Falling for the Single Dad Surgeon
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Charlotte Hawkes
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CHAPTER ONE
THIS WOMAN WAS surely going to be his undoing.
The premonition walloped into Jake Cooper as he stared across the throng of well-heeled guests attending the welcome gala dinner for the summer programme at Brazil’s renowned Hospital Universitário Paulista.
He knew it, and still he stared. And despite the colleagues jostling to talk to him, he found he couldn’t draw his gaze from one agitated figure.
Flávia Maura. Or, as she was more colloquially known, the selvagem woman.
Wild. Savage. The jungle woman.
And there was no doubt in Jake’s mind that she posed a setback to his own sanity.
She was standing in a trio of women; yet, for him, the other two had blurred into muted shades of grey around Flávia. Just as everyone else in the vast, elegant room had done, the moment he’d laid eyes on this one woman. He might have thought that there was something abruptly wrong with his vision, but for the fact that he was so focused on the image of her, in glorious high definition.
He was supposed to be here for the training programme. A summer of top medical experts from around the world all meeting in one place both to learn, and also to teach, new cutting-edge skills to each other. Not least demonstrating the clinical trial he himself was part of, where he was using a scorpion-venom-based toxin to highlight cancer cells—effectively showing up as a fluorescent tumour paint when put under near-infrared light, within a patient on the operating table.
And Flávia Maura had been one of the researchers who had worked on the toxin he was using for his particular trial.
Only, it wasn’t her professional skills which currently had his eyes devouring every inch of her, from the top of her rich, glossy hair right down to the sexy high heels in which she appeared to be trying to balance, and everything in between. Not least the long, figure-hugging metallic gown in some deep green, which seemed to shimmer to black as she moved. Everything about it teased him. The way it clung so lovingly to her body, but the shimmers tricked the eye; the way the neckline offered a mouthwatering taste—but no more—of sexy cleavage; the way the side slit, which tantalised glimpses of endlessly long legs, but never once veered into dangerous territory.
Like the merest whisper of a promise of something more.
It was ridiculous that he—who had known plenty of beautiful women during his assuredly bachelor life—should be so easily ensnared. Yet here he was, like a fish dangling helplessly from a fisherman’s hook.
She looked sophisticated yet sexy. Elegant yet slightly devilish. And utterly, and completely, terrified. It wasn’t just the way her eyes were darting about the room however hard she kept trying to look her colleagues in the eye. It wasn’t simply how her hands kept toying with her dress, her earrings, her shoes, as if she felt completely out of her comfort zone. It wasn’t even her confident smile, which froze in place just once or twice.
It was the way she kept subconsciously edging behind the shoulder of one of the other two women, as though they could somehow provide a barrier between her and the colleagues who were clearly edging to talk to her—the woman whose work as a naturalist and researcher were helping to change the face of contemporary cancer treatment.
It should have acted as a warning that he could read her—a relative stranger—so well.
It should have worried him even more that it didn’t.
But then, it wasn’t the first warning he’d had, was it? He’d known it three days ago, in the middle of an operation, with the guy who’d been the closest thing to a best mate for the better part of a decade.
The memory played out in his head, as if reliving that conversation could somehow help to steel him against the pull of the woman standing no more than thirty metres from him right now.
As if it could help him resist this odd lure of striding across the room and claiming her for his own all night.
Like some kind of Neanderthal that he’d never been before. Like the guy he’d sworn only three days ago that he wasn’t.
‘So,’ his mate and neurosurgeon colleague had demanded good-naturedly partway through their joint operation. ‘Who did you sleep with in order to get on to this year’s summer teaching programme at Paulista’s?’
‘Funny, Oz.’ He’d grinned but he hadn’t even bothered looking up from the surgery.
His eyes had been trained on the brain of his patient as his colleague, neurosurgeon Oscar Wright, had worked to reveal a tumour. They’d made the first incision and had been drilling the bone flap as close to the tumour site as possible.
Once they were ready to start the resection, they would wake the patient and begin brain mapping. Normally, Jake wasn’t in on these operations, his area of expertise being vascular oncology, but the tumour paint was his clinical trial. Added to that was the fact that the particular young lad in question had always been particularly jumpy and Jake had been working with him long enough to have built up a rapport that would help during the awake part of the surgery.
