Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT’S THE STORY, BRATIK?’

Lost in his own thoughts, a plastic cup of cold, less than stellar vending-machine coffee cupped in his hands, Sol took a moment to regroup from the out-of-the-blue question from his big brother.

Then another to act as though he didn’t know what Malachi was getting at.

‘The scan revealed no evidence of any bleed on the brain and Izzy hadn’t damaged her neck or broken her jaw in the fall, which we’d suspected, hence why she’s been transferred to Paediatric Intensive Care. Maxillofacial are on their way to deal with the teeth in Izzy’s mouth that are still loose. We have the two that came out in a plastic lunchbox someone gave to Izzy, but I think they’re baby teeth so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. We won’t know for sure until some of the swelling goes down.’

They had left Izzy with her mother and sister for some privacy, but, without having to exchange a word, both brothers had chosen to remain on hand. The girls’ mother was going to need help, if nothing else.

‘I know all that,’ Malachi cut in gruffly, as though it pained him to ask. ‘The paediatric doctor told me. I was asking what the story was with you, numb-nuts.’

An image of Anouk popped, unbidden, into Sol’s head, but he shoved it aside.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

It was only a partial lie.

He knew what his brother was getting at, which was surprising since they didn’t do that feelings stuff, but he didn’t know the answer to the question himself.

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ Malachi snorted. ‘You forget I’ve practically raised you since we were kids. You can’t fool me.’

Sol opened his mouth to jibe back, as he normally would. But tonight, for some inexplicable reason, the retort wouldn’t come. He told himself it was the situation with Izzy. Or perhaps the fact that sitting on hard, plastic chairs, in a low-lit, deserted hospital corridor in the middle of the night, played with the mind.

He had a feeling it was more like the five-foot-seven blonde doctor who was resurrecting ghosts he’d thought long since buried. He had no idea what it was about her that so enthralled him, but she had been doing so ever since the first moment he’d met her.

It had been an evening in a nightclub where Saskia, already a doctor at Moorlands General, had brought Anouk along so that she could meet her new colleagues. The night before, he’d seen Anouk as a focussed, driven, dedicated doctor. And she’d been so uncomfortable that it had been clear that clubs definitely weren’t her thing.

He’d seen her from across the room. She’d looked up and met his gaze and something unfamiliar and inexplicable had punched through him. Like a fist right to his chest. Or his gut.

If it had been any other woman he would have gone over, bought her a drink, probably spent the night with her. Uncomplicated, mutually satisfying sex between adults. What could be better? But as much as his body might have greedily wanted the pretty blonde across the room, possibly more than he’d wanted any woman, something had sounded a warning bell in his head, holding him back.

And then someone had spiked her drink—they must have done because he’d seen her go from responsible to disorientated in the space of half a drink—and he’d found himself swooping in to play some kind of knight in shining armour, before any of her colleagues could see her.

Sol couldn’t have said how he knew that would have mattered to her more than almost anything else. There was no plausible explanation for the...connection he’d felt with her.

So he’d alerted the manager to the situation before pushing his way across the room, grabbing the dazed Anouk’s bag and coat and putting his arm around her before anyone else could see her, and leading her out of the nightclub.

Only one person had challenged him on the way out, a belligerent, narrow-eyed, spotty kid he hadn’t known, who he suspected had been the one to spike Anouk’s drink. It hadn’t taken more than a scowl from Sol to send the kid slinking back to the shadows.

He’d got Anouk home and made sure she was settled and safely asleep in bed before he’d left her. The way he knew Saskia would have been doing if she hadn’t snuck away by that point. Along with his brother. Sol had seen them leave. Together. So wrapped up in each other that they hadn’t even noticed anyone else.

He’d headed back to the club to advise them of the situation, before calling it a night; there had been a handful of women all more than willing to persuade him to stay. None of them had enticed him that night.

Or since. If he was being honest.

Not that Malachi knew that he knew any of it, of course, and he wasn’t about to mention it to his big brother. Not here, anyway. Not now. Not when it included Saskia. If the pair of them had wanted him to know they’d ever got together then they wouldn’t have pretended they didn’t know each other back when Malachi had brought Izzy’s mum up to the ward and Saskia had explained to her what was going on with the little girl.

