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‘Twenty-nine is the new nineteen, Mum, didn’t you know?’ Mikki said dryly.
Her mother pursed her mouth again and reached for her wineglass. ‘You can joke about it all you like, but when was the last time you went on a date?’
‘I went out to dinner with a colleague the other day,’ Mikki said.
Heloise narrowed her eyes. ‘That was a work thing, wasn’t it? And didn’t you tell me there were four other people there? Hardly what I would call a date, darling. When was the last time you were kissed?’
‘Mum!’ Mikki kept her voice low but her colour was high. ‘Will you please butt out of my love life?’
Heloise gave her an affronted look. ‘Only trying to help, dear. No need to bite my head off.’
‘Sorry,’ Mikki said, feeling her shoulders slump. For years she had worked incredibly hard at her career but she had come to a point just lately when her high-stress, high-responsibility job was not enough any more. She wanted more from life than long hours and a six-figure income. But it was so hard to put a toe in the dating pond when she had almost drowned all those years ago.
‘You’re not on call, are you?’ Heloise asked as Mikki took a sip of the wine the waiter had just poured to refill their glasses.
‘No, not tonight,’ Mikki said. ‘I was on last weekend.’
Mikki wanted to look across at Lewis’s table. She ached to have one more look at his face, to see if he was smiling at his date, to see if his eyes were crinkling up at the corners the way they used to do. Not that he had smiled a lot in the past, but when he had, it had been in a way that had made his rare smiles all the more valuable and meaningful. When he smiled his eyes lost that hard ice look and took on a summer-sky tone instead.
She wanted to reacquaint herself with the look of his hands, with those long, tanned fingers with their dusting of masculine hair, those clever, amazing hands that had saved so many lives, the hands that had touched her and caressed her and held her. She wanted to look again at his mouth, the mouth that had kissed hers so passionately, the lips that had touched her in places she had not been touched since.
Heloise’s glass clinked against the side plate as she placed it back on the table. ‘Don’t frown, Michaela. You’ll get wrinkles.’
Mikki forced her expression to relax. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about work.’
‘Have you heard from your father since he arrived in Paris?’
‘Yes, he called me last night.’
Heloise reached for her glass again and took a sip of wine. ‘Did he tell you he is thinking of marrying Rebecca?’
Mikki put her glass down. ‘He did, actually. How do you feel about it?’ she asked, studying her mother’s features. Her parents’ divorce a couple of years ago had not really come as much of a surprise. They had grumbled along for years, not really happy together but neither of them unhappy enough to leave, until her father had met someone working for his international investment company.
Heloise gave a relaxed smile. ‘I’m happy for him.’
Mikki frowned. ‘But Rebecca is so much younger than him. What if they decide to have children? She’ll want them surely?’
‘Darling, your father always wanted more children but I was unable to have any more after you,’ Heloise said. ‘I think it’s lovely that he’s got another chance. Rebecca is a sweetheart. She’ll make a lovely mother. Maybe I’ll get the chance to babysit. I would love that.’
Mikki was still frowning so hard her forehead ached. ‘I can’t believe you’re so accepting of all this. I would want to move to another side of the world instead of…’ She stopped, suddenly realising what she was saying.
‘How will you feel if Lewis suddenly introduces a wife and family to you?’ Heloise asked with a pointed look.
Mikki had to drop her gaze in case her mother witnessed the pain she felt at the prospect of seeing Lewis with a little brood of his own. No one at the hospital had said much about him other than mentioning that his appointment in the neurosurgical department at St Benedict’s was one of the most exciting appointments in a long time, but, then, she hadn’t exactly gone fishing for information. ‘I imagine I will cope with it,’ she said. ‘I was the one who walked out on him, not the other way around.’
‘Was it hard, seeing him again?’ Heloise asked after another little pause.
Mikki picked up her wine and gave her mother what she hoped was a convincing smile. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s just another colleague working at St Benedict’s.’
‘But you’ll see rather a lot of him, won’t you, given that he’s a neurosurgeon and you’re in ICU?’
