Sheikh Surgeon Claims His Bride

Except she hadn’t found him yet.

She’d run up several flights of steps, right to the top of the hospital where the recently expanded and refurbished PICU was situated just round the corner from the brand-new surgery suite she’d caught a glimpse of when she’d come for her interview.

She’d had to knock for admittance to the ward, not privy to the code to unlock the door yet.

‘I’m Dr Livingston, the new member of Mr Khalil’s team,’ she announced, hoping she didn’t sound too winded, but taking the stairs instead of the lift was one of the habits she’d had to adopt if she was to stand a hope of keeping her weight under control.

‘Welcome!’ the staff nurse said with a smile as she swung the door wide. ‘We had no idea we were going to be getting a woman on one of our paediatric surgical teams. I’m Jenna Stanbury.’

She, at least, had looked pleased to see her, Emily noted as she was led into the unit. Several heads looked up from what they were doing and smiled vaguely in her direction.

‘I’m afraid that Tamsin…Sister Rush…has shut herself in her office with strict instructions only to be disturbed in case of fire or flood while she fights with a mountain of paperwork,’ Jenna said apologetically.

‘Actually, I’ve been trying to catch up with Mr Khalil,’ she said with a grimace when she caught sight of the time on a clock shaped like a cat with a long tail swishing rhythmically to count off the seconds. At this rate she was going to be fired for poor time-keeping before she even started work.

‘Don’t panic,’ Jenna soothed. ‘The last time I saw Mr Khalil, he was going into the interview room with the Hananis to explain exactly what’s going to happen during their son’s operation. I sent one of the juniors in a little while ago with a tray of coffee, so you’ve probably got time to have a bit of a walk around while you catch your breath. Don’t forget infection control procedures…he’s very hot on that.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Emily said as she reached for the gel dispenser. ‘It’s bad enough when an adult gets a hospital-acquired infection, but when it’s a sick child…’ She was pleased that her new boss was as keen on good hygiene as she was. That was one thing they had in common already.

She made her way around the unit to familiarise herself with the layout, hoping that it would soon be a second home to her. It was an environment that she felt comfortable in, where post-operative patients would be continuously supervised by batteries of monitors and their needs taken care of by highly trained specialist nurses while they began their recovery after surgery.

And there he was.

Oh, she had no idea who he was, just that he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, with thick dark hair cut short to combat an obvious tendency to curl, dark lustrous eyes with more than a hint of the exotic about them, surrounded as they were by the thickest, longest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man. But the most beautiful thing about him was the way he was smiling as he was leaning over the equally beautiful child in an isolette, spending precious time with him while he was awake.

She watched him as he tenderly stroked an elegant, long-fingered hand over soft dark curls, smiling again as he murmured softly.

Her heart clenched at the sight of that smile and the way it lit those beautiful dark eyes from within. This was a man who loved his child and wasn’t ashamed who knew it, and something inside her ached that she’d never known such unconditional love from anyone other than her grandmother.

She didn’t know whether she’d made a sound or whether her presence in the doorway had finally registered on him, but suddenly she was the focus of those dark eyes…and they weren’t smiling any more.

‘Who are you? Do not come any closer,’ he ordered in a voice soft enough not to startle the little child at his side, but with the obvious stamp of authority in every exotically accented syllable. ‘What are you doing here? Do you wish to speak with me?’

‘If you are Mr Khalil, yes, I do,’ she said with a crushing sense of disappointment adding a crisp edge to the words. Where was the warm, caring father with his dark eyes full of love that she’d just lost her heart to? This man was something else entirely, the expression in his eyes almost cold enough to freeze her in her tracks in spite of the glorious Cornish summer day outside.

‘And you are…?’

He was obviously a man of few words, she thought as she took his nod as permission to approach, his commanding presence growing more overwhelming the closer she came.

For the first time since she’d embarked on her medical career she actually found herself wanting to step back from a challenge, but that wasn’t her way…had never been her way, from the day when a brusque social worker had dumped her unceremoniously on her grandmother when she’d been rescued from her parents’ crushed car.

Deliberately, she straightened her shoulders and forced herself to meet that obsidian gaze, noticing for the first time that his face was marked with the evidence of deep- seated suffering, the eyes that had been so expressive such a short while ago now showing absolutely no emotion.

It took another second for her brain to compute all the other information it was receiving about the tall, lean man facing her from less than an arm’s span away—the arms that were bare to the elbow in compliance with the latest infection control policy, darkly tanned skin and even darker hair on well-muscled forearms, the taut skin of his freshly-shaven cheeks, the crisp freshness of his plain white shirt startling against the natural tan of his soap-scented skin.

