Accidental Seduction

  ACCIDENTAL SEDUCTION

  Caroline Anderson

  Audley Memorial Hospital – Book 26

  The price of seduction

  Annie has been coping as a registrar and as a new single mom, but only just. Then she meets Max in the hospital corridor, after more than a year, and discovers he's her new boss. Now her senses and her emotions are completely in turmoil. Her guilt overwhelms her -- because she's never told him about their daughter; because she gave in to a fateful seduction that should never have happened -- and because she wants him all over again..

  CHAPTER ONE

  Max walked onto the ward and looked around, checking out the unfamiliar layout, the strange faces, the different uniforms. He felt a twinge of apprehension and dismissed it. He knew himself better than that. A couple of days and he'd be part of the team—except that this time he was the head of the team, the consultant, the one they'd all look to.

  That ought to scare him, he thought, but it didn't. He was ready for it, champing at the bit. It was what he'd worked so hard for, for so many years—and it started now. With an inward girding of the loins he drew himself up, squared his shoulders and continued walking onto the ward.

  'Can I help you?'

  He turned his head and smiled at the nurse. 'Morning. I'm Max Williamson, the new—'

  'Oh, Mr Williamson, we were expecting you—but probably a bit later. I'm Suzie Crane, one of the staff nurses. Come with me, I'll take you to meet Damien, the charge nurse.'

  He followed her down the ward and into a treatment room, where a male nurse was just finishing taping up a dressing.

  'Right, Ted, you'll do,' he said, and turned towards the newcomers. 'Hello, Suzie.' He scanned Max with curious eyes and stripped off his gloves, holding out a hand in greeting. 'Damien Rayner—and you must be Mr Williamson.'

  'Max, please. It's good to meet you.'

  'And you. You're good and early. Trying to create a good impression?'

  Max chuckled. 'Just finding my feet. Someone's kindly scheduled my time so I don't really start till this afternoon, but I wanted to familiarise myself and meet everybody, and I thought this was the obvious place to start.'

  'Quite so. Let's take five and grab a coffee. Ted, I'm going to leave you with Suzie, OK?'

  'Perfectly all right.' The elderly man chuckled. 'She's a lot prettier than you.'

  'You old flirt,' Suzie teased, and flicked the brakes off the bed. 'Come on, let's wheel you back before you get ideas.'

  Max and Damien left them to it and headed back up the ward. As they walked Damien explained the layout, a very common and sensible system of bays and treatment areas, with small side rooms of one or two for critical patients right under the eye of the staff. A long desk bristling with computers and phones and monitoring equipment, the nursing station was set right in the centre of the ward and was the hub around which all the activity revolved.

  Behind it was the ward office and a little kitchen, and Damien was just heading for the door when the phone rang and he was summoned.

  'Typical. Give me a minute,' he said, and went into his office.

  Max stood there for a moment looking round, and then his ear caught a sound, a laughing voice that stopped him in his tracks.

  It couldn't be.

  He went still, his head raised slightly, listening for the sound again in the hubbub of the ward, but his heart had slammed against his ribs then settled to a steady roar, drowning out not only the voice but also reason and common sense.

  You're an idiot. It can't be her, he told himself— and anyway, she's married.

  It didn't stop you last time, his alter ego reminded him ruthlessly.

  His heart still wasn't listening either. It was thrashing away inside his chest, threatening to choke him. He dragged in a much-needed lungful of air, propped himself casually against the wall and closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, praying for enough control that he didn't make a complete idiot of himself.

  The voices were approaching. He could hear it again, the voice that sounded like hers, and he opened his eyes and watched as the small group spilled through the double doors and came onto the ward.

  It was her.

  Thinner, lines of strain around her eyes, her mid-brown hair longer now, scraped up in a ponytail, but unmistakably Annie. She was wearing theatre blues, baggy, soft cotton pyjamas that should have done nothing for her, but she looked stunning. He closed his eyes again just briefly, and when he opened them she was looking at him.

  Her jaw dropped a fraction, then firmed, her shoulders straightening as if to resist a blow, and he felt a surge of regret for all the things that had happened to disturb the status quo. No, not for the things that had happened, but their effect, at least.

  He shrugged away from the wall, hoping that she couldn't hear his heart thundering against his ribs.

  'Annie,' he murmured, and he felt his mouth kick up in a crooked smile.

  'Max.'

  She made it sound like a prayer—only instead of a prayer of thanks, it sounded like a prayer for deliverance.

  A voice interrupted them. 'Do you two know each other?'

  Max turned his head to look at the man. Another surgeon, also in scrubs, his eyes searching. He recognised him from his interview. David somebody. Armstrong?

  'We've met,' she said carefully, and Max nearly laughed.

  Met? They'd done a damn sight more than meet— and yet they hadn't, really. He didn't know her surname, where she'd been for the past year and a bit, anything about her other than the simple fact that his body and his heart had recognised her the very first moment they'd first set eyes on each other at that hotel.

  He held out his hand, and slowly, reluctantly almost, she placed her cool, firm palm against his and heat rocketed through him. His fingers curled around the back of her hand, seeking to prolong the brief contact, but she pulled it back, tucking it into her pocket as her eyes slid away.

