The Surgeon's One-Night Baby. Charlotte Hawkes
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her mouth again. A crooked smile that Archie knew so well hovered on her friend’s lips.
‘I do believe you mean it.’
‘I do.’
Katie paused, considering.
‘Then far be it from me to stop you. Okay, you know that sexy, dangerous scar across his jawline?’ Archie nodded silently. ‘Apparently it was the result of some big fight when he was younger.’ Katie hugged her arm tightly and whispered in conspiratorial tones. ‘You remember those massive Hollywood kung-fu, karate-style blockbusters he did as a seven-and eight-year-old?’
The Hollywood life he’d been only too desperate to run away from, Archie remembered. Not that she could say anything.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she hedged instead.
‘Of course you have to know them. They were huge, until his mother apparently demanded too much money or riders or whatever and he got kicked out and replaced.’
The rumours didn’t come close to the damage his volatile mother had caused. But she couldn’t say that either.
‘So you heard he got the scar on those films?’ Archie tactfully changed subject.
Katie’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
‘No, the rumour I actually read somewhere was that the fight was down some back alley when he was about seventeen or something, and wasted after a drinking session. Apparently he was outnumbered five to one but he still beat their collective backsides. Juicy, isn’t it?’
‘Juicy,’ Archie agreed half-heartedly.
The idea of the quiet, controlled Kaspar of back then drinking, let alone fighting, was a complete anathema to her. No doubt a lie the press had spun to help them with their paper-shifting image of the playboy Kaspar. Not that he hadn’t played his own stupid part to a T.
But the man in the media bore little resemblance to the boy she’d once known. And it was the latter who had stolen her adolescent heart.
Besides, she’d been there when he’d really got that scar, climbing the forty-foot oak tree outside Shady Sadie’s house when he’d been fifteen. Or at least she’d been in the living room with her father when Robbie had raced back to say that a damaged limb had given way and Kaspar had fallen to the ground. He’d been carted off to the hospital with a few superficial cuts and bruises and that one deep gash. He’d worn it with all the pride of a battle scar, of course. Trust the media to come up with something far more dark and exotic to explain it.
But they couldn’t have made up everything, could they? The playboy lifestyle? The dangerous reputation? It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen him so of course he wasn’t going to be the same boy she’d known. As Katie gabbled on, Archie let her head drop back, the cool concrete of the pillar seeping into her brain, and tried to think a little more clearly. Maybe opening the Kaspar Athari can of worms really wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had.
As Katie’s hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her off the pillar, Archie was tugged back to the present.
‘This is your chance, here comes your Surgeon Prince.’
Before she could stop it, she was being swung around and thrust out around the column. The breath whooshed from her body. She didn’t need to turn to know that Katie would have already gone.
‘And there I was thinking you were hiding from me, Archie.’
The rich, slow drawl was laced with a kind of lazy amusement as every inch of Archie’s skin prickled and got goosebumps. Not least the fact that he knew who she was after all. Her stomach spiralled like a helter-skelter in reverse.
Archie. He rolled her name on his tongue as though sampling it, tasting it. She imagined he was measuring it against the woman she was now, compared to the ‘Little Ant’ he’d always known her as.
She opened her mouth to speak just as Kaspar stepped closer to her. Everything in her head shut down as her body shifted into overdrive. Heady, and electrifying, and like nothing she’d ever known before.
He was dressed smart-casual, a vaguely lemony, leathery scent toying with her nostrils, and he practically oozed masculinity. Enough to eclipse every other male in the room most probably. Even every other male in the county. The world.
Even her childhood crush on him didn’t compare. It made her feel physically winded and adrenalin-pumped all at once.
The indolent crook of his mouth, so sinful and enticing, gave the distinct impression that he could read her thoughts. Feed into her darkest desires. It made her very blood seem to slow in her veins. A sluggish trickle, which her thundering heart seemed to be working harder and harder to process.
He was simply intoxicating. She cast around for something, anything, that wouldn’t betray how at sea she felt.
‘How is the patient? Rick, wasn’t it?’
Not exactly ideal, but it would have to do. Kaspar only hesitated for a moment.
‘He’s in pretty bad shape.’
‘But you can help him?’
‘Possibly.’
He didn’t want to talk shop, she could understand that, but it was buying her some much-needed time. She had to settle down. Katie was right, she was like a beachgoer on hot sand.
‘I think I read last year that you had a patient who’d had a firework go off in his face and you used some kind of layering technique?’
‘You’re in the medical profession?’ Kaspar’s stare intensified.
Archie swallowed. Hard.
‘No, actually I’m in the construction industry. I build the hospitals, you work in them.’
‘You build them?’
‘Well, I work out layout, ease of movement so it isn’t a rabbit warren; service routes such as for heating, lighting and medical gases especially for the operating rooms; whether to connect to the existing back-up generators, or build new ones; medical incinerators, that sort of thing.’
There was a lot more to it, and given how much she loved her job she could probably go on about it all night. Which would be a problem. It was hardly the most seductive of conversations.
‘Are you part of the team building the new women’s and children’s wing for our hospital?’
Pride outweighed her need to change the subject.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m impressed. It’s looking really good and I believe you’re pretty much on time and on budget.’
She was powerless to prevent a grin so wide it might well crack her face in two.
‘Thanks. It isn’t going too badly. There are a few niggles but I built decent float into the programme so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Once we’ve finished on the new wing we’ll start on the new hospice facility across the site. We should be done within ten months, hopefully.’
‘Even more impressive.’
‘Dad always loved what I did,’ she added suddenly.
Waiting, hoping, for Kaspar to add something he also remembered about her father. Then fighting the sense of discouragement when he barely even reacted.
‘I can imagine.’
‘Anyway,’ she caught herself, ‘we were talking about your firework patient.’
She didn’t know why it felt so important that he should answer her. Perhaps because her dad had once told her and Robbie that getting Kaspar to open up about the things he loved was the key to knowing the boy. He kept everything that mattered to him so closely guarded, as though he feared the pleasure could be snatched from him at any time. The way his mother had often cruelly