A Surgeon Worth Waiting For

by MELANIE MILBURNE

Becky followed him into his house, looking around with undisguised interest. It wasn’t quite the ‘Home of the Year’ showcase mansion his father and current stepmother resided in, neither was it the comfortable, rambling family homestead where she and her brother had spent their childhood, but for all that it was spacious, if a little formally decorated for her taste.

  ‘There are three spare rooms,’ he informed her. ‘You choose which one you’d prefer.’

  Becky decided right then and there to choose the one closest his room just to annoy him.

  ‘Why don’t you give me a little tour?’ she suggested.

  He gave a grudging nod and showed her through the house, hurrying through it as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. Becky deliberately asked questions to prolong his agony.

  ‘What’s this cupboard for?’

  ‘It’s the linen cupboard,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘See?’

  She peered inside and gave an inward smile at the neat piles of folded sheets and colour-coordinated towels. So, Mr Punctual was super-tidy as well.

  ‘And which is your room?’

  ‘That one there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There.’ He pointed vaguely to a room down the hall.

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head at him. ‘Because I want to know the real you. I read this book once which said the way to truly know a person’s personality is to meet their family of origin, go for a drive with them in their car and take a peek inside their bedroom.’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ he muttered. Striding down the hall, he opened the door for her. ‘There. Analyse this.’

  Becky inspected the neatly made bed, the spotless wall of mirrors on the inbuilt wardrobes, the neatly placed book by the bedside with a bookmark inside it instead of a dog-ear. Not a thing out of place and everything in its place.

  ‘I knew it! You have obsessive-compulsive disorder,’ she said, turning back to look up at him. ‘I bet you wash your hands a hundred times a day, too.’

  His green eyes went heavenwards in search of renewed patience. ‘Of course I wash my hands a lot. I’m a surgeon, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘You have issues of control.’

  ‘Oh, for—’

  ‘And you don’t like disruption to your routine,’ she said. ‘It really gets under your skin. That’s why this is really hard for you having me here, isn’t it?’

  You don’t know the half of it, he thought with an inward grimace.

  ‘I don’t mind you being here,’ he lied.

  ‘What will we tell everyone at work?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No one needs to know.’

  ‘I’ll have to let the hospital switchboard know,’ she said. ‘Otherwise how will they contact me when I’m on call?’

  The line of his mouth tightened even further. ‘Tell them you’ll be only contactable on your mobile until further notice.’

  ‘You see?’ She gave him a triumphant look. ‘You are uncomfortable with me being here. You don’t want anyone to know about it. If you were at ease with it, you wouldn’t give a damn who knew.’

  ‘Listen, if my mother finds out you’re staying here she’ll have invitations in the mail by morning,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Invitations?’ She looked up at him in confusion. ‘Invitations for what?’

  He gave her a grim look. ‘Our wedding.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘“Oh” is right.’ He rubbed his unshaven jaw. ‘Come to think of it, if your parents hear about this…’

  ‘They won’t hear it from me,’ she said.

  ‘What if they ring you at your flat? Won’t they worry when you don’t answer?’

  ‘They usually call or text me on my mobile, or send me emails, which I can access here or at work. Anyway, I can access my landline phone messages from off site.’

  He gave a sudden frown. ‘What about your clothes?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I know it’s late but perhaps we should go to your flat and get them.’

  It was Becky’s turn for displaying the grim look. ‘The only clothes I have that are decent are the ones I’m wearing now. The rest have been hacked to pieces.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I need to do some urgent shopping, but in the meantime do you have a T-shirt I could borrow to sleep in?’

  He went to his wardrobe and pulled back one of the mirrored doors.

  Becky peered around his shoulder, making tsk tsk tsk sounds in her throat.

  ‘What?’ He swung around to look at her.

  She shook her head at him in mock despair. ‘You are really anal.’

