Sheikh Surgeon, Surprise Bride Read online

  Except, that night, he realised it wasn’t going to be quite that easy to banish those images from his brain.

  It wasn’t just the fact that the two of them seemed to work in perfect synchronicity in Theatre. He’d seen it happen before but only with surgeons who had become accustomed to each other’s ways through many hours of working together. With Lily…it was almost as though their brains were tuned to the same frequency so that he barely needed to speak for her to know what he needed from her.

  It was an exhilarating sensation, so that he’d felt almost as if he had been flying, but it was dangerous, too. Neither of them could afford to become involved with each other in any way other than professionally, but it certainly hadn’t felt like a professional connection between the two of them when he’d met her eyes over the unflattering edge of her mask. He’d actually found himself noticing that, far from being a flat grey-blue colour, there was a green-gold circle around her pupils that radiated out like rays of light across the silvery iris all the way towards the dark sapphire-blue rim.

  ‘What on earth…?’ he exclaimed, wondering what had come over him. He couldn’t recall ever having paid so much attention to the colour of a woman’s eyes before. ‘And I shouldn’t be now!’ he said fiercely, as he reached for the phone. He would phone Karim. A conversation with his irreverent half-brother would be guaranteed to take his mind off Dr Lily Langley.

  ‘So, what’s your new boss like, then, Lil?’ Rose asked in the tone that told Lily that she was settling down for a gossip. Unfortunately, when she’d phoned, it had been in the hope that a conversation with her mother would take her mind off Razak Khan. She should have known that it wouldn’t work, not with her mother’s insatiable curiosity.

  ‘I bet he’s middle-aged and married,’ she heard Iris call from somewhere in the background. ‘With all his muscles gone to flab once he got too old to play rugby.’

  Suddenly Lily knew that it would be disastrous if she gave her family even a hint of how good-looking Razak was. Her sisters already taunted her with the fact that she hadn’t managed to ‘hook herself a doctor’ yet. If they found out that her new boss had sparked hormones to life that she hadn’t even known existed, she would never hear the end of it.

  ‘He’s foreign and temporary,’ she said, hoping she sounded suitably dismissive. ‘He’ll be going back to his own country in a few months.’

  She had to wait while her mother relayed the information to whoever else was in the room with her and, as she’d expected, Iris was ready with a pointed comment.

  ‘Bad luck, Lil. Still, his replacement might be worth looking at,’she suggested, raising her voice so that her mother didn’t need to relay her comments. ‘Hey, I heard that those orthopaedic surgeons are making an absolute fortune doing private operations, and that’s on top of their ordinary salary. Is it true? You could retire straight away if you hooked one of them.’

  ‘At the moment I’m too busy to do anything about hooking anyone,’ Lily said crossly. ‘I barely know my way around the hospital yet, and there have been accident victims needing operations as well as those booked in for replacement joints and so on.’

  ‘Ooh, I really don’t know how you could do all that gory stuff,’ her mother said with an audible shudder. ‘Honestly, I don’t know where you got the idea from…to go and be a surgeon. You could have been a GP. Then you could have come and worked at the practice in town here, and moved back home again. There’d be no shortage of people to choose from. You know most of the boys because you went to school with them…or your sisters did. Marjorie’s son has just moved back again since his wife went off with that estate agent and Derek’s just set up his own plumbing business. They’re both good lads and I’m sure you could take your pick of—’

  ‘Mum, I haven’t finished my training yet, so I’m really not interested,’ she interrupted hastily. ‘I’ve got at least another year before I can—’

  ‘Another year! But, Lily, love, you’re already thirty!’ her mother exclaimed, as if Lily didn’t know her own age. ‘You can’t afford to wait any longer to start a family. They said on the telly just the other night that too many women are waiting until they’ve got a career and then when they try for a baby, they find it’s too late…that their eggs have all shrivelled up or something. You can’t wait any longer if you’re going to have a lovely family like Iris and—’

  ‘Mum, there was a woman the other year who had her first baby when she was in her sixties.’

