Charlotte Hawkes - A Surgeon For The Single Mum

She didn’t know how she managed to stop her hands from lifting automatically to touch her head. It had taken her hours to get her hair like this—she would say she was hopelessly out of practice, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever been in practice—and she was pleased with the results. Thick, glossy, soft curls. It was the most glamorous she’d felt in a long time.

It was only fitting that she should spoil it all by saying something ridiculously prosaic and work-related. ‘Did you know there’s a study showing that natural redheads often need around twenty percent more anaesthetic than people with other hair colours to reach the same levels of sedation?’

‘There have been several studies,’ he confirmed gravely, but she couldn’t shake the impression that he was concealing his amusement. ‘They appear to confirm redheads as a distinct phenotype linked to anaesthetic requirement.’

Of course he knew. He was a neurosurgeon, after all. Well, that was her bank of small talk exhausted. Not that it seemed to matter when her brain froze as he stepped up to her and offered his arm.

For one brief moment the sight of Tak—so mouth-wateringly handsome in a bespoke tuxedo, the cut of which somehow achieved the impossible by allowing his already well-built body to look all the more powerful and dangerous—made her wonder what it would be like to go on a real date with someone like him.

She might have said made her yearn , had she not already known that was impossible. She hadn’t yearned in over thirteen years. She’d learned that bitter lesson—although she would never change her precious daughter for anything in the world.

Effie clicked her tongue impatiently—more at herself than the man standing in front of her. ‘Right, shall we go and get this over with?’

‘A woman after my own heart,’ he said, and his mouth twisted into something which looked more like the baring of teeth than an actual smile.

And then he stepped closer, his hand to the small of her back to guide her, and it was all Effie could do not to shiver at the delicious contact. She could put it down to nerves, and the fact that this was the first time she’d been out in two years—ever since the last hospital gala she’d been compelled to attend and had hated every moment—but she suspected that wasn’t the true root of it.

‘There’s no reason to feel nervous—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Did you know we’d met before when we talked the other day?’

She twisted her head to look at him, surprised that he remembered her. ‘Yes, actually. I brought one of the first casualties I ever attended with the air ambulance to your hospital. You were the neurology consultant. Left-sided temporal parietal hematoma.’

‘Douglas Jacobs.’

‘You remember his name? I’m impressed.’

‘I remember,’ Tak confirmed.

She couldn’t have said what it was about his tone, but in that instant he made her believe that he remembered all his patients. That they weren’t just bodies to him. They were people.

It took her aback. Worse. It made him all the more fascinating.

‘You’re the one who diagnosed the expressive aphasia?’ Tak asked.

It had been in the notes, but she knew he was testing her. Because it mattered to him. It was a heady thought.

‘I did.’ It was all she could to sound casual. As though her body wasn’t beginning to fizz deliriously at Tak’s interest.

‘He wasn’t talking much and his vitals were stable. You did well to spot it. It was very subtle on presentation.’

His compliment didn’t send a tingle rushing along her spine. Not at all.

‘It worsened over time?’ she asked.

‘Very quickly, I’m afraid.’ Tak nodded. ‘CT revealed a depressed skull fracture and an underlying subdural bleed, so we took him straight into an OR. When he awoke the aphasia was still present, but reduced.’

‘So he’s in rehab?’ She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering how sweet the guy had been, and how close he and his worried wife had seemed.

‘He is,’ Tak confirmed. ‘He’s doing well, and he has a good support network, so with any luck he should be fine.’

‘That’s good.’ She smiled, more to herself than at Tak.

It occurred to her that he’d been distracting her. Telling her a story—a work-related story—which he’d known would make her feel less tense, more at ease.

She should be angry that he’d played her, but instead she just felt grateful to him.

Allowing Tak to guide her to a large, chauffeur-driven limousine, she slid inside, trying not to marvel at the bespoke rich plaid wool and leather seats. And then he was climbing in gracefully beside her, closing the door, and the entire back seat seemed to shrink until she was aware of nothing but how very close his body was to hers.

Now it was just the two of them together, in such a confined space, it was impossible for her to keep up the pretence. To keep telling herself that his voice didn’t swirl inside her like a fog which refused to clear, that his eyes didn’t look right into her soul as though they could read every last dark secret in there, that his touch didn’t send electricity coursing through her veins only to conclude in a shower of sparks as breathtaking as the best fireworks display.

The realisation thrilled and terrorised her in equal measure.

‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed about where you live, you know.’

It took a moment for her to focus, and then another for shame and guilt to steal through her. ‘I’m not,’ she said, and lifted her chin a little higher.

‘Then why did you insist on meeting me in the lobby instead of letting me pick you up from your apartment?’

‘I just... It wasn’t about being embarrassed.’ Not entirely true, but close enough.

‘Then what was it about?’

There was no justification at all for her wanting to tell him the truth. Effie had spent her whole life shutting people out—as soon as she’d learned it was either that or be shut out. It shouldn’t be difficult to tell Tak to mind his own business.

Yet there was a quality about him which reminded her of the one woman who had cared for her, helped her so long ago. She couldn’t explain it, nor shake it. It was bizarre. This wasn’t even a proper date, and the fact that she kept finding that detail so difficult to remember was concerning in itself.

‘It wasn’t about where I live, although I know it’s no penthouse. It was more about keeping the two parts of my life separate. My private life and my professional one.’

‘Does it matter that much?’

Was she guarding her personal details because they were none of his business? The way she would keep any other one of her colleagues at bay? Or was there a part of her that wished she could be—just for one night—the kind of carefree single woman that a man like Tak might actually want to date? And not just pretend.

Ridiculous.

Guilt speared her. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She had barely been that kind of girl. Her carefree single days had ended the moment she’d found out that she was going to become a teenage mum. And there had been absolutely no one in the world to support her.

For the last thirteen years it had been just her and Nell. Together. She was ashamed that a part of her should want to pretend otherwise, even for a few hours.

‘Yes, it does matter.’ She nodded. It was now or never . ‘To me. And to my daughter.’

Silence dropped between them like the thick, heavy curtain on a stage, separating the players from the audience. Her from Tak. What on earth had possessed her to say anything? Was it simply because Tak reminded her of a woman who was long gone?