Date with a Surgeon Prince(4)
As she passed the nurses’ station, nerves prickled along her spine and glancing over her shoulder she saw the back of a tall, dark-haired man bent slightly to listen to what the nurse at the desk was saying.
Of course it’s not him, she told herself, though why had her nerves reacted?
Surely she wasn’t going to tingle when she saw every tall, dark and handsome stranger!
CHAPTER TWO
NO GAZ IN Theatre the next day or the next, and Marni decided, as she made her way down the children’s ward to visit Safi, that she was pleased, she just had to convince herself of the fact. But the sadness in the little boy’s eyes as she entered his room banished all other thoughts. She sat beside him, took his hand, said ‘Hello’ then ‘Salaam’, one of the few words she’d managed to remember from Jawa’s language lessons.
Safi smiled and repeated the word, then rattled off what might have been questions, although Marni didn’t have a clue. Instead she opened up the folder of pictures she’d printed off the internet, showing Safi a map of Australia and pointing to herself, then one of Ablezia. Using a cut-out plane, she showed how she’d flown from Australia to Ablezia.
The little boy took the plane and pointed from it to her. She nodded. ‘Aeroplane,’ she said. ‘A big jet plane, from here…’ she pointed again ‘…to here.’
Safi nodded but kept hold of the plane, zooming it around in the air.
Marni flipped through her folder, bringing out pictures of a koala, a wombat and a kangaroo. She put them all on the map of Australia and when Safi picked up the picture of the kangaroo, she hopped around the room, delighting the little boy, who giggled at her antics.
‘Kangaroo,’ she said, hoping the books and toys she’d ordered would arrive shortly—she’d paid for express mail. She’d actually found a female kangaroo with a joey in its pouch among the soft toys for sale, and had made it her number-one priority.
Safi was jumping the picture of the kangaroo on the bed now and pointing towards her, so Marni obligingly jumped again, her hands held up in front of her like the kangaroo’s small front paws. Unfortunately, as she spun around to jump back past the end of the bed, she slammed into an obstacle.
A very solid obstacle!
Stumbling to recover her balance, she trod on the obstacle’s feet and mashed herself against his chest, burning with mortification as she realised it was the surgeon—Safi’s surgeon—the man called Gaz.
‘S-s-ir!’ She stammered out the word. ‘Sorry! Being a kangaroo, you see!’
Marni attempted to disentangle herself from the man.
He grasped her forearms to steady her and she looked up into eyes as dark as night—dark enough to drown in—felt herself drowning…
Fortunately he had enough presence of mind to guide her back to the chair where she’d been sitting earlier and she slumped gratefully into it, boneless knees no longer able to support her weight.
He spoke to Safi, the treacly voice light with humour, making the little boy smile and bounce the picture of the kangaroo around the bed.
‘I am explaining to him you come from Australia where these animals are,’ Gaz said, turning to smile at her.
The smile finished her demolition. It lit fires she’d never felt before, warming her entire body, melting bits of it in a way she didn’t want to consider.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, so suggestively she had to wonder if he’d read her reaction to him. Surely not, although the smile playing around his lips—gorgeous lips—and the twinkle in his eyes suggested he might have a fair idea of it.
‘You’re the new surgical nurse.’
A statement, not a question.
‘Marni Graham,’ she said, holding out her hand then regretting the automatic gesture as touching him, even in a handshake, was sure to cause more problems.
You’ve fallen in lust! Twenty-nine years old and you’ve finally been hit by an emotion as old as time.
‘It’s not lust,’ Marni mumbled, then realised she’d spoken the words, although under her breath so hopefully they hadn’t been audible to the surgeon, who was bent over Safi, examining the site of the operation and speaking quietly himself in the soft, musical notes of the local language.
The little boy appeared to know the man quite well, for he was chatting easily, now pointing to Marni and smiling.
‘You have visited him before?’ Gaz asked as he straightened. ‘For any reason?’
‘Should I not have come? Is it not allowed?’ The man, the questions, her silly reactions all contributed to her blurting out her response. ‘Jawa said it would be all right, and the nurses here don’t have a lot of time to spend with him.’