Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon's Heart

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘Something like that.’ He tried not to spit it out in distaste.

  Clearly he didn’t do a very good job; the expression on her face said enough. Less shock, more a tired understanding. As though she hadn’t expected it from him, but, now that he’d said it, she wasn’t entirely surprised.

  Or maybe he was just projecting. This woman made him rethink things of which he’d long since stopped taking notice. He blinked as he realised she was still talking to him.

  ‘Sol? I asked about your dad.’

  ‘Dead. That’s why she became...ill.’

  ‘So he cared for you before that?’ She was trying to put it together, like one of the jigsaws at the carers’ centre, only it was a jigsaw of his life and he hadn’t given her all the pieces.

  With anyone else, he wouldn’t have wanted to.

  ‘Cared is a bit too generous a description,’ Sol ground out. ‘He was a former Russian soldier.’

  ‘Your parents were Russian?’

  ‘Not my mother,’ he clarified. ‘My father was medically discharged due to injury; he had street smarts but no education so he earned a living taking work on the docks when it was available, or as a pub fighter otherwise.’

  ‘Did he hit you and Malachi?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t exactly the best father but he didn’t hit us, except the odd clip around the ear as many kids got back them, not bad for a man who had been systematically used as a punching bag by his own father. Though he did teach us to fight, from toddlers really, but particularly Mal because he was older. It was his way of bonding with us, I guess.’

  ‘So that’s how Malachi became the skilled fighter he is now.’

  ‘I doubt he’d ever have believed it would make Mal a millionaire.’ Sol shook his head. ‘Love wasn’t something our father was good at. Even his relationship with our mother was more passionate and volatile than loving. She showed us some love as kids, and he put food on the table and a roof over our heads.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Bad fight.’ Sol laughed but it was a hollow, scraping sound. ‘Brain bleed. And yes, I know all the psychology arguments about that being the reason why I became a neurosurgeon. The point is that my mother fell apart. Started doing drugs to numb the pain. It wasn’t a far reach from the world in which we lived back then. The love went pretty fast, then.’

  ‘How old was Malachi?’

  ‘Eight.’ He shrugged as Anouk drew her lips into a thin line. ‘By the time he was ten, she was a full-on addict and Mal was full-time carer for us both, whilst he also earned money for us to eat and live.’

  ‘He was earning money at ten?’ Anouk blew out a breath. ‘Doing what? Surely no one would employ him.’

  ‘Local gangs.’

  ‘Gangs?’ She looked momentarily stunned. ‘So...what did he do?’

  Sol crossed his arms over his chest. Even now, over two decades on, it still rattled him that he didn’t know exactly what his brother had been compelled to do just to keep the two—three—of them together.

  Like holding their lives together with sticking plaster. No, not even something so expensive. His ten-year-old brother had been holding their lives together with a bit of discarded string he’d found blowing about in the filthy street outside their tiny terraced house.

  He didn’t even understand why he was telling Anouk any of this, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop. She drew it out of him, with all the patience and compassion that he had used on the young carers in his centre.

  It was odd, the tables being turned on him. And, strangely, not entirely unpleasant.

  ‘Errands like drugs?’ she pressed gently.

  He emitted another harsh laugh. Given the state of their mother, drug gangs were people Malachi had never, ever worked for.

  ‘No, never drugs. I don’t know everything he did, you’d have to ask Mal, but things like being a runner for bookies. They trusted him because of our dad. Maybe he did things which were a bit dodgy but not outright illegal. Even as a kid Mal was always unshakeable on that.’

  ‘He seems so quiet.’ Anouk shook her head, evidently trying to absorb it all.

  No judgement. No false sympathy or drama. Just...her. Listening. Caring. It should have concerned him more that he was letting her get so close, but he couldn’t bring himself to back away. Even emotionally.

  He told himself that he knew what he was doing.

  ‘Mal isn’t as quiet as people think. He has this inner core of steel, I’m telling you. Even as a kid he handled himself with those guys. Enough to make sure that I kept going to school. Believe it or not, I was always better with the discipline than he was.’

  ‘Sol, the playboy, a good schoolboy?’

  She offered him a soft smile and he realised she was teasing him. It was like a lick of heat.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

  ‘So how did he get away with not going?’

  ‘Mal has a true eidetic memory. He didn’t really need to be in lessons to keep up with school. I used to...persuade some lads in his year to get copies of the work.’

  ‘Persuade as in employ some of the fighting techniques your father had taught you?’ she guessed.

  ‘Only in the beginning.’ Sol made no apologies. Not even to this woman. ‘With those ten-or eleven-year-old lads who had trouble accepting a polite request from an eight-year-old. They rarely had trouble the next time.’

  ‘I never realised.’

  ‘Why would you?’ Sol pointed out evenly. ‘The point is that we got by, and if he hadn’t done all of that I wouldn’t have stayed in school, and without him I wouldn’t be in medicine, let alone a neurosurgeon.’

  Neither of them could have imagined even a half of what they had today. Or just how far the two of them would pull themselves out of the gutter. Together. The way it had always been.

