The Legendary Playboy Surgeon (9 page)

What had taken their friendship to a completely new level, however, was that incident in the car park.

Connor was the first person she had ever told about her past. Even the men she’d had relationships within the last few years had never known.

Could that be part of the reason why they’d never worked out?

And while Kate might protest that it was nothing more than friendship with Connor, she knew it was more than that. Or potentially more than that. On both sides? They seemed to be in a kind of holding pattern. Spending time together and keeping options open without taking things any further.

Did Connor want to?

Did she want to or was it just that she was reluctant to lose this amazing connection that they seemed to have? And she would lose it, if Connor learned about the parts of her story that she still had locked away.

‘It’s not going anywhere,’ she told her niece firmly. ‘So stop going on about it.’

But Bella couldn’t let it go. She refilled both their wine glasses. Kate tried to refuse. She started gathering the dishes that should have been loaded into the dishwasher long ago.

‘Leave it.’ The very idea of ordering Kate around made Bella offer up a surprisingly contrite smile. ‘Please? I really like talking to you.’

Kate liked it too. She hadn’t realised how nice it would be to have company in her home at night. Someone to share food with. Even if they were both busy with other things in the evenings it was nice to have someone else in the house. To not feel so...alone.

‘Just don’t go on about Connor, then,’ she relented.

Bella sighed theatrically. ‘But he’s gorgeous. You’re both single. You like each other. I can’t see what the problem is.’

‘Neither of us wants a long-term relationship.’

‘So have a short-term one, then. A friendship with extras.’ Bella’s eyebrows wiggled suggestively. ‘Some
fun
. I’ll bet Connor would be up for it.’

‘I’ll bet.’ Kate’s tone was dry. ‘And that’s one of the reasons it couldn’t possibly work. He’s got a reputation for breaking hearts. He’s probably the world’s expert in “friendships with extras”. What woman in her right mind would want to be another notch on someone’s bedpost?’

‘He’s only like that because he hasn’t found the right woman. That might be you.’

Oh
... She had to stop this conversation. That feeling of wanting...
hoping
...was too painful.

She gave her head a sharp shake. ‘I don’t do casual sex.’

The odd look that Bella had on her face made Kate sigh. ‘So you’ve heard the rumours, then.’

Bella chewed her bottom lip and wouldn’t meet Kate’s eyes.

‘I’m not a middle-aged virgin and I’m not a lesbian, OK? People round St Pat’s have short memories. You met Tim, didn’t you? That nephrologist I was with for two years?’

Bella nodded. ‘Seems a long time ago.’

It was. Over three years, in fact. Tim had left St Pat’s not long after the relationship had ended. Connor had arrived not long after that. Hospitals were like that. People coming and going all the time. Romances starting. Others ending.

‘He was a nice guy,’ Bella added. ‘What went wrong, Kate?’

Kate shrugged. ‘He wanted a family. I didn’t.’ And Tim had pushed and made her realise how impossible it would be to ever go there again. So she had pushed back and the distance created so swiftly had made it obvious that there hadn’t been enough there in the first place.

Bella’s bewilderment was written all over her face. ‘It’s all I want,’ she said. ‘Is that wrong—to want a husband and a bunch of kids and not be bothered about much else?’

‘It’s not wrong. It’s who you are.’ Kate smiled. ‘And I’m sure you’ll get exactly what you want. You’ll probably have three kids by the time you’re my age. Good grief, that’ll make me, what—a great-aunt?’

‘You’ll be a famous pathologist great-aunt. I’ll bring all the kids to visit and they’ll drive you crazy, making a mess all over the place.’

‘Hey, I got used to that living with you lot.’ Kate was more shocked than she was prepared to admit at the thought of being part of an older generation. It felt like something very important was passing her by. That she’d end up having regrets. She shook the thought away. ‘Why don’t we ring home?’ she suggested. ‘And see what they’re all doing?’