He’d tackle Malachi about it some other time, when he could wind him up a little more about it. The way the two of them usually did.

Sol glowered into his coffee rather than meet Malachi’s characteristically sharp gaze.

‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I remember everything you went through to raise us, Mal. I know you sold your soul to the devil just to get enough money to buy food for our bellies.’

For a moment, he could feel his brother’s eyes boring into him, but still Sol couldn’t bring himself to look up.

‘Bit melodramatic, aren’t you, bratik?’ Malachi gritted out. ‘Is this about Izzy?’

‘I guess.’

His second lie of the night to his brother.

‘Yeah. Well,’ Malachi bit out at length. ‘No need to get soppy about it.’

‘Right.’

Downing the last of the cold coffee and grimacing, Sol crushed the plastic cup and lobbed it into the bin across the hallway. The perfect drop shot. Malachi grunted his approval.

‘You ever wondered what might have happened if we’d had a different life?’ The question was out before he could stop himself. ‘Not had a drug addict for a mother, or had to take care of her and keep her away from her dealer every spare minute?’

‘No,’ Malachi shut him down instantly. ‘I don’t. I don’t ever think about it. It’s in our past. Done. Gone.’

‘What the hell kind of childhood was that for us?’ Sol continued regardless. ‘Our biggest concern should have been whether we wanted an Action Man or Starship Lego for Christmas, not keeping her junkie dealer away from her.’

‘Well, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known you were going to get maudlin on me.’

‘You were eight, Mal. I was five.’

‘I know how old we were,’ Malachi growled. ‘What’s got into you, Sol? It’s history. Just leave it alone.’

‘Right.’

Sol pressed his lips into a grim line as the brothers lapsed back into silence. Malachi could claim their odious childhood was in the rear-view mirror as much as he liked, but they both knew that if they’d really locked the door on their past then they wouldn’t have founded Care to Play, their centre where young carers from the age of merely five up to sixteen could just unwind and be kids instead of responsible for a parent or a sibling.

If there had been anything like that around when he and Malachi had been kids, he liked to think it could have made a difference. Then again, he and Mal had somehow defied the odds, hadn’t they?

Would the strait-laced Anouk think him less of an arrogant playboy if she knew that about him?

Geez, why did he even care?

Shooting to his feet abruptly, Sol shoved his hands in his pockets.

‘I’m going to check on some of my patients upstairs, then I’ll be back to see Izzy.’

He didn’t wait for his brother to respond, but he could picture Malachi’s head dip even as he strode down the corridor and through the fire door onto the stairwell.

He wasn’t ready for Anouk to come bounding up the steps and, by the way she stopped dead when she saw him, she was equally startled.

‘You’re still here?’ she faltered.

‘Indeed.’

‘I’d have thought you’d have gone home by now. I heard Izzy’s mum arrived.’

She glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if checking no one could see them talking. He could well imagine she didn’t want to be seen as the next notch on his bedpost. He almost wanted to ask her how much free time she imagined a young neurosurgeon to have that he could possibly have made time for so many women.

He bit his tongue.

What did it matter to him if she believed he was as bad as all those stories? Besides, hadn’t he played up to every one of them over the years? Better people thought him a commitment-phobe than realise the truth about him.

Whatever the truth even was.

‘Mal and I stayed to help.’

‘Mal?’

‘Malachi.’

‘That’s right.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Your brother. You did say he was collecting the girls’ mother.’

‘He’s through there now.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘With Saskia.’

‘Okay.’ She nodded, but her eyes stayed neutral.

Interesting. She clearly didn’t know that Saskia and Malachi had had a...thing. He wondered what, if anything, Anouk remembered from that night. The club? The drink? The fact that he’d been the one to escort her safely home? Did she not remember him at all from that night?

‘Anyway, I have to go.’

‘Women waiting for you?’

That prim note in her voice had no business tingling through him like that.

‘Always.’

She shot him a deprecating look and he couldn’t help grinning, even as he moved to the flight of stairs, heading down two at a time.

‘See you around, Anouk.’

He was briefly aware of her grunt before she yanked open the door and shot through it. Waiting a few seconds to be sure the door closed behind her, Sol turned around and headed back upstairs to the neurology department to check on his patients.

He felt somehow oddly...deflated.