But in that moment, the lad was still anaesthetised and the banter he and Oz shared often made critical operations like those seem easier.
‘Besides, that’s more your style than mine, isn’t it?’
‘You think I didn’t try?’ Oz had shaken his head. ‘I pulled out all the stops last year when they were choosing surgeons to go to Brazil, lot of good that did me. Not that it was a hardship, you understand.’
‘I bet it wasn’t,’ Jake had retorted dryly. ‘Though I imagine that high-profile case you have coming might have something to do with it.’
They had both known Oz’s name would have been right up there with his if it hadn’t been for the fact that Oz needed to stay in London this winter, which was summer below the equator in Brazil.
The guy’s reputation as a playboy preceded him, but he was also one of the best neurosurgeons Jake had known. Work hard, play harder—that was Oz’s single rule for life, just as it had been his own up until ten months ago.
Right up until Brady had appeared in his life.
‘When does it start, next week?’ Oz had asked. And then, the killer question. ‘Did you know that Flávia Maura is scheduled to be talking on Paulista’s lecture programme?’
Even then, in that moment, something had kicked, sharp and unexpected, low in Jake’s gut. He’d tried valiantly to ignore it, but now he knew that had been nothing compared the maelstrom tumbling around inside him now.
‘You know who she is, don’t you?’ Oz had continued, oblivious. ‘She worked on the chlorotoxin you’re using in these trials for a while, though I read an article a few months ago that said she’s now switched to working on a venom from some species of bushmaster viper that might be able to break down cancer cells without damaging healthy cells. I’d have thought it would have been right up your street. Isn’t it a step on from this scorpion-venom-based toxin we’re using here?’
‘Yes, I know what it is,’ Jake had bitten out at length.
Just as he’d known who Flávia was.
And yet, he’d stayed silent. Oz had had other ideas.
‘So you’ve heard of this Flávia, then?’
There had been nothing else for it.
‘As it happens, I caught a lecture of hers by accident a little while ago.’
‘Really? Is she as wackadoodle as they say?’
There had been no reason for him to bristle on her behalf. No reason at all. And even now, half a world away from that OR and only metres away from Flávia, he felt...not protectiveness, obviously, but something...even more strongly.
‘She’s...quirky,’ he had admitted reluctantly.
‘Quirky? I guess that’s one word for it.’ Oz had snorted. ‘But then, I suppose you have to have something different about you to want to work with an animal, or whatever, that could kill you in a matter of hours. And that’s after it has induced vomiting and dizziness, severe internal bleeding and organs shutting down.’
‘She loves what she does.’ He had shrugged, remembering the passion in her voice as she’d talked about how important the snakes were, and how it was a shame that the only way she could save them from man was proving to man that the snakes could ultimately provide the key to curing cancer.
‘And she’s highly intelligent.’
‘Right.’
‘She’s hot, too. I’ve seen a photo. Hence hoping I’d be in Brazil for their summer programme.’
He hadn’t liked the way Oz had been eyeing him so astutely. His mate wasn’t stupid, and one wrong answer would have given the game away. Jake had known he needed to watch what he’d said next, especially with the anaesthesiologist pretending to be preoccupied and the scrub nurses hanging off their conversation. At least it was a team he trusted.
But still.
‘Didn’t particularly notice.’
It hadn’t been so much a lie, but more a whole tightening around his chest, as though the air was being squeezed out of his lungs. It was ridiculous, and yet he hadn’t seemed able to stop it; this woman—this stranger—had such an effect on him.
The effect her presence was having on him even now.
Him.
Jake Cooper. Bowled over by a woman he hadn’t even spoken to. Bowled over by any woman, full stop. It just didn’t happen.
‘Really?’ Oz had looked sceptical. ‘I’d have thought she’d have been just your type.’
‘I didn’t know I had a type.’
‘Smart, stunning and single-minded when it comes to career? You’ve got a type, all right.’
‘You mean as opposed to you.’ Jake didn’t know how he had managed to force the light, wry note into his tone. ‘You just go for female, attractive and up for a good time.’
And Oz had laughed. As though it had been just another version of the conversation they’d been having for years.
‘Nothing wrong with that. As long as we’re all consenting adults and all that.’
‘Yeah, well, I just attended her lecture. Don’t really recall anything else.’