Bella let Kate make the call.

Clearly one of the twins was at home and answered the phone because Kate was laughing in no time flat and it was quite a while before she even got a word in edgeways.

And then it was her mother’s turn and Kate seemed to be very interested in hearing how her brother was doing. Michael was in his third year of med school now, living a long way from home in Dunedin. Apparently he was also changing flats because Kate went hunting for a pen and paper to take down his new details. She had the phone tucked against her shoulder as she wrote.

Sipping the last of her glass of wine, Bella was content to wait for once because she had a lot to think about.

How embarrassing was it that Kate knew about those rumours? Bella had been horrified when she’d found out from her fellow theatre nurses. She’d taken a great deal of satisfaction in scorching the horrible innuendoes by announcing that her aunt was, in fact, in a relationship with Connor Matthews.

Her colleagues had been more than a bit sceptical and Bella couldn’t blame them. She’d come to the conclusion that Kate and Connor were an impossible match herself, weeks ago. Just before the man himself had turned up on the doorstep and whisked Kate off on the back of that gorgeous bike. He hadn’t brought her home until hours later and there’d been a glow in her eyes that Bella had never seen before.

One that had been there with increasing frequency over the last few weeks, but now Kate was claiming that it was nothing more than a friendship and never would be. And she’d sounded pretty convincing.

Bella could feel herself frowning. It couldn’t be allowed to fizzle out like that. Or not get going properly or whatever the problem was. But what could she possibly do about it? She could hear an echo of her mother’s voice in her head. Or was it Kate’s?

Don’t meddle, Bella. You’ll only cause trouble.

With a sigh, she tuned back into the phone conversation.

‘Only if he’s not busy,’ Kate was saying. There was a short silence and then her father must have been given the phone. ‘Hi, David.’ Kate was smiling into the phone. ‘Yes, I’m good, thanks. Yes...’ She was looking at Bella as she listened. ‘She’s behaving herself. Her cooking’s improving, too—when she remembers to turn the oven on.’ The chuckle was a happy sound. ‘How are things with you?’

Kate’s expression changed in the space of a heartbeat. ‘
What
?’ Her voice lowered. ‘
When
?’

She turned away, leaving Bella to stare at her back, unable to get any clues from her face as to what might be being discussed. It was something that wasn’t good, that was for sure.

‘I hope you didn’t say anything.’ Kate listened a little longer and then nodded. ‘Well, let’s hope that an end to it. Once and for all. Yes... OK... Yes, she’s right here.’

Kate was turning back as she spoke. She held the phone out.

‘What’s going on?’ Bella whispered urgently, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘What was that all about?’

The head shake was definite. ‘Nothing.’

Bella uncovered the mouthpiece cautiously. ‘Hello?’

‘Bells.’ Her father sounded perfectly normal. ‘Your mum’s waving at me. She wants to know when you’re coming down for a visit.’

‘Soon. I’ll try for my next weekend off if I can get a cheap flight. I’m trying to save my money, you know.’

‘We’ll spring for the flight,’ her father promised. ‘Just give us the dates.’

‘Hang on.’ Bella walked towards the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall, where she’d marked all her days off with a smiley face. She had to go past Kate, who didn’t seem to notice. She was sitting at the table, staring into space.

‘Hey, it’s only two weeks away.’

‘Great. Tell Kate we’d love to see her if she wants to come with you.’

Bella turned her head to pass on the invitation. Kate hadn’t moved a muscle and she looked...weird.

‘She might have better things to do,’ she said experimentally. ‘She’s got a new boyfriend.’

Yup. There was no reaction from Kate at all. She was in another place entirely, staring at nothing at all.

Looking as though she’d seen a ghost.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘W
HERE
’
S
Dr Graham?’

‘In the morgue.’ The technician was one of the reduced number of people who worked in the laboratory to do the work that couldn’t fit into the busy day shift. Most of the benches in the area were deserted at the moment and the whirr of electronic machinery was no more than a background hum.