Anouk tapped her fingers agitatedly on her electronic pad as she waited for the lift.

Why did she keep letting Solomon Gunn get under her skin? It was ignominious enough that her body was clearly attracted to him but it was so much worse that she kept wanting him to be different from the playboy cliché—imagining that she saw glimpses of something deeper within him, for pity’s sake.

She who, of all people, should surely have known better?

She’d spent her entire childhood managing her mother. Playing the grown-up opposite her childlike mother—a woman who had perfected all the drama and diva-like tendencies of the worst kind of Hollywood star stereotypes.

She had watched the stunning Annalise Hartwood chase playboy after playboy, fellow stars and movie directors alike, convinced that she would be the one to tame them. It was the same story every time. Of course each finale was as trite as the last. Her biological father had been the worst, by all accounts, but ultimately they’d all ended up using her, hurting her, dumping her.

And Anouk had been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces and put her mother’s fragile ego back together.

Not that Annalise had ever thanked her for it.

Quite the opposite.

Anouk had never quite matched up to her mother’s mental image of how she should be as the daughter of a famous movie star. She’d been too gawky, too lanky; too introverted and too geeky; too book-smart and too gauche.

It had taken decades—and Saskia—for Anouk to finally realise that the problem hadn’t really been her. It had been her mother.

That deathbed confession had been the most desolating moment of all. The betrayal had been inconceivable. It had laid her to waste right where she’d stood.

That was the moment she’d realised she had to get away from her old life.

She’d changed her name, her backstory, and she’d come to the UK. And Saskia, loyal and protective, had dropped everything to come with her.

In over a decade in the UK no one had come close to getting under her skin and poking away at old wounds the way Sol had somehow seemed able to do.

The lift doors pinged and she stepped forward in readiness. The last person she expected to see inside was the cause of her current unease. This was the very reason she’d waited for the lift instead of returning via the staircase. For a moment, she almost thought he looked as unsettled as she felt.

But that was ridiculous. Nothing ever unsettled Sol.

‘Have you decided against getting in after all?’ he asked dryly when she’d hovered at the doors so long that he’d been compelled to step forward and press the button to hold them. ‘Anyone would think you were avoiding me.’

No, they wouldn’t. Not unless he’d equally been avoiding her, surely?

Her mind began to tick over furiously. Her school teachers had called her an over-thinker as a kid. They’d made it sound like a bad thing.

‘I thought you were leaving? Women to meet.’

‘I am.’ He shrugged casually, leaning back against the lift wall and stretching impossibly long, muscled legs in front of him.

‘Up in Neurology?’ she challenged.

‘I forgot something.’

She eyed him thoughtfully. No coat, no bag, no laptop.

‘What?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What did you forget?’ she pushed.

‘What is this?’

He laughed convincingly and anyone else might have believed him. She probably should believe him.

‘The Inquisition?’

‘You were checking on your patients,’ she realised, with a start.

Who was that patient he’d mentioned earlier? Ah, yes.

‘Mrs Bowman, by any chance?’

He swiftly covered his surprise.

‘My patient, my responsibility,’ he commented briskly.

Anouk ignored him.

‘And now you’re going back to support Izzy and her family.’

‘Is that so?’

Her heart thundered in Anouk’s chest and she didn’t know if it was at the realisation of what he was doing, or the fact that she was confronting him about it.

‘You play the tough guy, the playboy, but you’ve actually got a bit of a softer side, haven’t you?’

‘Vicious rumour,’ he dismissed.

‘I don’t think so.’

The lift bumped gently as they reached the ground floor and when she swayed slightly, Sol instinctively reached out to steady her. The unexpected contact was a jolt as though she’d grabbed hold of an electrical power cable with no Faraday suit to protect her.

It coursed through her, zinging from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

His darkening eyes and flared nostrils confirmed that she wasn’t the only one who felt it.

A little unsteadily, she made her way out of the lift with no choice but to walk together across the lobby or risk making things look all the more awkward.

The doors slid open and the cool night air hit her hard. In a matter of seconds he’d be gone, across the car park and into that low, muscled vehicle of his.

Any opportunity would have evaporated. For good.

She stopped abruptly at the kerbside.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Shoot,’ he invited.

She opened her mouth but her courage deserted her abruptly.