And if it was an outright lie, then Jake had consoled himself with the lie that at least he was the only one who had known.
Still, Oz had eyed him critically.
‘Bull. I don’t buy that. You definitely would have noticed her,’ he had countered. ‘Oh, wait, did you sleep with her and never tell me?’
Jake remembered the way the accusation had riled him. Odd, since it never had done in the past. And even then, as he’d scrabbled about for a deflection, he’d known he was in trouble. Even if he hadn’t realised how deeply.
‘Listen, that lecture was a couple of months after Helen’s death. After Brady.’
At least that bit hadn’t been a lie.
‘Ah, say no more.’ Oz had backed off instantly. ‘How is the champ?’
Jake remembered pausing. Exhaling deeply. He hadn’t liked using Brady to change the conversation like that, but at least there was something of a poetic truth to it. Plus, his nephew catapulting into his life as a seven-year-old orphan was when Oz had proved their friendship of almost a decade was built on more than just nights out after hard operations.
Not every best mate would have been thrilled with a seven-year-old kid bursting in on their bachelor lifestyles, but Oz—the oldest of four brothers—had taken it in his stride, able to relate to Brady in a way Jake himself still hadn’t managed.
His nephew was still a complete mystery to him. And it shamed him, angered him and frustrated him, all at once. He wasn’t a man accustomed to failure. He had never failed. At anything.
But he’d failed at being a brother to Helen and now he was failing at being an uncle, and sole guardian, to Brady.
And he hated himself for it.
‘No idea how he’s going to take to Brazil,’ Jake had begun. Then, ‘No idea how he’s going to like it with only me to talk to.’
‘You’ll cope.’
If only he felt half as confident as Oz.
He could deal with tumours, dying patients, grieving families. But he was at a complete loss when it came to talking to one grieving seven-year-old boy.
‘I suggested going to a water park when I have a free weekend,’ he’d told his mate.
‘And?’
‘He agreed.’ Jake grimaced at the memory just as he had done when recounting it to his friend. ‘But he wasn’t exactly jumping up and down like most seven-year-old kids would.’
‘That’s because Brady isn’t most seven-year-olds.’ Oz had shrugged, like it was obvious. ‘Did you offer to take him into the rainforest? That would have him leaping around like a maniac. In fact, you’d probably get home to find he’d packed both your suitcases. They wouldn’t contain anything you needed, of course, but he’d have his test tubes, his sample pots and his magnifying camera for every insect or arachnid you could possibly find.’
‘I considered it. But you really think taking a young kid into the rainforest is a responsible thing to do? I couldn’t guarantee keeping him safe.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Oz had scoffed. ‘You and I are city guys through and through. But you can get guided tours, some especially geared up for kids.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘Brady told me.’ Oz had sounded surprised. ‘He didn’t tell you?’
No. He hadn’t. Because the fact was that Brady barely exchanged a word with him, if he didn’t have to. Which told him altogether too much about the kind of absent uncle he’d been—and he didn’t like it.
‘Okay, that’s the next step done.’ Oz had confirmed his focus squarely back on the patient—not that it had ever really left—and Jake was grateful for the change of topic. ‘Just one more and you can finally show me this tumour paint close-up. Man, I’d have killed to get this clinical trial of yours.’
‘What can I say? They only choose the best.’
‘You’d think you’d won awards for your research or something...’ Oz had stopped abruptly, his entire demeanour changing in an instant. ‘Ah, wait, is that it?’
He’d moved aside to give Jake room.
‘Kill the lights, please,’ Jake had instructed, all trace of their former banter gone as they’d focused on the task in hand.
The operating room had turned eerily dark, with only the light from the monitors casting out around the area. Then he’d shone a near-infrared light over the patient’s brain and a pink-purplish glow had lit up.
‘That’s it,’ Jake had confirmed with satisfaction. ‘That’s the chlorotoxin we injected last night.’
The chlorotoxin that Flávia Maura had worked on.
The thought had rattled through Jake’s brain before he could stop it, proving that, even before tonight, with the vision of her in front of him, the woman had been positively haunting him. And no matter how many times he told himself it was purely professional interest, a part of him knew there was more to it.
‘It’s lit the tumour up like Christmas lights in a grotto.’ Oz had shaken his head. ‘I’ve seen it on footage but never in person like this. She’s quite the beauty.’
‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ Jake had concurred, staring at the tumour. ‘The engineered toxin fluoresces every cancer cell, yet leaves every single healthy cell around dark.’
‘My God, it shows me every last bit of the tumour which I’d need to remove without worrying about margins and without fear of leaving anything behind, causing a recurrence. The only question will be whether it also interferes with the centres of the lad’s brain responsible for speech or motor control.’
‘That’s your call.’ Jake had nodded. ‘How about get it out so that my patient can get his life back.’
‘Okay, you’re ready for the brain mapping? Can we go ahead and wake the patient, please?’
For the next hour or so, Jake had worked with the neurologist, using flash cards, asking questions and just generally keeping his patient talking whilst Oz had sent light electrical currents down the nerves to stimulate each part of the brain, then worked on removing the tumour.
And then Oz had given the signal that it was time to anaesthetise the patient again so that they could close up.
‘Okay, mate,’ Jake had told his patient. ‘Next time you wake up, you’ll be out of surgery.’
‘You’ll be with me?’ the lad had managed.
‘I’ll come and see you as soon as I can and we’ll talk you through how it’s all gone,’ Jake had confirmed, moving back to allow the anaesthetist to take over.
‘Want to see?’ Oz had offered when he was confident the lad was out again, but Jake had already been making his way around the table.
‘I don’t see any fluoresced areas.’ He’d frowned in disbelief. ‘You were actually able to get all of it?’
‘Every last bit.’ Triumph had reverberated through his mate’s voice. ‘Your patient might have to relearn his grade-two flute from when he was a kid, but if any tumour recurs in this guy, then it won’t be because of anything I had to leave behind. You need to complete these clinical trials so we can get our hands on this stuff for every patient.’
‘I’m working on it,’ Jake had replied grimly. ‘You know how long these things take.’
‘Yeah, too long, when we’ve got patients to try to save. You’d better ask Ms Maura what else she has up her sleeve. And how long.’
And he’d filed it away as though professional interest was the only reason he was planning on talking to Flávia Maura.
They’d worked carefully, precisely, for a little longer.
‘Now bone flap.’
Using plates and wires, they had secured the segment of skull they had removed in order to access the patient’s brain. And then the surgery had been completed, and Flávia Maura had still been in residence in Jake’s head.
‘Nice,’ Jake had congratulated as he and Oz left the OR together, trying to shake her, though not too hard. ‘Good going.’
‘Yeah, well, when you see the delectable Ms Maura, don’t go doing anything I wouldn’t do.’
‘Apart from the fact that leaves pretty much everything on the table—’ Jake remembered ignoring the jolt of anticipation which shot through him ‘—Brady will be with me. So my interactions will be strictly professional.’
Yet now, only three days later, and watching the woman agitatedly shift her weight from one foot to the other before finally taking her leave from the other women, he realised that his intentions towards Flávia Maura were far from strictly professional.
This he admitted as he strode forward and cut a slick path through the crowd to Isabella Sanchez—the woman running the gala evening’s slick operation.
Three more nights, Flávia Maura chanted silently to herself as she took her leave from her colleagues, Doctors Krysta Simpson and Amy Woodell, and edged her way through the crowded ballroom with something approaching relief.
Three more nights of awkward social hospital events and then she could be out of the city and back to the rainforest, where she felt most at home.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Krysta or Amy—far from it. She admired both women, who were incredibly accomplished in their careers and who seemed as kind as they were successful. She’d simply never been very good with crowds.
Animals were fine, but people...? Not so much. In fact, not only had her six-and nine-year-old nieces spent the previous weekend trying to give her a crash course in superficial conversation, but their mother—her own sister—had spent two hours this afternoon primping and preening her like some fun pet project.
Typical bossy Maria, Flávia thought fondly even as she anxiously tried to keep her balance in the unfamiliar skyscraper heels, and smoothed down her long gown. Her sister had practically bullied her into this dress tonight, and although it would undoubtedly look sleek and sophisticated on any other woman, it was all such a far cry from her usual uniform of trusty hiking boots and sensible, light grey cargo pants with a black tee that she felt like she might as well have been wearing little more than a scantily clad, samba carnival dancer.
