Unlocking Her Surgeon's Heart

‘That’s not what I meant at all.’ Noah pulled up a BMI chart, spun the computer screen towards Bec and pointed to the yellow overweight zone where it met the red obese one. ‘Right now, you’re just below the border of obese. If you’re not careful during this pregnancy, you’ll tip into the red zone. That will put you at risk of complications such as gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and thrombosis. There’s also an increased risk that the baby may end up being in a difficult position such as breech. All of those things would make you ineligible to be delivered by Lilia at the birth centre.’

‘I want to have my baby here,’ Bec said, her voice suddenly wobbly.

‘Then make sure you exercise and eat healthy foods. It’s that simple.’ Noah turned to Lily. ‘I assume you have information for your patients about that sort of thing.’

‘I do,’ she managed to grind out between clenched teeth. ‘If you come with me, Bec, I’ll give the pamphlets to you now as well as the water aerobics timetable. It’s a fun way to exercise and there’s a crèche at the pool.’

She escorted Bec from the room and gave her all the information, along with small packet of tissues. ‘Come and see me tomorrow and we’ll talk about it all then in greater detail. Okay?’

Bec nodded and sniffed. ‘I kinda knew I’d got big but it was hard hearing it.’

Lily could have killed Noah. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It’s not your fault.’ Bec gave a long sigh. ‘I guess I needed to hear it.’

She gave Bec’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘Only in a kinder way.’

‘Yeah.’ Bec took in a deep breath. ‘I didn’t know being heavy could make things dangerous for me and the baby, and I guess it’s good that he told me because I don’t want to have to go to Melbourne. I know Mandy Carmichael’s preggers again and she’s pretty big. Maybe we can help each other, you know?’

Lily smiled encouragingly. ‘That sounds like a great plan.’

As Bec left, Karen buzzed her. ‘Kat Nguyen’s rescheduled for later today so you’ve got a gap.’

As Lily hung up the phone she knew exactly what she was going to do with her free half-hour, whether she wanted to take that risk or not.

Noah glanced up as Lily walked back into the office alone. Her face was tight with tension and disapproving lines bracketed her mouth, pulling it down at the edges. An irrational desire to see her smile tugged at him and that on its own annoyed him. So what if a smile made her eyes crinkle at the edges with laughter lines and caused dimples to score her cheeks? So what if a smile made her light up, look happy and full of life and chased away her usual closed-off sangfroid? Made her look pretty?

He tried to shake off the feeling. It was nothing to him whether she was happy or not. Whether she was a workaholic or not, like the ladies at the beach had told him. Whether she was anything other than the pain in the rear that she’d already proved to be. He didn’t have time in his life for a woman who was fun, let alone one with dragon tendencies. ‘Where’s the next patient?’

She crossed her arms. ‘She’s running late.’

He’d already pegged her as a person who liked things to go her own way and a late patient would throw out her schedule. ‘So that’s why you’re looking like you’ve just sucked on a lemon. Surely you know nothing in the medical profession ever runs on time.’

Her eyes rounded and widened so far he could have tumbled into their pale, azure depths. ‘Are you stressed or ill?’

‘No,’ he said, seriously puzzled. ‘Why would you say that?’

She walked closer to the desk. ‘So you’re just naturally rude.’

Baffled by her accusations, he held onto his temper by the barest of margins. That surprised him. Usually he’d have roared like a lion if a nurse or anyone more junior to him had dared to speak to him like this. ‘Where’s all this antagonism coming from? Did something happen to upset you while you were out of the room?’

‘Where’s all this coming from?’ Incredulity pushed her voice up from its usual throaty depths. ‘You just told Bec Sinclair she’s fat.’

He didn’t get why she was all het up. ‘So? I said that because she is.’

She pressed her palms down on the desk and as she leaned in he caught the light scent of spring flowers and something else he couldn’t name. ‘Yes, but you didn’t have to tell her quite so baldly. Do you ever think before you speak?’

Her accusation had him shooting to his feet to rectify the power balance. ‘Of course I do. She needed to know the risks that her weight adds to her pregnancy. I told her the truth.’

Her light brown brows hit her hairline. ‘You’re brutally blunt.’

‘No. I’m honest with them.’

She shook her head back and forth so fast he thought she’d give herself whiplash. ‘Oh, no, you’re not getting away with that. There are ways of telling someone the truth and you’re using it as an excuse to be thoughtless and rude.’

