Even so, his career wasn’t the whole of it. The whole of it was that he feared being the kind of man whose selfish, self-centred actions hurt any wife, any child, the way his father had hurt them. Time and again. And the truth was that he would be that kind of man. However much he abhorred the thought, it was unavoidable. Inexorable. It was in his blood.
Just as it was in Rafi’s blood.
Much as he loved his younger brother, Tak wasn’t blind to the fact that Rafi was their father all over again. And Tak hated that. Yet here he was. Staring at this doctor as though he’d never seen anyone, anything quite like her before.
It made no sense.
There was something about her which snagged his attention and made him think she possessed a unique quality, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what that was. He told himself that he certainly wasn’t following the long, impossibly elegant line of her neck, or wondering what that glorious hair might look like free of its rigid net cage, or imagining what lay beneath that less than flattering orange suit.
Still he didn’t move.
Once Effie was done with her notes she’d be back to the heli and to her base, ready for the next shout. Which was a good thing. A great thing. It meant he could get past this crazy moment and back to real life.
A life that didn’t include his baby sister interfering in his life and picking out potential dates for him, he reminded himself firmly. Least of all dates with a woman like Effie.
Except hadn’t Hetti told him that it wouldn’t be a date? Not in any real sense of the word, anyway. What had she called them...the perfect foil for each other? Each of them using the other to keep the world off their back?
It should sound ludicrous. It did sound ludicrous. But in between women taking his single status as evidence that of course he must be yearning for the perfect wife, and his mother becoming relentless in her desire to see all of her children settled down, even against their will, ludicrous might just work.
It wasn’t as though he could simply turn around and tell Mama to stay out of his personal life, much as he might want to. She would always be too fragile, too weak to handle it—their father had made sure of that. And she might not have been the perfect mother, but at least she’d always been there.
Hetti was right. He needed a foil. A distraction. Effie.
Tak turned back to eye the new air ambulance doctor again just as she was finishing up her notes.
As if it was meant to be. Effie. Dr Effie Robinson. He remembered her name now, from Douglas Jacobs’s notes. He narrowed his eyes for a moment.
‘Dr Robinson, I wonder if we could have a word? In private.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘LET ME GET this straight—you’re asking me out on a date?’
Effie was infinitely proud of the way she’d kept any shake out of her quiet voice. The same could not be said for her stentorian heart.
‘No. I’m asking you out on a fake date.’
‘I don’t know whether to be amused or insulted.’ Her eyebrows felt as if they were somewhere up in the vicinity of her hairline. ‘Is this some kind of practical joke? Hazing the new member of staff? Because I can tell you right now—’
He made no attempt to conceal his irritation as he cut her off. ‘It isn’t. I don’t have time for stupid pranks, and I hardly think this would be a particularly funny one even if I did. I need a date for the ball and you fit the bill.’
‘There are probably a hundred women in this hospital alone who would jump at your oh-so-romantic offer.’ Effie felt she’d injected just the right amount of sarcasm into her tone. ‘But I am not one of them.’
She wasn’t some green doctor, about to go giddy because the gorgeous Tak Basu was talking to her. She’d refused to do that six weeks ago, when one of her first ever air ambulance cases had thrown her a hillside rescue and a man, Douglas Jacobs, suffering from expressive aphasia.
Tak had been the neurological consultant on call. He’d threatened to steal her breath away on sight. But she’d been determined not to let him.
Tall, with archetypal brooding dark looks, he wasn’t exactly a playboy, but rumour had it that he had dated some high-profile stunning women in his time.
Well, good for him. But good-looking, arrogant males held little interest for her. Hadn’t she been there, done that, and ended up at just turned eighteen years old, heading to Oxford University with a newborn infant in tow?
For the past thirteen years Nell had been her life. She hadn’t wanted anything—even her longed-for medical career—as much as she’d wanted to take care of her daughter. But something about this man sent her body’s warning system into motion, into an internal flurry, like ants who had just had dirt knocked into their nest.
‘I don’t think you are remotely one of them. Which is precisely why I’m asking you. No jokes, no hazing—just a mutually beneficial arrangement.’
She opened her mouth to reply but no words came.
A fake date, indeed. It should sound insane. Nonsensical. Yet his rich, even tone and neutral expression made it sound utterly plausible. Normal, even. As if a fake date was a completely run-of-the-mill daily event.
Perhaps it was in his world.
Tak Basu—one of the hospital’s brightest stars. Talk about an eligible bachelor. His reputation for medical excellence preceded him only slightly more than his brooding good looks and an immorally stunning Adonis physique that would make even the most pious woman ache to sin.
Yet now she realised that not even the most fevered description could accurately convey just how devastating he was in the flesh, or just how paralysing his sheer magnetism truly was.
Every hair on her body felt as though it was standing to attention. Ready to do his bidding—eager, even. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced in the whole of her life.
