She stood mesmerised by the tether of his touch, by the intense blue of his gaze as it held hers.

It was as if the busy, bustling world of the hospital had faded into the background, leaving them isolated in a bubble that contained memories of private moments—intimate moments only they knew about. Her heart kicked against her breastbone as his finger drew closer to her scalp. She could smell his aftershave. It wasn’t one she recognised but it was underpinned with his all too familiar smell: musk and soap and healthy potent male.

‘Do you want to know why I came back after so long out of the country?’ he asked.

She drew in a breath that felt as if it had thorns attached. ‘To further your career,’ she said. ‘That’s always been your priority. Nothing comes before that.’

He uncoiled the strand of hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘A career is not everything, Mikki,’ he said as his hand dropped back down by his side. ‘It can’t keep you warm at night.’

Dear Reader

All my Medical™ Romance titles to date have had a hero and heroine meeting for the first time within the first pages of the novel. But this time I wanted to revisit a failed relationship—a very popular theme I have explored several times in my Modern™ Romance titles.

The things that draw a couple together can often be the very things that tear them apart further down the track, and so it was with Mikki and Lewis. Their whirlwind affair in London tragically came unstuck and Mikki ran back home to Australia, to all that was familiar.

But time has passed and their paths cross when Lewis comes to work as a leading neurosurgeon at St Benedict’s, where Mikki is an ICU specialist. Their careers are closely entwined, but so too is their history. The spark is still there, but can Mikki risk heartbreak all over again over the unreachable Lewis Beck?

As brooding heroes go, Lewis has it all. He’s a loner, aloof, in control and needs no one. Or does he?

Mikki is just the person to bring Lewis into contact with his feelings. It is only she who can reach that dark, secret place inside him where he has stored all the hurt, guilt and grief and disappointments that life has dished up. I loved watching their second chance at love unfold. It was an emotional journey for me writing it as I know many people do not get the second chance they hope and pray for.

I hope you are deeply touched by their story.

Melanie Milburne

Melanie Milburne says: ‘One of the greatest joys of being a writer is the process of falling in love with the characters and then watching as they fall in love with each other. I am an absolutely hopeless romantic. I fell in love with my husband on our second date, and we even had a secret engagement—so you see it must have been destined for me to be a Harlequin Mills & Boon author! The other great joy of being a romance writer is hearing from readers. You can hear all about the other things I do when I’m not writing and even drop me a line at: www.melaniemilburne.com.au’

Melanie Milburne also writes forModern™ Romance!

‘THE FIORENZA FORCED MARRIAGE

by Melanie Milburne: insults fly, passion explodes,

and it all adds up to an engaging story

about the power of love.’

—RT Book Reviews

The Surgeon

She Never

Forgot

Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my niece Claire Elizabeth Luke.

You are a beautiful person inside and out.

Love you. xx

With special thanks to Dr David Rigg

at The Royal Hobart Hospital, an intensive care

specialist who was very generous with his time

in helping me research some aspects of this novel.

His dedication to his patients really moved me deeply.

Thank you.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER ONE

IT WASN’T that Mikki hadn’t expected to run into him at some point, she just hadn’t thought it would be quite like this. She had thought it through in her head: she would be in the doctors’ room, he would come in and she would look up, as casual as you please, and act as if what had happened between them seven years ago had never occurred. Or, alternatively, she would be in ICU, attending to one of the patients under her care, when he would come in. She would be all cool and professional, treating him exactly the same as she would treat any other specialist at St Benedict’s.

But not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t how she had planned it at all.

As soon as she stepped into the restaurant she saw him. In spite of the subdued romantic lighting there could be no mistaking that tall rangy, dark-brown-haired figure. He was sitting alone at a table towards the back of the restaurant, his concentration on the menu in front of him, but then, as if some internal radar of his had picked up her presence, he raised his head and his startling ice-blue eyes met hers.

Mikki felt like someone had landed a punch in her belly. The air gushed out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She stood with her eyes locked on his, her heart going into a painful spasm for endless moments until she vaguely registered that someone was speaking to her on her left.

‘Dr Landon?’ the maître d’ said at her elbow. ‘Your mother called to say she would be ten minutes late. Shall I show you to your usual table?’

Mikki turned and forced a polite smile to her stiff lips. ‘That would be fine. Thank you, Gino.’

The maître d’ pulled out her chair for her and she sat down on legs that felt as spindly and ungainly as a newborn foal’s. She kept her head down, making a business of turning her mobile phone to the vibrate setting before she sat back with an ease she was nowhere near feeling. She daren’t look across at the other table but she could feel the weight of that penetrating all-too-critical, all–too-assessing gaze.

Was he thinking how much she had changed since she had seen him last? Her honey-brown hair was longer now; she had gone from the urchin look of her early twenties to a more sophisticated shoulder-length style that was easy to manage given the long and often unpredictable hours she worked. She was certainly thinner than seven years ago. Her approach to exercise had been very ad hoc in the past. Now she was an addict, or so her mother kept telling her. Mikki didn’t necessarily agree or disagree. She exercised to keep her demons at bay and the pay-off was a figure she had longed for and had never achieved until now.

‘Hello, Mikki.’

The deep, smooth bass of his voice with its hint of a London accent brought her head up and her heart rate beyond anything it had ever done in a spin cycle class. Mikki looked into those Antarctic eyes and felt the cold breeze of his disdain blow holes in her chest like a volley of bullets. ‘Hello, Lewis,’ she said, pleased her voice sounded so cool and composed when for a moment she had thought it might not work at all.

His eyes moved over her face, pausing for an infinitesimal moment on her mouth, before coming back to her gaze. ‘How are you?’