She’d just crossed the line in the sand he’d already moved for her. ‘Look, Miss Manners,’ he said tersely. ‘You don’t have the right to storm in here and accuse me of being rude.’

Her shoulders rolled back like an Amazon woman preparing for battle. ‘I do when it affects my patients. You just reduced the most laid-back, easygoing woman I know to tears.’

A pang of conscience jabbed him. Had he really done that? ‘She was upset?’

She threw her hands up. ‘You think? Yes, of course she was upset.’

He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck as he absorbed that bit of information. ‘I didn’t realise I’d upset her.’

Lily dropped into the chair, her expression stunned. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

No. Man, he hated general practice with its touchy-feely stuff and rules that he hadn’t known existed. He was a surgeon and a damn good one. He diagnosed problems and then he cut them out. As a result, he gave people a better quality of life. It was a far easier way of dealing with problems than the muddy waters of internal medicine where nothing was cut and dried and everything was hazy with irrational hope.

He and his mother had learned that the hard way and after that life-changing experience he’d vowed he would always give his patients the truth. Black was black and white was white. People needed information so they could make a choice.

The prof’s voice came out of nowhere, echoing loudly in his head. We’ve had complaints from your dealings with patients when they’re awake.

His legs trembled and he sat down hard, nausea churning his gut. Was this the sort of thing the prof had been referring to? Propping his elbows on the desk, he ran his hands through his hair and tried to marshal his thoughts. Did Lilia actually have a point? Was his interpretation of the facts blunt and thoughtless?

He instantly railed against the idea, refusing to believe it for a moment. We’ve had complaints. The prof’s words were irrefutable. As much as he didn’t want to acknowledge it, this was the reason he’d been sent down here to Turraburra. It seemed he really did have a problem communicating with patients. A problem he hadn’t been fully aware of until this moment. A problem that was going to stop him from qualifying as a surgeon if he didn’t do something about it.

‘Noah?’

There was no trace of the previous anger in her voice and none of the sarcasm. All he could hear was concern. He raised his eyes to hers, his gaze stalling on the lushness of her lips. Pink and moist, they were slightly parted. Kissable. Oh, so very kissable. What they would taste like? Icy cool, like her usual demeanour, or sizzling hot, like she’d been a moment ago when she’d taken him to task? Or sweet and decadently rich? Perhaps sharply tart with a kick of fire?

The tip of her tongue suddenly darted out, flicking the peak of her top lip before falling back. Heat slammed into him, rushing lust through him and down into every cell as if he were an inexperienced teen. Hell, he had more control than this. He sucked in a breath and gave thanks he was sitting down behind a desk, his lap hidden from view.

He shifted his gaze to the safety of her nose, which, although it suited her face, wasn’t cute or sexy. This brought his traitorous body back under control. He didn’t want to be attracted to Lilia Cartwright in any shape or form. He just wanted to get this time in Turraburra over and done with and get the hell out of town. Get back to the security of the Melbourne Victoria and to the job he loved above all else.

Her previously flinty gaze was now soft and caring. ‘Noah, is everything okay?’

Everything’s so far from okay it’s not funny. Could he tell her the real reason the Victoria had sent a surgeon to Turraburra? Tell her that if he didn’t conquer this communication problem he wouldn’t qualify? That ten years of hard work had failed to give him what he so badly wanted?

For the first time since he’d met her he saw genuine interest and empathy in her face and a part of him desperately wanted to reach out and confide in her. God knew, if he’d unwittingly upset a patient and been clueless about the impact of his words, he surely needed help.

She’ll understand.

You don’t know that. She could just as easily use it against me.

He’d fought long and hard to get this far in the competitive field of surgery without depending on anyone and he didn’t intend to start now. That said, he’d noticed how relaxed she was with her patients compared to how he always felt with them. With Bec Sinclair, she’d explained everything he’d been doing, chatting easily to her. She connected with people in a way he’d never been able to—in a way he needed to learn.

He had no intention of asking her for help or exposing any weakness, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t observe and learn from her. Don’t give anything away. Leaning back, he casually laced his fingers behind his head. ‘Do you have any other fat pregnant women coming in today?’

Wariness crawled across her high cheekbones. ‘There is one more.’

‘Do you concede that her weight is a risk to her pregnancy?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Good.’ He sat forward fast, the chair clunking loudly. ‘This time you run the consultation, which means you’re the one who has to tell her that her weight is a problem.’

She blinked at him in surprise and then her intelligent eyes narrowed, scanning his face like an explosives expert looking for undetonated bombs. ‘And?’