  ‘What? No! That’s awful!’ Rose exclaimed, momentarily diverted from her usual plaint. ‘The poor little mite! Imagine having a mother old enough to be your great-grandmother! you’re not thinking of doing that, are you?’

  ‘Of course not, Mum. I only mentioned it to show that I’ve got a few years yet before I need to panic and leap into bed with the first reasonably healthy man who offers.’

  Lily managed to sustain the rest of the conversation with only half of her attention, her mother exclaiming at length over the idea of ‘geriatric’ mothers.

  At least it had switched her attention from her unmarried daughter’s shortcomings, but it couldn’t take Lily’s own thoughts away from Razak Khan.

  She could just imagine what Iris would have said if she’d found out that not only was her new boss close to her own age but he was seriously good-looking. As for single…

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’she said aloud into the echoing solitude of her minute bathroom a little later, suddenly aware that her stomach had taken a dive towards her feet at the thought that Razak might, at this very moment, be curled up in bed, making love with his stunningly beautiful, endlessly fascinating wife.

  ‘Not that it makes a scrap of difference to me whether he’s married or not,’she said firmly through a mouthful of toothpaste, even as she realised that she was lying through her freshly brushed teeth.

  So what if he was the first man whose mouth had made her wonder what his kiss would taste like, whose eyes spoke to her of knowledge far beyond her wildest imagining and whose body fascinated her every time she came within its aura of leashed power so that he had even started invading her dreams. She, Lily Langley, who had never dreamed of anything beyond achieving her goal of a consultancy and leading her own team…

  What she really needed was someone to talk to, but there was no one.

  ‘I certainly can’t talk to anyone in the family,’she declared with a shudder. She could just imagine the uproar that would cause. First there would be amazement at the mere suggestion that she was attracted to a man. Then, if she was stupid enough to let slip that the man was her boss…well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Her father would recognise that the situation could end up as professional suicide but her mother would be going all misty-eyed over wedding dresses and the next brood of grandchildren while her sisters would be crowing and twittering that Lily had finally hooked herself a consultant.

  As if anyone as insignificant as Lily could ever hook someone like Razak when, by all accounts, every single nurse in the hospital had set her cap at him, and a few of the married ones, too, if the gossips were right.

  ‘Why now?’ she groaned aloud into the darkness as sleep still eluded her. For years her imagination had been limited to devising ways of piecing shattered bones together. Why had it suddenly taken off in an entirely new direction so that when he’d pulled his mask down at the end of the operation and grinned at her at their success, it had started devising ways for that sexy mouth to meet hers and teach her all the ways to please him?

  She finally fell asleep to X-rated dreams, waking up with a burning need to see the man, if only to prove to herself that it had been mere exhaustion that had made him seem so overwhelmingly attractive.

  Please, please, let there be no hitches in getting the new theatre suites up and running, she pleaded fervently as she made her way up to the surgical ward before the start of her shift.

  After her feverish hurry to get to the hospital, she was suddenly loa
th to come face to face with the man who was dominating her thoughts, afraid that he might be able to see that she was aware of him with every cell in her body. It was safer by far to detour for a quick visit to each of their postoperative patients just to satisfy herself that there hadn’t been any problems overnight.

  ‘you’re bright and early this morning, Dr Langley,’ said the staff nurse as she entered the female half of the ward. She was looking a little frazzled, as though it had been an especially busy night. ‘Is there something I should know about? Mr Khan just phoned to warn me he was on his way up.’

  Just the sound of his name was enough to double Lily’s pulse rate and she would have turned tail and run if it wouldn’t have caused just the sort of gossip she didn’t want.

  ‘Please, won’t you call me Lily when there aren’t any patients about?’she suggested, giving herself a moment to get her brain working before she had to say anything intelligent. She’d thought she’d been giving herself a few extra minutes to get her crazy emotions under control by coming onto the ward, but Razak was already on his way. Any moment now, he would walk through that door and that sexy voice would say…

  ‘Good morning, Lily.’