‘Is she busy?’ Connor knew that Kate was getting involved in the forensic side of pathology. Maybe there’d been a suspicious death that needed urgent investigation.

‘Something to do with a research trial. She said she didn’t need any help. Go on in. Kate won’t mind.’ The technician smiled at Connor. ‘She might be glad of some company.’ The smile turned into a grimace. ‘Company that can talk back, anyway.’

Clearly, some of the things that happened in the basement of St Pat’s were well out of the comfort zone of this young girl. Autopsies were out of the comfort zone of most people.

Including himself?

Yes. Connor walked slowly through the laboratory to the back entrance of the morgue, where bodies were stored in their refrigerated cubicles. This wasn’t an area he could enter with any great enthusiasm. If he stopped to think about it, it was downright weird that he was drawn to a person that was more than comfortable with it all. Someone who had a passion for it, even.

But drawn he was. The piece of news he had, that the sparkly new microscope had been delivered upstairs, could easily have waited until tomorrow. It could have been passed on with a phone call or an email. But Connor had seen it as a compelling reason to go and see if Kate was still at work and, if she wasn’t, he would have headed straight for her house.

And he would have felt surprisingly comfortable turning up unannounced on her doorstep, he realised. Almost as if they were dating. Except they weren’t, of course. They’d been spending a lot of time together setting up the mini pathology lab in Theatre. There’d been lots of coffees and even a dinner but Connor was still treading carefully, at a loss as to precisely what direction he was treading in.

It wasn’t heading away from Kate, though, was it?

He walked through the chill of the room where the bodies were stored. Empty to all outward appearances but Connor felt far from alone. He looked through the wide glass window of the partition into the next area.

A body lay exposed on the stainless-steel table in the centre of the room. A middle-aged male with an open chest that suggested the autopsy was well under way. Kate, bent over the body and completely focused on her task, was dressed in what looked like theatre gear with a heavy-duty plastic apron over the gown. The clothing was baggy and made Kate look smaller somehow. Or was that because she was working alone in a place that already made Connor feel isolated and uncomfortable? Even from this distance he could sense the clinical detachment with which Kate was working. She had learned how to deal with this environment by closing herself off from reactions that were at an emotional level.

She was good at that, wasn’t she? A lesson she had probably learned as a child and a big part of who she was. And thank goodness there were people who could do that because this kind of work might be distasteful to many but it was a vital part of the world of medicine.

‘Hey...’ He poked his head through the door. ‘Is it OK if I come in?’

Kate looked up, surprised. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Do I need to put any gear on?’

‘Some booties would be good but you don’t need anything else, unless you want to get your hands dirty.’ She smiled at his expression. ‘It’s OK, I’m almost done. I won’t ask you to help.’ She was lifting an organ from the body. The heart. ‘This is the bit I was after.’

Connor was already hating the smell but he went closer, following Kate as she took the heart to a set of scales hanging over a bench. His gaze skittered past the body on the table. ‘Interesting case?’

‘Part of a research trial.’ Kate activated a Dictaphone to record the weight and external appearance of the organ and then took the heart from the bowl of the scales and laid it on a dissection board that had an impressive array of scalpels and other surgical instruments laid out beside it. ‘It’s looking at sudden death in patients who are known to have heart failure.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, it’s commonly thought that many of the deaths are due to an irregular heart rhythm that becomes fatal, but it appears that a high percentage—maybe up to seventy-five per cent—of these people have actually had a heart attack and if that’s the case, different drug therapy may well protect them.’

‘Hmm. International trial?’

‘Yes. They’re looking at thousands of cases. I’m going to present data on our contribution in a couple of months’ time. In Zurich.’

‘Cool.’ Connor was watching the meticulous dissection Kate was doing on the coronary arteries of the heart. ‘You would have made a great surgeon.’

