The Surgeon's Marriage Demand

‘What the hell’s going on?’

Olivia turned to see Seth striding down the examination room towards her, and smiled. ‘Crisis over. Mr Taylor—’

‘You’re bleeding,’ Seth declared, concern plain on his face. ‘Babs, we’ll need a cross-match, X-rays—’

‘Seth, these are tomato stains,’ Olivia said, beginning to laugh, only to stop when she saw his expression. ‘I’m not laughing at you—honestly I’m not. It was sweet of you to be concerned, but Mr Taylor just decided to throw some fruit around, and I was the unlucky recipient of the tomatoes. I’ve stitched—’

‘Babs, have you telephoned the janitor to come and clean up this mess?’ he snapped, cutting right across Olivia’s explanation.

The sister flushed. ‘Not yet, but—’

‘Then I suggest you do it now. If a patient slips and falls we’ll have a negligence suit slapped on us before you can say diddly squat and I don’t think Admin will consider that a laughing matter, do you?’

‘And I don’t think there was any need for you to chew poor Babs’s head off,’ Olivia protested as the sister hurried towards the phone and Fiona escaped into Mr Taylor’s cubicle. ‘It’s been pretty hairy in here for the past quarter of an hour, and—’ He’d walked away from her. He’d just upped and walked away, and she turned to Jerry furiously. ‘Of all the rude, arrogant…What is wrong with that guy?’

‘I think he was worried about you,’ the specialist registrar replied, and Olivia rolled her eyes heavenwards.

‘Worried? Seth Hardcastle wouldn’t care if I was strung up by a mob of rioting yobs.’

‘Of course he would. Look, he’s not normally like this,’ Jerry continued as Olivia shook her head. ‘All right, so he can be a bit abrasive at times if he thinks a patient’s trying to con him, or if Admin’s giving him the runaround, but—’

‘So you’re saying it’s me—my fault?’ Olivia exclaimed, pulling off her stained white coat and throwing it into the laundry basket with rather more force than was strictly necessary. ‘Jerry, he’s impossible. If I said white, he’d say black, just to be difficult.’

The specialist registrar looked uncomfortable. ‘I know he has some pretty strong views—’

‘Some?’ Olivia spluttered. She opened her mouth to give Jerry chapter and verse of all the things Seth had said and done over the past week, then snapped her jaw shut. Gossiping with a member of staff about another member of staff was a definite no-no. Asking for information, however, wasn’t. ‘Jerry, why didn’t he get the clinical director’s job? He’s got the experience, the ability, so why didn’t he get the job?’

Jerry sighed. ‘Seth’s always been a bit of a maverick, and I guess Admin’s not keen on guys doing their own thing.’

Independence wasn’t a bad thing, Olivia thought as she stared down the examination room to where Seth was deep in conversation with one of the nurses. She just wished his particular brand of independence wasn’t always constantly directed at her.

‘Well, I can’t change my sex,’ she said belligerently, ‘so he’s just going to have to live with it.’

Jerry looked startled. ‘Can’t change your…? Why would you—?’

‘Oh, lord, what’s wrong now?’ Olivia exclaimed as Tony strode angrily out of cubicle 3, followed by an equally irate-looking man.

‘Looks like young Tony’s in trouble,’ Jerry observed.

‘Looks like young Tony needs help,’ Olivia said, and together they hurried towards him.

‘Dr Mackenzie, perhaps you can convince Mr Carter that I’m a bona fide, fully qualified medic,’ Tony said the moment he saw her. ‘He seems to feel—’

‘Is either of you somebody in authority?’ Mr Carter demanded, glancing from Jerry to Olivia then back again.

‘I’m the clinical director in charge of this department,’ Olivia replied. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘You’re in charge of the department?’

The man’s surprise was palpable, and Olivia gritted her teeth for the third time that morning. Where were all these New Age men she kept reading about? Her tally for today—and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet—was two male chauvinists and a drunk who thought women should be used as target practice.

‘Yes, I’m in charge of the department,’ she said as evenly as she could. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

‘There is no trouble,’ Tony insisted. ‘I’m just trying to convince Mr Carter that his wife has a bad cold—’

‘My wife does not have a cold,’ Mr Carter interrupted. ‘My wife is ill—very ill—and I want a second opinion.’