‘Um—fine, and you?’ Mikki felt her facade slipping. Why had he looked at her mouth like that? That one brief glance had set off a chain reaction beneath the surface of her lips. They felt dry and tingling and she desperately wanted to moisten them with her tongue but somehow fought the urge.

She drank in his features in one quick slurping glance: his dark brown hair had only a few strands of grey in it, although he was now thirty-six years old; and his body, although lean, was well muscled, suggesting he also spent a bit of time in the gym. His sensual mouth was deeply grooved either side with vertical lines that in a lesser man would have been aging but in Lewis’s case gave him a distinguished, knowledgeable and eminently commanding air. He still had a prominent scar over his right eyebrow, the result of a fight when he had been a teenager. He had never told her the circumstances of it; he had said it was a part of his past he was not proud of, and in spite of her probing had refused to be drawn on it.

‘Dining alone this evening?’ he asked, glancing at the empty chair opposite.

‘No, I’m…’ She hesitated, wishing she was meeting one of her colleagues at the very least, or a date. A date would have been better. Much, much better. ‘I’m having dinner with my mother. She’s running late.’

One of his dark brows moved upwards ever so slightly. ‘Please give her my regards,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose she has forgotten me?’

How could anyone ever forget you? Mikki thought with a pang that felt like a tiny fish hook in her heart. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I told both my parents you were coming to St Benedict’s to join the neurosurgical team. They were interested in how well your career has gone.’

‘Surprised would be more appropriate, don’t you think?’ he asked with that same mocking lift of his brow.

Mikki reined in her temper behind a cool impersonal smile, holding back emotions that were straining at the leash of her control. There was no way she was going to show how much seeing him again had rattled her. ‘You were always going places, Lewis. No one could have doubted that.’

‘Ah, darling, I can’t believe I’m so late,’ Heloise Landon said as she came in on a cloud of perfume and the rapid tattoo of click-clacking designer heels. ‘You would not believe the traffic, and Rashid, my driver, had trouble starting the car— Oh!’ She gave a little shocked gasp. ‘It’s not Lewis, is it? Lewis Beck?’

Lewis held out his hand, hardly a muscle moving on his face. ‘Heloise. You’re looking well.’

Heloise’s perfectly manicured hand fluttered back to her neck once he had released it. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Seven years,’ he said with an expression as unreadable as stone.

‘Yes, of course,’ Heloise said. ‘Well, this is rather a coincidence, I must say. Fancy running into you like this! I’ve heard all about your appointment at St Benedict’s. It was in the paper and, of course, Michaela confirmed it. Not that she’s let too many in on the secret, mind you. I had to drag it out of her and I’m her mother.’ She gave Lewis a you-know-what-she’s-like look. ‘But, then, I don’t suppose it is de rigueur to go brandishing about the news of one’s ex-fiancé’s imminent arrival just because you’re going to be working with him every day now, is it?’

Mikki wished the floor would open up and gulp her down whole. She chanced a glance at Lewis’s expression but it remained inscrutable, although she thought she saw a glint of something hard in his eyes as they briefly encountered hers. Again, she kept her own expression cool and composed, although it was taking more of an effort than she could ever have imagined.

Heloise was undaunted. ‘Won’t you join us? You can tell us all about your stellar career. That would be lovely and civilised, don’t you think, darling?’ She addressed the latter comment breezily to Mikki.

Mikki had grown to dread her fortnightly dinner sessions with her mother, and would ordinarily have jumped at the chance of diluting her company, but the thought of sharing a meal with Lewis was beyond her capabilities right now. ‘I am sure Lewis has other arrangements for this evening,’ she said a little tightly.

‘Yes, I have, actually,’ Lewis said, nodding towards the young woman who had just been led to his table. He encompassed Mikki and her mother in one look that was polite but indifferent, and added, ‘Maybe some other time.’

The hook in Mikki’s heart dragged a little bit further when she saw him greet the gorgeous young woman who had been shown to his table. His arms went around the young woman’s slim figure, almost lifting her off the floor as he held her to him. Mikki knew it was ridiculous of her to be feeling so wretched at seeing him with someone else. Of course he would have someone else by now. He would have had many someone elses over the last few years. She should have prepared herself better for a situation like this. She had been concentrating on the work part, the professional, not the personal, when the personal was the thing that hurt the most. It shouldn’t, but it did, even after all this time.

Mikki turned away before she saw his mouth go down on that pretty rosebud mouth. ‘So, how are you, Mum?’ she asked.

‘Michaela,’ Heloise said, leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘did you see that girl he has with him? Why, she’s barely out of her teens, I’m sure of it.’

‘Yes, well, he always did go for the young innocent type,’ Mikki said as she examined the wine list with studious intent.

‘Darling, you were twenty-two,’ her mother said, ‘hardly a babe in the woods.’

Mikki brought her head up from the wine list and sent her mother a wry look. ‘I thought you and Dad said I was too young to know what I was doing and I was just about to throw my life away on my first real love affair.’

Heloise pursed her mouth before she spoke. ‘He’s done very well for himself, hasn’t he?’

‘What are you saying, Mum?’ Mikki said as she began perusing the wine list again. ‘That I made the biggest mistake of my life in leaving him when I did?’

There was a tense little silence.

Heloise let out a frustrated breath. ‘Michaela, you’re always so defensive. Of course you did the right thing in leaving him. You had nothing in common with him.’

Mikki put the wine list down and met her mother’s gaze. ‘I loved him, Mum. I thought that was all the common ground one needed.’

