And verbal punching bag, of course.
Her brain skittered away from the unwanted memories.
‘Are you looking forward to Christmas?’ Anouk asked milliseconds before it occurred to her that it might not be the most appropriate question for someone like Libby.
For a moment, the little girl looked thoughtful and then, to Anouk’s relief, she managed a slow bob of her head. Anouk hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath until that moment.
‘Yes, I think so. It’s a lot better now that I have this place to come to.’
‘Right,’ Anouk agreed, swallowing quickly. ‘And these are for the Christmas Fayre?’
‘Yep, it’s a lot of fun. There are stalls and fairground games, and Sol and Malachi usually arrange something special. Like, one year it was an ice rink, and another it was fairground rides. It can be a chance for the centre to get out into the community and show them that we’re good kids.’
‘I understand.’ Anouk bobbed her head, carefully concealing her surprise.
The maturity with which Libby spoke belied her six years. But then, that was likely a result of being a child carer for her parent. It was testament to her resilience how this little girl could talk so eloquently one moment, and be excited about making Father Christmas faces to stick on paper bags of stocking fillers.
‘Plus, we raise money to help keep the centre running,’ she added proudly. ‘And to buy new pieces for our Christmas village scene.’
Anouk wasn’t quite sure what that was, but before she could ask Libby was reaching for a small box beside her to lift up a handful of faces from Santa to Rudolph, and from elves to gingerbread men.
‘I made these already.’
‘They’re amazing.’
Libby beamed, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
‘And, don’t tell the younger girls, but I know that Father Christmas isn’t real.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Anouk asked carefully. Most six-year-olds she knew still believed.
Libby shot her a cynical smile.
‘Please. I know he isn’t. Last year, when I was five, we went shopping together and Mummy bought me presents without me knowing. But over Christmas she got unwell again and couldn’t get out of bed without my help so she couldn’t put them out overnight. She tried to pretend that Father Christmas had got lost and left them under her bed by mistake.’
‘That’s entirely possible,’ Anouk replied steadily, her eyes deliberately focussed on her task.
‘You don’t have to protect me. I’m not your average six-year-old,’ Libby remonstrated softly, echoing words she must have heard people use time and again about her.
The matter-of-fact tone only tugged at Anouk’s heart all the harder.
‘The point is that Mummy was ill so I’d had to do the hoovering over Christmas. I knew the presents had been there for weeks. I tried to tell Mummy but she got upset and cross with herself so I pretended that I believed her.’
‘It’s still possible—’
Libby cut her off as though she hadn’t spoken.
‘But I wanted to tell someone and I like you. I think I can trust you.’ She tipped her head on one side and eyed Anouk shrewdly. ‘I can, can’t I?’
The lump in her throat meant she might as well have been trying to swallow a golf ball.
‘You can,’ she choked out, and Libby just eyed her a little longer before bending her head back to her Father Christmas crafting and working diligently again. A companionable silence settled over them once more—as long as the little girl couldn’t hear how hard and how fast Anouk’s heart was beating for her, that was.
A good half-hour had to have passed before Libby spoke again.
‘You know there’s going to be an entertainer at the Christmas Fayre, maybe a magician or a puppet show?’
As if their previous conversation had never happened.
‘Wow.’ Anouk hoped she managed to inject just the right amount of sounding impressed but not condescending. ‘That sounds like it will be fun.’
‘It will.’ The girl nodded enthusiastically. ‘Especially when it’s a real entertainer and not just Sol and Malachi dressed up in costumes. Although they’re pretty funny, too. And so cool.’
‘You think so?’ She tried to sound chatty but her throat felt dry. Scratchy.
Libby’s unbridled adoration didn’t help Anouk in her fight not to let Sol get under her skin any more than he had already appeared to.
‘Of course—’ Libby snorted in a little-girl sort of way ‘—you could normally see it for yourself. They’re usually always here. Or at least, they used to be before they started to build our new centre.’
Picking up another face to glue, Anouk tried to sound utterly casual.
‘What makes them so cool, then?’
‘Well, everything, I guess.’ Libby looked up, her expression thoughtful. ‘They were carers, too, just like all of us, only my mummy loves me and their mummy didn’t. But they’ve still become rich and famous. When I grow up, I’m going to be just like them.’
‘A surgeon like Sol?’
It was all she could do to sound normal. Another revelation about Sol. Another description that made him seem like a world away from the commitment-phobic playboy of the hospital gossip mill.
‘Sol’s a neurosurgeon,’ Libby corrected. ‘He saves lives. Or maybe I’ll be an investor and become a millionaire like Malachi. I haven’t decided yet, but they’re both always saying that if you want something enough, and work hard enough for it, there’s a good chance that you can achieve it.’
‘Right.’ Anouk grappled for something to say.
She wasn’t sure if it was Libby’s maturity or the fact that Sol was such an inspiration to the little girl that stole her breath away the most.
‘Did you know they like to help to actually build the new centre?’
