Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart. Charlotte Hawkes
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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.