Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon's Heart

by Charlotte Hawkes

  Gathering up all her will, Anouk made herself turn around, even as Saskia was sliding her arm from Anouk’s and greeting Sol as if they were good friends.

  Then again, they were. Saskia had been at Moorlands General for years. Admittedly a much nicer hospital than Moorlands Royal Infirmary, where she herself had trained. Why hadn’t she made the transfer sooner?

  She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she only just caught Saskia murmuring something about going to check the seating plan, too late to stop her friend from slipping away into the faceless crowd.

  And just like that she was alone with Sol.

  As if the couple of hundred other people in the place didn’t even exist.

  It should have worried Anouk more that she felt that way.

  ‘You look...breathtaking.’

  Ridiculously, the fact that he had to reach for the word, as though it was genuine and not some well-trotted-out line, sent another bolt of brilliant light through her.

  And heat.

  So much heat.

  Which was why he had a reputation for being fatal. He was the Smoking Gun, after all.

  She would do well to remember that.

  ‘You thought I wasn’t coming?’ she made herself ask, tipping her head to one side in some semblance of casualness.

  ‘I did wonder.’

  Some golden liquid swirled about an expensive-looking, crystal brandy glass in his hand. But it was the bespoke suit that really snagged her attention. Expensively tailored, it showcased Sol to perfection with his broad shoulders and strong chest, tapering to an athletic waist. The crisp white shirt with the bow tie that was already just a fraction too loose suggested a hint of debauchery, as though he was already on the brink of indulging where he shouldn’t.

  With her?

  She went hot, then cold, then hot again at the thought. It was shameful that the idea should appeal so much. The simmering heat seemed to make her insides expand until she feared her flesh and bones wouldn’t be able to contain her. He was simply too...much.

  He isn’t your type, she told herself forcefully. Only it didn’t seem as though her body wanted to listen.

  ‘I thought perhaps I could introduce you to some people.’

  ‘Oh.’ That surprised her. ‘Is that why you came over, then?’

  He hesitated, and then offered a grin that she supposed was meant to look rueful but just looked deliciously wicked instead.

  ‘Not really.’ He made it sound like a confession yet he deliberately didn’t elaborate and Anouk wasn’t about to play into his hands by asking him.

  ‘I see,’ she lied.

  ‘Do you indeed?’ he murmured. ‘Then perhaps you might explain to me why I couldn’t resist coming over here the instant I saw you walk in.’

  Her chest kicked. Hard. It didn’t matter how many times she silently chanted that he couldn’t affect her, Anouk realised all too quickly that she was fighting a losing battle. She had no idea how she managed to inject a disparaging note into her voice.

  ‘Does that line usually work?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never used it before. I’ll tell you next time I try.’

  She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking when that next time would be. He was clearly baiting her, but what bothered her was that it was working.

  ‘Besides...’ his eyes skimmed her in frank, male appreciation, and everywhere his eyes moved she was sure she nearly scorched in response ‘...if I hadn’t come over then some other bloke would have. You’re much too alluring in that gown.’

  ‘But not out of it?’ she quipped.

  His eyes gleamed black, his smile all the more wolfish. Too late, Anouk realised what she’d said.

  ‘Is that an invitation? I have a feeling I would be breaking quite a few harassment in the workplace rules if I admitted to imagining you out of that dress.’

  ‘I mean... I didn’t mean... That isn’t what I intended.’

  ‘Then be careful what you say, zolotse, you can build a man up too quickly otherwise.’

  ‘Zolotse?’ she echoed. It sounded... Russian, maybe?

  ‘Zolotse,’ he confirmed.

  It was the way his voice softened on that word—as if he hardly knew what he was saying himself as he moved closer, his body so tantalisingly close to hers and his breath brushing her neck—that sent a fresh awareness singing through her veins. It made her forget even to draw breath.

  Her mind struggled to stay in control.

