A Surgeon for the Single Mom

by Charlotte Hawkes

  She forgot completely where they were, or the game they had been playing. All she knew was Tak, and the way he was kissing her. She was drowning in him all over again, pouring herself into him as she moulded every inch of her body to his.

  All that subtle flirting, all those heady glances, all that repressed desire was unleashed in this single moment. As though it would never end.

  He plundered her mouth, demanding and devouring with every scandalous swipe of his tongue and every luscious graze of his teeth. And Effie was all too happy to lose herself in the lustiness of it all.

  Right up until the moment he moved his hands to her shoulders and pushed her back.

  ‘I cannot do this,’ he ground out, his face twisted into something she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Tak...’

  ‘I cannot do this,’ he repeated quietly. Obdurately. ‘With you, least of all.’

  Effie was wholly unprepared for the pain as the words sliced through her. A lifetime of being told, directly or indirectly, that she wasn’t good enough—that she wasn’t enough—flooded through her. Hateful and merciless. She’d thought she’d buried her past a long, long time ago. Yet one utterance from Tak and instantly she felt like that pathetic, rejected girl she’d never really left behind.

  Grief blinded her, but she knew the one thing she couldn’t afford to do was let Tak see it.

  With Herculean resolve, Effie turned slowly and forced herself to take her time picking up her clutch. She would not run out of here. She would not turn and flee with her tail between her legs like some unwanted, abandoned puppy.

  ‘Well, then...’ She cleared her throat, amazed at how collected she’d managed to sound. ‘That settles that debate, doesn’t it?’

  And she turned and stalked off, head held high, out of the restaurant and into a parked taxi before Tak had even moved a muscle.

  Her tears could wait until she was alone. The way they always had.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘THAT SOUNDS LIKE an emphatic crack,’ Tak approved, as he carefully lifted out a section of his patient’s skull and began to clear away the dura to expose her brain. ‘Okay, we have good access to the temporal lobe now, and the tumour is hiding in there. Time to map her brain, so go ahead and wake her up.’

  He waited as his co-pilot and the anaesthetist worked together to bring the patient to the level of awareness he would need her to have in order to carry out his language tests as he passed a series of electrical currents over her brain to map it.

  The lull was unwelcome. It created a void in the operation and allowed his own brain the chance to reflect on things he would rather not have to mull over.

  Like the way everything had changed when he’d touched Effie, held her, kissed her last night.

  One minute they’d been playing some kind of game, and the next he had completely taken leave of his senses. Felt the same kind of madness taking hold of him that he had always despised in his selfish, ruthless father. The man who had taken such delight in telling his wife time and again that his latest mistress made him feel alive in a way that Tak’s mother never could.

  The same kind of selfishness that Rafi had shown, taking a mistress of his own and believing it was perfectly normal even though he’d seen how it had devastated their mother. Worse, Rafi had said contemptuously that Uma Basu—he hadn’t called her Mama since he’d turned fifteen—was foolish, emotional, even irrational. That her depressions and addictions were of her own making, and even that they excused their father for needing to find companionship elsewhere, rather than it being his father’s actions causing Uma’s devastation.

  Tak couldn’t say he thought his brother was entirely wrong—their mother was quite the master manipulator—though what had come first, her machinations or his father’s cruelty, was a question he couldn’t answer.

  Either way, he’d spent his whole life avoiding being like either his father or his brother. He’d thought he’d succeeded. His relationships had always been fine. He had sated his physical and emotional desires without ever feeling as though he wasn’t in control.

  Until last night. Or, more accurately, until Effie.

  He could no longer deny the attraction which had been evident between them since that first meeting. Or the fact that he’d been acting irrationally since the hospital gala—not least when he’d commanded her to pack her bags and move herself and her daughter into his home.

  He could couch it in whatever terms he liked—Effie needing somewhere to live or him wanting to distract his mother from her obsession with arranging a marriage for him—but ultimately it all came down to the fact that he’d wanted an excuse to spend more time with Effie. To indulge this attraction which had slid so insidiously into his entire body.

  ‘Madeleine, can you hear me?’

  As the neurologist dropped down behind the sheets Tak switched quickly back to the task in hand.

  ‘Can you open your eyes for me, Madeleine? Good. Now, can you stick out your tongue for me?’

  Working quickly and efficiently, Tak moved the electric current over different areas of his patient’s brain. As the tests went on, through actions and various language tests, he could work out which parts of Madeleine’s brain were responsible for key activities and try to avoid these areas when he moved in to try to remove the tumour.

  They were partway through the first series of exercises, the reciting of the alphabet, when the neurologist signalled to him to slow down.

  ‘Okay, Tak.’ Her voice carried low but clear. ‘We have some problems in this area.’

  ‘Understood.’ Tak nodded to his colleague.

  It seemed as though they were near a vital speech area of Madeleine’s brain, from where he would be unable to remove the tumour. But they were only a short while into the operation and their patient was already becoming increasingly tired, finding it harder and harder to stay awake.