‘Sorry?’ Anouk snapped back to the present.
‘Sol and Malachi?’ Libby prompted. ‘They are actually helping to build the new Care to Play. We saw them a lot in the summer when the centre organised rounders and football matches in the park. They were carrying bags off a builder’s truck and cutting wood.’
‘They did?’ The image certainly didn’t do anything to dampen the ache that constantly rolled inside her these days.
No wonder Sol always looked so healthy. Every time she had failed to push away memories of that mouth-watering physique, slick and hot under her hands, she’d consoled herself with the knowledge that he must spend countless hours in the gym. Her mother had enjoyed enough gym-junkie boyfriends for her to know that they loved themselves more than they would ever be able to love someone else.
She’d almost convinced herself that this fact therefore detracted from how good-looking Sol might otherwise seem. So discovering now that he had achieved that honed, utterly masculine body from genuine physical labour—and not just any labour, but building a centre for young carers—only made it that much harder to pretend there wasn’t some empyreal fire to the man.
‘Some of the older girls said they were hot.’ Libby looked sceptical, all of her six years suddenly showing. ‘But I think they were probably okay because they’d taken their tops off to cool down. They put them back on when we passed, though.’
‘Right,’ Anouk managed. Just about.
She imagined that the temperature of the brothers wasn’t the kind of hot the older girls had meant. But the image of Sol shirtless wasn’t one she was ready to deal with right at this moment.
‘Sometimes we take them bottles of water to help cool them down.’
Despite herself, Anouk suppressed a grin.
‘Very thoughtful of you.’
Libby, her eyes on her Santa face, didn’t notice.
‘Sol and Malachi look after us, it’s only fair that we do a little for t
hem. They’re who we buy the Christmas village scenes for. It’s special to them.’
‘I’m pretty sure they’re looking after you because you already take care of people,’ Anouk said softly.
‘Well...maybe, but they know exactly what we’re going through, and that makes it easier to talk about.’
Another titbit of information. Anouk felt like a tiny bird, starving for every morsel dropped about Sol. She bit her lip.
‘How did they come to be carers?’
She’d tried to sound casual, but the little girl glanced up sharply.
‘That’s their story to tell.’ Libby shut down immediately, sounding for all the world like a young woman and not a six-year-old kid. ‘Don’t you think?’
It was all Anouk could do not to let it show how flustered she felt. She plastered a smile on her face. She wouldn’t think about Sol Gunn a second longer.
‘Okay, Libby, I’ve finished that batch of Father Christmas faces. What should I make now?’
And she wouldn’t be going anywhere near the new building site, either.
* * *
Sol knew she was there even before he turned around. It was as though the entire air seemed to change and shift around him and where it had been peaceful before, now a kind of energy was pulsating through it.
He took a breath and took his time, turning slowly. She looked delicious standing there, all bundled up in a big coat, a Christmas pudding hat and a very green, Christmas-tree-patterned scarf.
‘Anouk.’ Even her name tasted absurdly good as it rolled off his tongue. ‘Just passing?’
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ she replied evenly. ‘Libby said I could find you here. As I imagine you knew she would.’
He wanted to deny it but couldn’t.
Libby was confident and talkative, a good kid who would have been able to show Anouk around without becoming tongue-tied. But he supposed there was a tiny piece of him that had also known the six-year-old would have told Anouk about the new centre.
He just hadn’t known, until now, whether Anouk would have taken the bait and come to see him for herself. He tried to ignore the sense of satisfaction that punctured him.
‘Ah, but you didn’t have to come.’
‘Of course that’s what your response would be.’ She drew her lips into a thin line.
Yet Sol couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t a denial either. He was barely even aware of dropping his tools and making his way to her, feeling the heat start to come back to his frozen limbs as he stamped his way over the stony ground.
‘So why are you here?’
‘Libby mentioned that you and Malachi are helping to build the place. I had to come and see for myself, and here you are, hauling bags of...’ she cocked her head to read the packaging that he still had hoisted on his shoulder ‘...plaster off a truck. Surely you have guys to do that for you?’
‘Every bit Mal and I do means more money saved for the centre itself.’
Plus, the physical labour of it somehow... fulfilled him.
‘I thought you were a millionaire playboy? You and your brother come from money. Isn’t that what the hospital grapevine says?’
He opened his mouth to make one of his typical, non-committal responses, but found he couldn’t. There was a new edge in her tone, almost as if she was testing him. But she couldn’t possibly know the truth, could she?
Something dark and unfamiliar loomed in the shadows of his mind. A lesser man might have mistaken it for shame at his past. But he refused to be that lesser man. Malachi was right: it was done. It was history. No need to rake up the humiliation of their childhood for anyone, especially the daughter of a Hollywood starlet who had no doubt enjoyed a charmed upbringing.
Except that wasn’t what the Hintons had said, was it?
He stuffed it down and forced himself to be upbeat.
‘Mal and I can donate all we want, but these centres need to exist for themselves, support themselves—that way they can keep going long after we’re gone. And if the model works then it can be replicated up and down the country.’