‘But, darling, did he love you?’ Heloise asked. ‘There’s a very big difference between lust and love, you know.’ She took one of Mikki’s hands across the table and stroked it gently. ‘I know losing the baby was hard but in the end it worked out for the best, didn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes, it did.’ Mikki pulled her hand away and tried to ignore the sharp pain she always felt when the subject of the baby she had lost came up. She had felt so ashamed of letting her parents down. Her first trip abroad on her own and look what had happened. Her well-to-do parents’ hopes for their only daughter to one day have a society wedding with all the trimmings had been pushed aside for plans for a shotgun affair in a London register office, sandwiched between procedures in one of Lewis’s theatre lists.

‘Do you know if he’s married?’ Heloise asked, leaning back in her chair. ‘I didn’t notice a ring, did you?

Mikki had looked but was not going to admit to it. ‘I have no idea.’

‘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. ‘Er...I’d better get back to the ward. See you later.’

Mikki felt the hairs on the back of her neck lift up follicle by follicle. She turned round and met the inscrutable gaze of Lewis from where he stood in the doorway. ‘Apparently you’ve made quite an impression on the female staff,’ she said, keeping her voice even and controlled.

The corner of his mouth lifted but it was still not quite a smile. ‘Not all the female staff,’ he said. ‘Have you been actively avoiding me, Mikki? I haven’t seen you since we ran into each other at the restaurant the other night.’

Mikki felt the pull of his gaze and had to drag hers away with an effort. ‘Of course I haven’t been avoiding you,’ she said, keeping her voice low in case any of the other staff were about.

‘I didn’t see you at the welcoming morning tea,’ he said.

She straightened the already straight papers on the desk. ‘I was busy with one of the patients, that’s why. You know what ICU is like. There is always the possibility of a crisis of some sort.’

He leaned back against the filing cabinet with indolent ease, as if he had been working there all his professional life instead of having arrived two days ago. ‘What have you told people about us?’ he asked.

Mikki gave her head a little toss as she faced him. ‘Nothing.’

One brow lifted in an arc. ‘So no one knows we were once engaged?’

‘Why should they?’ she said.

The corner of his mouth kicked up again. ‘Interesting.’

Mikki felt her lower back tingle as his gaze swept over her, lingering a little too long on her mouth. Again her lips began to fizz with sensation and she ached to send her tongue out to dampen down their sudden dryness, but it seemed to be too intimate an action, a signal of want and need she wasn’t prepared to reveal at any cost. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be professional and mature about this situation, not fluttering with nerves and panic every time she ran into him. ‘Have you told anyone?’ She threw his question back.

‘Not yet.’

Mikki wasn’t sure what she felt about his ‘not yet’. It seemed to contain a threat that he might at some point reveal their past relationship. A couple of people at the hospital knew she had been engaged once but she had never told anyone Lewis’s name or occupation. She didn’t want anyone to connect the dots, and certainly not now with him here in the flesh. ‘What about your girlfriend?’ she asked. ‘Surely you’ve told her about your broken engagement?’

He folded his arms across the broad span of his chest, his eyes still holding hers in a lock-down that was as penetrating as it was unnerving. ‘Abby is not my girlfriend,’ he said.

Mikki only just managed to stop from rolling her eyes. ‘Well, whatever she is, she’s clearly smitten by you. She was hanging on every word that came out of your mouth.’

His eyes softened. ‘She’s rather sweet, isn’t she? I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you but we had a lot of catching up to do.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ Mikki said crisply.

There was a little beat of silence.

‘So how are we going to manage this situation?’ Lewis asked.

‘You mean working together?’

‘Yes. Are you going to be OK with it?’

‘I’m perfectly fine with it,’ Mikki said, but on the inside she was screaming, Of course I’m not OK with it!

‘That’s fine, then,’ he said, unfolding his arms.

Mikki pressed her lips together. ‘Um—what about the other stuff?’

His brow lifted again. ‘What other stuff?’

‘The we-were-once-engaged stuff,’ she said.

‘I don’t see that it has anything to do with anyone but us.’

Just to hear him say ‘us’ was enough to send a shock-wave of reaction through her whole body. To be bracketed with him in such a way was deeply disturbing. It suggested an intimacy between them that should no longer be there. Was it still there or was it just her imagination? It was hard to tell from his expression. Even when they had been together in the past he had revealed little of himself. He had been an island she had briefly visited before pulling up anchor and moving on.

But how soon before the hospital grapevine got its tentacles around their past? The medical world was small, the subset of the surgical world even smaller. It would only take one word out of place for people to make the connection. ‘Well, I’m not about to tell anyone,’ she said. ‘I make it a habit to keep my private life separate from my professional one.’

‘You’ve done well career-wise, from all accounts,’ Lewis said, pushing his hands into his trouser pockets as he crossed one ankle over the other. ‘No one works longer hours, or so I’m told. That can’t keep much time free for a private life.’

Mikki shifted her gaze out of the range of his. ‘I love my job.’

‘You say that as if you’re trying to convince yourself rather than me.’

She threw him a cutting look. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve cut back to working nine to five these days?’

His ice-blue eyes glittered like shards of ice. ‘I’ve been working on the work-life balance.’

Her expression showed her cynicism. ‘I’m sure you have.’

‘Are you seeing anyone?’

Mikki frowned at him. ‘What sort of question is that?’

He gave a light shrug. ‘I’m interested in what my successor is like. Or has there been more than one?’

‘It’s been seven years,’ Mikki said with a lift of her chin. ‘What do you think?’

Something moved in his eyes, a camera-shutter flick. ‘You’re not married.’

She arched her brow. ‘So?’