Then there were the smaller things. Like his big hands, strong forearms, the way he stood as though he owned the world. Or the shock of thick black hair, longer on top than she might have expected, which only added to his already six foot three height. It looked soft and inviting, and it took Effie a moment to realise that her fingers were actually aching with the urge to test it out.
And so she perched there on her stool, pretending she was still working so that she didn’t have to turn to him and withstand the full weight of her inconvenient attraction. The fact that he didn’t seem to date much only enhanced his appeal—and his mystique.
Finally—mercifully—she found her tongue again. ‘What on earth makes you think I want a fake date?’ She flushed. ‘Or indeed any kind of date.’
She studiously ignored the little voice in her head taunting her for engaging with him. Telling her that had it been anyone else she would already have declined politely before walking away.
‘Isn’t that rather the point?’ His mouth curved slightly in what could only be described as a sinful smile. ‘If it’s a fake date, then it isn’t really any kind of date.’
‘Semantics.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Or riddles. In any case, I’ve never really cared for either. Just as I really don’t need a date—fake or otherwise.’
Still she didn’t make herself walk away. Why was that?
‘I don’t understand how I...how a fake date...concerns me.’
And she wanted to understand. Perhaps a little bit too much. Even if he was eyeing her as though to him she rated as about as intelligent as the average sponge in the animal kingdom. She could take offense, but that really wasn’t her style. Who had time in a job like her?
‘Hetti suggested otherwise.’
‘Hetti?’
‘Yes, Hetti. The other Dr Basu.’ He jerked his head towards where his sister and her team were focussed on the cyclist. ‘Hemavati.’
Something clicked. How had she missed it before? Probably something to do with the stress of moving house, moving town, moving halfway acros
s the country. And at every step fighting with her thirteen-going-on-thirty-year-old daughter, who hadn’t wanted to leave everything she knew.
‘Hetti? Yes, I know who Hetti is. I just don’t understand why she would have mentioned me to you.’
She and Hetti had worked together for a couple of years back at Allport Infirmary’s A&E. They’d even been friends. Well, as close to being friends as two rather guarded individuals could be. Probably that was one of their shared traits, which had drawn them to each other.
‘She mentioned that you were caught on the horns of a dilemma—not wanting a date for the charity gala on one side and risking being hit on all night if you’re without a date on the other. Apparently you’ve swiftly shut down any man who has asked you.’
Nothing about Nell, then. That was good. The last thing she wanted was people gossiping about her having been a teenage mum, or privately questioning whether she was really up to the job of being an air ambulance doctor. It was such a demanding, limited environment, and lives literally depended on her and her two paramedics.
No one else. Just the three of them. Not like in the A&E, where she’d been a doctor up until now, where she could call on a colleague for a consult if she needed to.
So she was still new to the air ambulance team—still in her probationary period. Her employers might have liked her CV and her references, and the way she’d come across in her many interviews, but they didn’t know the first thing about her. Mainly because she kept her private life just that. Utterly private.
If they’d known the truth about her would they still have hired her? Would she have been good enough for them? Or even enough?
A jolt of something that felt altogether too much like insecurity bolted through Effie before she could stop it. Before she could shove it back into the distant shadows of her brain where it belonged.
The only person who had never made her feel she had something to prove was Eleanor. The one woman who had seen through Effie’s tough, angry exterior to the frightened, lonely kid beneath. The woman who had loved her so much that she’d been willing to fight Effie’s sorry excuse for a mum and to adopt her. The woman who had seen Effie’s potential and encouraged her to really do something with her life—starting by going to university. And not just any university, either.
But Eleanor had been gone from her life for so many years now that it was getting harder and harder for Effie to remember how it had felt to have someone to lean on.
It would hardly have been surprising if her bosses and colleagues had panicked about hiring a single mum with a young daughter. If Nell was ill she couldn’t just call in sick herself, like other parents. There was no one to cover her. Her team depended on her being there every single time she was supposed to be. On never being distracted.
Including right now.
Effie jutted out her chin and met his gaze. ‘And so you stepped up to save me from myself? How chivalrous.’
Her tone was a little tighter, a little sharper than she might have preferred, but that was better than giving in to this absurd heat trapped low in her belly. The kind which threatened to melt a girl from the inside out.
Surely she was past all that nonsense? Hadn’t having a baby at eighteen taught her that much, at least?
‘You could call it chivalrous. Or you could call it selfish. I’d prefer the term mutually beneficial.’
‘Really?’ Even as she asked, she knew it was a bad sign that it made a difference to her. Made her a little bit too eager for an excuse to break her usual no dating code. ‘So what do I gain from it?’
‘Hetti mentioned you were too career-focussed to have time to date, and that your move here has invited attention. Fresh blood and all that. We both know that attending this function alone would be tantamount to inviting people to hit on you all night. Going with me should make anyone else leave you alone.’
She could point out that it sounded arrogant for him to say that other men would naturally back away if Tak was her date. The problem was she could imagine that was exactly what would happen.