  He had ideally anticipated three hours’ brain-mapping for this size tumour, but they were barely ninety minutes in. If they didn’t work quickly Tak risked missing out on the vital brain-mapping information that would enable him to remove the tumour without compromising their patient’s brain function.

  It was the kind of challenge which spurred him on—even more so today, when he didn’t want to think about anything but his work.

  If only everything in his life could be pigeonholed so damned easily.

  * * *

  For several almost blissful hours Tak concentrated on his surgery.

  And the next. And the next.

  Yet the minute he was out of the operating room, and his shift was over, his brain was flooded afresh with images of Effie. They had been becoming more and more insistent all week. Ever since he’d taken Effie on that disastrous date, since he’d taken Effie’s daughter to that bowling alley.

  He had no idea what it was about Effie—about wanting to make the woman happy—that had possessed him to volunteer to chaperone her kid at a party. Not that it had been a chore. The girl had chattered non-stop, even whilst climbing into his sleek, muscular super-car. Undisguised happiness had danced off her every word, and as far as she was concerned the evening had been a resounding success.

  Just as undisguised happiness had danced around in him at the idea that he was doing something for Effie, making her life a little easier.

  Nell had been happy. Which meant that Effie was happy. Because her happiness was intrinsically linked with that of her daughter. It was sweet.

  When the hell had he ever cared about anything sweet? But it mattered to him. She mattered. Yet he had no explanation for why. He didn’t even stop to consider it. Deliberately.

  He didn’t want to dig into his emotions or responses. He didn’t wish to ask himself why he had practically jumped at the chance to insert himself deeper into Effie’s family life. He hadn’t allowed himself to ask any one of the hundreds of questions
which charged around his head.

  He told himself that the only reason he’d insisted they stayed with him was because it would have been inhumane to knowingly leave mother and daughter in that freezing flat. He refused to acknowledge that it had anything to do with the kick which had reverberated around his body that first time he’d seen her stride into Resus. Or the fire which had ripped through him when he’d walked into that lobby to see her standing there so regally. Not to mention the passion that had later flared between them on that restaurant date.

  It made no sense. Perhaps it was because he knew that soon Effie would be gone and life would revert back to normal.

  The knowledge should please him. Not make him feel as though a weight was pressing down inside his chest.

  It was the familiarity of it all, he concluded eventually. It was simply that he was drawing parallels between Effie’s life, caring for her only just teenage daughter, with his life growing up, when he had often had sole responsibility for his younger teenage siblings, Hetti and Sasha. And Rafi too, for that matter, although he’d barely been nine at that time.

  He remembered those feelings of loneliness and being scared, especially when his mother had been going through one of her episodes.

  But wasn’t that part of the issue? He and Effie had agreed to be each other’s buffers. Nothing more. She wasn’t supposed to be making him take trips down memory lane. He certainly wasn’t supposed to be playing at happy families and helping out with her daughter.

  Was he somehow giving her the impression that there was something between them? Playing with Effie’s emotions in much the same way that his father had always so cruelly toyed with his mother’s feelings? Surely it was a case of like father like son. Rafi had definitely suggested that was the case with his own wife.’

  ‘I’m not our father,’ Tak growled to himself, but the accusation pounded through him, making the blood heat in his veins.

  Abruptly he realised he was outside the hospital and at his car, with no memory of how he’d even got there. He hit the ignition button, revved the engine, and pulled neatly out of the parking bay and onto the road beyond. He’d go for a drive. A long, fast drive in his prized car—the kind of vehicle which wasn’t at all conducive to a man with a wife and kids. It would clear his head and remind him of exactly what he wanted his life to look like.

  And it wasn’t settling down. Because what if he was wrong? What if he was like his father, much as it might gall him? If there was any chance he was like that man, then Tak knew he would inevitably hurt his family, exactly the way his own father had hurt his.

  Which was why he couldn’t go home. Not with Effie and Nell there. Reminding him of the family he could never have. That life wasn’t for him, and the sooner he remembered that, the better.

  * * *

  It was the early hours of the morning when Tak returned home, his head finally clear. Or at least as clear as it was going to get.

  He still hadn’t solved the puzzle that was Dr Effie Robinson, or why she so intrigued him. But he had convinced himself that he didn’t have time for riddles and games.

  Their original agreement—to play each other’s buffer at the hospital gala—had worked perfectly. The rest of it was unnecessary complications which they should have avoided. That date at the restaurant should have been avoided. The kisses certainly should have been avoided.

  But the beauty of it was that as soon as the central heating was fixed in Effie’s flat and the asbestos was gone, she would be gone. And he could pretend all this had never happened.

  In the meantime, sleep was certainly going to elude him.

  Tak wandered down to the games suite.

  The last person he’d expected to see there was Effie. And he certainly hadn’t expected to see her, cue in hand, making the perfect pool game break, as though she was some kind of hustler.

  He stopped, ridiculously enchanted all over again. Just like that.

  It was only when he watched her pot the final black that he realised he’d watched her play an entire game. Lurking in the shadows like some kind of admirer from afar. Like some kind of adolescent kid.

