The Surgeon She Never Forgot. Melanie Milburne
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‘Do you think that’s his mistress?’ Heloise asked. ‘Rich and powerful men nearly always have mistresses, don’t they? It seems to all be the rage these days.’
Mikki put the wine list down again with a heavy sigh. ‘Look, Mum, I don’t care who it is. Lewis has a perfect right to see who he likes. It’s none of my business.’
Heloise shifted in her seat like a hen ruffling its feathers. ‘I don’t want to argue with you, darling. I’m just trying to make conversation. You seem so stressed lately. And your father told me the last time he had lunch with you, you barely ate a thing. Is something wrong?’
‘Of course there’s nothing wrong,’ Mikki said. ‘I’ve just been putting in some long hours.’
‘You work too hard, darling,’ Heloise said. ‘Why do you drive yourself into the ground? Don’t you think you need a bit of a balance? You’re not getting any younger.’
‘Twenty-nine is the new nineteen, Mum, didn’t you know?’ Mikki said dryly.
Her mother pursed her mouth again and reached for her wineglass. ‘You can joke about it all you like, but when was the last time you went on a date?’
‘I went out to dinner with a colleague the other day,’ Mikki said.
Heloise narrowed her eyes. ‘That was a work thing, wasn’t it? And didn’t you tell me there were four other people there? Hardly what I would call a date, darling. When was the last time you were kissed?’
‘Mum!’ Mikki kept her voice low but her colour was high. ‘Will you please butt out of my love life?’
Heloise gave her an affronted look. ‘Only trying to help, dear. No need to bite my head off.’
‘Sorry,’ Mikki said, feeling her shoulders slump. For years she had worked incredibly hard at her career but she had come to a point just lately when her high-stress, high-responsibility job was not enough any more. She wanted more from life than long hours and a six-figure income. But it was so hard to put a toe in the dating pond when she had almost drowned all those years ago.
‘You’re not on call, are you?’ Heloise asked as Mikki took a sip of the wine the waiter had just poured to refill their glasses.
‘No, not tonight,’ Mikki said. ‘I was on last weekend.’
Mikki wanted to look across at Lewis’s table. She ached to have one more look at his face, to see if he was smiling at his date, to see if his eyes were crinkling up at the corners the way they used to do. Not that he had smiled a lot in the past, but when he had, it had been in a way that had made his rare smiles all the more valuable and meaningful. When he smiled his eyes lost that hard ice look and took on a summer-sky tone instead.
She wanted to reacquaint herself with the look of his hands, with those long, tanned fingers with their dusting of masculine hair, those clever, amazing hands that had saved so many lives, the hands that had touched her and caressed her and held her. She wanted to look again at his mouth, the mouth that had kissed hers so passionately, the lips that had touched her in places she had not been touched since.
Heloise’s glass clinked against the side plate as she placed it back on the table. ‘Don’t frown, Michaela. You’ll get wrinkles.’
Mikki forced her expression to relax. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about work.’
‘Have you heard from your father since he arrived in Paris?’
‘Yes, he called me last night.’
Heloise reached for her glass again and took a sip of wine. ‘Did he tell you he is thinking of marrying Rebecca?’
Mikki put her glass down. ‘He did, actually. How do you feel about it?’ she asked, studying her mother’s features. Her parents’ divorce a couple of years ago had not really come as much of a surprise. They had grumbled along for years, not really happy together but neither of them unhappy enough to leave, until her father had met someone working for his international investment company.
Heloise gave a relaxed smile. ‘I’m happy for him.’
Mikki frowned. ‘But Rebecca is so much younger than him. What if they decide to have children? She’ll want them surely?’
‘Darling, your father always wanted more children but I was unable to have any more after you,’ Heloise said. ‘I think it’s lovely that he’s got another chance. Rebecca is a sweetheart. She’ll make a lovely mother. Maybe I’ll get the chance to babysit. I would love that.’
Mikki was still frowning so hard her forehead ached. ‘I can’t believe you’re so accepting of all this. I would want to move to another side of the world instead of…’ She stopped, suddenly realising what she was saying.
‘How will you feel if Lewis suddenly introduces a wife and family to you?’ Heloise asked with a pointed look.
Mikki had to drop her gaze in case her mother witnessed the pain she felt at the prospect of seeing Lewis with a little brood of his own. No one at the hospital had said much about him other than mentioning that his appointment in the neurosurgical department at St Benedict’s was one of the most exciting appointments in a long time, but, then, she hadn’t exactly gone fishing for information. ‘I imagine I will cope with it,’ she said. ‘I was the one who walked out on him, not the other way around.’
‘Was it hard, seeing him again?’ Heloise asked after another little pause.
Mikki picked up her wine and gave her mother what she hoped was a convincing smile. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s just another colleague working at St Benedict’s.’
‘But you’ll see rather a lot of him, won’t you, given that he’s a neurosurgeon and you’re in ICU?’
Mikki had lain awake at nights thinking about exactly that: how she would cope with seeing Lewis on a daily basis. His patients would become hers. They would have to consult each other on management and care. There would be ward rounds and joint interviews with relatives, staff meetings, and the shared space of the doctors’ room. It would be next to impossible to avoid him, and if she tried, someone would surely notice and comment on it. It was going to be hard to pretend he was just like any other colleague but she was determined to do it. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ she said, taking another fortifying sip of wine. ‘I’m not going to fall for Lewis Beck again. That part of my life is definitely well and truly over.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘HAVE you met the new neurosurgeon yet?’ Kate Fry, one of the recovery nurses, asked Mikki a couple of days later.
Mikki continued writing in the patients’ notes as she spoke. ‘Not formally. What’s he like?’
‘Gorgeous,’ Kate said in a dreamy tone. ‘Tall, at least six-four, with the most amazing piercing blue eyes. And get this: he’s not married.’
Mikki put the file on the top of the others on the desk in the doctors’ office waiting to be filed. ‘Do you have Mrs Bronson’s file there?’ she asked. ‘I have to check on her potassium levels.’
Kate found the file and handed it to her. ‘Apparently he was engaged briefly a long time ago, back in London. I wonder what broke him and his fiancée up. Have you heard any gossip?’
Mikki made a note in the file and handed it back. ‘I am not sure Mr Beck would appreciate having his private life discussed on the ward,’ she said curtly.
‘No one can hear us in here,’ Kate said, undeterred. ‘I can’t imagine breaking up with someone like him, can you? He’s über-exy.’
‘If you go for the aloof, show-no-emotion type,’ Mikki said in a disinterested tone as she picked up another file to leaf through.
Kate gave a little gulp.