His collar was open, in line with the hospital’s no-ties policy, and she could see a dark, delicious hollow at the base of his throat and the prominent knobs of the ends of his collar-bones and, just in the deepest part of the V of his shirt opening, a dark tangle of silky-looking hair that seemed impossibly intimate, hinting at what she might reveal if she were to reach out and unfasten more of those small white buttons.

‘Well?’ he said shortly, and she felt the warmth surge up into her cheeks with the realisation that for the first time in her life she’d been so busy looking at him that she’d completely forgotten to answer his question.

‘I—I understand that Mr Breyley told you about me before he left for New Zealand. I’m Emily Livingston, the new member of your team,’ she said, and to prove just how scrambled her brain had become in his presence, she completely forgot about infection control and held her hand out to him.

CHAPTER TWO

ZAYED blinked at the announcement that this was his newest colleague, so startled that he only just remembered in time not to reach for the slender hand hovering in mid-air.

One half of his brain was wondering whether anyone had remembered to tell her how strict he was about maintaining hygiene around his patients.

‘You should be a man!’ he exclaimed, while the other half of his brain busied itself with taking in the perfection of her barely sun-kissed, peaches-and-cream complexion and the blonde hair wound tidily away in an attempt to make her look professional. Then there was the lushness of her gently rounded body clad in the simplest of clothing that struck the first spark of sexual interest he’d felt in far too long.

Not that he would ever do anything about it. He couldn’t.

‘My secretary took down the details,’ he continued, forcing both halves of his brain to work together so that his voice came out far more harshly than he’d intended.

‘I know,’ she said calmly, and an intriguing hint of a smile hovered at the corners of a mouth that didn’t seem to have a trace of artifice deepening its soft rose colour. ‘She’d left the “y” off the end of my name and added it to my chromosomes.’

He almost chuckled at the clever play on ideas, strangely delighted when he realised that there was more to this woman than met the eye, but he ruthlessly subdued the unexpected impulse. Any attraction that he felt for her would be nothing more than a momentary aberration…it could never be more than that, not since…

‘Well, if “xx” is willing to work as hard as “xy”, I will have no cause for complaint,’ he said shortly, the old pain and the never-ending guilt gripping him anew even as he tried to banish the bitter memories from his mind.

‘In that case, where do you want me to start?’ she offered, and he felt a strange sense of disappointment when he saw the way she’d deliberately switched off any warmth in her expression, but what else did he expect when he’d been so cold with her?

A demanding cry behind him drew his attention before he could answer her question.

‘Come and meet Abir,’ he invited, and was puzzled by the arrested expression on her face, those startling green eyes of hers wide with what looked almost like surprise as they travelled from his mouth to his own eyes and back again.

He frowned, wondering what on earth was the matter with the woman as he gestured towards the child in the plastic isolette.

‘He was delivered by emergency Caesarean when his mother went into full eclampsia, but there were no adverse after-effects. Both mother and child were doing well…until she noticed that his head was not like the heads of the babies of her friends.’

By this time they’d reached the isolette and he broke off to murmur a few soothing words to the fractious infant before he continued.

‘Her doctor was not really sure what was the matter with the child, and there was no paediatric specialist nearby, so as she was the sister of a…friend…’ he prevaricated, avoiding specifying the real connection between Abir’s family and his own, ‘I was asked to see the child.’

He ran his hand over the child’s head, mourning the fact that all this silky dark hair would be gone in a matter of minutes now, as he was prepared for the life-changing surgery. He refused to let himself remember cradling another little head, little knowing just how short that precious life would be.

Abir had settled under his touch, his big dark eyes gazing up at the two of them with that strange solemnity that he sometimes saw in these little ones.

‘If you would like to clean your hands, you could make an examination of Abir,’ he invited, and stepped aside slightly to gesture towards the child, inviting Dr Emily Livingston to make her own assessment of Abir’s condition.

‘I used antibacterial gel on my hands just before I stepped inside the room,’ she said, then startled him by blushing softly. ‘And apart from trying to shake hands with you, I haven’t touched anything since then.’

‘So…’ He repeated his gesture towards the infant, who seemed almost as captivated by the woman’s blonde hair as he was.

‘Hello, Abir. Haven’t you got beautiful big brown eyes?’ she crooned as she bent down to bring her head almost to the same level as the child’s. She reached out a slender hand to stroke a gentle finger over the back of a chubby little fist and smiled when the little one immediately grabbed it and held on tightly.

‘That’s a clever boy,’ she praised as she began to stroke her other hand over the silky dark hair covering the unusually shaped skull, her voice taking on an almost sing-song quality that clearly mesmerised the child.

The tone of her voice stayed the same as she continued speaking softly to the little one so that it was a couple of seconds before Zayed realised that she was now speaking to him.

‘Without seeing any X-rays, I’m assuming that this is craniosynostosis, with some of the cranial sutures fusing before birth,’ she said with an air of steady confidence in her diagnosis that impressed him no end. Her fingertips were gently tracing the lines where the joins between the plates of the skull were already showing pronounced abnormal ridges. ‘Is there a genetic component here— any history of Crouzon or Apert in the family, for example?’

