Top-Notch Surgeon, Pregnant Nurse. Amy Andrews

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СКАЧАТЬ If she ignored him, started acting weirdly, they’d be onto her. She could tell they were already bursting to get her alone.

      John gestured for Gabe to exit first. ‘See you later, girls.’ John smiled at his daughters as they left the office.

      Beth sat, her shaky legs dubiously supportive. She adjusted a few things on her desk and then risked a look at her sisters. They were looking at her with grins on their faces.

      ‘What?’

      ‘You didn’t mention that Gabe was so gorgeous,’ Rilla stated.

      ‘Very sexy,’ Hailey concurred. ‘Slip your mind?’

      ‘He’s OK, I guess.’ she shrugged.

      ‘You guess?’ Hailey laughed. ‘That man is so damn cute I thought about slipping into a diabetic coma just to grab his attention.’

      Beth grinned at the image and then sobered. ‘Well that man is now apparently a colleague so the rest of it doesn’t matter.’

      ‘Thought you said he was a teacher?’ Hailey said.

      Beth shrugged. ‘That’s what he told me.’

      A great start to their working relationship. Not only had they slept together but he’d lied to her. Had the flirting and flattery been lies too? To get her into bed? He had confessed to her, as they’d eaten from room service at three in the morning, that he’d never done anything so spontaneous before. Had that been another lie?

      She had suppressed the impulse to question him further at the time knowing that a few hours in bed with a stranger did not permit her access to the intimate details of his life, and now wished she hadn’t. She’d known what had driven her to act so outrageously—what had been his excuse?

      Beth groaned inwardly. What did his reasons matter? The more important question was how she was going to work with him. The next six months stretched before her interminably and she wished they were over already.

      ‘Well.’ Rilla grinned and winked at Hailey. ‘Looks like Gabe’s going to be around for a while. You never know what could happen in that time.’

      Beth looked from one to the other. Their brown eyes sparkled mischievously at her. ‘No.’

      Rilla and Hailey’s grins widened.

      ‘No,’ Beth repeated, more emphatically this time.

      ‘Oh, come on, Beth,’ Hailey cajoled. ‘I think he fancies you.’

      Beth tried not to remember just how much he’d fancied her on Friday night. ‘I’m not interested.’

      ‘Liar, liar pants on fire,’ Rilla teased.

      ‘I do not date colleagues.’

      ‘Oh, Beth,’ Rilla chided. ‘You do not date, full stop.’ She made a chicken noise and flapped her arms a couple of times. Hailey giggled.

      Beth fixed her sister with a glare. ‘Rilla, you of all people should know how disastrous relationships at work can be.’

      Rilla’s smile died and Hailey’s laughter cut off abruptly. Her sisters looked at her as if she’d slapped them, and Beth knew she’d stepped over the line. Damn Gabe Fallon! She’d done nothing but mother and dote on them since she’d entered their lives twenty-three years ago. Rilla ha been seven at the time and Hailey five.

      ‘I’m sorry, Ril,’ she said immediately, getting up from behind the desk and crouching beside her sister’s chair. ‘I spoke without thinking.’

      Rilla blinked and smiled weakly. ‘It’s OK, Beth. I know you didn’t mean it that way. Just because it didn’t work out for me, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a bad thing. You have to stop punishing yourself. It’s been twenty-three years…’

      It was both incredible and daunting to have two other human beings who knew everything about you and loved you anyway. Who knew what kind of ice cream you liked or what you wished for when a falling star crossed your path or how you’d cried yourself to sleep for a year. Despite their physical differences, despite their different surnames, Hailey and Rilla were her family. She didn’t know what she’d do without them.

      Beth looked into Rilla’s earnest brown eyes. She took her sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She reached for Hailey’s and did the same.

      ‘Listen, guys. I love you both but I don’t need fixing up. I like my life. I have a great job and my own place and I can do what I like, when I like. I’m happy.’

      Beth knew it was hard for her younger sisters to grasp. They were both still at an age when marriage and children were possible. Two years off forty, she’d given up on the often desperate need to hold a baby in her arms and her dreams of becoming a mother again. And she’d mourned that for a while but in the last couple of years had found some peace with it.

      ‘Now, come on, you two,’ Beth said, breaking away and standing up. ‘Thanks for coming but go away now. I have work to do.’

      Rilla and Hailey stood and they all huddled together for a group hug, their foreheads touching.

      ‘You could just use him for sex,’ Hailey suggested. ‘He looks like he’d know some pretty slick moves.’

      Rilla burst out laughing and Beth joined in despite shaking her head at Hailey. You have no idea, sister, dearest!

      ‘Goodbye you two.’ Beth kissed both her sisters and returned to her desk, pleased to be alone again.

      She put her head on the desk and groaned. Now what? How was she supposed to see Gabe every day and act like she hadn’t seen him naked?

      The day got worse. Kerry Matthews, her second in charge and the scrub nurse rostered to work in Theatre Four with the new neurosurgeon, went home at lunchtime with a migraine. The other two nurses allocated to the theatre were junior and as such had had little experience in neurology cases.

      Beth had cut her teeth in neurosurgery. She’d worked for two years at the internationally renowned Radcliffe in Oxford when she’d first gone traveling, and had been working there again when she’d come home for Rilla’s wedding eight years ago and decided not to go back.

      So, with the other theatres staffed and running smoothly, Beth resigned herself to having to scrub in. She stood at the washbasins outside Theatre Four and put her mask on. She could do this, she thought briskly as she tied the paper straps. Just hand him the instruments as he asks for them and try and anticipate his needs. Nothing she hadn’t done for any other surgeon in the past eighteen years.

      Except she’d never slept with any of the surgeons she’d worked with. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t had her share of opportunities. Because she had. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t sleep around. At all. And certainly not with colleagues.

      Sure, there had been some relationships. But her past had made her very reserved and distrustful so nothing had been successful for long. And no one had got past the detached veneer to the softness beneath.

      Letting that go long enough to let someone in was a big step for Beth. Too big. It meant giving up some hard-won СКАЧАТЬ