Either that or like a little girl trying on her mother’s clothes and high heels and lipstick, as her nieces had taken to doing with Maria’s clothes. Flávia grinned to herself at the image of them playing princesses, even as an uncharacteristically melancholic pang shot through her. She loved the two little girls with all her heart, but sometimes—just occasionally—their lives reminded her of all that she and Maria had missed in their own childhoods. Not least the fact that their own mother had never stuck around long enough to give the sisters time to grow up and start to play dress-up in her clothes.
No. Their beloved papai, Eduardo, had raised them single-handedly, usually under the canopy of the Amazon or Atlantic rainforests, with explorer clothes instead of princess gowns, and animals for company rather than people. And Flávia had never regretted a moment of it.
Except when it came to taking life lessons from her nieces and then walking in on her sister stuffing condoms into her purse just before the taxi had arrived this evening, with an encouraging, If you meet a cute doctor, why not try having a little fun for once in your life, Livvy?
But she didn’t want to have a little fun. She was here because her boss demanded it, not because she had any desire to be; the sooner the night was over, the better.
She’d take a deadly bushmaster viper, a Brazilian wandering spider or a poison dart frog over trying to make conversation with a normal human being any day of the week. So between the hospital’s packed social calendars, it was proving to be a particularly tense week.
Still moving—or rather, teetering—Flávia desperately scanned the ballroom, telling herself that she didn’t need an escape route but searching for one all the same. Before her eyes alighted on the doors at the far end and a sense of consolation poured through her.
The botanical gardens were quite busy during the day, but at this time of evening they would probably be closed. If she could sneak in, it would give her a much-needed chance to regroup, and to quell the unfamiliar sensation of champagne bubbles up her nose from the glass she’d been trying to drink for the past hour.
She turned direction sharply, almost straight into one of her least favourite surgeons.
‘The hospital should be more careful of their reputation,’ the condescending tones of Dr Silvio Delgado—clearly pitched to be heard by as many luminaries as possible, as though by denigrating everyone else he somehow elevated himself—reached her ears. ‘First they hire the crazy selvagem woman, then the gigolo, and to add insult to injury, they then bring some frump in to lecture. This one looks like a street person.’
A better person, a stronger person, would have carried on walking, not letting that interminably pompous man get under their skin. But Flávia froze, shame momentarily rendering her immobile before eventually allowing her to twist herself around uncomfortably, a scowl pulling her features taut despite her best efforts not to react.
Selvagem—jungle woman.
It wasn’t the term itself—she’d been called selvagem plenty of times and it didn’t usually bother her—so much as the utter contempt in this particular man’s tone. The pejorative way he spat out the word—selvagem—as if she was as feral as the animals found in the rainforest. Or was that just because Delgado had said as much to her face, many times in the past?
Perhaps that was why Flávia tried telling herself it was the fact that he was also insulting a new colleague—a visitor to Paulista’s—which rattled her most.
Frump.
As though what Krysta wore mattered more than the fact that the woman was a focused, driven individual, already a leader in the combined fields of otolaryngology and facial reconstruction.
Flávia felt as though she ought to say something. She wished she could. Then again, what was to be gained from drawing attention to something half the crowd mercifully hadn’t understood, anyway, given that Delgado had spoken in Portuguese? Anyway, he’d only laugh her off, and she would probably let him.
All the more reason to get to the gardens and be alone.
Flávia gritted her teeth and gingerly lifted her foot, hoping she wasn’t about to do something as stupid as catching the heel in the hem.
‘Is that guy always such an abhorrent boor?’
Perhaps it was the clear-cut English accent which gave away the fact that the speaker was Dr Jacob Cooper. Or it could have been the rich, utterly masculine timbre, suggesting a barely restrained dynamism. Or maybe it was the fact that she remembered that voice only too well. It had featured in her pitiful dreams several times over the past eight months—and in those it wasn’t just asking that one question after her lecture.
Whatever the truth, sensations skittered this way and that, like interlopers, inside Flávia’s chest. The mere sound of his voice ignited every inch of her nerve endings, leaving her feeling as though her entire body was...itching. On fire.
An effect that no one had ever had on her before. Not even Enrico, the man who she had once called her fiancé.
Holding herself steady, Flávia spun slowly back around to face the speaker.
And promptly wished she hadn’t.
