lied to me. You said you were a teacher.’
Gabe turned to face the sink and flicked the tap on. ‘I do a little lecturing.’
Beth glared at him over the top of her mask.
Gabe chuckled. ‘Look. I’m sorry. I don’t usually tell people I’m a neurosurgeon. I’m good at my job but it takes up so much of my life. I have a killer schedule and I so rarely get the chance to socialise. When I do, I like to keep my work at work. And it can get weird. People know you’re a doctor and they always want a consultation.’ He scrubbed at his soapy hands for a few moments. ‘Would you have stayed if I’d told you I was a neurosurgeon?’
She could hear the smile in his voice and she didn’t have to look at his peridot eyes to know they’d be laughing. Beth snorted. ‘I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if I’d known you were a neurosurgeon.’
He nodded as he scrubbed at his wrists. ‘I’m glad I was…economical with the truth, then.’
Beth worked the soap down towards her elbows, ignoring the way the mask muted his voice, accentuating the accent, making it sound husky as hell.
Time for a few home truths. ‘I don’t do one-night stands.’
He’d known that the minute he’d suggested she go back to his room. He could still recall how totally shocked she’d looked for those seconds before something had changed in her eyes and she had taken his hand. ‘I never intended it to be a one-night stand.’
‘I don’t do two-night stands either,’ she said primly, horrified by the leap her pulse took at his statement.
He laughed and the noise caused a flutter inside her and she scrubbed harder at her arms. ‘This is not funny. This is a disaster.’
Gabe frowned. ‘No, a disaster would have been if we’d slept together and it had been awful. And it wasn’t.’ He looked down at her and their gazes clashed. ‘It was good. It was very, very good.’
Beth heard her breathing go all funny. She couldn’t refute it, no matter how much she knew she had to get this conversation back on an impersonal level.
She cleared her throat and turned back to concentrate on her scrub technique. ‘Be that as it may, we have to work together for the next seven months so I think we need to establish some ground rules.’
Gabe smiled behind the mask. ‘This should be good.’
‘One. Forget Friday night happened.’ She looked at him for confirmation.
He nodded.
‘Two. No references to Friday night—ever.’
Gabe nodded again.
‘Three. Be professional at all times. I will call you Dr Fallon and you will call me Sister Rogers. Four—’
‘Rogers?’ Gabe interrupted, frowning. ‘I thought John said you were his daughter? Oh, God…you’re not married, are you?’ She hadn’t mentioned a husband and she hadn’t been wearing a ring. Maybe that’s why she’d looked so panicked?
‘No!’ Beth said indignantly. Did he really think she would have slept with him had she been married? ‘John is my foster-father. I’ve been with them since I was fifteen.’
Gabe struggled with relief and curiosity. ‘Ah. I see,’ he said, even though he didn’t really.
Beth pressed on. ‘Where was I?’
‘Number four, I believe.’
Beth nodded. ‘Four. No fraternising outside work—’
‘Look, Beth, let me spare you the rest of the list,’ Gabe interrupted. ‘I happen to agree. Relationships at work should be avoided.’
Not that it was a strict rule for him. He’d had relationships with colleagues before but they’d always known the score. Relationships with women who didn’t, women like Beth, were to be avoided at all costs.
‘I have no intention of continuing where we left off. I live on the other side of the world. I’m here for seven months only. There would be very little point.’ Except for the pretty amazing sex, of course. ‘You have no need to fear. I will be nothing but professional.’
‘Good.’ Beth held her arms up under the tap and let the water run down them from her fingertips to her elbows, sluicing the soap off. ‘We’re both on the same page, then.’
She shut off the taps with her elbow and waited for the excess water to drip off her arms squashing the traitorous flutter of disappointment at his easy capitulation. She flapped her arms, briskly to dispel it altogether, keeping her arms bent. And then she turned on her heel, her now sterile arms held out in front of her.
Gabe watched her go, pushing open the theatre doors with her shoulder, her green theatre scrubs accentuating the length of her thighs and the slimness of her hips and bottom. He shook his head as he watched the last drips of water fall from his elbows.
That morning Beth had been thrown but this afternoon she’d been back in control. All business. Where was the woman who had struck such a chord with her sad eyes on Friday night? Who had come apart in his arms? Who had wept as she had come down from the heights they’d climbed?
Something had been up with Beth Rogers on Friday night. Maybe it had been his own recent grief that had made him sensitive to her inner turmoil but something had made her act completely out of character. Impulsively. As had he.
He’d known after about five minutes in her company that she wasn’t the type to sleep with a virtual stranger. And yet after her initial shock she had followed him willingly—surprised the hell out of him—and given him everything she had.
He could still hear the gut-wrenching quality of her sobs as she had curled herself into a ball beside him. There had been such misery in her outpouring. Heartbreak and sorrow and grief. It had come from something buried deep inside. And, with his own emotions still a little raw, it had affected him more than he wanted to admit.
Beth Rogers was certainly a conundrum. Not that he had the time or the inclination to find out what made her tick. She was right. They were colleagues and he didn’t need any complications messing with his burgeoning career. Separating conjoined twins was complicated enough.
He flicked off the taps and drew a mental shutter on their one-night stand. He had an aneurysm to clip.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO weeks later, Gabe was staring down at the eight-month-old Fisher twins, lying back to back in their pram, fused occipitally. He was still amazed at the rare phenomenon. One in two hundred thousand live births. And craniopagus? Only two per cent of Siamese twins were joined at the head.
Most doctors could go a whole lifetime and never see this condition but in his relatively young career he’d now seen three sets of craniopagus-conjoined twins and had successfully separated two of them. Consequently, he was one of the world’s foremost experts.
As the late, great Harlan Fallon’s son, the world had expected big things of him, and fate, it seemed, had intervened to ensure that Gabe’s career was just