  ‘I didn’t know you played,’ he said, stepping out into the room.

  She jumped, as if he’d caught her red-handed.

  He made a mental note to get the lighting in the room changed. It had been designed to be ambient, but right now he didn’t like the way the soft glow bounced off the walls, making the place feel so cosy, so...intimate. Yet ironically making him feel just that little bit too exposed.

  He could put it down to the time of night—bewitched at the witching hour. But that suggested a ridiculous fancifulness with which he wasn’t commonly associated.

  ‘I don’t play nowadays, but that doesn’t mean I can’t play.’

  ‘So I’ve just witnessed. Misspent youth?’ He quirked an eyebrow.

  ‘You could say that.’

  Her tone was casual. Perhaps too casual.

  ‘Sounds intriguing.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she bit out, and he hated it that there was such a divide between them now. Especially when he knew he was the one who had created it, with that kiss the other night.

  He should walk away. But not for the first time he stayed still instead. ‘I owe you an apology.’

  She grimaced.

  ‘I should not have kissed you the other night. Perhaps I shouldn’t have even taken you there.’

  It was as if a hurricane was raging around them, but in the eye of it there was simply stillness. A hush.

  ‘You didn’t force my hand,’ she said at length, gritting her teeth. ‘And at least I now know where we stand. What you really think of me.’

  ‘What I really think of you?’ He frowned, but she merely turned away.

  Clearly Effie didn’t want to elaborate, and he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care. This was exactly what he’d spent the last few hours repeating to himself. It...she...wasn’t his business. When it came to Effie there wasn’t something clawing inside him, desperate to find its way out.

  But, despite everything he’d thought during that exhilarating drive, nothing compared to this unexpected wallop of insatiable need. This urge to learn more about this surprisingly enigmatic woman, even as a part of him knew she would never tell him.

  ‘Effie, I shouldn’t have kissed you because of my reasons. Nothing to do with you. Not really.’

  ‘Is this the old it’s not me, it’s you?’ She turned on him instantly, her voice a little too bright, too high, too tight. ‘Only I’ve heard that a hundred times before.’

  He wasn’t prepared for the jealousy which sliced through him.

  ‘Is that why you reacted the way you did? And why you don’t date? Because some idiot bloke—Nell’s father, maybe—once used that cliché and hurt you?’

  ‘You think this is about some guy?’ She shook her head incredulously. ‘That I would carry around something so banal and frankly inconsequential for thirteen years?’

  ‘Then what?’

  She stared at him, and then suddenly she wasn’t seeing him any more—she was staring right through him.

  ‘What is it that I don’t understand about you, Effie?’ he asked softly. ‘You’re intelligent and driven and beautiful. You’re career-minded and you have Nell—I know that—but why are you so insistent on doing everything alone? On making sure no one ever gets close? You get more than your fair share of male attention but you shut every bit of it down before you can even think about giving it a chance.’

  She flattened her lips together, clearly not about to answer him. He knew if he pushed her she would only shut down all the faster.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your game,’ he managed softly, turning around to leave. Pretending that, for all the difficult things he’d had to do in his life, walking away from Effie wasn’t one of the hardest.


  Whether it was the hour, or the quiet, or the windowless nature of the games den which made it feel as if they were totally disconnected from the rest of the world, he couldn’t be sure. But he heard her as she carefully placed the pool cue down on the table.

  ‘Tak, wait.’

  He turned and came back down a couple of steps. Effie was staring at the rich burgundy baize and it took Herculean strength for him not to speak. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to know something about a woman so badly. So desperately. But she had to open up to him voluntarily. If he pushed her then she was likely to shut down again.

  For long moments the quiet swirled around them, like the soft artificial smoke rising on the stage in one of the shows he’d taken his mother to see during her visits.

  Tak had a feeling they were the only times Mama had got to do something she liked for a change. Even now his father would never deign to give her an hour of his time for something he termed so terminally dull.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Effie seemed to brace herself. ‘It’s more about my childhood than some stupid lad—it wasn’t exactly conventional. Anyway, it was wrong of me to take it out on you.’

  She was trying to relegate her outburst to the past. But he wasn’t about to let her. It was the closest he’d come to seeing the real Effie.

  ‘What was so different about it?’

  ‘Please, can we just leave it at that?’

  ‘Is this why you don’t talk about your family?’

  ‘I don’t have a family,’ she burst out before checking herself.

  Pursing her lips, she inhaled and exhaled heavily through her nose. And still he held himself still. Silent.

  ‘I had a mother—some of the time—but I spent a lot of time in and out of children’s homes and foster families.’

  ‘You were a foster kid?’

  ‘On and off. Not enough to be given a family of my own, but enough that I spent most of my childhood shunted in and out of other people’s homes. I grew up resenting everything. Not least the fact that my mother couldn’t get herself together enough to keep me safe whilst other kids were complaining that their mums had given them cheese sandwiches for lunch again when they’d wanted ham.’