‘And then I’ll critique your performance like you just critiqued mine. After all, the Victoria’s a teaching hospital so it seems only fair.’

He couldn’t help but grin at her stunned expression.

CHAPTER THREE

LILY TURNED THE music up and sang loudly as she drove through the rolling hills and back towards the coast and Turraburra. As well as singing, she concentrated on the view. Anything to try and still her mind and stop it from darting to places she didn’t want it to go.

She savoured the vista of black and white cows dotted against the emerald-green paddocks—the vibrant colour courtesy of spring rains. Come January, the grass would be scorched brown and the only green would be the feathery tops of the beautiful white-barked gum-trees.

She’d been out at the Hawkers’ dairy farm, doing a follow-up postnatal visit. Jess and the baby were both doing well and Richard had baked scones, insisting she stay for morning tea. She’d found it hard to believe that the burly farmer was capable of knocking out a batch of scones, because the few men who’d passed through her life hadn’t been cooks. When she’d confessed her surprise to Richard, he’d just laughed and said, ‘If I depended on Jess to cook, we’d both have starved years ago.’

‘I have other talents,’ Jess, the town’s lawyer, said without rancour.

‘That you do,’ Richard had replied with such a look of love and devotion in his eyes that it had made Lily’s throat tighten.

She’d grown up hearing the stories from her grandfather of her parents’ love for each other but she had no memory of it. Somehow it had always seemed like a story just out of reach—like a fairy-tale and not at all real. Sure, she had their wedding photo framed on her dresser but plenty of people got married and it ended in recriminations and pain. She was no stranger to that scenario and she often wondered if her parents had lived longer lives, they would still be together.

Although her grandfather loved her dearly, she’d never known the sort of love that Jess and Richard shared. She’d hoped for it when she’d met Trent and had allowed herself to be seduced by the idea of it. She’d learned that when a fairy-tale met reality, the fallout was bitter and life-changing. As a result, and for her own protection, and in a way for the protection of her mythical child, she wasn’t prepared to risk another relationship. The only times she questioned her decision was when she saw true love in action, like today.

Her loud, off-key singing wasn’t banishing her unsettling thoughts like it usually did. Ever since Noah Jackson had burst into Turraburra—all stormy-eyed and difficult—troubling thoughts had become part of her again. She couldn’t work him out. She wanted to say he was rude, arrogant, self-righteous and exasperating, and dismiss him out of her head. He was definitely all of those things but then there were moments when he looked so adrift—like yesterday when he’d appeared genuinely stunned and upset that his words had distressed Bec Sinclair. She couldn’t work him out.

You don’t have to work him out. You don’t have to work any man out. Remember, it’s safer not to even try.

Except that momentary look of bewilderment on his face had broken through his I’m a surgeon, bow down before me facade, and it had got to her. It had humanised him and she wished it hadn’t. Arrogant Noah was far more easily dismissed as a temporary thorn in her side than thoughtful Noah. The Noah who’d sat back and listened intently and watched without a hint of disparagement as she’d talked with Mandy Carmichael about her weight was an intriguing conundrum.

She braked at the four-way intersection and proceeded to turn right, passing the Welcome to Turraburra sign. She smiled at the ‘+1’ someone had painted next to the population figure. Given the number of pregnant women in town at the moment, she expected to see a lot more graffiti over the coming months. Checking the clock on the dash, she decided that she had just enough time to check in on her grandfather before starting afternoon clinic.

Her phone beeped as it always did when she drove back into town after being in a mobile phone reception dead zone. This time, instead of one or two messages, it vibrated wildly as six messages came in one after another. She immediately pulled over.

11:00 Unknown patient in labour. Go to hospital.

Karen.

11:15 Visitor to town in established labour in Emergency. Your assistance appreciated.

N. Jackson.

‘What have you done with the Noah Jackson I know and despair of?’ she said out loud. The formal style of Noah’s text was unexpected and it made Karen’s seem almost brusque in comparison. The juxtaposition made her smile.

11:50 Contractions now two minutes apart. Last baby I delivered was six years ago. Request immediate assistance.

NJ.

12:10 Where the bloody hell are you?!

N.

‘And he’s back.’ Although, to give Noah his due, she’d be totally stressed out if she was being asked to do something she hadn’t done in a very long time. She threw the car into gear, checked over her shoulder and pulled off the gravel. Three minutes later she was running into Emergency to the familiar groans of a woman in transition.

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