  ‘Here.’ He thrust an ironed and neatly folded T-shirt at her chest. ‘And will you quit it with the character analysis? You’re really starting to annoy me.’

  She gave him a teasing smile. ‘You are so uptight, Jack. You need to chill out a bit. You’re acting like someone who was potty trained with a stun gun.’

  ‘You know something, Rebecca, you are one of the most irritat—’

  ‘Aaarrgghh!’ Becky screamed at the top of her lungs, even going as far as plugging her own ears to escape the shrill, teeth-jarring sound.

  ‘Shut the hell up!’ Jack grasped her by the upper arms and gave her a little shake. ‘Shut up! The neighbours will hear you!’

  ‘I told you not to call me that. I warned you.’ She took a big breath and squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Aaarrgghh!’

  ‘Damn it! If you don’t shut up I’ll do something we’ll both end up regretting.’

  Becky drew in another quick breath and opened her mouth for another good bellow, but before she could get the sound out Jack’s mouth came down on hers and blocked off all sound except for the one tiny whimper that escaped from her lips before she could stop it. His mouth was hard and insistent, determined and ruthless in its mission to stop her from screaming.

  As silencing methods went, it certainly worked, since she was so shocked she didn’t even put up a fight. She felt herself weaken in his tight hold as his mouth changed its pressure, her stomach giving an unexpected somersault as his tongue flicked against hers, the heat and probe of it demanding a response from her she was in no way able to hold back. His tongue mated with hers, curling around hers intimately, the dart and retreat action stirring deep longings in her that she could feel reverberating in his hard body where it was pressed so insistently against hers.

  Searing heat coursed through her from hips to breasts. She was aflame with a need she hadn’t known she’d felt until his mouth had connected with hers. Her whole body was on fire, flames licking along her flesh until she thought she was going to explode with the sheer force of it.

  His hands left her arms to grasp her head, angling it for better access, his long fingers buried in her hair, his lower body grinding into hers.

  She felt every hard ridge as if they were standing together naked, the heat of his growing erection burning a pathway to her soul, melting her from the inside out. She could feel her body preparing itself, the liquid silk of desire swamping her, the delicate but intoxicating scent of mutual arousal rising upwards to tantalise and tempt.

  She felt the sweep and plunge of his tongue, felt too the rasp of his unshaven jaw as he plundered her mouth even further, the scrape of masculine flesh on hers a delicious reminder of all that set them apart as man and woman.

  Jack dragged his mouth off hers and stared down at her, his green eyes glazed with a combination of unrelieved desire and blistering anger.

  Becky was the first to find her voice. ‘You really shouldn’t have done that,’ she said.

  A tiny nerve pulsed at the side of his mouth as he held her reproving look. ‘You asked for it.’

  Her brown eyes defied him. ‘You called me Rebecca.’

  He stepped away from her as if she’d burnt him.

  ‘I must say, you’ve improved on your technique,’ she added when he didn’t respond. She ran a finger tip exper
imentally over her swollen lips. ‘Only marginally, of course, but probably worth noting.’

  He swung back to glare at her. ‘You are the most annoying woman I’ve ever met, do you know that?’

  She lifted her chin. ‘Why? Because I won’t let you walk all over me? That’s your beef, isn’t it, Jack? You can’t control me. You can’t put me in one of your neat little boxes like your stupid towels or T-shirts.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she insisted, coming up close to invade his personal space, pressing a finger to his chest. ‘You hate the fact that I see through your keep-away-from-me mask. You’ve been doing it for years. You don’t want anyone to get too close in case you start to feel something for them you just won’t allow yourself to feel.’

  ‘I don’t feel anything for you.’

  She gave him a narrow-eyed look. ‘Then why did you just kiss me?’

  ‘I wanted to shut you up.’

  ‘You could have gagged me.’

  His green eyes went to slits as he looked down at her. ‘I could have strangled you too, but unfortunately there’s a law against it.’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I do not want to know what you think. But no doubt you’re going to tell me anyway.’ His tone positively dripped with sarcasm.