  ‘What happened with your mum?’

  He tensed; it was impossible not to.

  ‘He got her the help she needed, but it turned out it still wasn’t enough. She died when I was seventeen.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He shrugged, ignoring the odd scraping sensation deep inside his stomach. One that he was sure had more to do with the soft way that Anouk was looking at him than anything else. ‘In some ways her death set Mal and me free.’

  She stared at him for another long moment and he had to fight the urge to turn away lest she see right down to his soul. Down to where he still felt like that socially awkward, ashamed, inadequate kid.

  ‘Is that where the playboy image came from? Not wanting to commit to someone, or settle down, or have kids because of your experience with your mum?’

  Sol didn’t answer.

  He couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Either way, the net result was the same.

  He swung away to stare at the tiled wall, his hands resting on either side of him on the counter top. Behind him, he heard her slide off the granite surface. He could sense her approaching him and he turned, unable to help himself.

  Suddenly they were facing each other, everything rending apart as Anouk placed her hands on either side of his face as if to make him look at her. He definitely didn’t want to talk any more.

  He forgot that he’d been doing all this to make her trust him. That he’d been waiting for her to need him so badly that she begged him, as she had the night of the gala.

  ‘Confession time is over, zolotse,’ he growled, snaking his arms to her waist and hauling her to him.

  She didn’t object. Especially not when he snagged her mouth with his.

  Sol’s whole body combusted in that one second. The woman was mouth-watering. Every slide of her tempting mouth, every shift of her delectable body, every tiny groan as he swept his finger over her sinfully hard nipples. He’d never ached so much before to bury himself inside a woman. Not aside from the primal, ph
ysical urge, that was.

  Anouk was dynamite where before he’d only known black powder.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘WHAT IS THE matter with you, bratik?’ Malachi challenged from across the expansive, luxury office just as Sol was filling his mug with hot, rich coffee from his brother’s coffee maker.

  ‘What?’ Sol cocked an eyebrow, selecting a couple of Danish pastries to put onto a napkin and striding over to flop in a comfortable chair.

  The last week had been unparalleled. So much for a one-night stand. He hadn’t wanted to let Anouk go and she had been more than happy to stay. There hadn’t been a room in his penthouse they hadn’t used as their personal playground.

  ‘You’re full of the joys of spring,’ sniped Malachi.

  ‘And you’re grouchy and on edge.’ Sol eyed him shrewdly. ‘More so than usual, that is. Though I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.’

  ‘Funny,’ Malachi bit out.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Idiot.’

  Sol shrugged, wholly unconcerned, and wolfed down the second pastry before speaking again.

  ‘Hungry by any chance?’

  ‘Always.’ Sol grinned, glancing around the room.

  ‘Vkusno! So, what’s the Christmas tree all about?’

  He didn’t think he’d ever seen so much as a bauble in his brother’s offices before. Only Anouk had been more resistant to festive decorations than his brother always had been. Sol didn’t know why, but he found himself staring at it a little harder. It looked remarkably similar to the one in Resus. The one that Anouk had said her friend Saskia had decorated.

  He practically heard the clang as the penny hit the floor of his brain.

  ‘I realised it’s good for morale,’ Malachi sidestepped. ‘I’m not the only one who works here, you know. Listen, I’ve got a board meeting to prepare for, so do you want to tell me why you really schlepped across town to see me?’

  Sol stared at his brother wordlessly. That tree had nothing to do with morale; it was about Saskia, plain and simple. Suddenly, he wondered if she was doing for Malachi anything like what Anouk was doing for him. Making him feel whole when he hadn’t before recognised how broken he’d been? And, if so, didn’t they all deserve this chance?

  ‘You and I have always said that we weren’t built for commitment, or love. That everything she put us through destroyed that in us. But what if we’re wrong, Mal? What if you and I have always been capable of love?’

  ‘This discussion is over,’ Malachi ground out. But still, he didn’t move.

  ‘There’s always been a love between you and me.’ What had Anouk said? ‘It may be a different kind of love, but it’s love nonetheless.’

  ‘Where did those pearls of wisdom come from?’ Malachi snorted, but Sol noted that it lacked the level of scorn he might have expected from his big brother. He also noticed that Malachi wasn’t outright dismissing him.

  Or was he just reading too much into it because of the way Anouk had made him re-evaluate his own priorities?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly.

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘No,’ he denied. Then, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Anouk?’

  Reality bit hard, and for a moment Sol thought about denying it. What if talking about her with Malachi spoiled what he and Anouk had? Might have. Not that he even knew what they were—these...feelings that sloshed around inside him like sand and cement and water in a mixer.

  ‘Are you going to take the proverbial?’ He glowered at Malachi.

  Their brotherly banter was inevitable, joshing each other, but for a moment, Malachi didn’t say anything.

  ‘Maybe next time.’

  That was unexpected.

  ‘Yeah, then,’ Sol admitted. ‘Anouk.’

  ‘Something is going on between you both?’

  Malachi didn’t need to spell out that ‘something going on’ meant more than just him and Anouk having sex. His brother had mocked him for his playboy reputation plenty of times in the past.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Serious?’

