gone pear-shaped, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Right now she was second-guessing her good idea.
While she read the reports, the daytime nursing staff drifted in, busy chatting, and the medical students soon followed. Finally, the consistently late junior house officer, Andrew Bailey, arrived breathless and with his white coattails flapping. He came to a sudden halt and glanced around, his expression stunned. ‘I still beat him?’
Claire, who’d just read little Ryan Walker’s ‘no change’ report, stood with a sigh. ‘You still beat him.’
He grinned. ‘I must tell my father that my inability to be on time makes me a natural neurosurgeon.’
‘Perhaps that’s my problem,’ Claire muttered as she checked her phone for a message or a missed call from the exuberantly talented consultant surgeon who had no concept of time or workplace protocol. Nope, no messages or voicemail. She automatically checked the admissions board, but if Mr Alistair North were running late because of an emergency admission, she’d have been the one hauled out of bed to deal with it.
‘I heard while you and I were slaving away here last night, he was holding court over at the Frog and Peach,’ Andrew said with a conspiratorial yet reverent tone.
‘That doesn’t automatically mean he had a late night.’
Andrew’s black brows rose and waggled at her. ‘I just met the delectable Islay Kennedy on the back stairs wearing yesterday’s clothes. She mentioned dancing on tables, followed by an illicit boat ride on the Serpentine and then bacon and eggs at the Worker’s Café watching the dawn break over the Thames. When I see him, I plan to genuflect in his direction.’
A flash of anger swept through Claire’s body so hot and fast she thought it might lift her head from her neck. I want to kill Alistair North. Surgery was such a boys’ club and neurosurgery even more so. For years she’d gone into battle time and time again on the basis of raw talent but it was never enough. She constantly fought sexism, and now, it seemed, she had to tackle ridiculous childish behaviour and the adoration of men, who in essence were little boys. Fed up and furious, she did something she rarely did: she shot the messenger.
‘Andrew, don’t even think that behaviour like that is commendable. It’s juvenile and utterly irresponsible. If you ever pull a stunt like that and turn up to operate with me, I’ll fail you.’
Before her stunned junior house officer could reply, the eardrum-piercing sound of party blowers rent the air. Everyone turned towards the raucous sound. A tall man with thick, rumpled dark blond hair and wearing fake black horn-rimmed glasses—complete with a large fake bulbous nose and moustache—was marching along the ward with a little girl clinging to his back like a monkey. Behind him followed a trail of children aged between two and twelve. Some were walking, others were being pushed in wheelchairs by the nurses and many wore bandages on their heads—all of them were enthusiastically puffing air into party blowers and looking like they were on a New Year’s Day parade.
‘Wave to Dr Mitchell,’ the man instructed the little girl on his back. ‘Did you know she’s really a kangaroo?’
Despite his voice being slightly muffled by the fake moustache, it was without doubt the unmistakably deep and well-modulated tones of Alistair North.
A line of tension ran down Claire’s spine with the speed and crack of lightning before radiating outwards into every single cell. It was the same tension that invaded her every time Alistair North spoke to her. The same tension that filled her whenever she thought about him. It was a barely leashed dislike and it hummed inside her along with something else she didn’t dare name. She refused point-blank to contemplate that it might be attraction. The entire female staff of the castle might think the man was sex on a stick, but not her.
Granted, the first time she’d seen all six feet of him striding confidently towards her, she’d been struck by his presence. Unlike herself, not one single atom of the many that made up Alistair North hinted at doubt. The man positively radiated self-assurance from the square set of his shoulders to his brogue-clad feet. He wore clothes with effortless ease, their expensive cut and style fitting him flawlessly, yet at the same time finding the perfect pitch between stuffy and scruffy. Despite his posh accent, there was also something engaging and decidedly un-British about his lopsided and cheeky grin. It wasn’t a smile one associated with a consultant. It would break over the stark planes of his cheeks, vanquishing the esteemed surgeon and give rise to the remnants of a cheeky and mischievous little boy. But it wasn’t so much the smile that undid her—it was the glint in his slate-grey eyes. He had the ability to focus his attention on a person and make them feel as if they were the only human being on the planet.
‘Welcome to the castle, Mitchell,’ he’d said to her on her first day.
As she’d shaken his outstretched hand and felt his firm pressure wrap around her fingers and travel up her arm, she’d been horrified to feel herself just a little bit breathless. Her planned speech had vanished and she’d found herself replying in her broadest Australian accent, ‘Thanks. It’s great to be here.’
It had taken less than a week for her to realise that Alistair North’s cheeky grin almost always flagged that he was about to break the rules and wreak havoc on a grand scale. She’d also learned that his eyes alone, with their dancing smoky hue and intense gaze that made the person in their sights feel like they mattered to him like no one else, were frequently used with devastating ease to tempt women into his bed.
She conceded that, perhaps, on her first day when she’d felt momentarily breathless, she’d succumbed to the hypnotic effect of his gaze. Now, after working closely with him for weeks, she was immune to its effects. She’d spent ten years slogging her way up the medical career ladder, spending more hours in hospitals than out of them, and she wasn’t about to risk it all by landing up in the boss’s bed. More importantly, she didn’t like Alistair North, so even if he were the last man on earth, she wouldn’t be tempted.
Apparently, she was virtually the only woman at the castle with that thought. Over the past few weeks she’d been stunned to find herself sought out by hopeful women seeking information about Alistair North’s proclivities, or worse still, being asked to act as go-between for disappointed and sometimes furious women whom he’d dated and then hadn’t bothered to call. All things considered, from his casual disregard of the rules to his blasé treatment of women, there was no way on God’s green earth or in the fiery depths of hell that she was attracted to that man. Not now. Not never.
The stories about Alistair North that circulated around the hospital held fable qualities. If she hadn’t been working closely with him as his speciality registrar, she’d have laughed on being told the tales. She’d have said, ‘They’ve got to be the invention of an overactive imagination.’ But she did work with him. Sadly, she’d seen enough evidence to know at least two of the stories she’d heard were true so she had no reason not to believe the others. As hard as she tried to focus solely on Alistair North’s immense skill as a neurosurgeon and block out the excited noise that seemed to permanently spin and jangle around him, it was impossible.
Everywhere she turned, people talked about his exploits in and out of the operating theatre. Gossip about who he was currently dating or dumping and who he’d been seen with driving into work that morning ran rife along the hospital corridors. It was as if speculation about the man was the hospital’s secondary power supply. What she hated most of all was the legendary status the young male house officers gave him, while she was the one left trailing behind, picking up the pieces.
No, the sensation she got every time she was in the same space as Mr Alistair North was antagonism. The man may be brilliant and talented in the operating theatre
