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The Surgeon She Never Forgot
MELANIE MILBURNE
Unfinished business with the boss!For Dr Michaela Landon romance and relationships don't even register on her radar–her career always comes first. That is until a face from her past walks into St Benedict's hospital–the face that broke her heart years ago…and one that's as wickedly handsome as ever!Legendary neurosurgeon Lewis Beck and his dangerous charm instantly jeopardise Mikki's cool, calm exterior. Working long days…and even longer nights…how can she ignore her sizzling attraction to the man that once kissed was never forgotten?
She stood mesmerised by the tether of his touch, by the intense blue of his gaze as it held hers.
It was as if the busy, bustling world of the hospital had faded into the background, leaving them isolated in a bubble that contained memories of private moments—intimate moments only they knew about. Her heart kicked against her breastbone as his finger drew closer to her scalp. She could smell his aftershave. It wasn’t one she recognised but it was underpinned with his all too familiar smell: musk and soap and healthy potent male.
‘Do you want to know why I came back after so long out of the country?’ he asked.
She drew in a breath that felt as if it had thorns attached. ‘To further your career,’ she said. ‘That’s always been your priority. Nothing comes before that.’
He uncoiled the strand of hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘A career is not everything, Mikki,’ he said as his hand dropped back down by his side. ‘It can’t keep you warm at night.’
Dear Reader
All my Medical
Romance titles to date have had a hero and heroine meeting for the first time within the first pages of the novel. But this time I wanted to revisit a failed relationship—a very popular theme I have explored several times in my Modern
Romance titles.
The things that draw a couple together can often be the very things that tear them apart further down the track, and so it was with Mikki and Lewis. Their whirlwind affair in London tragically came unstuck and Mikki ran back home to Australia, to all that was familiar.
But time has passed and their paths cross when Lewis comes to work as a leading neurosurgeon at St Benedict’s, where Mikki is an ICU specialist. Their careers are closely entwined, but so too is their history. The spark is still there, but can Mikki risk heartbreak all over again over the unreachable Lewis Beck?
As brooding heroes go, Lewis has it all. He’s a loner, aloof, in control and needs no one. Or does he?
Mikki is just the person to bring Lewis into contact with his feelings. It is only she who can reach that dark, secret place inside him where he has stored all the hurt, guilt and grief and disappointments that life has dished up. I loved watching their second chance at love unfold. It was an emotional journey for me writing it as I know many people do not get the second chance they hope and pray for.
I hope you are deeply touched by their story.
Melanie Milburne
Melanie Milburne says: ‘One of the greatest joys of being a writer is the process of falling in love with the characters and then watching as they fall in love with each other. I am an absolutely hopeless romantic. I fell in love with my husband on our second date, and we even had a secret engagement—so you see it must have been destined for me to be a Harlequin Mills & Boon author! The other great joy of being a romance writer is hearing from readers. You can hear all about the other things I do when I’m not writing and even drop me a line at: www.melaniemilburne.com.au (http://www.melaniemilburne.com.au)’
Melanie Milburne also writes forModern™ Romance!
‘THE FIORENZA FORCED MARRIAGE
by Melanie Milburne: insults fly, passion explodes,
and it all adds up to an engaging story
about the power of love.’
—RT Book Reviews
The Surgeon
She Never
Forgot
Melanie Milburne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my niece Claire Elizabeth Luke.
You are a beautiful person inside and out.
Love you. xx
With special thanks to Dr David Rigg
at The Royal Hobart Hospital, an intensive care
specialist who was very generous with his time
in helping me research some aspects of this novel.
His dedication to his patients really moved me deeply.
Thank you.
CONTENTS
Chapter One (#ua216dc79-4640-5539-9026-0d1236077f73)
Chapter Two (#u531b9557-f2df-5001-a3b8-29f3d78c5e34)
Chapter Three (#ua8ad6ff2-d0e3-505e-8560-da7d82f94f09)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
IT WASN’T that Mikki hadn’t expected to run into him at some point, she just hadn’t thought it would be quite like this. She had thought it through in her head: she would be in the doctors’ room, he would come in and she would look up, as casual as you please, and act as if what had happened between them seven years ago had never occurred. Or, alternatively, she would be in ICU, attending to one of the patients under her care, when he would come in. She would be all cool and professional, treating him exactly the same as she would treat any other specialist at St Benedict’s.
But not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t how she had planned it at all.
As soon as she stepped into the restaurant she saw him. In spite of the subdued romantic lighting there could be no mistaking that tall rangy, dark-brown-haired figure. He was sitting alone at a table towards the back of the restaurant, his concentration on the menu in front of him, but then, as if some internal radar of his had picked up her presence, he raised his head and his startling ice-blue eyes met hers.