  ‘You don’t intend to elucidate?’ She barely recognised her own voice, it was so laced with desire.

  ‘I do not,’ he muttered.

  Now that she thought about it, Sol and Malachi both had a bit of a Russian look about them. But if they were Russian then it was something Sol didn’t share with many other people. Certainly it wasn’t common knowledge around the hospital.

  Which only made her feel that much more unique.

  Dammit, but the man was positively lethal.

  * * *

  Three hours had passed since she’d arrived.

  Three hours!

  It felt like a mere five minutes, and all because she’d been in Sol’s company.

  The man had turned out to be a revelation. She’d known he was intelligent, witty, devastatingly attractive, of course. The whole hospital talked about him often enough. But knowing it and experiencing it turned out to be two entirely different things.

  He had a way of making her feel...special. And it didn’t matter how many times she cautioned herself that this was his trick, every time he stared at her as though she were the only person in the entire room, an incredible thrill skewered her like a javelin hurtling through her body.

  Even as he’d introduced her around the room—to contacts to whom many of the top consultants would have amputated their own limbs to be introduced—she’d had to fight to concentrate on what he was saying. The feel of his hand at the small of her back kept sending her brain into a tailspin.

  She felt like a reed, bending and turning, twisting wherever the breeze took her, and right now that breeze took the form of Solomon Gunn. He was swaying her at will and yet all he was really doing was moving smoothly through the throng, his hand barely touching her searing flesh.

  Still, she smiled and greeted and charmed, just as she’d learned to do at the knee of her Hollywood mother. And she made no objection to what Sol was doing.

  Perhaps because a portion of her longed to wallow shamelessly in the glances cast their way?

  Some admiringly. Others enviously. She’d been on the receiving end of enough sugar-coated scowls and underhanded digs to know that she wasn’t the only one to have noticed Sol’s attention to her. Or realise that this was more than just his usual behaviour towards a woman on his arm.

  He was giving her his undivided attention and presenting her as though she were a proper date. Half of the room seemed to be more than conscious of his body standing so close to hers. As though she were more than just a colleague.

  As though there were something intimate between them.

  And yet she couldn’t bring herself to care the way she suspected she might have cared a few days ago.

  His gentleness and compassion with the young family the other night still played on her mind.

  Sol might be renowned for caring about his patients, but she’d seen the way he’d stayed with that family even when he was off duty, helping the girls’ mother even when he should have been getting much-needed rest.

  Too natural, too easy. A world away from the playboy Lothario she’d once thought him to be. It fired her curiosity until she couldn’t ignore it any longer.

  ‘I must say that, whilst I don’t know your brother all that well, I wouldn’t have thought a gala ball to raise money for kids was something you’d be interested in. Let alone quite so heavily involved with. I
t begs the question of why.’

  ‘If there is something you want to know, then ask. I am an open book, zolotse.’ He shrugged breezily, and yet it tugged at Anouk.

  Was there more going on behind his words than Sol was willing to reveal?

  It was all she could do to stay brisk.

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me that you’re misunderstood. That your playboy reputation is a terrible exaggeration.’

  Was she really teasing him now?

  ‘On the contrary.’ He shook his head, his stunning smile cracking her chest and making her heart skip a beat or ten. ‘My reputation is something for which I’ve never made any apologies.’

  ‘You’re proud of it,’ she realised abruptly.

  And there was no reason for the sharp stab of disappointment that lanced through her at that moment. No reason at all.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I was proud of it, but then I’m not ashamed of it either.’

  His nonchalance was clear. She had only imagined there was another side to him because that was what she’d wanted to see. What her mother had always done with her own lovers.

  It galled Anouk to realise that she was more like her mother than she’d ever wanted to admit.

  ‘Perhaps you should be ashamed of it,’ she challenged pointedly, but Sol simply flashed an even wider, heart-thumping grin.