‘Those mince pies the other day...were you also the one who decorated the desk with tinsel?’

He grinned.

‘Sometimes in a place like this—’ he bobbed his head back to the hospital ‘—it can be easy to forget Christmas should be a celebration. Don’t underestimate how much a bit of tinsel and a few mince pies can lift the spirits.’

‘Blue and white tinsel hung like an ECG tracing,’ she clarified.

‘Festive and atmospheric all at once.’ He grinned again, and another moment of awareness rippled over her skin.

‘Right.’

‘Indeed.’

They watched each other a moment longer. Neither speaking. Finally, Sol took a step forward.

‘Well, goodnight, Anouk.’

‘Can I ask you something else?’

He stopped and turned back to her as she drew in a deep breath.

‘How is it you know this family so well? Well enough that you’ve saddled yourself with four of the worst shifts of the year just to get the night off to sit with those girls in there whilst your brother is helping their mum?’

A hundred witty comebacks danced on his tongue. She could practically feel them buzzing in the air around the two of them. But then he looked at her and seemed to bite them back.

‘Malachi and I work with a young carers’ group in town,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Katie and Isobel are two of about thirty kids who come to the centre.’

‘So many?’

It was the bleak look in his eyes that gouged her the most.

‘That’s not even the half of it.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve read the reports, probably around a quarter of a million kids are carers for a parent or other family member. All under sixteen, some as young as four or five. We want to reach them all but we’ve only just got the council on board. Sometimes the hardest bit is getting people to even acknowledge there’s an issue.’

‘You’re raising awareness?’ Her eyebrows shot up.

This really meant something to him? He truly cared?

He watched her carefully, wordless for a moment. As if he was waging some internal battle. She waited, holding her breath, although she didn’t understand why.

‘We’re having a fundraiser on Saturday night, to throw a spotlight on the centre.’

‘Solomon Gunn is throwing a charity gala?’

Something flitted across his eyes but then he grinned and offered a nonchalant shrug, and it was gone.

‘What can I say? Lots of attractive, willing women to choose from, so I guess I get to kill the two proverbial birds with one stone.’

The silence pulled tighter, tauter.

A few hours ago she would have believed that. Now she knew it was an act. And that was what terrified her the most.

Was she being open-minded and non-judgemental? Or was she simply being gullible, seeing what she wished she could see?

‘Come with me.’

She had a feeling the invitation had slipped out before he could stop himself.

She frowned.

‘Sorry?’

For a moment she thought he was going to laugh it off.

‘Be my guest at the gala.’

Something rocked her from the inside. Like thousands of butterflies all waking up from their hibernation, and beating their wings all at once.

She had never experienced anything like it.

‘Like...a date?’

‘Why not?’ he asked cheerfully.

As though it was no big deal to him.

It probably wasn’t.

‘With you?’

‘Your eagerness is a real ego boost for a man, you know that?’

She aimed a sceptical look in his direction.

‘I hardly think a man like you needs any more ego massages. You have women practically throwing themselves at you at every turn.’

‘I’m not asking them, though, am I?’ he pointed out. ‘I’m asking you.’

She schooled herself not to be sucked in. Not to fall into that age-old trap. But it wasn’t as easy as it had been for all those other men who had flirted with her over the years.

Because those other guys hadn’t been Sol, a small voice needled her.

Anouk gritted her teeth.

‘Is that why you’re inviting me? Because you don’t like the fact that I’m not falling over myself to flirt with you?’

‘That’s exactly it,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘I find my ego can’t take the knockback.’

‘Sarcastic much?’ she muttered, but a small smile tugged at her mouth despite herself.

‘I’ll pick you up at half-past seven.’

‘I might be on duty.’

‘You aren’t.’ He shrugged.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Relax. I was just checking the rotas before and I don’t remember seeing your name.’

She told herself that it meant nothing. It was pure coincidence.

‘What makes you think I want to go?’

‘What else are you doing that night? It’s fun, and, hey, you can do something for charity at the same time.’

He was impressively convincing.

‘People will think I’m just the next notch on your bedpost.’

‘Some women are happy to have that accolade.’

‘I am not some women.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You are not.’

The compliment rolled through her, making long-dormant parts of her body unfurl and stretch languidly. Her head was rapidly losing this battle with her body.