Mikki had lain awake at nights thinking about exactly that: how she would cope with seeing Lewis on a daily basis. His patients would become hers. They would have to consult each other on management and care. There would be ward rounds and joint interviews with relatives, staff meetings, and the shared space of the doctors’ room. It would be next to impossible to avoid him, and if she tried, someone would surely notice and comment on it. It was going to be hard to pretend he was just like any other colleague but she was determined to do it. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ she said, taking another fortifying sip of wine. ‘I’m not going to fall for Lewis Beck again. That part of my life is definitely well and truly over.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘HAVE you met the new neurosurgeon yet?’ Kate Fry, one of the recovery nurses, asked Mikki a couple of days later.
Mikki continued writing in the patients’ notes as she spoke. ‘Not formally. What’s he like?’
‘Gorgeous,’ Kate said in a dreamy tone. ‘Tall, at least six-four, with the most amazing piercing blue eyes. And get this: he’s not married.’
Mikki put the file on the top of the others on the desk in the doctors’ office waiting to be filed. ‘Do you have Mrs Bronson’s file there?’ she asked. ‘I have to check on her potassium levels.’
Kate found the file and handed it to her. ‘Apparently he was engaged briefly a long time ago, back in London. I wonder what broke him and his fiancée up. Have you heard any gossip?’
Mikki made a note in the file and handed it back. ‘I am not sure Mr Beck would appreciate having his private life discussed on the ward,’ she said curtly.
‘No one can hear us in here,’ Kate said, undeterred. ‘I can’t imagine breaking up with someone like him, can you? He’s über-exy.’
‘If you go for the aloof, show-no-emotion type,’ Mikki said in a disinterested tone as she picked up another file to leaf through.
Kate gave a little gulp. ‘Er...I’d better get back to the ward. See you later.’
Mikki felt the hairs on the back of her neck lift up follicle by follicle. She turned round and met the inscrutable gaze of Lewis from where he stood in the doorway. ‘Apparently you’ve made quite an impression on the female staff,’ she said, keeping her voice even and controlled.
The corner of his mouth lifted but it was still not quite a smile. ‘Not all the female staff,’ he said. ‘Have you been actively avoiding me, Mikki? I haven’t seen you since we ran into each other at the restaurant the other night.’
Mikki felt the pull of his gaze and had to drag hers away with an effort. ‘Of course I haven’t been avoiding you,’ she said, keeping her voice low in case any of the other staff were about.
‘I didn’t see you at the welcoming morning tea,’ he said.
She straightened the already straight papers on the desk. ‘I was busy with one of the patients, that’s why. You know what ICU is like. There is always the possibility of a crisis of some sort.’
He leaned back against the filing cabinet with indolent ease, as if he had been working there all his professional life instead of having arrived two days ago. ‘What have you told people about us?’ he asked.
Mikki gave her head a little toss as she faced him. ‘Nothing.’
One brow lifted in an arc. ‘So no one knows we were once engaged?’
‘Why should they?’ she said.
The corner of his mouth kicked up again. ‘Interesting.’
Mikki felt her lower back tingle as his gaze swept over her, lingering a little too long on her mouth. Again her lips began to fizz with sensation and she ached to send her tongue out to dampen down their sudden dryness, but it seemed to be too intimate an action, a signal of want and need she wasn’t prepared to reveal at any cost. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be professional and mature about this situation, not fluttering with nerves and panic every time she ran into him. ‘Have you told anyone?’ She threw his question back.
‘Not yet.’
Mikki wasn’t sure what she felt about his ‘not yet’. It seemed to contain a threat that he might at some point reveal their past relationship. A couple of people at the hospital knew she had been engaged once but she had never told anyone Lewis’s name or occupation. She didn’t want anyone to connect the dots, and certainly not now with him here in the flesh. ‘What about your girlfriend?’ she asked. ‘Surely you’ve told her about your broken engagement?’
He folded his arms across the broad span of his chest, his eyes still holding hers in a lock-down that was as penetrating as it was unnerving. ‘Abby is not my girlfriend,’ he said.
Mikki only just managed to stop from rolling her eyes. ‘Well, whatever she is, she’s clearly smitten by you. She was hanging on every word that came out of your mouth.’
His eyes softened. ‘She’s rather sweet, isn’t she? I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you but we had a lot of catching up to do.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Mikki said crisply.
There was a little beat of silence.
‘So how are we going to manage this situation?’ Lewis asked.
