Watching Sol at work made it almost impossible to remember his reputation as a womaniser.
And it certainly wasn’t helping to smother her inconvenient crush on him.
‘The doctor won’t tell me anything,’ Katie replied flatly.
‘I’d rather explain to Mum.’ Anouk bit back her irritation as Katie and Sol exchanged a glance, hating the feeling that she was missing a vital piece of information.
‘Bad day?’ he asked Katie simply.
She bit her lip. ‘She can’t even get up today. But she was resting so I thought Izzy and I could have an hour at the park before we went back and started our chores. There’s no way she will be able to get here on her own.’
‘I’m on call so I can’t leave.’ He rubbed his face thoughtfully. ‘But I could call Malachi. He can help if she’d be happy about that?’
‘Yes.’ Katie’s relief was evident. ‘Please call him. I’ll text Mum.’
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Anouk tried to control her heart, which had decided to pick up its pace as she listened to the conversation. It was aggravating feeling as though she wasn’t entirely following, but the tone of it seemed all too painfully familiar. Or was she just reading too much into it?
Still, she had nowhere else to be for the moment; a nurse was with Isobel and they were waiting on a few results before they could move her to CT.
‘In the meantime,’ Sol’s voice dragged her back to the moment, ‘let me try to explain to Dr Anouk here why she can speak to you.’
Katie narrowed her eyes uncertainly.
‘You’re going to have to trust her,’ Sol cajoled. ‘I do.’
They were just words to ease the concerns of a kid, Anouk knew that, and yet she was helpless to stop a burst of...something from going off inside her chest.
‘The more I understand, Katie, the more I can help.’ She fixed her gaze on the young girl, whose penetrating stare was unsettling.
‘Okay,’ Katie conceded at last, before turning back to Sol. ‘But you’ll call Malachi?’
‘Right now,’ Sol confirmed.
For a moment it looked as though her face was about to crumple, the pressure of the decisions clearly getting to her. But then she pulled herself together, sinking down onto her chair and fishing out a mobile phone to begin texting. As if there wasn’t time for self-indulgent emotions.
As if she was a lot older than her years with far too much adult responsibility.
Anouk fought back the wave of grief that swelled inside her. All too familiar. All too unwelcome. Coming out of nowhere.
‘Anouk.’
She snapped her head up to find that Sol was beckoning her, his eyes on Katie to ensure she was preoccupied as he moved across the room.
Wordlessly, Anouk followed, letting him lead her around the curtain and into the central area, keeping his voice low.
‘Katie and Isobel are young carers. They look after their mum, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Some days are good, some not so good. Today, unfortunately, is a bad day, which means Michelle can’t even get out of bed without their help.’
‘I see.’ Anouk breathed in as deeply and as unobtrusively as she could and tried to fight back the sense of nausea that rushed her. Her own situation had been vastly different from the girls’, but the similarities were there. ‘Dad?’
‘Died in an RTA two years ago. He’d just popped out to get cough mixture.’
She exhaled sharply, the injustice of it scraping at her.
‘Who’s Malachi?’
‘My brother. He’ll go round and help Michelle. See if there’s anything he can do to get her here. Otherwise you keep me informed throughout and we’ll agree as much as we can tell Katie. She’s mature, but she’s still only eleven and she has enough to deal with.’
‘Isn’t there anyone else?’ She already knew the answer, but she still had to ask. ‘Any other family member?’
‘No. Let me see what I can do but there are a few people I could call as a last resort. They’re from the centre and they can at least sit with Katie so that she isn’t alone until my shift finishes or I can get someone to cover for me.’
‘Why would you do that?’ She folded her arms across her chest as though the action could somehow contain the churn of...feelings that were swirling inside her, so close to the surface that she was afraid they might spill out.
She wanted to pretend that it was just empathy for Katie, the familiarity of a young girl who had far too much responsibility for her tender age. But she had a feeling it was also to do with Sol. His obvious concern and care for the young girl and her sister and mother was irritatingly touching.
She was ashamed to admit that she’d been attracted enough to the man when she’d thought he was just a decent doctor but also a gargantuan playboy. Seeing this softer side to him was only making the attraction that much stronger.
‘Why not do it?’ He shrugged and the fact that he was clearly hiding something only made Anouk want to get to know him that much more.
It was galling, really.
Checking on little Isobel and consulting with her team was the opportunity Anouk needed to regroup, and as she worked she let the questions about Sol fall from her head, even as he worked alongside her. Her patient was her priority, as always. Soon enough it was time to take the girl to CT to scan her head and neck.
‘Can I go with her and hold her hand?’ asked Katie, the concern etched over her face jabbing into Anouk’s heart.
She usually let parents go in to be with their child, but unnecessarily exposing an eleven-year-old to ionising radiation, however short a burst, was different.
‘How about if I go in?’ Sol announced over her shoulder. ‘You can wait outside but I’ll hold Izzy’s hand for you?’
Katie eyed him slowly for a moment.
‘Okay, thank you,’ she conceded at length.
