she began to scrub. Just as he felt he’d disappeared from her senses’ radar, she raised her eyes. “You have someone around to help me gown, or shall I go the solo route?”
He couldn’t answer right away. Not when his mind was being swamped with all the times he’d ungowned her, so to speak, exposing her to his impatience and hunger.
When he answered, his voice sounded like raking through gravel. “I’ll gown you.”
That exquisite eyebrow rose again. Had she heard the gruffness, known its import?
But her gaze wasn’t taunting, or knowing. It was empty. “I know I’m here to share a position with you, but isn’t gowning me taking the coworker thing outside the job description?”
Share a position. A thousand images inundated him, of every position he’d shared with her, the ecstasy they’d wrung from each other’s bodies in each. Had she meant the double entendre?
No. She hadn’t. He was sure her comment had been professional. If her dismissal of his authority could be called that. But there was no sexual innuendo in anything she said or did. Or she was a more undetectable actress than he’d imagined.
Thinking a closer look might avail him of better judgment, he closed in on her. “I assure you that helping fellow surgeons gown isn’t outside my job parameters.”
She finished scrubbing, held up her hands to drip-dry before picking up a sterile towel folded over the gown/glove packs and began a flawless drying technique. “Really? So does Crown Prince and Head of Surgery have Scrub Nurse or Circulator in the fine print of expected duties? Who would have thought?”
A jolt coursed through him again. No one talked to him like that. Ever. Not even her. Especially her. Not in the past.
But why the jolts? Had he come to expect deference beyond decorum and professionalism that it shocked him she was speaking freely in his presence? Admittedly, he hadn’t been approachable in recent years, but had she been right? Had he gone beyond maintaining the distance his status demanded into imposing a form of oppression?
Not that she was affected by whatever intimidation he emitted. She hurled out her thoughts as they formed.
“Isn’t life full of surprises?” he drawled, almost to himself.
She volunteered no answer to that but reached for a gown and began unfolding it, her sterile procedure perfect.
He advanced on her then, unable to stay away a second longer. The closer he got, the worse it got. Her scent reached out to him, enveloped him. Yes. This was it. Unchanged. Sweet and fragrant and exuding sensuality.
He reached her as she placed her arms inside the sleeves, circled her in one aching sweep, careful not to come into contact with any part of her. For sterile conditions, he told himself.
He began adjusting her scrubs around her lush body, focused on regulating his breathing, his urges. She stood there all through, eyes downcast, seemingly unbreathing.
He was tightening her belt when his surgical team entered the hall en masse.
He almost groaned in disappointment. Now he’d have no excuse to demand that she return the favor. She was already moving away, snapping on gloves on her own.
Resigned that this interlude had come to an end, that this face-off had gone against his expectations and certainly in her favor, he turned to his own scrubbing and gowning, acutely conscious of her every movement, every breath.
In minutes he turned to her again, impatient to continue his study of her—and sustained another shock.
She was smiling. At anesthesiologist Hisham Sukhr and resident Aneesah Othman. She hadn’t smiled at him since she’d walked into the hall. Not even a mockery of a formality.
She’d never smiled at him like that.
And he suddenly realized what had been missing from the smiles she’d once lavished on him. This, what flowed from her smile right now. Ease. She’d always been…tense, even forced, for the lack of more appropriate words, around him.
Had it been a manifestation of the artifice she’d practiced? Looking at her now, it was impossible to believe she was capable of artifice. Which was too stupid a thing to think.
Even more stupid was the surge of anger and animosity he felt as he watched the scene unfold. Anger toward her for showing him how delightful her ease was, but that he’d never warranted it. Animosity toward Hisham, his most trusted anesthesiologist, whose eyes sparkled with the covetous thoughts any male would have about Viv…
Ya Ullah. Was he on the verge of a breakdown, as Adnan insisted he was? Was he angry at Viv for not being cordial with him? Was he jealous that another man coveted her on sight? When in either case he should expect nothing less, nothing else?
It was time to put an end to this stupidity, get on with his plans. Before he forgot what they were and why he’d hatched them.
He moved to the door connecting to the OR he’d chosen. As the door slid open, he turned and a hush fell over the buzzing room.
“Now that Dr. LaSalle has introduced herself, we’re ready to start our list.” With that, he entered the OR.
Everyone followed in a silence loud with surprise that he hadn’t given Viv the esteem of a formal introduction and welcome in front of her future team and subordinates. From her there was only opacity. She’d closed her mind to him.
Viv walked into the OR last, struggling not to wobble.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
She’d accepted the position because it dictated she’d meet Ghaleb possibly a couple of times initially, to set things up, then she wouldn’t see him again as she did his job when he wasn’t around. He shouldn’t be here, about to begin a ten-surgery list with her. Why wasn’t he leaving her to it?
This had to be a test. One he would have subjected anyone he’d install as his co-head to. A one-off. Yes. She could live with that. She thought. She hoped. If she survived the next hours…
Stop it. Why was she going to pieces like this?
But she knew why, didn’t she? She’d entered to scrub, had seen him standing there with his back to her, and it had been like being catapulted back to the past, to that time she’d sought him out, to sell him on choosing her for his research assistant’s position.
She’d seen him many times from afar till that moment, each time suffering a jolt of awareness at the power and charisma compounding the impact of his phenomenal looks and physique. She’d known he had the same effect on every female with a heartbeat, but had been convinced one close-up look would take care of all that.
Then he’d turned to her and her self-assurance had boiled and evaporated, then his answering awareness had turned hers into compulsion. She’d hurled herself at him, a moth fully aware of its fiery end yet hurtling deliriously toward the flame. Then he’d left her and her world had turned upside down. It had taken months to set it right. How could she let herself be taken by storm again?
Oh, she knew how. This time he’d turned to her only to show her her memories had