‘And you’re not living with anyone,’ he said.

Mikki folded her arms, the height of her chin challenging. ‘You seem to have done your homework. The question that begs to be asked is: why? Why are you so interested in my private life after all this time?’

Another beat of silence ticked past.

‘Was it worth it, Mikki?’ he asked. ‘Have you finally got what you want?’

Mikki dropped her arms from around her chest and moved to the other side of the office, her eyes averted from his. ‘Of course I’ve got what I want,’ she said.

‘And yet you don’t seem happy.’

She swung back to face him angrily. ‘You’re overstepping the mark, Lewis.’

‘Am I?’

She tightened her mouth. ‘You know you are. My happiness or lack thereof should be of no concern to you.’

‘Is that the way you want to play this?’ he asked. ‘Just pretend we don’t have a history together? How long do you think it will be before someone finds out? Sooner or later someone’s going to make the connection, Mikki. We worked in the same hospital in London. You know how the system works. Everyone knows everyone in this profession.’

Mikki swallowed a knot of tension in her throat. ‘No one needs to find out if we maintain a professional distance.’

He gave a snort of mock amusement and drawled, ‘You’re fooling yourself, sweetheart.’

Mikki cast a nervous gaze around to see if anyone had overheard his casual endearment. ‘Don’t call me that.’

He stepped closer, his tall frame shrinking the space like an adult stepping into a child’s cubby house. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it?’ he said in velvet-smooth tone.

Mikki didn’t need to ask him to clarify what he meant. She could feel it in the air between them— the tension, the crackling, the energy, the temptation. ‘You’re deluding yourself, Lewis,’ she said. ‘I’ve moved on. We’ve both moved on with our lives.’

One of his hands picked up a strand of her hair that had worked its way out of the tight ponytail she had fashioned earlier that day. He coiled it around his finger in an action he had done so many times in the past. Mikki couldn’t have moved away if she had tried. She stood mesmerised by the tether of his touch, by the intense blue of his gaze as it held hers. It was as if the busy, bustling world of the hospital had faded into the background, leaving them isolated in a bubble that contained memories of private moments—intimate moments only they knew about. Her heart kicked against her breastbone as his finger drew closer to her scalp. She could smell his aftershave. It wasn’t one she recognised but it was underpinned with his all-too-familiar smell: musk and soap and healthy potent male.

‘Do you want to know why I came back after so long out of the country?’ he asked.

She drew in a breath that felt like it had thorns attached. ‘To further your career,’ she said. ‘That’s always been your priority. Nothing comes before that.’

He uncoiled the strand of hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘A career is not everything, Mikki,’ he said as his hand dropped back down by his side. ‘It can’t keep you warm at night.’

Mikki stepped out of his force field. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of nubile companions to do that for you,’ she said.

He gave that almost-smile again. ‘You sound jealous.’

She sent him a gelid look. ‘I can assure you I’m not.’

‘All the same, it would be good if we can be friends as well as colleagues,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to add to the stress of the workplace by us being at war with one another.’

‘Friends, Lewis?’ Her expression was incredulous. ‘Isn’t that asking a little too much given the circumstances?’

His jaw grew tense as if he was trying to contain the anger that was there just under the surface of his civility. ‘You walked out on me, Mikki,’ he said. ‘You didn’t give our relationship a chance.’

Mikki glared at him. ‘Our relationship should never have occurred in the first place. It was a mistake from start to finish.’

‘I know it had a rough start but we could have worked at it,’ he said. ‘We could have tried to sort out the career commitments so that both of us could have had what we wanted.’

‘We didn’t want the same things,’ Mikki said. ‘You never wanted the ties of a family so early in your career. You told me that when we first met. But then, when I told you I was pregnant, you turned into someone else. You were obsessed with the baby, what school it would go to, what football team it would support, which of us it would look like. How could I know if you were truly enthusiastic or just making the best of a bad situation?’

‘What was I supposed to do?’ he said. ‘Abandon my own flesh and blood? I couldn’t do that. There was no other choice but to get married. I got you pregnant. It was my fault. I accepted that then and I still accept responsibility for it now. I didn’t want any child of mine growing up without its father.’

Mikki felt perilously close to tears, tears she hadn’t shed in years. ‘You were glad when I lost the baby. I know you were. It left you free to get on with your life without the responsibility of parenthood to deal with.’

‘Why would I be glad that you had to go through that?’ he asked, frowning darkly. ‘What sort of jerk do you take me for? I was gutted when you lost the baby.’

‘You never said a word to me,’ Mikki said. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘You had been through a devastating experience,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it was fair to dump my stuff on you on top of what you’d gone through. Talking about it only makes it worse, or that’s what I thought at the time. I hated seeing you cry. I felt responsible. I was the one who got you pregnant. I felt like I had ruined your life.’

Mikki bit her lip. She was feeling shocked at hearing his side of things. She had been so focussed on what she had felt that she hadn’t factored in Lewis’s feelings at all. He had always been so composed and clinical. Had he hidden all that he was feeling behind that mask of professional composure? Had he truly felt as devastated as she had?

Lewis scraped a hand through his dark brown hair, leaving deep grooves in the strands. ‘I don’t do emotion well, Mikki,’ he said in a world-weary tone. ‘For work I have to shut off my feelings so they don’t cloud my judgement. It’s hard to switch them back on again in my private life.’

His private life was a sore point and it made her sound a lot more resentful than she would have liked. ‘You didn’t seem to have too much trouble accessing your feelings the other night with Gabby or Tabby or whatever her name was,’ Mikki said.

‘You really are spoiling for a fight, aren’t you, Mikki?’ he asked.