Out of the corner of her eye Olivia could see that Seth was no longer talking to the nurse but staring intently at the whiteboard. He didn’t fool her for a second. He was eavesdropping, listening to find out how she was going to handle the situation. Well, let him listen. She didn’t need his help. If she could deal with a fruit-throwing alcoholic, she could deal with an irate husband.

She beckoned to Babs. ‘Sister, could you take Mr Carter—?’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the man exclaimed, his eyes angry, his colour high. ‘I’m staying right here until you find out what’s wrong with my wife.’

He would, too, unless she found some way to placate him, and Olivia summoned up one of her best trust-me-I’m-a-doctor smiles. ‘I’m afraid it’s against hospital policy for us to examine a patient while a relative is present.’

‘He didn’t say that,’ Mr Carter protested, gesturing at Tony. ‘In fact, he—’

‘It’s written into my contract,’ Olivia declared, and saw Seth’s lips twitch. OK, so it was a feeble excuse but if Tony’s diagnosis was wrong, the last thing she wanted was Mr Carter present when she discovered it. ‘I’ll be as fast as I can, Mr Carter,’ she continued, upping her smile a notch. ‘And the second I’ve made my diagnosis you’ll be the first to know.’

That Mr Carter didn’t want to go was plain, but Olivia kept on smiling, kept on radiating confidence, and eventually he reluctantly followed Babs out of the examination room.

‘OK, what have we got?’ Olivia said, turning to Tony.

‘Mrs Carter’s shivering, she’s slightly feverish and she has a headache. She has all the classic symptoms of a cold.’

She also had all the classic symptoms of something else, Olivia realised when she’d finished examining the woman.

‘Malaria?’ the junior doctor gasped. ‘You think she has malaria?’

‘Didn’t you notice how brown she was?’ Olivia said. ‘We might have had a good summer, but there’s no way she could have got that suntan in Glasgow. My guess is she’s been to Africa or Asia, and that’s where she contracted the disease.’

The junior doctor stared unhappily at her. ‘I feel like an idiot.’

‘Don’t,’ Olivia protested. ‘Good grief, it’s not as though malaria’s so rampant in Glasgow that even our janitor would have recognised it. And we don’t even know for certain yet that she has malaria,’ she continued when Tony didn’t cheer up, ‘so why don’t you take some blood samples and get them checked by the lab?’

With a nod and a worried frown Tony hurried back into the cubicle, and as Olivia pulled off her examination gloves Jerry stared at her thoughtfully.

‘That was a very kind thing to do. A lot of consultants would have nailed him to the wall for a mistake like that.’

‘I’ve seen a couple of cases of malaria before,’ Olivia replied dismissively. ‘He hasn’t.’

‘It was still a kind thing to do,’ Jerry insisted, and Olivia’s eyes flicked across the examination room to where Seth was still hovering by the whiteboard.

‘Believe it or not, I’m actually quite a nice person. And now I’d better find out how Mr Taylor’s doing,’ she continued, ‘before some people accuse me of not pulling my weight.’

She’d gone before Jerry could reply and the specialist registrar shook his head as Seth walked across to him. ‘You asked for that.’

‘What makes you think she meant me?’ Seth demanded.

Jerry gave him a hard stare. ‘Seth, I’d have to be blind and deaf not to see you’re never off her back. She’s smart, on the ball and more than pulls her weight in the department, so what’s your problem?’

Seth opened his mouth, clearly thought the better of what he’d been about to say and muttered grimly, ‘She said I was sweet. I am not sweet.’

Jerry laughed. ‘Yes, you are. You’re nothing but a big pussy cat at heart, so stop riling her.’

‘Me rile her?’ Seth choked. ‘Listen, Jerry—’

‘I like her.’

‘Fine. Feel free to have a mad, passionate affair with her, and when Carol slices off your reproductive organs with a scalpel, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Carol knows I wouldn’t cheat on her, and I won’t.’ The specialist registrar glanced down the examination room to where Olivia was talking to Fiona. ‘She is pretty, though, isn’t she?’