  Her mouth tilted in a knowing little smile. ‘I think you wanted to kiss me.’

  He didn’t answer, but she could see that tiny, almost imperceptible pulse still leaping at the side of his set mouth, which indicated he wasn’t as in control of his emotions as he would have liked.

  For some reason Becky felt a tickle of excitement run over her for cracking his normally iron-clad control. She enjoyed teasing him, pushing him to the edge. She’d been doing it for years, although she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  ‘You wanted to kiss me, Jack, just like you did twelve years ago.’

  ‘You were a spoilt brat twelve years ago,’ he bit out. ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you then either, but it was either that or shake you till your teeth fell out.’

  ‘Well, since you dislike me so much, I think it might be best if I call a taxi and go to the nearest hotel,’ she said, picking her handbag up from the floor and taking out her mobile phone.

  ‘No!’ He snatched the phone out of her hand and held it out of reach.

  Becky’s eyebrows rose in twin arches. ‘You know, Jack, along with strangling, holding someone against their will is also against the law.’

  ‘I want you to stay with me,’ he said from between clenched teeth.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s three a.m. I don’t like the idea of you trawling the city for a hotel at this hour.’

  ‘How terribly chivalrous of you but, really, I’m a big girl now and can quite easily find myself somewhere to stay.’ She made a grab for her phone but he held it even further out of her reach. ‘Give me the phone, Jack.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give me the phone or I’ll scream again.’

  ‘You scream again and I won’t just kiss you this time,’ he threatened darkly.

  She let her arm drop by her side, her eyes widening at the look in his eyes. She couldn’t make him out. He gave every appearance of being uncomfortable with her around, but as soon as she offered to leave he refused to let her go. What was going on?

  ‘I see,’ she said, even though she didn’t.

  She watched as he dragged a hand through his hair for the second time, giving him an out-of-character tousled look. She couldn’t help noticing the dark bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes. He looked exhausted, as well he should considering he’d been on call two nights in a row, each of them stressful and technically demanding.

  She suddenly felt ashamed of the fuss she was making. After all, he was only doing what any decent person would do, offering her a place to stay until things were sorted out at her flat. Most of her friends lived too far away from St Patrick’s for it to be convenient, especially for her on-call shifts, and with Ben and her parents out of reach Jack was as close to family as she could get at short notice.

  He handed her back the phone, his eyes avoiding hers. ‘I’ll organise to have your car fixed first thing in the morning. You should get some sleep—it’s been a long night.’

  She took the phone and stared at him for a moment or two, her fingers feeling where the warmth of his hand had been.

  She was still trying to think of something to say when the telephone beside his bed rang.

  He moved past her to answer it, turning his back to her. ‘Colcannon.’

  ‘Mr Colcannon,’ Robert said. ‘There have been a couple of admissions since you left. Sorry to call you so late but while they’re not urgent, I just need some advice.’

  ‘Of course, Robert,’ Jack said. ‘What have you got?”

  ‘There’s a Mrs Ryan who’s had vomiting and pain in the right upper quadrant, going through to the back. She’s tender in the upper abdomen, more on the right, but no mass, normal bowel sounds, slightly febrile. I think it sounds like acute cholecystitis. I’ve ordered an ultrasound.’

  ‘Good, that’s fine. Make sure you get bloods, including liver function tests, amylase and lipase, and start her on IV cephalosporin. What else have you got?’

  ‘A male, mid-forties with suspected pancreatitis. He’s a heavy drinker and presented with acute epigastric pain through to the back. His lipase is off the scale.’

  ‘OK. Order a CT scan for the morning, put him in HDU for the rest of tonight, get him catheterised and make sure he’s producing at least 30 mls an hour urine output. Repeat all his blood parameters and blood gases, and get a chest X-ray,’ Jack advised.