  ‘Perhaps. But you could argue that I’m better than many people because I’m above board. I don’t pretend to be emotionally available and looking for a relationship to get a woman into bed, only to turn around and ghost her, or whatever.’

  ‘No, but women practically throw themselves at your feet and you sleep with them anyway.’

  ‘They’re grown women, Anouk, it’s their choice.’

  Anouk snorted rather indelicately.

  ‘You must know they’re secretly hoping for more.’

  ‘Some, maybe. But I make no false pretences. Why does this rile you so much, Anouk?’ His voice softened suddenly. ‘Is this about what happened with Saskia? Or did some bloke treat you that badly in the past?’

  He might as well have doused her with a bucket of icy water.

  What was she doing arguing with him about this? Letting him see how much it bothered her just as clearly as if she’d slid her heart onto her sleeve.

  She fought to regroup. To plaster a smile on her face as though she weren’t in the least bothered by the turn of conversation. But she feared it looked more like a grimace.

  ‘No, I’m fortunate that I’ve never been treated that way.’

  She didn’t add that she’d watched her mother repeat the same mistake over and over enough times never to be caught out like that.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never,’ she confirmed adamantly.

  As though that would rewind the clock. Back to the start of the conversation when she hadn’t been quite so revealing about herself. Or the start of the night before she’d let Saskia walk away and leave her alone with him. Or three days ago when they’d worked together on little Isobel and she’d arrogantly imagined she saw something in the man that no one else appeared to have noticed.

  The worst of it was that there was some component of her that didn’t want to rewind anything. Which, despite every grey cell in her brain screaming at her not to be such an idiot, was enjoying tonight. With Sol.

  ‘In that case, there’s something else you should bear in mind.’ He leaned into her ear, his breath tickling her skin, and it was like a huge hand stealing into her chest and closing around her heart. ‘There are plenty of women who enjoy no-strings sex just as much as I do.’

  Don’t imagine him in bed. Don’t.

  But it was too late.

  Anouk wrinkled her nose in self-disgust.

  ‘I get that in your twenties, but you’re—what? Mid-thirties? Don’t you think you might want to grow up some time? Settle down. Be an adult.’ She cocked an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t Peter Pan.’

  ‘That’s a shame, because you’d make the perfect Tinker Bell.’

  ‘I’m not a ruddy fairy,’ she huffed crossly.

  ‘See?’ he teased, oblivious to the eddies now churning within her. ‘You even have the Tinker Bell temper down flawlessly. Clearly we’re perfectly matched.’

  ‘We most certainly are not,’ she gasped.

  And he laughed whilst she pretended to be irritated, even though she still didn’t try to pull away. So when Sol’s hand didn’t leave her, when his body remained so close to hers without actually invading her space or making her feel crowded in, and when he deftly steered her out of the path of a couple of rather glassy-eyed, lustful-looking men, she found it all such an intoxicating experience.

  As though Sol wanted to keep her to himself.

  No, she was being fanciful, not to mention ridiculous.

  And still that knot sat there, in the pit of her stomach. Not apprehension so much as...anticipation. She was waiting for Sol to do something. More than that, she wanted him to.

  Perhaps that was why, when reality cut harshly into the dream that the night had become, Anouk was caught completely off guard.

  ‘Now, these are the Hintons,’ he leaned in to whisper in her ear as a rather glamorous older-looking couple approached. ‘She was a human rights lawyer whilst he was a top cardiothoracic surgeon. They’re nice, too.’

  ‘How lovely to meet you.’ The older woman smiled at her, but her old eyes burned brightly as they looked her over thoughtfully. ‘Anouk Hart... Hartwood... Hmm. You seem familiar, my dear?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Anouk forced herself to smile back but her cheeks felt too frozen, her smile too false.

  The woman peered closer and Anouk could feel the blood starting to drag through her veins even as her heart kicked with the effort of getting it moving again.

  ‘Yes, definitely familiar.’ She nudged her husband, who was still beaming at Anouk. ‘Don’t you think so, Jonathon?’