‘An uncle and a cousin,’ he confirmed. ‘But we only found that out when we started questioning the rest of the family. As neither of the affected members has survived, their disfigurement meant that they are rarely mentioned any more, and especially not in front of a pregnant woman.’

‘For fear her baby will “catch”the problem?’ she asked with a smile in the baby’s direction that had him gracing her with an answering open-mouthed, gummy grin.

‘That sort of superstition still lingers in some of the more remote villages in Cornwall, too,’ she continued, this time smiling directly up at him as though sharing a particularly delicious secret as she added, ‘At one time, it even included redheads being banned from visiting.’

‘And what would be your preferred treatment modality?’ He wouldn’t allow himself to be beguiled by a pair of sparkling green eyes. There was no point.

‘Surgery, of course, to excise the affected bone,’ she answered, so promptly that he wasn’t sure whether it was her own decision or one based on the fact she’d already been told about the impending surgery.

‘Because?’ he probed with unexpected intensity, suddenly needing her to be able to justify her assertion, although he had no idea why.

‘Because otherwise the fact that the bones had already fused before he was born will mean that there’s no room for expansion and his brain will end up terribly damaged. If I remember correctly, a linear craniotomy and excision of the affected sutures is most effective when performed in the first three months of life,’ she added.

She was looking down into those big brown eyes, and he suddenly knew that she had recognised the gleam of intelligence already lighting them, too, and understood just what a tragedy it would be if that spark were crushed out of existence.

‘What are the potential hazards of the operation?’ He forced himself to ignore the sudden feeling of connection with her by concentrating on the specifics of the procedure. This was the sort of detail that he would hope she knew backwards, forwards and inside out, having taken her latest exams so recently.

There was a sudden flash of concern in her eyes, as though she was genuinely concerned that he might not be sufficiently satisfied with her answers to give her the placement on his team. But surely he’d been mistaken. She would only have been informed of Mr Breyley’s departure when she’d arrived at the hospital that morning. It wasn’t as if this position was one that she desperately wanted or that she’d had time to become nervous about a make-or-break interview…or was it?

There was something about the tension in her feminine frame that told him there was a burning need in her to gain his approval for the placement, that there was something inside her that meant she would work every bit as hard in his department as she had in his colleague’s.

So, was there another reason why she wanted the job, a personal reason, completely separate from her career aspirations?

Perhaps she particularly wanted to stay in this part of the country, between the wild desolation of the moors and the rugged majesty of the coast. Perhaps she had family here, or a boyfriend she wanted to be close to.

He was almost grateful for the fact that she began speaking, able to ignore the sudden unexpected clutch of disappointment in his gut at the thought that some undeserving man had the right to wrap that beautiful body in his arms. He had absolutely no right to feel anything for this woman other than the need for her to be the best junior she could be.

‘During surgery, there’s the possibility of hypovolaemic shock, especially in such a young patient,’ she announced with a slight quiver in her voice that belied her apparent confidence. ‘There’s also the chance that there might be dural tears unrecognised during the procedure that can cause cerebrospinal fluid leaks. They could leave a pathway open for infection. There could also be epidural or subdural haematoma due to surgical trauma. Post-operatively,’ she continued swiftly, almost as fluently as though she were reading word for word from the relevant specialist text, ‘there will be facial swelling, of course, especially around the eyes. That usually resolves in the first few weeks, but the improvement in the head shape is almost immediate.’

‘And have you observed such surgery?’ He was careful not to reveal just how impressed he was. Not only had she made a correct diagnosis of a relatively rare condition, but had obviously recalled, verbatim, everything she had read about it.

‘Only in my teaching hospital’s video library,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve always been interested in paediatric orthopaedics.’

‘In that case, we just have enough time to introduce you to Abir’s parents before it’s time to scrub,’ he announced, suddenly eager to see how well this young woman would acquit herself in an operating theatre.

As if they were obeying some invisible signal, that was the precise moment that the Hananis chose to emerge from the interview room.

Zayed led the way towards them, touched by the matched pairs of reddened eyes that were clear evidence that both parents had obviously given in to a bout of tears in his absence.

‘Dr Emily Livingston, these are Abir’s parents, Meera and…’

Further introductions seemed unnecessary as the newest member of his team stepped forward to take the young mother’s hands in hers.

‘You have a beautiful baby,’ Emily said simply, as though she’d guessed that neither of the child’s parents had a detailed command of English. ‘I will do everything I can to help make him well.’

Athar Hanani threw Zayed a puzzled frown, obviously needing some clarification of the situation.