Kate’s smile was crooked. ‘Can’t kill anyone in here. And...I like working alone.’

She liked
being
alone. How many people, Connor wondered, had any idea of the ‘other’ Kate? The secret one that was hidden inside a respected pathologist who would probably be warmly welcomed to present data at an important international conference?

The secret Kate. The imprisoned, sensual Kate.

Connor had a sudden desire to be out on the highway, with the miles peeling away beneath the wheels of his bike. With Kate’s arms wrapped around his waist and her hair flying in the wind beneath her helmet.

No. What he wanted was to be somewhere with soft music playing and an empty dance floor so that he could have Kate entirely to himself. Soft lighting, too. Moonlight would be enough.

And then it hit him.

What he actually wanted was more than that. He simply wanted Kate. He wanted to make love to her. Slowly. Deliciously. Probably more than once.

Whoa!

Had any of that shown on his face? Thank goodness Kate was absorbed in her task.

‘Look at that.’ The hard white shell of a major blood vessel within the heart was opening slowly beneath the tip of a precisely wielded scalpel. The clot was huge and dark and ugly. ‘Pretty conclusive evidence.’ Kate sounded pleased. ‘I might get some photos.’ Stripping off her gloves, she walked away. ‘Back in a tick. I’ll just get the camera.’

Connor wanted to excuse himself as well but it would be kind of rude to walk out when Kate wasn’t there. He felt uncomfortable enough being in here in the first place, without the unwanted attraction now simmering in his gut.

Good grief. Kate didn’t even like being touched. Sex was out of the question. Wasn’t it?

He had to get out of there. When Kate came back in, carrying a digital camera, Connor opened his mouth to give her the message he’d come with so he could leave, but the intention was interrupted by his pager sounding. He glanced at the screen.

‘Can I make a call in here?’

‘There’s a phone right there.’ Kate was busy adjusting settings on the camera. She glanced up to tilt her head and indicate the location of the wall phone. Connor was wearing his leather jacket and looked as though he’d popped in here on his way home.

Why?

Because he wanted to see her at work? To see
her
?

They’d almost run out of reasons to spend time together under the umbrella of the joint project for Theatre and Kate had suspected that they would start spending less time together so this was unexpected.

Nice.

She focused the camera on the evidence of the massive heart attack that had killed her patient. The sooner she finished this job, the sooner she could leave the hospital and maybe...Connor was going to ask her out somewhere.

Kate pushed the shutter button and then changed angles and pushed it again. She could hear Connor’s voice and, after a surprised-sounding introduction to his conversation, his tone became oddly intense.

‘Who is she...? How old...?’

He was being given quite a lot of information judging by the length of his listening time.

‘What’s the time frame? OK...remind me what’s involved on my part?’

He listened again. ‘Might go for a local anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘Less down time. So, Monday, then? Seven-thirty a.m.? Got it.’ He hung up the phone but, oddly, stood there staring at it for what seemed a long time.

‘Problem?’ Kate asked.

‘Not for me.’ Connor’s voice sounded curiously thick. He cleared his throat. ‘Not even my patient.’

‘Oh?’

‘Little girl up in the ward. Lucy. She’s seven and she’s got leukaemia.’

Kate had finished her photography. She should dictate all her findings about the coronary arteries so she could complete her paperwork accurately later but something wasn’t making sense here. Something Connor had asked about what was involved on his part.

‘Do you know her?’

‘I’ve seen her. Totally bald from her chemo but she’s got the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. Gorgeous kid.’

Something tightened in Kate’s belly. An unpleasant sort of tightness which wasn’t the sort she was used to associating with thoughts about Connor. This wasn’t the first evidence that he liked children, was it? How had she managed to push that so far to the back of her head?

She stared at Connor and something must have shown on her face because he looked away.

‘She needs a bone-marrow transplant,’ he said. ‘The family all lined up but they found a better match on the register. Me.’