Mikki opened her mouth to send him a scathing retort but he had already swung away to walk out of the office, almost bumping into one of the registrars as he left the ward.

‘Gosh, Mr Beck seemed rather annoyed,’ Kylie Ingram commented as she came into the office. ‘Has one of his operating lists been cancelled or something?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Mikki mumbled by way of reply, before excusing herself to answer her mobile.

* * *

‘We have four patients scheduled to come in tomorrow for Mr Beck’s list,’ Jane Melrose, an ICU nurse, informed Mikki as she came in for her shift a couple of days later.

‘Have we got the beds?’ Mikki asked, frowning as her gaze swept over the already full unit.

‘Not unless someone is transferred, discharged to the ward or dies,’ Jane said flatly.

Mikki pressed her lips together. ‘Then Mr Beck’s list will have to be culled. We’re stretched to capacity as it is and that’s not leaving room for any A and E admissions.’

‘I’ll call the theatre supervisor,’ Jane said and sighed. ‘Remind me why I work here?’

‘You get paid,’ Mikki said.

‘There’s got to be more to it than that,’ Jane said. ‘Aren’t I supposed to feel fulfilled and get a sense I’m making a difference?’

Mikki smiled. ‘We’re all making a difference, Jane. I’ll call the theatre supervisor. You go and have your tea break.’

Jane instantly brightened. ‘I just remembered why I work here. You are such a nice person to work with.’

‘It’s very sweet of you to say so, Jane, but I have a feeling I’m not going to be popular once I’ve made this call,’ she said as she resignedly picked up the phone in the office.

* * *

‘What do you mean, half my list has been cancelled?’ Lewis snapped at the theatre supervisor who had delivered the news.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Beck, but there are no available beds in ICU,’ the nurse said. ‘Dr Landon was most insistent.’

Lewis frowned. ‘So this was Dr Landon’s decision?’

‘Well, sort of, I guess,’ she said. ‘This stuff happens all the time. ICU is always full to the brim and the op lists have to be shuffled around a fair bit. If there’s no ICU bed post-op, you can’t operate. Some of ICU is contracted out to the private hospital next door, but the unit is too small anyway.’

‘I know how a co-located hospital works,’ Lewis said curtly. ‘I just don’t like having decisions made over my head without consultation with me. Which patients were cancelled? I should be the one deciding which patients are put off, not someone who has never seen the patients. I know who is the most urgent, I’ve done the work-ups, organised the preparation. I will be the one making that decision.’

‘You’ll have to take up that with Dr Landon,’ the nurse said, giving a nervous grimace before she left.

Lewis scraped a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn’t like being the ogre with nursing staff but his first week and a half at St Benedict’s hadn’t gone as smoothly as he would have liked. His office and consultation room were still being painted and fitted out, even though he had been promised they would be ready by the time he arrived, and now half his operation list had been cancelled by his ex-fiancée. Was she deliberately putting him in his place or was there a genuine bed crisis?

He went down to the unit but Mikki was nowhere in sight. He asked one of the registrars on duty, who informed him she had gone to the doctors’ room on the fifth floor for a coffee break.

Lewis took the stairs two at a time and shouldered open the doctors’ room door to find Mikki waiting for some fresh coffee to brew in the percolator on the bench next to a microwave and toaster. ‘Just the person I want to see,’ he said, pressing the door with the flat of his hand so it clicked shut.

Her tawny-brown eyes widened a fraction. ‘I take it this is about your list?’ she said.

‘I have four ill patients I need to operate on tomorrow,’ Lewis said. ‘What am I supposed to say to them now you’ve cancelled the surgery on half of them?’

‘We haven’t got the beds,’ she said. ‘The two we’ve given you don’t need ICU beds post-op. Didn’t Theatre Management tell you?’

‘Find the beds,’ he said, locking gazes with her, his mouth set in an intractable line. ‘I want those two operations to go ahead as planned.’

‘I can’t do that. The unit is full. We had two unexpected admissions from private overnight. That’s the two post-op beds gone. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.’

‘Mikki, this is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Surely there is a better way of managing this? Those two beds should have been earmarked for neurosurgical post-op. The private hospital should have sent their patients elsewhere. Aren’t there any patients you can transfer to another ICU somewhere else? Is there not one patient here you can wean off a ventilator?’

‘I can’t turn people’s ventilators off just because you need the beds,’ she said with a spark in her eyes.

‘I’m not asking you to do any such thing. There should just have been better communication over this, especially with me.’

‘Look, Lewis, the system is overstretched here. They should have told you that before you took on the position,’ she said. ‘It’s like this just about every week with every surgical speciality in need of high-dependency beds. There just aren’t enough ICU beds for every specialty. People have to be postponed, especially, it seems, public patients.’

‘Mikki, you know neurosurgical patients are nearly always high acuity,’ he said. ‘Surely I don’t have to bargain for beds every time I’m scheduled to do a list?’

Her eyes moved away from his as she poured her coffee. ‘Take it up with the hospital management,’ she said. ‘It’s not my problem.’

‘Have you even thought about a way to manage this better?’ Lewis asked.

She turned her defiant brown gaze on him. ‘It’s my job to keep critically ill patients alive. I don’t have the time to brainstorm on how to manage the hospital better. That’s Administration’s job.’

‘How many non-surgical patients do you currently have in ICU?’ Lewis asked.

‘Seven.’

‘How many of them are on ventilators?’

‘Two.’

‘Then why can’t those other five patients be transferred somewhere else and free up ventilated beds?’ he asked.