‘Dr Livingston will be in the operating theatre with me, assisting me while I’m operating on Abir,’ he said, and when the young man switched to his own language to question the presence of a doctor who was a female, Zayed was glad that Emily couldn’t understand this clear evidence of his countryman’s chauvinism.

Before he could find the words to set the record straight, it was Meera who did the job for him, rounding on her husband and berating him for failing to see that the young woman doctor obviously cared about their son already.

‘I put my son, Abir Hanani, in your hands,’ she said to the green-eyed woman, reverting to English and wiping away the worried expression Zayed’s new junior had been wearing while the sharp-edged conversation had whirled incomprehensibly around her.

‘I am honoured by your trust,’ Emily said, and her smile almost seemed to light up the corridor.

An hour later, Emily’s concentration on the operative procedure was broken again by her conviction that Zayed Khalil was in pain.

The doctor in her had belatedly tallied the fact that there had been a slight hitch in his stride the first time he strode away from her along the corridor. At the time, she’d been full of a mixture of trepidation and excitement that she would shortly be assisting in a major surgical procedure; she’d also been slightly distracted by her sympathy for the terrified parents. It wasn’t until the first time she noticed that Zayed seemed to be shuffling constantly from one foot to the other that she deliberately started to take notice.

Even as she marvelled at the fact that a live human brain was only millimetres away, under the softly gleaming dura, she found herself speculating that the handsome surgeon probably maintained his impressively fit physique by some form of vigorous exercise. Had he overdone the exercise last time? Or was the marked hitch in his stride the result of an accident in his youth—perhaps the spur that had set him on course towards his career in orthopaedics?

Suddenly, she realised that this was a very similar train of thought to one that she’d had not so very long ago; that this was the second man with impaired gait she’d met since her return to Penhally…although she could hardly say that she’d met the man on the beach, only ogled him from her shadowy hideaway among the rocks. Whereas Zayed Khalil…

Well, she couldn’t really imagine this man standing on a beach as the last of the sunset faded around him while he pushed his body harder and harder to perform such a punishing workout. His preference would probably be some high-tech gym now that he was an important surgeon. And, besides, his position at St Piran’s meant that he would have to live within a relatively short distance of the hospital. The other man definitely had to live somewhere close to Penhally, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to turn up at the beach at roughly the same time each evening.

And if by some impossible fluke of coincidence they happened to be one and the same person…

Well, they aren’t, and that’s that, she told herself crossly as the surgeon shifted position yet again.

Afterwards, Emily told herself it was just her impatience with her silent speculation that took the brake off her tongue but, whatever it was, she couldn’t believe it when she heard herself saying, ‘If your back aches, you might try taking those clogs off for a while.’

There was an instant deathly hush in the operating theatre and she was certain that her mask was nowhere near large enough to hide the fiery blush that swept all the way up her throat and face until it reached her hairline under her disposable hat.

‘I beg your pardon?’ His eyes were almost black, as were the eyebrows that were raised so high that they nearly reached the hat covering his close-cropped hair.

In for a penny, in for a pound, she could hear her grandmother saying, and she tipped her chin up an inch before she repeated her suggestion.

‘I said, if your back aches, you might try taking off your clogs and going barefoot…you could put disposable hats over your feet if you’re worried about contamination.’

This time the silence seemed to stretch for ever, filled only by the rhythmic bleeps and hisses of the monitors and anaesthetic regulators.

When she was beginning to wonder if she was going to be thrown out of the theatre for breaking his concentration, he gave one swift nod.

‘It is worth trying,’ he said, and in an instant there was a nurse on her knees beside him, giving a nervous giggle as she pulled a bright blue plastic hat over each of his elegant long feet before she took his theatre clogs away.

Without another word, the operation continued as seamlessly as though the last couple of minutes had never happened, the second strip of misshapen bone carefully cut out of the skull so that the prematurely fused sutures were removed entirely.

Emily was utterly absorbed in the procedure, even more so now that she was assisting than when she had merely looked at a tape.

The brutal part was over and, hopefully, would never need repeating. Now it only remained to irrigate, check for leaks and close before he’d finished. She was quite looking forward to finding out if his suturing technique was as meticulous as every other one she’d observed when he suddenly stepped back from the table.

‘Taking the clogs off helped for a while,’ he announced in a slightly rough-edged voice as he stripped off first one glove and then the other, somehow managing to tuck one inside the other without getting any fluids on either hand. ‘But now I will watch while you complete the process.’

From the electric atmosphere in the theatre Emily knew that something momentous had just happened, but she couldn’t allow it to break her concentration, not if she was going to do herself and little Abir justice.

‘You might want to rest your best feature on an anaesthetist’s stool while I close,’ she said, as she positioned herself in his place at the table and held her hand out for the gently warmed saline, hoping her tone was matter-off-fact enough not to wound his ego. ‘I’ll probably take rather longer over this than you would.’