She was, Seth thought as he followed the direction of the specialist registrar’s gaze. Not beautiful—her nose was too small and her chin was too pointed for beauty—but she was pretty in a gentle, homespun sort of way, and when she smiled… ‘She’s OK.’

‘You thought she was a lot better than OK when you first saw her.’

He had, but that had been before he’d discovered who she was. ‘She’s too skinny.’

Jerry tilted his head and surveyed Olivia critically. ‘Slender. Not skinny—slender. And she’s got great legs.’

She had. Long legs. Endless legs. The kind of legs a man could fantasise about. The kind of legs guaranteed to give a man wet dreams.

‘I’ve never been a leg man myself,’ Seth lied. ‘And even if I was,’ he added quickly as Jerry’s eyebrows rose, ‘she’s already in a relationship.’

‘Says who?’

‘She did last week. Some guy called George.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Jerry’s eyes drifted down the examination room again. ‘Pity.’

‘I doubt if Carol would think so,’ Seth said testily, and Jerry grinned.

‘I’m not thinking of me, you dummy. I was thinking of you.’

‘Hey, who are you calling a dummy?’ Seth protested, but the specialist registrar was already hurrying away in answer to Babs’s call.

He wasn’t a dummy. He just had a healthy sense of self-preservation. OK, so Olivia had a pair of incredible legs and nice eyes, but dating your boss was asking for trouble. Dating your boss on a strictly let’s-have-fun-for-a-few-dates-and-then-it’s-over basis was career suicide.

Not that she’d ever go out with him, he thought ruefully as he watched all laughter disappear from her face when she noticed him staring at her. She thought he was a jerk, and he was. All the crap he’d given her about how it ought to have been a man appointed clinical director. He didn’t give a damn that she was a woman. What really bugged him was she’d got the job, and he hadn’t.

‘Childish,’ he muttered out loud. ‘No, not you, Tony,’ he added quickly, seeing the startled look on the junior doctor’s face as he emerged from Mrs Carter’s cubicle clutching a blood sample. ‘Me.’

And he was being childish, he thought as the junior doctor scurried away.

Jerry was right. Olivia more than pulled her weight in the department, and she was spunky, too. Lord, just thinking about her tackling Brian Taylor was enough to make him shudder. The man was unpredictable enough when he was sober, but when he was drunk…

And she’d been terrific with young Tony. Any other consultant would have torn the junior doctor to shreds. He probably would have done so himself, and yet Olivia had taken the softly-softly approach, ensuring the young man’s confidence wasn’t shattered.

He’d have to apologise to her, but apologising would mean telling her why he’d behaved as he had, and she’d think he was a jerk, and he didn’t want her thinking he was a jerk.

‘Something wrong?’ Babs asked curiously, seeing him frown as she passed, and he shook his head.

‘Nothing I can’t fix,’ he replied lightly, but who was he kidding? It was going to take a lot more than one of his smiles to smooth down Olivia’s ruffled feathers. But what?

Nothing occurred to him as he treated the elderly woman with the worst case of haemorrhoids he’d ever seen. No solution presented itself when he patched up the victim of a horrific car crash, and because he couldn’t think of anything his temper grew shorter and shorter and it was a relief to everyone when their shift finally ended.

‘Boy, but Seth’s been a little ray of sunshine today, hasn’t he?’ Jerry observed when Olivia helped him to gather up the notes on the patients they’d seen that day.

‘What do you mean, “today”?’ she replied. The specialist registrar chuckled, but his laughter faded as he saw Seth striding towards them with a look of grim determination plain on his face.

‘Want me to stick around, act as a referee?’ he murmured. ‘Or, then again, perhaps not,’ he added, his smile returning as Olivia shot him a look that spoke volumes. ‘OK, I’m out of here.’

Lucky you, Olivia thought with a deep sigh, but if Seth thought he was going to bend her ear for the next half-hour he was very much mistaken.

‘Five minutes,’ she said as soon as he came to a halt in front of her. ‘You’ve got exactly five minutes, and then I’m going home.’

‘Five minutes is all I need,’ he replied, shouldering open the examination-room door then standing back so she could walk out into the corridor ahead of him.

It had better be, she thought grimly.