She appeared to think about it for a moment. ‘That would take a hell of a lot of organisation, transferring patients between ICU units in different hospitals. There would be issues, infection control for a start. But I doubt if Admin would come at the transfer costs, even if we could find other non-surgical ICUs willing to take patients.’

‘There are private hospital ICU beds elsewhere. Non-ventilated beds could be leased there to free up post-op beds here,’ he said.

She put her coffee cup down. ‘That’s something that would have to be dealt with by the powers that be. I can only do what I can to make room in my own department.’

‘Mikki, I would really appreciate if we could somehow just do this,’ Lewis said. ‘I have a thirty-five-year-old mother of three who has already had a subarachnoid bleed from an aneurysm. If she has another bleed, for which she’s got a worse than fifty per cent chance in the next day, she won’t make it—three kids with no mother. The other urgent patient has an astrocytoma on the verge of coning. If I don’t debulk the tumour asap it’s not going to be worth doing. And I think the new regime of intracranial chemo and radical radiotherapy has a real chance of eradicating this tumour. Twenty-one years old. Think about it, Mikki. This young guy hasn’t even started life and he’s staring down the barrel of it ending if I don’t do this operation. I’m not being difficult just for the heck of it. I really want those cases done. This is what I’ve spent the last decade training to do, and because of some dumb administrative lethargy I’m being told I can’t treat these people.’

Her slim throat rose and fell. ‘I understand the urgency. I always try and accommodate the high-priority cases. But I’m up against a limit here. I’m not the head of the department. Jack French is.’

‘But he’s currently on leave. Surely you can take charge here, can’t you? Someone has got to.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She gave a sigh of resignation. ‘I’ll see who I can possibly move but I’m not making any promises.’

‘That’s my girl,’ Lewis said.

‘Not any more,’ she said with a little hoist of her chin as she moved past him. The door closed behind her, the click of the lock adding a measure of finality to her statement.

Lewis had to fight his primal response to go after her. His reaction to seeing her again was something he had been preparing himself for ever since he had been approached about the position at St Benedict’s. It had been one of the reasons he had taken the post. He wanted to prove to himself he had moved on. He had known it would be difficult, seeing her. He had known it would stir up old hurts and disappointments. But he hadn’t expected to feel the same level of attraction after all this time. It had caught him totally off guard, which was foolish of him now that he thought about it. Over the last seven years, whenever he had thought of Mikki and their short and passionate time together he had felt a deep aching sense of loss at how it had ended. He had been in and out of other relationships before and since but he had never felt anything when he thought about them or even when he occasionally ran into them. But with Mikki it was like a punch to his gut, a deep, cruel punch that ached and throbbed for hours afterwards. This posting was supposed to change all that. To desensitise him, but so far it was doing the opposite.

Normally he was good at locking away his feelings. Since his brother’s death twenty years ago, feelings had been off limits. Feelings equalled vulnerability. And the one thing he hated to show was any sign of vulnerability. Mikki had walked out on him, so showing any sign of hurt, betrayal or disappointment had been the last thing he had been prepared to do. But somehow seeing her again had triggered something deep inside him and he couldn’t seem to turn it off. It niggled at him, like an annoying itch he couldn’t reach to scratch. She evoked feelings in him he had never expected to feel for anyone again. He didn’t want to need her. He didn’t want to want her. He had never wanted to want or need her or anyone. But just as she had come into his life in the past she had changed his black and white to vivid vibrant colour with her sparkly personality and endless cheerfulness. He had seen very little of that vibrant personality since he had come back. Had he done that to her with his clumsy handling of their relationship?

He felt the bone-deep ache of desire when he was with her, a physical need that no other woman incited in him. Somehow standing within touching distance of Mikki made him want to pull her into his arms the way he had had all those years ago and feel her body nestle up against his as if she had finally found her way home. He had not felt that with anyone else. It annoyed him that he hadn’t moved on as far as he had thought. Was it the fact that she had ended their relationship and not him? Hadn’t she just reminded him of it with her pert response?

She was no longer his girl.

She was no longer his lover.

She was no longer his fiancée.

He didn’t matter to her any more. That was what hurt the most. It was the one thing he couldn’t move on from. He was a part of her past she clearly wanted to forget. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone suggested she was ashamed of it. That hurt. That really, really bugged him. What they’d had together had been good, better than good. They’d had the chance to have a wonderful partnership and she had thrown it all away. How could she have professed to have loved him so passionately way back then but feel nothing for him now?

It shouldn’t matter what she felt now, but it did. And that was perhaps the thing that annoyed him most. He wanted her to still feel something for him, anything but that cool professional show-no-emotion ice-princess thing she had going. He was determined to break through it. He would chip away at that icy barrier until he found the warm-hearted, spontaneous girl he had fallen in love with seven years ago.

He just hoped she was still there…

CHAPTER THREE

‘WOW, Mr Beck must have really laid down the law with you,’ Jane Melrose said as she saw the orderlies in the process of transferring two patients to other hospitals.

Mikki gave her a speaking glance. ‘He can be very persuasive. But to tell you the truth, he has a point. This place could be better managed.’

‘Jack French won’t want to hear you say that,’ Jane said. ‘He thinks he’s the best director this unit’s ever had.’

‘He does the best he can,’ Mikki said. ‘But it’s always complicated. Look at poor Mrs Yates, for instance. Eighty-seven years old, on a ventilator with no sign of improvement after her bile-duct injury. Her daughters want us to withdraw support but her son is refusing to allow it.’

‘I think it’s about her will.’ Jane said. ‘I heard one of the relatives talking about it. Apparently she changed it recently and the son wants it changed back. Fat chance of that happening. Greedy vultures, some people.’

