Date with a Surgeon Prince
Uncertain of protocol but needing to know how he’d come out of the operation, Marni asked Jawa if she’d be allowed to see him.
‘Just a brief visit to see he’s okay,’ she added.
Jawa consulted her watch and decided that, yes, he should be well and truly out of Recovery and back on the children’s post-op ward.
‘Of course you can visit him,’ she assured Marni. ‘I would come with you but I have an appointment.’
The faint blush that rose in her cheeks as she said this suggested the appointment was special, but Marni forbore to tease, not knowing Jawa or the local customs well enough.
The post-op ward was easy to find. The hospital was set up rather like an octopus with all its tentacles spread flat on the ground. The operating theatres, recovery rooms, the ICU and the administration rooms were all in the tall body of the beast, while the arms supplied different wards.
In the post-op ward, bright with murals of colourful forests and wild animals, Marni found most rooms occupied not only by the patient but by a clutch of family members as well—black-robed women, white-robed men.
‘Can I help you?’ a passing nurse inquired.
‘A little boy who had a cleft palate operation this morning. I was one of the theatre staff and wondered how he was doing.’
‘Ah, you mean Safi. Do you wish to visit him?’
‘I wouldn’t want to intrude on his family,’ Marni said.
‘You won’t,’ The nurse told her. ‘In fact, it would be good if you could visit him. He’s not local but has come here for all his surgery. The hospital takes many children from neighbouring countries because we have the doctors with the skills to help them, and this wonderful facility where they can recover, but often the parents cannot afford to accompany the child. The nurses will do their best to see these children are not too lonely, but most of the time—’
‘You’re too busy,’ Marni finished for her. ‘I understand, but I’m far away from home myself so I’ll be happy to visit Safi when I can.’
Following the nurse’s directions, she found Safi’s room, knocked quietly then went in. The little boy turned wide, troubled eyes towards her.
‘Hello,’ she said, aware he probably had no idea of English but not knowing what language he might speak. ‘I’ve come to visit you.’
She sat beside him and held his hand, wishing she’d brought a toy or a book. Although this boy was eight and she’d been only two when she’d first gone to live with her grandfather, she remembered how Pop had helped her feel at home—he’d sung to her.
Dredging back through her memory, she sang the nursery rhymes of her childhood, using her hands as she had back then, making a star that twinkled in the sky and an itsy-bitsy spider climbing up a water spout.
Safi regarded her quite seriously but when she sang ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ for the fourth time, he joined in with his hands then smiled at her.
The smile made her want to cry for his aloneness, but apparently the music had soothed him and he fell asleep.
Not wanting to disturb him too soon, she sat by the bed, holding his hand, her mind drifting through the memories of the tumultuous few weeks since she’d made the decision to come to Ablezia, stumbling out of the drift when she thought of her goal—her goal, not Pop’s.
Could she do it? Go cold-bloodedly into a relationship with a man simply to rid herself of her virginity?
Hot-bloodedly if it was Gaz! The thought popped into her head and Marni knew heat was colouring her cheeks.
Think sensibly!
It wasn’t that she’d thought it precious, the virginity thing. It had just happened, partly, she knew, as the result of having a wayward mother who flitted like a butterfly from man to man. But the biggest hurdle had been growing up with two elderly men who thought the world of her, and not wanting to ever do anything that would make them think less of her.
So she’d pulled back through her late teens when her friends had been happily, and often unhappily, experimenting with sex, although, to be honest, there’d never been a boy with whom she’d desperately wanted to go to bed.
At university, her lack of experience had embarrassed her enough for her to be cautious, then, probably because of the virginity thing, she’d virtually stopped dating, somehow ashamed to admit, if a relationship had developed, her intact state. Until Jack—
Enough brooding!
But Marni still sighed as she lifted the little fingers that had been clasped in hers and kissed the back of Safi’s hand.
Who would have thought it could be so hard?
She stole silently out of the room, turning her thoughts back to the child, knowing she’d return and wondering just where she could buy toys and books to cheer the little boy’s recovery.