Mikki felt like someone had landed a punch in her belly. The air gushed out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She stood with her eyes locked on his, her heart going into a painful spasm for endless moments until she vaguely registered that someone was speaking to her on her left.
‘Dr Landon?’ the maître d’ said at her elbow. ‘Your mother called to say she would be ten minutes late. Shall I show you to your usual table?’
Mikki turned and forced a polite smile to her stiff lips. ‘That would be fine. Thank you, Gino.’
The maître d’ pulled out her chair for her and she sat down on legs that felt as spindly and ungainly as a newborn foal’s. She kept her head down, making a business of turning her mobile phone to the vibrate setting before she sat back with an ease she was nowhere near feeling. She daren’t look across at the other table but she could feel the weight of that penetrating all-too-critical, all–too-assessing gaze.
Was he thinking how much she had changed since she had seen him last? Her honey-brown hair was longer now; she had gone from the urchin look of her early twenties to a more sophisticated shoulder-length style that was easy to manage given the long and often unpredictable hours she worked. She was certainly thinner than seven years ago. Her approach to exercise had been very ad hoc in the past. Now she was an addict, or so her mother kept telling her. Mikki didn’t necessarily agree or disagree. She exercised to keep her demons at bay and the pay-off was a figure she had longed for and had never achieved until now.
‘Hello, Mikki.’
The deep, smooth bass of his voice with its hint of a London accent brought her head up and her heart rate beyond anything it had ever done in a spin cycle class. Mikki looked into those Antarctic eyes and felt the cold breeze of his disdain blow holes in her chest like a volley of bullets. ‘Hello, Lewis,’ she said, pleased her voice sounded so cool and composed when for a moment she had thought it might not work at all.
His eyes moved over her face, pausing for an infinitesimal moment on her mouth, before coming back to her gaze. ‘How are you?’
‘Um—fine, and you?’ Mikki felt her facade slipping. Why had he looked at her mouth like that? That one brief glance had set off a chain reaction beneath the surface of her lips. They felt dry and tingling and she desperately wanted to moisten them with her tongue but somehow fought the urge.
She drank in his features in one quick slurping glance: his dark brown hair had only a few strands of grey in it, although he was now thirty-six years old; and his body, although lean, was well muscled, suggesting he also spent a bit of time in the gym. His sensual mouth was deeply grooved either side with vertical lines that in a lesser man would have been aging but in Lewis’s case gave him a distinguished, knowledgeable and eminently commanding air. He still had a prominent scar over his right eyebrow, the result of a fight when he had been a teenager. He had never told her the circumstances of it; he had said it was a part of his past he was not proud of, and in spite of her probing had refused to be drawn on it.
‘Dining alone this evening?’ he asked, glancing at the empty chair opposite.
‘No, I’m…’ She hesitated, wishing she was meeting one of her colleagues at the very least, or a date. A date would have been better. Much, much better. ‘I’m having dinner with my mother. She’s running late.’
One of his dark brows moved upwards ever so slightly. ‘Please give her my regards,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose she has forgotten me?’
How could anyone ever forget you? Mikki thought with a pang that felt like a tiny fish hook in her heart. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I told both my parents you were coming to St Benedict’s to join the neurosurgical team. They were interested in how well your career has gone.’
‘Surprised would be more appropriate, don’t you think?’ he asked with that same mocking lift of his brow.
Mikki reined in her temper behind a cool impersonal smile, holding back emotions that were straining at the leash of her control. There was no way she was going to show how much seeing him again had rattled her. ‘You were always going places, Lewis. No one could have doubted that.’
‘Ah, darling, I can’t believe I’m so late,’ Heloise Landon said as she came in on a cloud of perfume and the rapid tattoo of click-clacking designer heels. ‘You would not believe the traffic, and Rashid, my driver, had trouble starting the car— Oh!’ She gave a little shocked gasp. ‘It’s not Lewis, is it? Lewis Beck?’
Lewis held out his hand, hardly a muscle moving on his face. ‘Heloise. You’re looking well.’
Heloise’s perfectly manicured hand fluttered back to her neck once he had released it. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘How long has it been?’
‘Seven years,’ he said with an expression as unreadable as stone.