‘You mean working together?’
‘Yes. Are you going to be OK with it?’
‘I’m perfectly fine with it,’ Mikki said, but on the inside she was screaming, Of course I’m not OK with it!
‘That’s fine, then,’ he said, unfolding his arms.
Mikki pressed her lips together. ‘Um—what about the other stuff?’
His brow lifted again. ‘What other stuff?’
‘The we-were-once-engaged stuff,’ she said.
‘I don’t see that it has anything to do with anyone but us.’
Just to hear him say ‘us’ was enough to send a shock-wave of reaction through her whole body. To be bracketed with him in such a way was deeply disturbing. It suggested an intimacy between them that should no longer be there. Was it still there or was it just her imagination? It was hard to tell from his expression. Even when they had been together in the past he had revealed little of himself. He had been an island she had briefly visited before pulling up anchor and moving on.
But how soon before the hospital grapevine got its tentacles around their past? The medical world was small, the subset of the surgical world even smaller. It would only take one word out of place for people to make the connection. ‘Well, I’m not about to tell anyone,’ she said. ‘I make it a habit to keep my private life separate from my professional one.’
‘You’ve done well career-wise, from all accounts,’ Lewis said, pushing his hands into his trouser pockets as he crossed one ankle over the other. ‘No one works longer hours, or so I’m told. That can’t keep much time free for a private life.’
Mikki shifted her gaze out of the range of his. ‘I love my job.’
‘You say that as if you’re trying to convince yourself rather than me.’
She threw him a cutting look. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve cut back to working nine to five these days?’
His ice-blue eyes glittered like shards of ice. ‘I’ve been working on the work-life balance.’
Her expression showed her cynicism. ‘I’m sure you have.’
‘Are you seeing anyone?’
Mikki frowned at him. ‘What sort of question is that?’
He gave a light shrug. ‘I’m interested in what my successor is like. Or has there been more than one?’
‘It’s been seven years,’ Mikki said with a lift of her chin. ‘What do you think?’
Something moved in his eyes, a camera-shutter flick. ‘You’re not married.’
She arched her brow. ‘So?’
‘And you’re not living with anyone,’ he said.
Mikki folded her arms, the height of her chin challenging. ‘You seem to have done your homework. The question that begs to be asked is: why? Why are you so interested in my private life after all this time?’
Another beat of silence ticked past.
‘Was it worth it, Mikki?’ he asked. ‘Have you finally got what you want?’
Mikki dropped her arms from around her chest and moved to the other side of the office, her eyes averted from his. ‘Of course I’ve got what I want,’ she said.
‘And yet you don’t seem happy.’
She swung back to face him angrily. ‘You’re overstepping the mark, Lewis.’
‘Am I?’
She tightened her mouth. ‘You know you are. My happiness or lack thereof should be of no concern to you.’
‘Is that the way you want to play this?’ he asked. ‘Just pretend we don’t have a history together? How long do you think it will be before someone finds out? Sooner or later someone’s going to make the connection, Mikki. We worked in the same hospital in London. You know how the system works. Everyone knows everyone in this profession.’
Mikki swallowed a knot of tension in her throat. ‘No one needs to find out if we maintain a professional distance.’
He gave a snort of mock amusement and drawled, ‘You’re fooling yourself, sweetheart.’
Mikki cast a nervous gaze around to see if anyone had overheard his casual endearment. ‘Don’t call me that.’
He stepped closer, his tall frame shrinking the space like an adult stepping into a child’s cubby house. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it?’ he said in velvet-smooth tone.
Mikki didn’t need to ask him to clarify what he meant. She could feel it in the air between them— the tension, the crackling, the energy, the temptation. ‘You’re deluding yourself, Lewis,’ she said. ‘I’ve moved on. We’ve both moved on with our lives.’
One of his hands picked up a strand of her hair that had worked its way out of the tight ponytail she had fashioned earlier that day. He coiled it around his finger in an action he had done so many times in the past. Mikki couldn’t have moved away if she had tried. 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 like 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.’
Mikki stepped out of his force field. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of nubile companions to do that for you,’ she said.
He gave that almost-smile again. ‘You sound jealous.’
She sent him a gelid look. ‘I can assure you I’m not.’