Nelson would send whatever she wanted but he was busy with Pop—she’d check out the internet when she went back to her room.
As she passed the nurses’ station, nerves prickled along her spine and glancing over her shoulder she saw the back of a tall, dark-haired man bent slightly to listen to what the nurse at the desk was saying.
Of course it’s not him, she told herself, though why had her nerves reacted?
Surely she wasn’t going to tingle when she saw every tall, dark and handsome stranger!
CHAPTER TWO
NO GAZ IN Theatre the next day or the next, and Marni decided, as she made her way down the children’s ward to visit Safi, that she was pleased, she just had to convince herself of the fact. But the sadness in the little boy’s eyes as she entered his room banished all other thoughts. She sat beside him, took his hand, said ‘Hello’ then ‘Salaam’, one of the few words she’d managed to remember from Jawa’s language lessons.
Safi smiled and repeated the word, then rattled off what might have been questions, although Marni didn’t have a clue. Instead she opened up the folder of pictures she’d printed off the internet, showing Safi a map of Australia and pointing to herself, then one of Ablezia. Using a cut-out plane, she showed how she’d flown from Australia to Ablezia.
The little boy took the plane and pointed from it to her. She nodded. ‘Aeroplane,’ she said. ‘A big jet plane, from here…’ she pointed again ‘…to here.’
Safi nodded but kept hold of the plane, zooming it around in the air.
Marni flipped through her folder, bringing out pictures of a koala, a wombat and a kangaroo. She put them all on the map of Australia and when Safi picked up the picture of the kangaroo, she hopped around the room, delighting the little boy, who giggled at her antics.
‘Kangaroo,’ she said, hoping the books and toys she’d ordered would arrive shortly—she’d paid for express mail. She’d actually found a female kangaroo with a joey in its pouch among the soft toys for sale, and had made it her number-one priority.
Safi was jumping the picture of the kangaroo on the bed now and pointing towards her, so Marni obligingly jumped again, her hands held up in front of her like the kangaroo’s small front paws. Unfortunately, as she spun around to jump back past the end of the bed, she slammed into an obstacle.
A very solid obstacle!
Stumbling to recover her balance, she trod on the obstacle’s feet and mashed herself against his chest, burning with mortification as she realised it was the surgeon—Safi’s surgeon—the man called Gaz.
‘S-s-ir!’ She stammered out the word. ‘Sorry! Being a kangaroo, you see!’
Marni attempted to disentangle herself from the man.
He grasped her forearms to steady her and she looked up into eyes as dark as night—dark enough to drown in—felt herself drowning…
Fortunately he had enough presence of mind to guide her back to the chair where she’d been sitting earlier and she slumped gratefully into it, boneless knees no longer able to support her weight.
He spoke to Safi, the treacly voice light with humour, making the little boy smile and bounce the picture of the kangaroo around the bed.
‘I am explaining to him you come from Australia where these animals are,’ Gaz said, turning to smile at her.
The smile finished her demolition. It lit fires she’d never felt before, warming her entire body, melting bits of it in a way she didn’t want to consider.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, so suggestively she had to wonder if he’d read her reaction to him. Surely not, although the smile playing around his lips—gorgeous lips—and the twinkle in his eyes suggested he might have a fair idea of it.
‘You’re the new surgical nurse.’
A statement, not a question.
‘Marni Graham,’ she said, holding out her hand then regretting the automatic gesture as touching him, even in a handshake, was sure to cause more problems.
You’ve fallen in lust! Twenty-nine years old and you’ve finally been hit by an emotion as old as time.
‘It’s not lust,’ Marni mumbled, then realised she’d spoken the words, although under her breath so hopefully they hadn’t been audible to the surgeon, who was bent over Safi, examining the site of the operation and speaking quietly himself in the soft, musical notes of the local language.
The little boy appeared to know the man quite well, for he was chatting easily, now pointing to Marni and smiling.
‘You have visited him before?’ Gaz asked as he straightened. ‘For any reason?’