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing…in and out, in and out. How could he sound even sexier with every time she heard him speak? And as for looking at him…She opened her eyes again and found the staff nurse watching her with a knowing look in her eyes.

  For a second panic struck her like a wrecking ball and she was terrified that the young woman would say something that would give her away. Her fear must have shown on her face because there was an answering half-smile of understanding. Then all it took was the slightest of shake of Jo’s head to indicate that she wouldn’t spill the beans, which allowed Lily’s panic to ease.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Khan,’ she said with a modicum of her composure restored. ‘I came up to have a look at the patients we operated on yesterday. Did you need me for something else?’

  ‘For now, let us pay a visit to our patients,’ he said with a smile, but not before she caught a glimpse of something else in those dark, dark eyes. A glint of…what? Something she hadn’t ever seen in a man’s eyes before, certainly not when he was looking in her direction.

  ‘Would you like to start with Mrs Turner?’ Jo suggested easily. ‘She’s been reminding me every time I’ve gone past her that she wants to have a word with you as soon as possible.’

  ‘There is a problem?’ Razak demanded, his expression all business in an instant. ‘Her pain is bad? She needs more analgesia?’

  ‘Not at all!’ Jo laughed as she cheerfully handed him the file she’d been checking and updating ready for handover. ‘The opposite, if anything. Go and see.’

  Lily was glad of her long legs as he strode swiftly along to Mrs Turner’s room. As it was, she was hard-pushed to keep up with him until he came to a halt beside the elderly woman’s bedside.

  ‘Mrs Turner, I understand that you wanted to speak to me. Is there some problem I can help you—?’

  ‘Oh, not at all!’ Cicely Turner interrupted with a broad smile. ‘I just couldn’t wait to thank you…to thank you both. I just can’t believe that all that dreadful gnawing pain has gone. Completely gone, as if you’d waved a magic wand!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad about that, Mrs—’

  ‘I tell you, I was expecting to wake up in agony after such a big operation,’ their patient interrupted, clearly bubbling over with enthusiasm. ‘Especially when you told me what you were going to have to do to me when you got me on the table…dislocate my hip, chop part of it off, hammer a new bit in…It all sounded like the sort of thing my husband used to do in his workshop at the end of the garden.’

  ‘So…’ Razak tried again when she paused for breath but still couldn’t stop her.

  ‘Well, of course, I’m a bit sore where you had to cut me, but the stuff the nurse gave me took that away. But it’s all thanks to the two of you that I can actually lie down and sit up and even stand up without a single twinge of that dreadful unrelenting bone-deep agony. I’ve been living with pain for more than two years, you know,’ she said, and pressed her lips into a tight line at the memory. ‘It was nearly six months before I gave in and asked my GP to get me an appointment with a specialist, then, after waiting months and months to see him, I was told I was going to have to wait up to a year before he would be able to do my operation. If the hospital hadn’t taken you two on, I’d probably still be waiting.’

  Lily met Jo’s eyes on the other side of the bed and saw that she’d known exactly what was going to happen when the two of them visited her patient. She saw, too, the moment she decided to take pity on them.

  ‘So, Cicely, would you like to slide down in the bed a bit so we can show the sawbones how you’re doing?’

  ‘Oh, of course, dear,’ she agreed readily, before turning back to Razak and Lily even as she complied. ‘She’s been taking ever such good care of me,’ she confided. ‘And she makes a lovely cup of tea. Just right. Not too milky but not too strong either.’

  While the anti-embolic stocking was rolled down to allow them to check on the colour and texture of Cicely’s skin, both Lily and Razak took advantage of the time to pull on sterile gloves, each taking the extra precaution of using the bactessriostatic gel before they went anywhere near the wound along the side of the patient’s upper thigh. The last thing their patient needed was to have an infective agent introduced at this stage by sloppy hygiene procedures.