  Was it? If it wasn’t, would he even be here? Doing this for her? He didn’t care to examine that too deeply.

  ‘Maybe. She’s the reason I came here today, at least.’

  His brother studied him, cool and perceptive.

  ‘What do you need?’ Malachi asked at length.

  ‘You have people who can track stuff down for you, right?’

  Malachi inclined his head.

  ‘I want you to track down all you can on this man.’ Sol flicked through his phone and found the notepad where he’d copied down the details from the scrap of paper in Anouk’s picture frame, leaning forward to spin it across the desk to his brother. ‘He died thirteen years ago, but he used to live there.’

  Wordlessly, Malachi read the screen and made a note of the information. He didn’t even question it and, not for the first time, Sol wondered how different his life would have been if he hadn’t had his brother.

  Anouk was right. Their relationship with their mother might have been destructive and damaging, but the two brothers had always believed in each other, loved each other. In their own fierce way.

  How was it that she—a relative stranger—had understood even when he hadn’t really been able to see it? He doubted Malachi had either.

  What was that saying about not seeing the wood for the trees?

  ‘Do you think you can do this without hurting her, Sol?’ Malachi demanded suddenly.

  ‘Sorry?’ Sol was instantly on alert.

  ‘Settling down with Anouk. Do you think you, the perennial playboy, can do that?’

  ‘I’m not settling down,’ Sol denied.

  ‘Then why care? I mean, I get that you care about your patients, and the kids at the centre. But I’ve never known you to care about a woman enough to ask for my help.’

  ‘She’s...different.’ He chose his words circumspectly. ‘But that doesn’t mean there’s anything serious between us.’

  ‘Right.’

  Malachi pushed his chair back abruptly and stood up, moving to the window to look out, and it struck Sol that they were so alike, he and his brother.

  Perhaps that was why, when he felt the disapproval radiating from Malachi’s stiff back, Sol knew it wasn’t actually directed at him. Rather, his brother was censuring himself. Which was why he took the plunge into the dangerous waters of asking personal questions.

  ‘Who is she, Mal?’

  Malachi swung around but said nothing. The silence seemed to arc between them, dangerous and electric, so many emotions charging over his brother’s usually closed face that Sol could barely keep up. But he recognised anger, and he recognised fear.

  What the hell could ever make his big, tough brother afraid?

  ‘I think I prefer the Sol who just beds women and moves on,’ Malachi said at length. ‘You’re acting like a lost puppy. Anouk’s lost puppy, to be exact.’

  But despite the way he bit out the words Sol knew his brother well enough to read that there was no malice behind them, and so he didn’t take offence.

  ‘Sod off.’ He stood slowly and deliberately, then sauntered over to the sideboard and selected another pastry. A show of nonchalance. ‘I’m no one’s puppy.’

  ‘Not usually, no.’ Malachi shrugged. ‘You’re usually fending them off with a stick.’

  ‘What? Puppies?’ Sol quipped.

  ‘Puppies, women, little old ladies.’ Malachi folded his arms over his chest and shrugged. ‘But I’ve never seen you look at anyone the way I saw you look at that one the night of the gala.’

  ‘Her name’s Anouk,’ Sol corrected instinctively, before realising that Malachi was baiting him. His brother knew her name perfectly well. He’d already used it several times.
‘And I didn’t look at her any particularly special way.’

  Malachi twitched one eyebrow upwards, but said nothing.

  ‘No clever quip?’ Sol demanded when he couldn’t stand the heavy silence any longer.

  ‘I told you, not this time.’

  Sol sized up his big brother. There was something odd about Malachi, and it came back to the fact that the guy was more on edge than usual.

  ‘What’s going on, Mal?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re being cagey.’

  ‘Not really.’ Mal dismissed it casually. Arguably a little too casually. ‘No more so than you, anyway.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Sol shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Fine.’ Leaning back on the sideboard, Sol eyed his brother. ‘Time to tell me something I don’t know, Mal. If you’ve got the balls for it.’

  And just like that, they were two kids again, and Sol was pressing his brother on where he’d been that first time he’d done a job for the Mullen brothers.

  Just as he began to think it wasn’t going to work, Malachi opened his mouth.

  ‘I always thought a wife, a family, wasn’t for us. Not after everything with her.’ Sol didn’t answer; they both knew he meant their mother. ‘I always thought I’d done that bit. I’d endured that responsibility. I never wanted to do it again.’

  ‘But now?’ Sol prompted.

  ‘Lately... I don’t know.’ Malachi swung around from the window almost angrily. ‘Forget it. I’m just... Forget I said anything.’

  In all these years, they hadn’t talked about what had happened. Or about feelings. They were the Gunn brothers. That wasn’t the way they handled their issues. But suddenly, something was different. Not Anouk, of course.

  He told himself that would be taking it too far. But...something. Maybe a delayed reaction to hitting his thirties. The incident with Izzy and her family. The responsibility of the centre.

  ‘Are we capable of it, do you think, Mal?’

  His brother frowned. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of...love.’