‘Should I not have come? Is it not allowed?’ The man, the questions, her silly reactions all contributed to her blurting out her response. ‘Jawa said it would be all right, and the nurses here don’t have a lot of time to spend with him.’
The tall man settled himself on the bed, his knees now only inches from Marni’s, although she could hardly push her chair back to escape the proximity, tantalising though it was.
They’re knees, for heaven’s sake!
Marni forced herself to relax.
‘Of course you are welcome to visit. Safi appreciates it and looks forward to your visits, but I wondered why you come. You are a stranger here, are you not being looked after? Have you not made friends that you spend your spare time with a child?’
The man had obviously painted her as pathetic.
‘Of course I’ve made friends, and everyone has been very welcoming, and I’ve done a lot of exploring, both on my own and with others, but…’
She hesitated.
How to explain that while she loved theatre nursing, the drama of it, the intensity, she missed patient contact?
He was obviously still waiting for an answer, the dark eyes studying her, his head tilted slightly to one side.
‘Like most nurses,’ she began, still hesitant, ‘I took it up because I felt I could offer something in such a career. I enjoyed all the facets of it, but especially nursing children. Early on, I thought I’d specialise in paediatric nursing, but then I did my first stint in Theatre and I knew immediately that’s where I really wanted to work. But in Theatre a patient is wheeled in and then wheeled out and somehow, even with the good surgeons who use the patient’s name, they don’t become real people—there’s no follow-up to find out if the operation was a success, there’s no person to person contact at all—’
Aware she’d been babbling on for far too long, she stopped, but when her companion didn’t break the silence, she stumbled into an apology.
‘Sorry, that sounded like a lecture, sorry.’
He reached out and touched her lightly on the knee, burning her skin through the long, loose trousers she was wearing.
‘Do not apologise for showing humanity. It is all too rare a trait in modern medicine where everyone is under pressure to perform and seek perfection in all they do, so much so we have little time to think about those under our care as people rather than patients. In this hospital we allow the families to stay, so our patients have them to turn to, but children like Safi, who have come from a neighbouring country, often have no one.’
‘Except you,’ Marni pointed out. ‘The nurse told me you’d been in earlier and that you stayed with him that first night.’
‘I was worried he’d be afraid, alone in a strange place, and I’ve learned to sleep anywhere so it was no hardship.’
Not only gorgeous but nice, Marni thought, and she smiled at him and told him so—well, not the gorgeous bit.
‘That was very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but have you done it every night? Surely that would be too much if you’re operating every day?’
Gaz returned her smile, but it was absent-minded, as if it had slipped onto his lips while he was thinking of something else.
‘Not every night, no, but an old friend of mine comes in now and stays with him. It was she who heard the story of a foreign woman visiting.’
‘So you came to check?’ Marni asked, not sure whether to be pleased or put out. Pleased to have seen him again, that was for sure…
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Not because I doubted your good intentions, but to see who it was willing to put herself out for a child she did not know.’
The smile this time was the full effort, its effect so electrifying in Marni’s body she hoped he’d go away—disappear in a puff of smoke if necessary—so she could sort herself out before she tried standing up.
‘And now that I do know,’ he continued, oblivious of the effect he was having on her, ‘I wondered if you’d like to have dinner with me, a kind of welcome to Ablezia and thank you for being kind to Safi combined. There is a very good restaurant on the top floor of the administration building right here in the hospital. We could eat there.’
So it would seem like colleagues eating together if your wife or girlfriend found about it? Marni wondered. Or because you have rooms here and it would be convenient for seduction? Well, the seduction part would be all right—after all, wasn’t that one of the reasons she was here?
Although annoyed by her totally absurd thoughts, Marni realised her first question had been plausible enough—a man this gorgeous was sure to be taken!
Taking a deep breath, she put the whole ridiculous seduction scenario firmly out of her head.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, and was surprised to find her voice sounded remarkably calm. ‘That must be a part of the building I haven’t explored yet. My friend Jawa and I usually go to the staff canteen on the ground floor.’
Shouldn’t you check whether he’s married before you get too involved? Marni thought.