‘Yes, of course,’ Heloise said. ‘Well, this is rather a coincidence, I must say. Fancy running into you like this! I’ve heard all about your appointment at St Benedict’s. It was in the paper and, of course, Michaela confirmed it. Not that she’s let too many in on the secret, mind you. I had to drag it out of her and I’m her mother.’ She gave Lewis a you-know-what-she’s-like look. ‘But, then, I don’t suppose it is de rigueur to go brandishing about the news of one’s ex-fiancé’s imminent arrival just because you’re going to be working with him every day now, is it?’
Mikki wished the floor would open up and gulp her down whole. She chanced a glance at Lewis’s expression but it remained inscrutable, although she thought she saw a glint of something hard in his eyes as they briefly encountered hers. Again, she kept her own expression cool and composed, although it was taking more of an effort than she could ever have imagined.
Heloise was undaunted. ‘Won’t you join us? You can tell us all about your stellar career. That would be lovely and civilised, don’t you think, darling?’ She addressed the latter comment breezily to Mikki.
Mikki had grown to dread her fortnightly dinner sessions with her mother, and would ordinarily have jumped at the chance of diluting her company, but the thought of sharing a meal with Lewis was beyond her capabilities right now. ‘I am sure Lewis has other arrangements for this evening,’ she said a little tightly.
‘Yes, I have, actually,’ Lewis said, nodding towards the young woman who had just been led to his table. He encompassed Mikki and her mother in one look that was polite but indifferent, and added, ‘Maybe some other time.’
The hook in Mikki’s heart dragged a little bit further when she saw him greet the gorgeous young woman who had been shown to his table. His arms went around the young woman’s slim figure, almost lifting her off the floor as he held her to him. Mikki knew it was ridiculous of her to be feeling so wretched at seeing him with someone else. Of course he would have someone else by now. He would have had many someone elses over the last few years. She should have prepared herself better for a situation like this. She had been concentrating on the work part, the professional, not the personal, when the personal was the thing that hurt the most. It shouldn’t, but it did, even after all this time.
Mikki turned away before she saw his mouth go down on that pretty rosebud mouth. ‘So, how are you, Mum?’ she asked.
‘Michaela,’ Heloise said, leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘did you see that girl he has with him? Why, she’s barely out of her teens, I’m sure of it.’
‘Yes, well, he always did go for the young innocent type,’ Mikki said as she examined the wine list with studious intent.
‘Darling, you were twenty-two,’ her mother said, ‘hardly a babe in the woods.’
Mikki brought her head up from the wine list and sent her mother a wry look. ‘I thought you and Dad said I was too young to know what I was doing and I was just about to throw my life away on my first real love affair.’
Heloise pursed her mouth before she spoke. ‘He’s done very well for himself, hasn’t he?’
‘What are you saying, Mum?’ Mikki said as she began perusing the wine list again. ‘That I made the biggest mistake of my life in leaving him when I did?’
There was a tense little silence.
Heloise let out a frustrated breath. ‘Michaela, you’re always so defensive. Of course you did the right thing in leaving him. You had nothing in common with him.’
Mikki put the wine list down and met her mother’s gaze. ‘I loved him, Mum. I thought that was all the common ground one needed.’
‘But, darling, did he love you?’ Heloise asked. ‘There’s a very big difference between lust and love, you know.’ She took one of Mikki’s hands across the table and stroked it gently. ‘I know losing the baby was hard but in the end it worked out for the best, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes, it did.’ Mikki pulled her hand away and tried to ignore the sharp pain she always felt when the subject of the baby she had lost came up. She had felt so ashamed of letting her parents down. Her first trip abroad on her own and look what had happened. Her well-to-do parents’ hopes for their only daughter to one day have a society wedding with all the trimmings had been pushed aside for plans for a shotgun affair in a London register office, sandwiched between procedures in one of Lewis’s theatre lists.
‘Do you know if he’s married?’ Heloise asked, leaning back in her chair. ‘I didn’t notice a ring, did you?
Mikki had looked but was not going to admit to it. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Do you think that’s his mistress?’ Heloise asked. ‘Rich and powerful men nearly always have mistresses, don’t they? It seems to all be the rage these days.’
Mikki put the wine list down again with a heavy sigh. ‘Look, Mum, I don’t care who it is. Lewis has a perfect right to see who he likes. It’s none of my business.’
Heloise shifted in her seat like a hen ruffling its feathers. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, darling. I’m just trying to make conversation. You seem so stressed lately. And your father told me the last time he had lunch with you, you barely ate a thing. Is something wrong?’
‘Of course there’s nothing wrong,’ Mikki said. ‘I’ve just been putting in some long hours.’
‘You work too hard, darling,’ Heloise said. ‘Why do you drive yourself into the ground? Don’t you think you need a bit of a balance? You’re not getting any younger.’
