devour him.
    It wasn’t going to happen .
    His girls had been through hell and they’d only just started to show signs of settling down. There was no way he was going to do anything that might threaten their new-found security. They needed life to be stable and predictable. They didn’t need their father involved with another woman.
    Christian strode back to the comparative sanctuary of his office, wondering what was happening to him. He’d never had any trouble focusing on his work and since the divorce he’d had no trouble in not noticing women. But that had changed when he’d moved hospitals and met Lara King.
    No man could fail to notice Lara.
    She had a vibrant, energetic personality and her sense of humour infected the whole department. And as for the way she looked—well, her appearance matched her personality. Her hair flicked cheekily up at the edges, she wore an almost permanent smile on her face and her deep blue eyes always seemed to be twinkling with humour.
    But despite her obvious attractions, he’d managed to think of her only as a talented colleague.
    Until a week ago.
    Meeting her in the Christmas grotto had changed everything.
    His life was no longer neatly and securely divided into work and home. She’d bridged the two and in doing so had forced a hole through the defences he’d built around himself. And it was nothing to do with the fact that Aggie had so innocently broadcast the details of his personal life and everything to do with his awareness of Lara as a woman.
    With a soft curse, Christian sprawled in the chair behind his desk, ignoring the fact that his computer was telling him that he had seventy-two new messages in his inbox.
    He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
    She was all energy and laughter but his attempts to dampen his libido by dismissing her as vacuous and lightweight were continually thwarted by the fact that she was, without doubt, the brightest nurse he’d ever worked with. She was always one step ahead of him and her experience in the ED smoothed every clinical situation.
    She was vivacious, full of life and almost impossibly sexy and, if she’d come into his life at a different time…
    But she hadn’t, he reminded himself grimly, gritting his teeth and hitting a key on his computer so that he could view his emails.
    And it didn’t matter how bright she was or how attractive. It didn’t matter how