Having dinner with a colleague was hardly getting involved!
Or so she told herself!
Until he took her elbow to guide her out of the room.
She knew immediately there was a whole lot wrong with it. She’d made a serious mistake. It was utter madness. That, oh, so casual touch made her flesh heat, her skin tingle and her heart race.
Although wasn’t that all good if—
She had to stop thinking about seduction!
He dropped her elbow—thankfully—as they walked back up the corridor to the big foyer in the middle of the building, which, again thankfully, gave Marni something to use as conversation.
‘It’s been beautifully designed, this building,’ she said—well, prattled really. ‘I love the way this atrium goes all the way up, seemingly right to the roof.
‘You’ll see the top of some of the taller palms from the restaurant,’ Gaz said. ‘In arid countries we long for greenery so when there’s an opportunity to provide some, either indoors or out, we make the most of it.’
The pride in his voice was unmistakeable and although Marni knew from Jawa that the locals didn’t encourage personal conversation, she couldn’t help but say, ‘So, you’re a local, are you?’
The lift arrived and as he ushered her in he smiled at her.
‘Very much so.’
The slightly strained smile that accompanied the words told Marni not to pursue the matter, so she talked instead of her delight in the markets, the colours, the people, the aromas.
Still prattling, she knew, but the man made her nervous in ways she’d never been before.
The lift doors slid open, and they stepped out into a glass-sheathed corridor, the inner wall displaying, as Gaz had said, the tops of the palm trees in the atrium.
Drawn to the glass, Marni peered down.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, turning to him to share her delight.
He was staring at her, a small frown on his face, as if something about the sight of her bothered him.
‘What?’ she asked, and he shook his head, before again, with another light touch on her elbow, guiding her forward, around the atrium to the far side, where a restaurant spread across the corridor so the atrium was indeed visible from the tables.
The place was dimly lit and quiet, only a few tables occupied.
‘Are we too early or too late for the usual dinner hour?’ Marni asked, desperate to talk about something—anything—to distract herself from the effect this man was having on her, especially with his casual touches and watchful dark eyes.
‘Early for the diners coming off late shift, late for those going on night duty,’ Gaz told her as the young man on the reception desk greeted Gaz in his own language then bowed them towards a table close to the atrium.
Gaz held up a hand and said something, and the young man bowed again and led them in a new direction so they crossed the room.
‘You have seen the tops of the palms in the atrium,’ Gaz explained, ‘but possibly not the desert in the moonlight.’
The table was beside a wall of glass, so Marni felt she was seated in space above the long waves of dunes. The moon silvered the slopes it touched, and threw black shadows in between, so the desert seemingly stretched away for ever with a patterned beauty that took her breath away.
‘I hadn’t known—hadn’t realised…’
‘That it could be so beautiful?’ Gaz asked as her words stumbled to a halt.
She smiled at him, but the smile was an effort because something in the way he said the word ‘beautiful’ made it seem personal—although that could hardly be true. The women she’d met here were so stunningly attractive she felt like a pale shadow among them, a small daisy among vibrant dark roses.
Answer the man, her head suggested, and she struggled to get back into the conversation—to at least act normal in spite of the chaos going on in her body.
‘Yes, that,’ she said, ‘definitely that, but I hadn’t realised the hospital was so close to the desert. I’ve always come to it from the direction of the city, from the sea side, but the desert’s right there—so close you could touch it—and so immense.’
‘And dangerous, remember that,’ Gaz said.
‘Dangerous?’ Marni repeated, because once again there seemed to be an underlying message in his words.
It’s the accent, you idiot, she told herself. Why should there be some sensual sub-text when the man barely knows you?
‘You have deserts in Australia—inhospitable places where a man without water or transport could perish in a few days.’
‘Of course. I hadn’t thought about it but it would be the same in any desert, I imagine.’
She’d caught up with the conversation, but it hadn’t mattered for Gaz was now conferring with a waiter, apparently discussing the menu. He turned to her to ask if she’d like to try some local dishes, and if so, would she prefer meat, fish or vegetarian.
