is, Sister Richards! My rescuer!’ exclaimed a newly familiar voice, and Laurel’s breath caught in her throat.
‘Thank you for rescuing him for me, Laurel. I wouldn’t want to lose him,’ her superior said, but although she was speaking to Laurel, her eyes never left the lean man at her side.
Laurel could all too easily understand why, especially if he was in the habit of smiling like that. What she didn’t know was whether there was something of a personal nature between the two of them, neither did she know why just the thought of it made her feel strangely hollow inside.
‘We didn’t introduce ourselves properly,’ he said, completely ignoring Melanie Richards’s possessive-sounding words as he held a hand out towards Laurel.
‘Oh, she’s Laurel Wright, one of our most junior staff,’ her superior said dismissively, her eyes still fixed on the man like a starving woman gazing at a giant box of Belgian chocolates. ‘This is Dr Ros—Rostro—’
‘Rostropovich,’ he supplied, tightening his hand fractionally around Laurel’s when she would have withdrawn it immediately. ‘Dmitri Rostropovich. It would probably be easier if you called me—’
‘Pleased to meet you, Dr Rostropovich,’ Laurel said without any difficulty, and had to fight a smile at her superior’s visible chagrin. Stumbling over pronouncing his name was all the evidence Laurel had needed that they were not as close as the younger woman wanted them to be. ‘Do you spell that the same way as the famous cellist?’
Having retrieved her hand, she wrapped the other one around it, surprised that she couldn’t feel the flash of heat that had been generated when his hand had touched hers. She was going to have to revise her scepticism over those scenes in romance novels where there was an electric connection between the hero and heroine the first time they touched.
Not that she was anybody’s heroine, least of all his.
‘It’s spelt exactly the same, although I don’t think there’s any family connection. Do you like his music?’
‘Some of it, especially his recording of—’
‘Laurel doesn’t really have time to stand chatting about music,’ Melanie Richards pointed out with a disgruntled scowl. ‘It’s time for Staff Nurse Norris to go for her break, isn’t it, Nurse? You’re supposed to be taking over monitoring baby Sweeny, aren’t you?’
It was news to Laurel but she wasn’t about to turn down the chance to do some hands-on nursing for a change. Up till this moment Sister Richards had seemed to be deliberately keeping her to menial tasks.
‘Perhaps we will be able to talk of music another time,’ Dmitri said politely as Laurel turned to cross the ward towards her charge. ‘In the meantime, if you will permit, I will come with you to have a look at this baby Sweeny who needs monitoring.’
Laurel caught a glimpse of the hastily hidden flash of anger in her superior’s eyes and blinked in surprise.
Surely the woman realised that it had been a purely professional decision for the good-looking doctor to accompany her? Melanie was a beautiful young woman with the sort of curves that Laurel could only sigh for. After all those years of ‘blunt speaking’ by Robert Wainwright, she knew only too well that she had few charms to attract a man’s eye. Least of all now, when she was being so careful not to draw attention to herself. If Robert Wainwright tracked her down before she found her sister, her rebellion would all have been in vain. She had no doubt that the man would be desperate enough by now to resort to all sorts of underhand tactics to achieve his aim.
Her heart gave a thud of fear before she deliberately set her thoughts on a different track…such as the handsome doctor’s completely unexpected response towards her.
Had her attempts at merging into the background completely failed today? Dmitri Rostropovich’s eyes seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time looking in her direction. And the only reason she knew that was because, even though her hands were busy noting down the readings of Jason Sweeny’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse from the electronic monitors onto his charts, her own gaze seemed magnetically attracted to him.
Unfortunately, Jason’s mother, who had rarely left his bedside once she’d been released from her own, had noticed her preoccupation.
‘He’s a good looker, isn’t he, Nurse?’ she prompted slyly, and Laurel felt the flush of heat travelling inexorably upward from her throat to her tightly restrained hair. How could she have forgotten just how sharp-eyed some people could be when there wasn’t much else to watch?
She bit her tongue as she hung the clipboard on the end of the high-tech trolley, hoping desperately to find some way of avoiding an answer.
‘Well, Nurse?’ he prompted, startling her into looking up into the wicked gleam in his eyes. He’d leaned himself against the column supporting the monitor displays while he’d chatted easily with Mrs Sweeny. Now he’d folded his arms across his chest as though he had the whole day to wait for her answer. ‘Do you agree with Mrs Sweeny?’
The pair of them exchanged a telling glance, grey eyes meeting blue, each knowing that they had put her on the spot.
Laurel felt the familiar anxiety start to swamp her, the feeling that she just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. And what was worse, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him.
If he could read her thoughts and feelings in her eyes, what would he think of her cowardly nature?
He wouldn’t know about the years she’d spent as the butt of Robert Wainwright’s caustic wit. Then, defiance had only earned her the label of ‘disturbed child’ and another handful of tranquillisers.
In the end, her only defence had been silence and stoicism while her resentment had grown, and in her undrugged moments her determination to find some way out of the destructive situation.
Then, for the first time in her life, she felt a sudden surge of something new. She didn’t know what it was or what was causing it. Could it be something to do with the expression in a certain pair of liquid silver eyes?
‘I suppose he’s quite good-looking, Mrs Sweeny,’ she admitted grudgingly. She flicked her gaze over him from head to foot and back again, his elegant grey suit doing more to enhance his lean physique than disguise it, then made sure there was more than a hint of doubt in her intonation. ‘That’s if you like them long and skinny.’
Mrs Sweeny burst out laughing.
‘That told you, didn’t it?’ She laughed gleefully up at Dmitri Rostropovich, her perpetually worried eyes brightening briefly with a flash of humour. ‘I’m so glad that we women are getting a chance to put a man in his place these days.’
Laurel found herself holding her breath, waiting for his response. What on earth had possessed her to talk to him like that? Apart from the foolishness of drawing attention to herself, she knew better than to provoke a man into anger by answering back.
Then he chuckled.
‘Oh, yes, Mrs Sweeny. I certainly like a woman who knows how to put a man in his place,’ he agreed. ‘The only trouble is, most men don’t know their place until a woman shows them.’
There was something in his gaze that made Laurel feel warm inside, almost as if she were basking in the warmth of a summer’s