Kate’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re on a register to donate bone marrow?’

‘Yeah... Been on it for a long time.’

‘Have you ever made a donation?’

‘Nope. This’ll be the first.’

‘So you’re going to do it?’

‘Sure.’ Connor sounded surprised. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘It wouldn’t even occur to me to get tested in the first place to go on a register.’

‘Don’t you donate blood?’

‘Of course I do. But that’s nothing. They don’t have to drill holes in my pelvis to get it out.’

Connor shrugged. ‘Be a bit sore for a day or two, I guess. I don’t mind.’ He met Kate’s stare. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

Was he kidding? It was a huge deal. Even for a close family member it would be a big deal to go through a bone-marrow donation but Connor only knew this child by sight. By her smile.

The depth of care he gave his own patients was something that had blown her away but this showed an even greater compassion. Was this kind of involvement instinctive for him because of how much he loved children?

What would he be like if he had children of his own?

He’d be an amazing father.

Maybe he couldn’t wait for that to happen and that was why he got so involved with the children of total strangers.

The tight feeling inside Kate became sharper. Like a knife that was twisting and turning. Her voice came out much more sharply than she’d intended, as though that knife was real and not emotional.

‘I can’t believe how involved you get with your patients. With other people’s patients, even.’

Connor seemed to grow taller. He was frowning. ‘What are talking about?’

‘I’m talking about the things you do for kids. Like riding a motorbike into a ward, for God’s sake.’

‘I didn’t
ride
it. I wheeled it. And that was a one-off. It was—’

‘You took me miles out of the city to sit on a hill above a beach to watch people surfing so I could understand how important Estelle’s leg was for her.’

Connor’s face was settling into an expression that managed to look both neutral and dangerous. ‘You have a problem with that?’

‘I think it’s unhealthy to get too involved.’ Kate wished she hadn’t started this conversation but she couldn’t turn back now. Besides, she still had that nasty, sharp feeling in her belly. ‘If you want to get that involved with kids,’ she heard herself saying, ‘you should get some of your own.’

That shocked him. He was staring at Kate as though she came from an alien species while she couldn’t banish a series of images flashing through her head.

Connor holding a newborn baby. His own.

Passing it into the arms of the woman who had given him this gift.

A woman that wasn’t Kate.

Oh, God... She wasn’t going to cry. No way. Kate turned back to her dissection board.

‘And if it’s kids you want,’ she added crisply, ‘you shouldn’t be wasting your time in here. With me.’

The silence from behind her was unnerving. She had to turn back.

‘You don’t really know me at all, do you?’ Connor said.

Didn’t she? Kate had thought she did. She’d danced with this man. She’d gone off with him willingly to do the most dangerous thing she’d ever done in her life, riding on the back of his bike. OK, he might have no idea that he’d been sharing her bed so often but it
felt
like she knew him very, very well.

Too well. Well enough to know that she could never get that close to him in reality.

But she couldn’t say any of that aloud. After waiting for a long, long moment Connor made a huff of sound that was both angry and defeated.

‘Kids are the last thing I’d
ever
want,’ he said bitterly.

* * *

He could hear the bitterness in his own voice.

See the absolute shock on Kate’s face. Whatever else she had to get done before she could put the poor chap on the table back together had clearly been forgotten.

She was as shocked by his vehement statement as he had been when he’d discovered that someone had abused Kate in the past.

She’d been honest with him that night.

Didn’t she deserve the same kind of honesty from him?

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘You touched a bit of a nerve.’

Kate nodded but her eyes were still bewildered. Connor blew out his cheeks in a long, long sigh.

‘I’m the youngest of four brothers by quite a few years,’ he told her. ‘And the first real memory I have is from when I was about three and they brought our baby sister home from the hospital. Her name was Philippa but she was only ever called Pippi. Cos she was little and precious, my mother always said. The little girl she’d always dreamed of having.’