‘Meat, please, and yes to local dishes. I’ve tried some samples of the local cooking in the souks. There’s a delicious dish that seems to be meat, with dates and apricots.’
‘And to drink? You would like a glass of wine?’
And have it go straight to my head and confuse me even further?
‘No, thank you, just a fruit juice.’
Her voice was strained with the effort of making polite conversation. Her nerves were strung more tightly than the strings of a violin, while questions she couldn’t answer tumbled in her head.
Was the attraction she felt mutual?
Could this be the man—not for a lifetime, it was far too early to be considering that—for a fling, an affair?
Worse, could she go through with it if by some remote chance he was interested?
The waiter disappeared and Marni took a deep breath, knowing she somehow had to keep pretending a composure she was far from feeling. But how to start a conversation in a place where personal conversations just didn’t seem to happen?
Gaz saved her.
‘You mentioned the souks. You have had time to see something of my country?’
She rushed into speech, describing her delight in all she’d seen and done, the beauty she’d discovered all around her, the smiling, helpful people she’d encountered.
Gaz watched her face light up as she spoke, and her hands move through the air as she described a decorated earthen urn she’d seen, or the tiny, multicoloured fish swimming through the coral forests. He saw the sparkle in her pale, grey-blue eyes and the gleam where the lights caught her silvery-blonde hair, and knew this woman could ensnare him.
Actually, he’d known it from the moment he’d seen her—well, seen her pale eyes framed by the white mask and lavender cap on her first day in Theatre.
There’d been something in those eyes—something that had caught at, not his attention but his inner self—a subliminal connection he couldn’t put into words.
At the time he’d dismissed the idea as fanciful—the product of a mind overburdened by the changes in his life, but now?
Impossible, of course! He had so much on his plate at the moment he sometimes doubted he’d ever get his head above water.
He groaned inwardly at the mess of clichés and mixed metaphors, but that’s how his life seemed right now. He’d stolen tonight from the schedule from hell, and by the time he had his new life sorted, this woman would be gone.
There’ll be other women, he reminded himself, then groaned again.
‘Are you all right?’
The pale eyes showed genuine concern, and a tiny line of worry creased the creamy skin between her dark eyebrows.
‘I will be,’ he answered. ‘There are some massive changes happening in my life right now, which, as far as I’m concerned, is really bad timing.’
He reached across the table and touched her hand, which was wrapped around the glass of pomegranate and apple juice the waiter had set in front of her.
‘Bad timing?’ she repeated.
‘Very bad timing,’ he confirmed, and said no more, because he knew that although an attraction as strong as the one he was feeling couldn’t possibly be one-sided, there was nothing to be gained from bringing it out into the open. He simply had no time! No time for them to get to know each other properly.
No time to woo her.
Instead, he asked how much diving she’d done, and listened as her quiet, slightly husky voice talked about the Great Barrier Reef, a holiday she’d had in the Seychelles, and compared other dives she’d done with the Ablezian Sea.
Was he listening? Marni had no idea, but she was happy to have something to talk about and as she spoke she relived some of her underwater adventures, and remembering the joy and fun she’d experienced eased the tension in her body so talking now was easy, her companion prompting her to keep going if she lagged.
The meal arrived—a covered earthenware dish set in the middle of the table, another dish of rice set beside it. The waiter added small plates of cut-up salad vegetables and a platter of the flat bread that she was beginning to realise was part of every meal in this country.
‘Traditionally, I would serve you, but perhaps you would prefer to help yourself,’ Gaz said, lifting the lid of the earthenware pot and releasing the mouthwatering aroma of the dish. ‘I would not like to give you too much or too little.’
Ordinary words—common-sense words—so why was she all atingle again?
It was his voice, she decided as she helped herself to rice then added a scoop of the meat dish, before putting a little tomato salad on her plate and taking a piece of bread. His voice sneaked inside her skin and played havoc with her nerves, but when she’d finished her selection and looked across at him, his eyes, intent on her again, caused even more havoc.