‘You certainly see the best and worst of human behaviour in here,’ Mikki said with a sigh.

Jane cocked her head at her. ‘Hey, do you know what I heard when I was on break?’

Mikki kept her voice cool and disinterested. ‘I have no idea.’

Jane swung back and forth on the ergonomic chair. ‘Mr Beck has bought a house in Tamarama overlooking the beach. Do you reckon it’s that house you were telling me about, the big one across from you where that soap actress used to live with her boyfriend before they moved to Hollywood?’

Mikki felt a feather of suspicion dance up her spine. ‘I did happen to notice a “Sold” sign on it when I got home yesterday but I have no idea who the new owner is.’

‘That’d be cool, being neighbours with Mr Beck, don’t you think?’ Jane said.

Mikki tried to keep her face and her tone blank. ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would think that would be cool.’

Jane stopped swinging to look at her. ‘Don’t you like him, Mikki?’

Mikki gave an up-and-down lift of her shoulders. ‘He’s all right, I guess.’

‘He’s more than all right,’ Jane said. ‘My heart flutters every time I see him. I’d love him to ask me out. Maybe I’ll make the first move. I know some men don’t like that but what have I got to lose?’

‘I think you’d be wasting your time,’ Mikki said. ‘He’s already got a girlfriend.’

‘Has he?’

‘Yes, a dark-haired gorgeous woman who looks like she could be a model,’ Mikki said, feeling the pain all over again as she thought of that bone-crushing hug Lewis had given his date.

‘How do you know?’ Jane asked, looking at her with intrigue.

‘I saw them when I had dinner with my mother. They were dining in the same restaurant.’

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Jane said, flopping back in her chair. ‘Why are all the good ones already taken?’

‘It’s life,’ Mikki said wearily, and reached to answer her ringing phone.

* * *

After Mikki spent a good hour in the gym she drove home to her little town house squeezed in between the exclusive mansions in a cul-de-sac in the beachside suburb of Tamarama. It was going to take a lifetime to pay off, but it was wonderful to be within walking distance of the ocean. The briny smell of the sea and the rolling waves cleared her head as nothing else could. She loved standing on her small balcony and watching for dolphins in amongst the die-hard surfers who were in the water no matter what the season.

In spite of living there for well over a year now, she hadn’t got to know any of her neighbours all that well. She stopped to chat to one or two of them now and again, but the hours she worked made socialising a little difficult and her free time was so precious she mostly spent it alone or at the gym. As for dating, well, that had been an area of her life that had never quite got off the ground after she’d returned from London. She’d had dinner a couple of times with a friend of a friend just recently but nothing had come of it. It was intensely annoying but every time she went out with another man she couldn’t help comparing him to Lewis. It was as if Lewis was her benchmark of what she felt to be the ideal man. Everyone else fell short, if not in height, then in looks and personality and intelligence.

It wasn’t that she still felt anything for him, well, nothing she was prepared to openly admit. In her most private moments she allowed herself to unlock that door in her heart where she stored that still weeping wound. Was love supposed to hurt for this long? Surely by now she should have forgotten about him and moved on.

When she had heard he was coming to Sydney to take up a position at St Benedict’s she had been furious. What right did he have to come waltzing back into her life, even if it was only professionally? That was how she had fallen for him in the first place. She had been a medical student on rotation in London, the same hospital where Lewis had been doing his registrar training. The irony was they hadn’t met at the hospital but in a pub frequented by homesick Aussies. She had come in out of the rain just as he had been going out. She had almost stabbed him in the stomach with her umbrella and he had stolen her heart with his ghost of a smile.

It had been a whirlwind romance, or at least for her. Mikki suspected Lewis had been used to a rapid turnover of bedmates. He was very experienced, but looking back she realised that had probably been in comparison to her inexperience.

She had been so terribly young and naive, so fresh faced and enthusiastic about life. She had fallen hard for Lewis, very hard. He had been her polar opposite. She had been bubbly and happy and he had been dark and brooding and serious. She had loved their differences. She’d loved making him smile. She’d taken it on as a mission to make him laugh out loud. She had never achieved it but she had made those lips of his curve upwards at her and his amazingly blue eyes dance a little.

Lewis had always seemed so controlled and in control. He hadn’t needed anyone. He’d had no one to need. His mother had died when he was young, and his father when he’d been a teenager, which had left him with no extended family to speak of. For someone who’d craved others’ approval so much, Mikki had found his air of untouchable aloofness devastatingly attractive. His lone-wolf status had intrigued her. She had been unable to imagine having no one in her life to lean on, but he had always shrugged off any notion of regret about being without a family.

Their first meeting had turned into a date, and then another. Within days of meeting they were sleeping together. She told him she loved him the third week they were together, a spontaneous gushing confession that to this day still embarrassed her. He had not said he loved her back, at least not then. He had just given one of his half-smiles and ruffled her hair, as one would do to a small, over-enthusiastic child. He made no promises but, then, why would he? He knew she was only in the UK for three months. Lewis made it clear he was staying in the UK and Europe for an indefinite period. He had no plans to return to Australia. What chance did they have of a permanent relationship when they were going in different directions?

That point was driven home to her almost daily as he barely acknowledged her at the hospital as he always seemed so determined to keep his private life separate from his professional one. At first Mikki admired his commitment to his career. The neurosurgical pathway was a demanding one. The long hours of difficult operations and arduous study left little time for play. She knew it and accepted it but still she secretly longed for more than he was prepared to give.