‘Fine. So what about you? Is this your way of ensuring no-strings sex for the night? Because I have to say it’s a pretty pathetic way of—’
‘No sex,’ he cut in definitively.
‘Sorry?’
‘If I want sex I can get sex. The point is that I don’t.’
‘A single man in his thirties who doesn’t want sex?’ Incredibly she found herself raising an eyebrow at him as though she was actually...flirting?
‘I don’t want sex with you,’ he corrected.
How was it possible to feel suddenly deflated when she didn’t want complications herself?
‘Oh. Right.’ She sounded so stiff, so wooden. ‘Well, good. Glad that’s cleared up.’
He raked his hand through his hair and she found the unexpectedly boyish gesture all the more disarming.
‘I didn’t mean it to sound that way.’ Clearly this was as close as she was going to get to an apology. ‘My point is that I want a date as a buffer. I don’t want complications from it. My extended family have it in their collective heads that if I’m not going to find a wife for myself then they need to find one for me. A date will buy me some time.’
There was no reason for her chest to constrict the way it did at that moment. No reason at all.
‘Couldn’t you just tell them no?’
‘I could...’ He shrugged, as though it didn’t matter to him one way or another. ‘I have. Many times. But that doesn’t stop them from trying and pushing. I was just about to offend every single one of them by making it unequivocally clear that I’m not interested. However, it’s been pointed out to me that there is another way to handle it. A softer way.’
‘By Hetti, by chance?’
‘Indeed.’ Tak flashed another of those wicked smiles which seemed to liquefy her insides within seconds. ‘She also pointed out that if I do that they’ll turn their focus on her. And no doubt redouble their efforts in revenge.’
Curious.
Hetti had alluded to the fact that her big brother was always looking out for her but, given Tak’s formidable reputation, Effie hadn’t really bought it.
‘And so you’re trying to project a softer Tak Basu? Now, there’s a curious notion.’
The words were out before she could swallow them. Revealing far more than she might have wanted him to know. Effie could have kicked herself.
‘Is it, indeed?’
His eyebrows lifted, his incorrigible expression stealing her breath from her lungs. God, he was magnificent. It should be illegal.
She forced herself to straighten her spine, make her tone just that bit choppier. ‘Although conning your extended family is one thing, but conning your mother rather than simply telling her the truth—’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ His low, deep voice, every word uttered with a razor-sharp edge, cut her instantly. ‘Consequently, I suggest you don’t even try.’
Despite the words he’d used, it would clearly be a mistake to actually believe it had been merely a suggestion.
Effie swallowed. Hard.
Silence enveloped them, and she found herself unable to move. Awkward in her own skin.
His expression softened. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way,’ he said, and abruptly Effie realised this was Tak apologising to her. ‘I’m just...a little protective of my family.’
It was such a familiar pain that it shouldn’t hurt her as much as it did. Her throat felt too tight, but somehow she managed to reply. ‘That’s...admirable.’
What would she have given, growing up, to have had a family who were protective of each other. Even one of her foster families. But instead...
She shuddered at the memories. An endless merry-go-round of girls’ homes and foster families, all of whom had either looked at her as though she s
hould be grateful to them for even knowing her name, or else had resented the fact that she wasn’t an adorable baby they could cuddle. Or worse. But she didn’t like to remember the nights she’d spent sleeping rough on park benches because it had been safer than any given foster home.
There had been a couple of nice families. She could remember both of them with such clarity. They had wanted to adopt her and she’d prayed that they would, even though she’d long since had any sense of faith knocked out of her. But on both occasions her biological mother had somehow—shockingly—managed to convince the authorities that she had gone clean, and they had been compelled to return Effie to her.
Of course it had never lasted.
‘I suppose you might call it admirable...’ Tak’s voice mercifully broke into her thoughts. ‘Either way, it seems we both have our reasons for wanting a buffer.’
‘I can handle myself.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, irked to concede that he might actually have a point.
‘I’m suggesting that you don’t have to. That our attending the ball together could make it a smoother night all around.’
‘Right...’ she conceded slowly, without knowing why.
‘So, do we have a deal?’
There were a hundred reasons why she should say no. Thirteen of them even had the same four letters. Nell. But suddenly all Effie could think of were all the reasons—as flimsy and as spurious as she knew them to be—why she might say yes.
‘My car is in the garage right now, so it would save me having to drive myself...’
She couldn’t believe she’d said it aloud. It didn’t even sound believable. What on earth had made her think it was better to say that than admit her car was such a clapped-out old mess she didn’t want people seeing her in it in case they asked too many questions?
It had been bad enough convincing her new colleagues that she kept it because it had sentimental value, rather than tell the truth about the fact that she’d been going to change it, but Nell’s new school had offered a last-minute place on a ski trip they’d been planning for twelve months and, given the lateness, she’d needed to make full payment of a sum which had made her eyes water.
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