  He pondered the question for a moment.

  Anouk tried not to tense, not to react, but she could feel herself sway slightly. Not so much that a casual observer might notice, but enough that a man standing with his hand on her back might. Certainly enough that Sol did.

  His head turned to look at her but she kept staring straight ahead, a tight smile straining her lips.

  ‘Around the hospital, no doubt.’ She had no idea how she injected that note of buoyancy into her voice. ‘Or maybe I just have one of those faces.’

  ‘Oh, no, my dear, you do not have one of those faces.’ The woman chuckled.

  ‘More like a screen icon,’ her husband agreed, then his face cleared and Anouk’s stomach plummeted. ‘Like Annalise Hartwood.’

  ‘Annalise Hartwood,’ the woman echoed delightedly. ‘And she had a daughter...what was her name, Jonathon? Was it Noukie?’

  How she’d always hated that nickname. She was sure her mother had known it, too. It was why Annalise had used it all the more.

  ‘Noukie...’ He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I think it might have been. You’re Noukie Hartwood.’

  As if she didn’t already know! They said it as if it were a nugget of gold, a little bit of information that they were giving her.

  Anouk wanted to shout and bellow. Instead, she stood exactly where she was, her smile not slipping, muscles not twitching.

  ‘Anouk Hart.’ She tried to smile. ‘Yes.’

  ‘My goodness, I can hardly believe it. Annalise was such a screen icon in my day. But, my dear, you don’t have any American accent at all, do you? How long have you been over here?’

  How it hurt to keep smiling.

  ‘My friend and I came to university over here...’ she paused as if she were searching for the memory, when the truth was she knew practically to the week, the day ‘...so a little over ten years ago.’

  The moment her mother h
ad died and Anouk had finally felt free of her. What kind of person did that make her?

  But then, after her mother’s deathbed revelation, who could blame her? To realise that her mother, her grandmother, had been lying to her about her father for eighteen years.

  What kind of people did that make them?

  ‘It was awful what happened to your mother, dear. God rest her soul.’

  Their sympathy was apparent, but all Anouk could feel was how relieved she’d been. It had been awful, but it had also been liberating.

  What had felt awful had been getting to the UK, tracking down her father from an address on a fragment of paper, only to discover that he had died a few years earlier. Her eyes pricked, hot and painful, at the memory. It had been the moment she’d realised the truth had been buried from her, quite literally if she thought about it, for ever.

  She hastily blinked away the inconvenient tears. This was no time for sentimental nonsense. Sol’s eyes were boring into her. Seeing her in a new way. Or maybe seeing her in the old way, the way she hadn’t wanted anyone to look at her ever again.

  ‘Yes, well...’ The smile was as rigid as ever but suddenly she felt like a sad, lonely, frightened kid all over again.

  You are a successful doctor, she chanted silently to herself. Successful. That wasn’t her life any more.

  ‘I know it wasn’t public knowledge, my dear. But we knew of the rumours. The things you did for her.’

  ‘No... I...’ The practised denial was on her lips but it had been so long. So many years.

  ‘What a marvellous ambassador for the young carers you will be.’ The woman brightened up, and it took Anouk a moment to realise what she was implying.

  She opened her mouth to interject but the woman was already turning to her husband.

  ‘Noukie, here, will make a wonderful role model. Don’t you think, Jonathon?’

  ‘Oh, quite, quite,’ he agreed solemnly, completely oblivious of the turmoil their observations were churning within Anouk. ‘Letting them know it doesn’t matter what your background—even the glitz of Hollywood—being responsible for someone else, like a parent, can happen to anyone.’

  She couldn’t focus. They were still talking but the words were becoming more and more distant and muffled. Her brain was shutting down despite her attempts to fight it. She tried to tell them that they had it all wrong, that she wasn’t anyone’s role model, but they were caught up in their excitement and weren’t listening.