‘Great, you walk with Anouk here and your sister. Okay?’
Something jolted in Anouk’s chest at the weight of Sol’s gaze on her.
‘Fine with me. You’re going to get leaded?’
‘I thought I might. They probably won’t let me in the room otherwise.’
He made it out to be a light-hearted joke, but Anouk knew better. Usually only parents were allowed to accompany their younger children into the room when the imaging was in progress.
‘You don’t have any patients up on Neurology?’
‘I’ll sort it. The only one I’m worried about right now is a Mrs Bowman, but I’ll deal with that.’
The fact that Sol was putting himself into that position in lieu of the girls’ mother said a lot more about him than Anouk expected.
She couldn’t shake the impression that it was also more than he would normally like a colleague to know about him. Why did she feel compelled to suddenly test him?
‘Boost your reputation around here to compassionate hero as well as playboy, huh?’ she murmured discreetly, so only Sol heard.
He glanced at her sharply, then formed his mouth into something that most people might take to be a smile. She knew better.
‘Something like that,’ he agreed with deliberate cheerfulness that instantly revealed to Anouk that this was the last stunt he wanted to be pulling.
He didn’t fool her. She couldn’t have said how she knew it, but Sol was doing this for Isobel and for Katie, despite the fact that it was going to make him all the more eligible within the hospital’s pool of bachelors, and not because of it. Which suggested there was more to Sol Gunn than she had realised.
Anouk wished fervently that the concept weren’t such an appealing one.
‘Right.’ Shoving the knowledge from her head, she smiled brightly at Katie and then at her patient. ‘Let’s get you to CT, shall we, Izzy? Don’t worry, your sister will be right beside you until you go in, and th
en again the moment you come back out.’
And that sharp jab behind her eyes as Katie slipped past her to walk next to the gurney and take her sister’s hand in her own wasn’t tears, Anouk told herself fiercely.
Just as she wasn’t softening in her opinion of the Smoking Gun. She couldn’t afford to soften, because that would surely render him more perilous than ever.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT’S THE STORY, BRATIK?’
Lost in his own thoughts, a plastic cup of cold, less than stellar vending-machine coffee cupped in his hands, Sol took a moment to regroup from the out-of-the-blue question from his big brother.
Then another to act as though he didn’t know what Malachi was getting at.
‘The scan revealed no evidence of any bleed on the brain and Izzy hadn’t damaged her neck or broken her jaw in the fall, which we’d suspected, hence why she’s been transferred to Paediatric Intensive Care. Maxillofacial are on their way to deal with the teeth in Izzy’s mouth that are still loose. We have the two that came out in a plastic lunchbox someone gave to Izzy, but I think they’re baby teeth so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. We won’t know for sure until some of the swelling goes down.’
They had left Izzy with her mother and sister for some privacy, but, without having to exchange a word, both brothers had chosen to remain on hand. The girls’ mother was going to need help, if nothing else.
‘I know all that,’ Malachi cut in gruffly, as though it pained him to ask. ‘The paediatric doctor told me. I was asking what the story was with you, numb-nuts.’
An image of Anouk popped, unbidden, into Sol’s head, but he shoved it aside.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
It was only a partial lie.
He knew what his brother was getting at, which was surprising since they didn’t do that feelings stuff, but he didn’t know the answer to the question himself.
‘You know exactly what I mean.’ Malachi snorted. ‘You forget I’ve practically raised you since we were kids. You can’t fool me.’
Sol opened his mouth to jibe back, as he normally would. But tonight, for some inexplicable reason, the retort wouldn’t come. He told himself it was the situation with Izzy. Or perhaps the fact that sitting on hard, plastic chairs, in a low-lit, deserted hospital corridor in the middle of the night, played with the mind.
He had a feeling it was more like the five-foot-seven blonde doctor who was resurrecting ghosts he’d thought long since buried. He had no idea what it was about her that so enthralled him, but she had been doing so ever since the first moment he’d met her.
It had been an evening in a nightclub where Saskia, already a doctor at Moorlands General, had brought Anouk along so that she could meet her new colleagues. The night before, he’d seen Anouk as a focussed, driven, dedicated doctor. And she’d been so uncomfortable that it had been clear that clubs definitely weren’t her thing.
He’d seen her from across the room. She’d looked up and met his gaze and something unfamiliar and inexplicable had punched through him. Like a fist right to his chest. Or his gut.
If it had been any other woman he would have gone over, bought her a drink, probably spent the night with her. Uncomplicated, mutually satisfying sex between adults. What could be better? But as much as his body might have greedily wanted the pretty blonde across the room, possibly more than he’d wanted any woman, something had sounded a warning bell in his head, holding him back.
And then someone had spiked her drink—they must have done because he’d seen her go from responsible to disorientated in the space of half a drink—and he’d found himself swooping in to play some kind of knight in shining armour, before any of her colleagues could see her.
Sol couldn’t have said how he knew that would have mattered to her more than almost anything else. There was no plausible explanation for the...connection he’d felt with her.