  ‘Thanks, got all that,’ Robert said. ‘The last one is an ischiorectal abscess in a seventy-year-old male. I’ve organised Theatre and the anaesthetic registrar is available, but if you want Dr Baxter to be called in…’

  ‘No,’ Jack said. ‘The registrar can handle that and so can you. You’ve done enough draining of abscesses now to do that with one hand tied behind your back. Anything else?’

  ‘There’s a suspected appendix but we’re going to sit on it till the morning. The patient isn’t febrile and the symptoms are a bit vague. He’s also been on a bit of a bender so it’s hard to make a proper diagnosis.’

  ‘Friday nights are like that,’ Jack said, running his hand along the side of his jaw. ‘Call me if there’s anything urgent. I’ll be in around eight for a quick round. Thank God I’m off for the rest of the weekend.’

  ‘It’s certainly been a big week,’ Robert agreed.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Jack said, and rang off.

  ‘Do you have to go back in?’ Becky asked, hovering at the end of his bed.

  He returned the phone to its cradle before answering. ‘No, there’s nothing urgent going on. I’ll check things when I go in in the morning.’

  ‘The night isn’t over yet,’ she said, smothering a yawn.

  ‘It is as far as I’m concerned.’ He sat on the edge of the bed and began to untie his shoe laces. ‘Besides, Robert’s turning out to be quite a good registrar. He’ll let me know if anything needs my attention and he’ll deal with the rest.’

  Becky watched as he methodically placed his shoes side by side, his socks neatly folded, not scrunched up as she or Ben would have left them.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said after a small silence.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s just how it looks on the outside.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘You should feel it from where I’m feeling it.’

  ‘Why do you work yourself so hard?’

  He lifted his bloodshot gaze to her, his expression becoming distinctly exasperated. ‘Why don’t you go to bed like a good little house guest and leave me in peace?’

  Becky sent him an arctic look, wishing she hadn’t tried to be nice to him. ‘You can be such a jerk sometimes.’

  ‘Only sometimes?’

 
; ‘All of the time.’

  He got up and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She stared at him, her heart doing a little kick-start in her chest.

  ‘I’m getting undressed, so if you want to see the rest, stick around,’ he said, his hands going to his waistband to unbuckle his belt.

  Becky wished she had the courage to call his bluff. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen the naked male form, she had—hundreds, if not thousands, of times—but Jack’s was something else.

  She turned on her heel and left his room, the sound of his laughter incensing her even further.

  She locked herself in the bathroom and, rummaging through her hastily gathered toiletries, washed her face and cleaned her teeth. She changed into the T-shirt Jack had given her, looking at her reflection with a rueful grimace as she saw how the soft fabric outlined her figure rather too closely.

  She sighed and turned on the taps to rinse out her lacy knickers and bra before hanging them over the shower cubicle to dry.

  The spare room was decorated in the sort of everything-matching-nothing-out-of-place way she’d come to expect from Jack. With a mischievous little smile playing about her mouth, she went through the room and deliberately put things out of place, ruffling the perfect curtains, scrunching up the spare pillows and leaving her clothes and shoes in a scattered pile on the floor. She tilted the gilt-edged mirror above the antique dressing-table at a crazy angle, making sure her recently moisturised fingers left a decent-sized smudge.

  She bounced on the bed a couple of times, knowing he would probably hear it in the room next door but way past caring.

  ‘Will you shut the hell up in there?’ Jack’s deep voice came through the wall. ‘I’m trying to sleep!’

  ‘Did you say something, Jack?’ she cooed back, stretching languorously on the bed, one of her hands inadvertently knocking the electronic bedside clock to the floor. The radio came on at high volume, the shrieking of violin strings filling the silence with nerve-tightening sound.

  ‘Oops!’ She rolled off the bed, trying to find the ‘off’ switch, but all she managed to do was change stations and increase the volume. This time instead of violins the mind-numbing sound of techno music filled the room.