Charlotte Hawkes – Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart (страница 9)

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.