So he’d alerted the manager to the situation before pushing his way across the room, grabbing the dazed Anouk’s bag and coat and putting his arm around her before anyone else could see her, and leading her out of the nightclub.
Only one person had challenged him on the way out, a belligerent, narrow-eyed, spotty kid he hadn’t known, who he suspected had been the one to spike Anouk’s drink. It hadn’t taken more than a scowl from Sol to send the kid slinking back to the shadows.
He’d got Anouk home and made sure she was settled and safely asleep in bed before he’d left her. The way he knew Saskia would have been doing if she hadn’t snuck away by that point. Along with his brother. Sol had seen them leave. Together. So wrapped up in each other that they hadn’t even noticed anyone else.
He’d headed back to the club to advise them of the situation, before calling it a night; there had been a handful of women all more than willing to persuade him to stay. None of them had enticed him that night.
Or since. If he was being honest.
Not that Malachi knew that he knew any of it, of course, and he wasn’t about to mention it to his big brother. Not here, anyway. Not now. Not when it included Saskia. If the pair of them had wanted him to know they’d ever got together then they wouldn’t have pretended they didn’t know each other back when Malachi had brought Izzy’s mum up to the ward and Saskia had explained to her what was going on with the little girl.
He’d tackle Malachi about it some other time, when he could wind him up a little more about it. The way the two of them usually did.
Sol glowered into his coffee rather than meet Malachi’s characteristically sharp gaze.
‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I remember everything you went through to raise us, Mal. I know you sold your soul to the devil just to get enough money to buy food for our bellies.’
For a moment, he could feel his brother’s eyes boring into him, but still Sol couldn’t bring himself to look up.
‘Bit melodramatic, aren’t you, bratik?’ Malachi gritted out. ‘Is this about Izzy?’
‘I guess.’
His second lie of the night to his brother.
‘Yeah. Well,’ Malachi bit out at length. ‘No need to get soppy about it.’
‘Right.’
Downing the last of the cold coffee and grimacing, Sol crushed the plastic cup and lobbed it into the bin across the hallway. The perfect drop shot. Malachi grunted his approval.
‘You ever wondered what might have happened if we’d had a different life?’ The question was out before he could stop himself. ‘Not had a drug addict for a mother, or had to take care of her and keep her away from her dealer every spare minute?’
‘No,’ Malachi shut him down instantly. ‘I don’t. I don’t ever think about it. It’s in our past. Done. Gone.’
‘What the hell kind of childhood was that for us?’ Sol continued regardless. ‘Our biggest concern should have been whether we wanted an Action Man or Starship Lego for Christmas, not keeping her junkie dealer away from her.’
‘Well, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known you were going to get maudlin on me.’
‘You were eight, Mal. I was five.’
‘I know how old we were,’ Malachi growled. ‘What’s got into you, Sol? It’s history. Just leave it alone.’
‘Right.’
Sol pressed his lips into a grim line as the brothers lapsed back into silence. Malachi could claim their odious childhood was in the rear-view mirror as much as he liked, but they both knew that if they’d really locked the door on their past then they wouldn’t have founded Care to Play, their centre where young carers from the age of merely five up to sixteen could just unwind and be kids instead of responsible for a parent or a sibling.
If there had been anything like that around when he and Malachi had been kids, he liked to think it could have made a difference. Then again, he and Mal had somehow defied the odds, h
adn’t they?
Would the strait-laced Anouk think him less of an arrogant playboy if she knew that about him?
Geez, why did he even care?
Shooting to his feet abruptly, Sol shoved his hands in his pockets.
‘I’m going to check on some of my patients upstairs, then I’ll be back to see Izzy.’
He didn’t wait for his brother to respond, but he could picture Malachi’s head dip even as he strode down the corridor and through the fire door onto the stairwell.
He wasn’t ready for Anouk to come bounding up the steps and, by the way she stopped dead when she saw him, she was equally startled.
‘You’re still here?’ she faltered.
‘Indeed.’
‘I’d have thought you’d have gone home by now. I heard Izzy’s mum arrived.’
She glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if checking no one could see them talking. He could well imagine she didn’t want to be seen as the next notch on his bedpost. He almost wanted to ask her how much free time she imagined a young neurosurgeon to have that he could possibly have made time for so many women.
He bit his tongue.
What did it matter to him if she believed he was as bad as all those stories? Besides, hadn’t he played up to every one of them over the years? Better people thought him a commitment-phobe than realise the truth about him.
Whatever the truth even was.
‘Mal and I stayed to help.’
‘Mal?’
‘Malachi.’
‘That’s right.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Your brother. You did say he was collecting the girls’ mother.’
‘He’s through there now.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘With Saskia.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded, but her eyes stayed neutral.
Interesting. She clearly didn’t know that Saskia and Malachi had had a...thing. He wondered what, if anything, Anouk remembered from that night. The club? The drink? The fact that he’d been the one to escort her safely home? Did she not remember him at all from that night?
Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon's Heart Page 2