  ‘Nice neat stitches,’ Razak commented as they were revealed, and his approval spread a warm glow through Lily. ‘The wound drains are doing their job well and there are no signs of any redness or untoward discharge. In fact, everything looks exactly the way it should,’ he pronounced as he straightened up.

  ‘Well, you did promise me that you would do your best, and you’ve certainly kept your promise,’ their patient said with a beam as Jo rolled on a clean anti-embolic stocking and pulled the cotton gown back into position. ‘Now it’s all up to me to get back on my feet. I’ll be going to stay with one of my children when I’m discharged from hospital, but I have every intention of being back in my own home before summer comes. It will soon be time to start sowing bedding plants for my garden and all my neighbours depend on me to do a few trays for them, too.’

  ‘You won’t be tempted to do too much, too soon, will you?’ Lily cautioned gently, even as she applauded the woman’s zest for life.

  ‘I certainly won’t be doing anything that will mess up your good work,’ she promised. ‘I’ve already been memorising the list of instructions you gave me. No crossing my legs…so I’ll be putting a small pillow between my knees so I can’t forget; no flexing the hip more than forty-five degrees…so one of my sons is getting me a wedge-shaped cushion to put in my chair; no rotational movement…so I’ve cancelled my dancing lessons…and I was really looking forward to learning to do the twist!’

  ‘I’m glad you’re feeling so cheerful,’ Razak said through their shared laughter, and patted her blue-veined hand. ‘You look after yourself.’ And he led the way out of the room.

  ‘You might want to see Gary Freshett next,’ Jo suggested, when she joined them again to hand Razak the next set of case notes.

  ‘Any particular reason?’ he queried.

  ‘Only that he hasn’t got any—reason, that is,’ Jo said quietly. ‘He’s only hours post-operative and I’ve already caught him getting out of bed twice, trying to see how far he can bend his knee.’

  Lily remembered the man all too clearly. He was heading ungraciously towards middle age while still trying to pretend that he could do everything that he could do as a young aspiring sportsman. But it had been his unpleasant leer at her while she’d been trying to make sure that he’d understood what his operation involved that had struck her most forcefully.

  The fact that he was now ignoring everything he’d been told was probably par for the course with a man of his arrogance.

&n
bsp; ‘Good morning, Mr Freshett. I hear you’ve been trying to mess all our good work up,’ Razak said crisply as he approached the man’s bed, and Lily silently cheered that her boss wasn’t going to pull his punches.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to waste any time lying around in hospital when I could be getting back on the golf course,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘I’ve got a good chance of getting my name on the club trophy this year so I need to get my knee moving again.’

  ‘And how many weeks is it until the competition is played, or is it a cumulative one?’ Razak queried mildly, as though he was genuinely interested in the game when Lily already knew, on his own admission, that he’d rather watch paint dry.

  ‘Cumulative, so I can’t afford to miss more than a couple of matches or I won’t stand a chance of catching up. That’s why it’s so important to get this damn knee moving as soon as possible, otherwise—’

  ‘Mr Freshett,’ Razak interrupted sharply. ‘Didn’t you listen to anything that Dr Langley told you yesterday? She went through the whole operation with you and told you exactly how many weeks of physiotherapy and rehabilitation it would take before you could even start to play golf again.’

  ‘Well, yes…but that’s only for the wimps who can’t take a bit of discomfort and don’t care about winning,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’ve been a sportsman all my life and I know how far I can push myself.’

  ‘And I know what it will do to your knee if you do push yourself,’ Razak snapped. ‘There is a reason why you were given that timetable, a sound medical reason. So let me give you another item to put on that timetable. If you try to go on the golf course before you have completed your post-operative period, you will end up on my operating table before the last game of the season has even been played, and this time I won’t be removing the osteophytes that were hampering your movement. I will be operating to fuse your knee so that it will never bend again because you will have ruined the joint permanently. Unless you follow your instructions to the letter, I doubt that you will ever get your name on that trophy.’