She was already neglecting her studies in those first few weeks of being blissfully in love but she felt it was worth it. Lewis was worth it. How he made her feel was worth any sacrifice. But then finding out she was pregnant turned her world upside down. All her career plans took a sudden nosedive. Lewis was shocked at her news but he was determined to do the right thing by her and the baby. He insisted on marrying her as soon as it could be arranged. Mikki had wanted more time to think about taking such a big step. She believed marriage was a lifetime commitment and she had always dreamed of doing it properly. She felt too young. She felt unprepared for all marriage and a baby would entail. Her reluctance to marry in a rush caused many a heated argument, some of which had gone on for days. There never seemed to be enough time to resolve anything. The phone was always ringing with another emergency or a patient needing urgent care. Lewis was a diligent and very capable registrar and the specialists trusted him to do the footwork for them, which he did without question and without complaint. He seemed to thrive on the challenges work threw at him. He relished the difficult cases, working on his skills alongside some of the best-known names in the field.

But Mikki felt Lewis had changed after finding out he was going to be a father. Their relationship changed. She could never put her finger on exactly how it was different, but the subtle change of mood increasingly made her feel as if he was only staying with her out of a sense of duty. Yes, he had said he loved her after she had told him about the baby. He had even said he had been going to say it days earlier but had wanted to find the right time. She wanted to believe him and did for a time. But then the doubts crept in, like shadows under a door. Those shadows lengthened as time went on, reminding her of the precarious position she was in, loving a man much more than he loved her.

After losing the baby, her decision to call off the wedding seemed the only sensible thing to do. Mikki could see Lewis was distancing himself since her miscarriage. They spent no time together, instead passing through the flat like flatmates who barely knew each other. She was preparing herself daily for him to call the wedding off himself but for some reason he didn’t say a word. She lived in a constant state of unease, a feeling of impending doom that destroyed her self-confidence even further.

Her parents, who had flown over the week before, had already spent the whole time they had been there trying to get her to change her mind about going ahead with the marriage. She didn’t want to be influenced by her parents, but neither did she want to make a mistake that would have repercussions for the rest of her life. She thought long and hard about leaving Lewis, but once she had made up her mind it was relatively easy to put the necessary steps in place.

Her parents had taken a couple of days to visit the Cotswolds and arranged to meet her at the airport the following evening when Lewis was on night shift. Mikki left a note and closed the door on their shoebox-sized flat with a sound that still echoed deep within her heart…

* * *

One of the regular dog walkers was coming along the footpath as Mikki collected her mail from the letter-box. She smiled at the middle-aged woman called Margery and reached down to pat the fluffy, pint-sized canine. ‘Hi, there, Muffy. You’re not pulling on your lead today. Those obedience classes must be working.’

The dog’s owner laughed. ‘Yes, they are,’ she said. ‘She was the most improved last session.’

‘That’s very good to hear,’ Mikki said, smiling.

‘The house across the road from you has finally been sold,’ Margery said. ‘Have you met the new owner?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Mikki said, wondering if that was true now or not. ‘Have you?’

‘No, but I heard it was bought by another doctor from St Benedict’s. A specialist of some sort, I’ve forgotten which one. I thought you might know him.’

‘No doubt I will run into him some time,’ Mikki said, prickling with annoyance.

‘I think it’s nice for the neighbourhood to have some more professionals in residence,’ Margery said. ‘I hope he brings a wife and family with him. After all those all-night rave parties with you know who, it will be a nice change to have some young children about the place.’

Mikki exchanged a few more desultory words before going up the path to her town house. She didn’t like where her thoughts were taking her. She was being paranoid. Why should she immediately think it had been Lewis who had bought that stunning and incredibly expensive house? At least a hundred doctors worked at St Benedict’s. Any one of them could have purchased the property. It was in a great location, and it was certainly relatively close to the hospital, which was essential if one was in one of the more emergency based specialities where time was so important.

Mikki tried to put it out of her mind as she went upstairs to shower and change out of her gym gear. She had only just dried and dressed when the doorbell sounded. She flicked back her still damp hair and padded down the stairs, and even though she had a security camera screen to check who was at the door, she didn’t use it. She didn’t need to. She knew exactly who was there and why.

‘Lewis,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘Just the person I want to see.’

‘Well, sweetheart, I’m deeply touched,’ Lewis said dryly. ‘You’re just the person I want to see too.’

She flashed him a furious glare. ‘You’d better come in. I wouldn’t want your future neighbours to take a set against you before you even move into the neighbourhood.’

One of his dark brows winged upward. ‘So you’ve heard about my little purchase across the road?’

Mikki shut the door with a sharp click as he stepped over the threshold. ‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘First you come to work in the same hospital I work in, you eat in the same restaurant I eat in and now you’re moving into the same street. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ he said. ‘I was headhunted for the post at St Benedict’s.’

Mikki placed her hands on her hips and angled her head at him in suspicion. ‘And the restaurant?’

‘It’s the most popular restaurant on that stretch of Bondi.’

‘And the house?’

He gave her a winning smile. ‘It was a steal. Do you realise how much I would have had to pay for a similar property in London?’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘There are no beaches in the centre of London so I’m not quite getting the comparison.’

‘It’s a nice house.’

Mikki clenched her hands into fists. ‘It’s right across the street from mine!’

He gave her a guileless look. ‘So?’

She blew out a breath of frustration and fury. ‘So what were you thinking?’ she asked. ‘It’s bad enough I have to see you every day at work.’

‘I thought you said it wasn’t going to be a problem for you at work,’ he said.

Mikki swung away towards the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the polished floorboards in anger. ‘You could have had least told me about the house when we were speaking earlier today,’ she said. ‘I can only imagine you didn’t because you knew I’d be furious.’

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