‘OK, what’s so important that it won’t wait until tomorrow?’ she demanded, once they were both standing outside in the corridor.

‘I just wanted to say how much I admired the way you dealt with Tony this morning—not ripping into him when the lab confirmed Mrs Carter’s malaria.’

Praise from Seth Hardcastle? That had to be a first, and he also looked uncomfortable. He never looked uncomfortable. He was up to something.

‘I’m glad you approve,’ she said. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else—’

‘I also think you were right when you said we needed to talk. We do need to talk, Olivia.’

He’d called her by her first name. He’d praised her, and he’d called her by her first name. He was definitely up to something.

‘What kind of talking?’ she said warily.

‘I think we need to talk about us.’

Us? As in him and her? His blue eyes were fixed on her, dark, and liquid and fathomless, and she swallowed—hard. Surely he wasn’t going to hit on her? He must know she’d knock him back. She was his boss, and relationships between staff members never worked, and she didn’t want to get involved with him anyway, and…

‘Seth—’

‘We always seem to be arguing, and I don’t want us to argue.’

Neither did she but, oh, lord, now he was smiling at her. That heart-stopping smile she hadn’t seen since last week. The smile which did odd things to her stomach and made her toes curl.

She took a steadying breath. ‘I don’t want to argue with you either, but—’

‘So I think there’s only one thing we can do.’

Oh, cripes, he was going to hit on her, and it wouldn’t work, she knew it wouldn’t. OK, so he was jaw-droppingly attractive but she didn’t do casual relationships, and he didn’t do permanence, and though a fling with him might be fun—hell, of course it would be fun—the repercussions didn’t bear thinking about.

‘What…?’ Her voice had come out way too high, and she cleared her throat and started again. ‘What—exactly—did you have in mind?’

‘A truce.’

A truce. Not ‘Why don’t we have a wild passionate affair?’ but a truce. Well, of course she’d known deep down that he wasn’t going to suggest an affair. Good grief, they’d only known each other a week, and she wasn’t his type, but…

‘Sounds good to me,’ she said, suddenly realising he was waiting for a reply. ‘What sort of a truce did you have in mind?’

He leant back against the corridor wall. ‘That you agree I might occasionally be right because of the length of time I’ve worked here, and I agree you might occasionally be right because you’re seeing everything with fresh eyes.’

It made sense. It made a lot of sense. A niggling voice at the back of her head pointed out that he could still be up to something, but she decided to meet him halfway.

‘Agreed,’ she said.

He stuck out his hand. ‘Shake on it?’

Try as she may, she couldn’t prevent a chuckle springing to her lips. ‘Shake on it,’ she agreed, and put her hand in his.

It was a mistake. She knew the minute their fingers touched that it was a mistake. Her hand felt so safe in his. Safe, and warm, and protected, and any woman who thought she was safe with Seth Hardcastle needed her head examined. He was breath-taking sex on legs, and trouble and heartache, and she’d had more than enough trouble and heartache to last her a lifetime.

But not enough breath-taking sex, her body whispered. Sex with Phil had been dull and unsatisfying, whereas sex with Seth…No, she wasn’t even going to speculate about what sex with Seth would be like, and quickly she eased her fingers free from his, praying her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt.

‘I have to go. George—’

‘Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about George.’

His voice sounded oddly flat, and she wondered if he didn’t like dogs. Phil hadn’t. He’d pretended to like George, and George had pretended to like him, and then she’d discovered Phil had only been pretending to love her and her marriage had ended.

‘I really must go,’ she said, backing up a step.

‘I must, too,’ he replied, not moving at all.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ she mumbled, and he nodded, and she walked briskly down the corridor.

I am not going to look back, she told herself. Looking back is what teenagers do when they’re desperate to know whether the boy they’re interested in might be interested in them so I’m not going to look back.

But she did.

Just as she pushed open the door leading to the car park she glanced over her shoulder, and he was still there, still watching her, and his face creased into a smile. A smile that had her smiling back like some dippy, moonstruck, sixteen-year-old. A smile that had her heart doing a happy quick-step. As she stepped out into the open air, she muttered out loud to nobody in particular, ‘Oh, damn.’

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