‘You want more Care to Play centres,’ she realised.
‘Right. One centre is good, two centres is even better, but what we want is a business model which can be extended nationally.’
‘I...didn’t think of that.’
‘Why would you?’ he asked. ‘Want a tour?’
Anouk looked surprised, before bouncing her Christmas pudding hat slowly and looking even more ridiculously cute.
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘So, what happened with that toddler who fell down the concrete steps?’ he asked as he turned and headed into the building as if it made no difference to him whether she had followed or not. It was only as he lowered the plaster bag and heard her boots clicking on the concrete floor that he knew she had.
Why did it give him another jolt of victory?
How had this woman managed to insinuate her way under his skin? It was sheer insanity and he should walk away now.
Sol had the oddest sensation that if he didn’t walk now, it would be too late.
And still he unlocked the padlock and unwound the heavy-link chain from around the temporary plywood doors.
‘The twenty-month-old?’ Anouk looked surprised.
‘Yeah. Rosie, right?’
‘Yes, Rosie. Believe it or not she was okay.’ Anouk grinned, the miraculous recovery of kids never failing to amaze her. ‘You knew there were no obvious signs of any breaks or fractures?’
‘I did, but there was that inter-cranial bleed that needed to be monitored.’
‘Yep, that’s it. She stayed in for two nights before being cleared. She was discharged yesterday.’
‘Lucky.’ He smiled.
‘Very.’
‘Anyway, welcome to our new Care to Play centre.’ He slid the chain through one door handle and pulled the other open to usher her inside. ‘We should be in by the new year.’
Anouk walked through what would soon be the reception area, stopping dead practically in the doorway of the new hall. Then she glanced around, silently taking it all in. From the expansive, hi-tech-looking space with its spaghetti junction of wires, evidently in preparation for any number of new gadgets for the kids, and the large heaters to dry the plaster.
It was inexplicable how buoyed up he felt, showing her around and watching her reaction—this unique, complicated woman who pulled at something deep inside him—and he didn’t know what name to put to it.
He didn’t really want to try.
There was an attraction, certainly, but he’d been attracted to plenty of women in his time. A primal, sexual attraction.
This wasn’t that.
He grappled for the word but the only thing he could come up with was...connection. And he knew better than to believe that.
Didn’t he?
‘What’s going over there?’ she asked, pointing to an area of the room where there was still a fair amount of work to do.
‘A stage.’ Sol smiled. ‘You want to see the talent some of these kids have. They’re just bursting for a forum in which they can showcase what they can do. Behind the wall there are a couple of soundproofed music rooms, too. We’ll be putting instruments in them and the kids can set up their own bands if they want to. Or just sing, whatever they want.’
‘Goodness, this place really is so much bigger than where they are now.’
‘By a couple of hundred square metres,’ Sol agreed. ‘But it isn’t just that, it’s the way we’ve teched the place up.’
‘I get that.’ She smiled, with the kind of radiance that heated up a person’s very bones. Heated up his very bones, anyway. ‘It’s incredible. The kids are going to be bowled over.’
‘That’s the hope. Come on, I’ll show you the rest.’
He continued the t
our to the new kitchens, the offices, the music rooms, and finally the small quiet rooms.
‘Although the centre is built on the idea that kids can come in and talk about normal things, and just be a kid crafting, or playing, or singing, there are nonetheless times when kids will need to talk. Maybe a little group of them will get together.’
‘And support each other,’ Anouk offered.
‘Exactly. Or sometimes someone might just need a quiet room for a one-on-one chat with an adult. We do get kids who have been self-harming and need something more to help them cope. They might have been struggling without any support and things have just got on top of them and they haven’t known where to turn.’
He didn’t miss the way Anouk dropped her eyes from his, that familiar stain creeping over her skin whenever she was embarrassed.
‘Everything okay?’
‘So Care to Play can be there for them and make sure they know that they’re no longer alone?’ she trotted out stiffly. ‘That’s great.’
Spinning around, she lunged for the door to leave and practically bumped into him.
Instinct made him reach out and grab her upper arms to steady her, before he could stop himself. There was clearly something more going on here and he felt oddly driven to find out what it was.
But the instant he made physical contact with her, electricity charged through him, practically fusing his hands in place. He was wholly unable to pull away. The need to learn more about this woman who had infiltrated his whole being in a matter of a week was almost visceral.
‘What’s going on, Anouk?’ Urgency laced through his voice. ‘What is it?’
These rooms were designed to feel closed off. A place where kids could talk about the things they might not even want to admit to themselves. Safe.
Right now, with Anouk up against his chest and his nostrils suddenly full of that fresh, faintly floral scent that he associated with her alone, Sol felt about as far from safe as it was possible to get.
He glanced down to see the pulse in her slender neck jolt then quicken, which didn’t exactly help matters. The need to bend his head to hers and taste her lips again was almost overpowering.
Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon's Heart Page 8