Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart

CHAPTER THREE

‘THIS PLACE IS STUNNING,’ Anouk breathed as she gazed up at the huge sandstone arches that lined either side of the gala venue, and then up again to the breathtaking vaulted ceiling.

‘Isn’t it?’ Saskia demurred.

‘I feel positively shabby by comparison.’

‘Well, you don’t look it.’ Saskia laughed and Anouk wondered if she’d imagined the tension she’d noted in her friend over the past few months. ‘You look like you’re sparkling, and it isn’t just the new dress. Although I’m glad you let me talk you into buying it.’

‘I’m glad I let you talk me into buying it, too,’ admitted Anouk, smoothing her hands over the glorious fabric.

It was amazing how much confidence the dress was giving her, from its fitted body and plunging sweetheart neckline to its mermaid hemline. Three strings of jewelled, off-the-shoulder straps swished over her upper arms whilst the royal-blue colour seemed to complement her blonde hair perfectly.

‘You look totally Hollywood.’

‘Don’t.’ Anouk shuddered, knowing Saskia was the one person she could be honest with. ‘I think I’ve had enough of Hollywood to last me a lifetime.’

‘Me, too. But still, the look is good.’

‘Maybe I should have been in more festive colours.’ She glanced at Saskia’s own, stunning emerald dress, which had looked gorgeous on the rack, but on her friend’s voluptuously feminine body seemed entirely bespoke, complementing Saskia’s dark skin tone to perfection.

‘I look like a Christmas tree.’ Her friend laughed, before waving towards the glorious eighteen-foot work of art, complete with elegant decorations, that dominated the entrance. ‘Although if I looked that amazing I’d be happy.’

‘You look even better, and you know it.’ Anouk laughed. ‘You’ve only just walked in and you’ve turned a dozen heads.’

‘They’re probably looking at you, and, either way, I don’t care. Tonight, Anouk, we’re going to relax and enjoy ourselves.’

‘We are?’

‘We are.’ Saskia was firm, taking a champagne flute from the tray of a passing waiter, her beam of thanks making the poor guy fall for her instantly. ‘Starting with this.’

She passed the drink to Anouk.

‘You still feeling sick?’ Anouk frowned.

‘Yeah.’ Saskia pulled a rueful face but Anouk didn’t miss the flush of colour staining her cheeks.

If she hadn’t known better she might have suspected that Saskia was pregnant. But that surely wasn’t possible? Up until ten months ago Saskia had been engaged and, for all Saskia’s confidence and effervescent personality, Anouk knew her ex-fiancé had been only the second man her friend had ever slept with.

But he hadn’t been as loyal, and Anouk had never really taken to him. Whenever she’d looked at him she’d seen yet another playboy—just like her mother’s lovers.

Just like Sol, a voice whispered in her head.

‘Relax.’ Saskia nudged her gently. ‘Enjoy your drink.’

‘I don’t really like...’ Anouk began, but her friend shushed her.

‘You do tonight.’

Anouk balked.

She still wasn’t sure what had happened at that nightclub. She had the vaguest memory of starting to relax and trying to have a little fun, and then a sense of panic. After that it wasn’t clear, but she’d ended up back home, in her own bed, alone.

Safe.

The popping bubbles looked innocuous enough—fun, even—but all Anouk could see was her mother, downing glasses and popping pills. Had anything else passed her lips in those final few years?

‘One glass doesn’t make you your mother.’ Saskia linked her arm through Anouk’s, reading her mind.

Anouk offered a rueful smile.

‘That obvious, huh?’

‘Only to me. Now go on, forget about your mother and enjoy this evening. You and I both deserve a bit of time off, and, anyway, we’re supporting a good cause.’

‘We are, aren’t we?’ Anouk nodded, dipping her head and taking a tentative sip.

It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. In fact, it was actually quite pleasant. Not the cheap plonk, at least, with no bitter aftertaste. Including that of her mother.

Sighing quietly, Anouk finally felt some of the tension begin to uncoil within her.

This was going to be a good evening. She was determined to enjoy it.

‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming after all.’

His voice was like a lightning bolt moving through her, pinning her to the spot. Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and even her legs gave a traitorous tremor beneath the gorgeous blue fabric.

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. It 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 had 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.

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