  'So what brings you here?' she asked with false brightness.

  'My job. I've just started—I'm the new consultant general surgeon.'

  Her eyes flew up to his again, shock widening them to impossible proportions. 'You?' she whispered, and then swallowed hard, recovering her composure with visible effort. 'We'll be working together, then,' she added in a commendably normal voice. 'I'm your registrar.'

  'My registrar?'

  It was his turn to sound shocked. As his registrar, she'd be working with him on a daily basis, and he'd be intimately involved with every aspect of her training. Ruthlessly he crushed the surge of delight and tried to restrain his smile.

  'So we'll be working together,' he said, stating the obvious.

  'Apparently.'

  'Have you two worked together before, then?' David Armstrong interrupted again.

  'No. We, ah, met each other on holiday. Only briefly, a little over a year ago. I don't think we got round to surnames.'

  Annie made a tiny strangled noise and looked frantically around her. 'Oh, look at the time! I have to get on—we've got a list and I'm assisting the Specialist Registrar. Unless you want to take over?'

  He looked back down at her, her wide, green eyes guarded now, and his heart thumped again. 'No. You go ahead. I might pop in, but I've got a bit of orienteering to do before I can start work, and I think someone's kindly scheduled me a clinic for this afternoon. How about lunch?'

  Panic fluttered in her eyes, and he hurried to reassure her. 'We ought to talk about work—I could do with you filling me in on what's what.'

  The panic retreated, replaced by a faint wave of colour in her pale cheeks. 'Um—sure. OK. Whatever. I'll see if the SpR can come too. I'll bleep you when we've finished in Theatre.'

  'Don't bother. I'll come
up when I'm done.'

  She nodded, then glanced up at the clock again. 'I really do have to get on.'

  'OK. I'll see you. Which theatre?'

  'Four. Someone will direct you.'

  She had to go past him, but they were standing in a bottleneck by the nursing station and she brushed against him, sending heat through him again like a flash fire. He almost groaned aloud.

  Working with her was going to be a very interesting experience. He just wasn't sure he'd survive it!

  Of all the people, in all the places...!

  Annie walked down the ward in a daze, her feet on autopilot. She picked up the notes, spoke to the patients she was due to see in Theatre shortly, reassuring them automatically as she went round the ward, but all the time her thoughts were on Max.

  She'd always thought she wouldn't see him again, and yet now here he was—and not only here, but here for good, working with her, for heaven's sake! Suddenly everything seemed unbearably complicated.

  She turned towards the ward door, ready to make her escape, and he was there, hovering near the exit, in conversation with the charge nurse. As she approached he glanced up, his eyes spearing her so that her footsteps faltered.

  'Excuse me,' he murmured to Damien, and then he was at her side, falling into step beside her. 'Change of plans,' he announced: 'The SpR has just phoned in sick, so I'm coming up to Theatre with you and you can fill me in as I work—or I can assist, if you like. I'd like to see you operate and there's no time like the present.'

  She nearly choked. The consultant, assisting her? Oh, well, it might come in handy. One of the cases was promising to be a bit more tricky than they'd first expected and she had half anticipated that Steve Kelly, the SpR, would have to call the consultant, whoever he was. But—Max?

  'Oh, well, you can always pick up the pieces,' she said, striving for a light note, but her heart was pounding and she felt an absurd mixture of elation and dread that was nothing to do with work and everything to do with this man striding along beside her on long, lean legs, charisma pouring off him like a tidal wave.

  So many complications.

  Well, no. Only one, really, but such an important one. Too important for her to allow her personal feelings to get in the way. Annie slid a sideways glance at his hand, but there was no wedding ring. That meant nothing, of course. Many doctors didn't wear one, particularly surgeons because of trapping germs under them or catching them on things. She always took her ring off for surgery and, in fact, for the last few weeks hadn't worn it at all.

  Not that it counted now, really.

  Passing through a doorway with Max's arm brushing hers and sending heat shooting through her body, she wondered if it had counted before, or if her role as Peter's wife had just been a part she'd played.

  In which case, Max had definitely been a walk-on, walk-off one-liner.

  But what a line!

  '—on the list?'

  'Sorry?'

  'I said, can you fill me in on what's on the list? Who are we expecting?'

  She dragged her mind back to the subject. 'Um...reversing a colostomy, laparoscopy for investigation of vague abdominal pain that might be almost anything, a hernia—I can't remember the other two.'

  Not surprisingly. She could hardly remember her name. She tried to focus her thoughts. 'The laparoscopy might be complicated. She's got a chequered history.' She filled him in as they walked towards Theatre, but her mind was hardly on it. All she could think about, all she could see or hear was Max beside her, his rangy, well-muscled body, the slight scent of his soap and skin, remembered from that brief encounter—

  Annie nearly choked, stumbling slightly on the perfectly level floor, and his hand came up like lightning to steady her elbow.

  'All right?'

  No! She was far from all right. She dredged up a smile and detached herself from him. She couldn't allow this again. He must be married now, probably with a baby on the way.

  'How's Fiona?' she asked, to remind him of his obligations so that one of them, at least, would remember that they had some, but he just gave her a slightly quizzical smile.

  'Fiona? I imagine she's all right. She's married to a banister now, living in London. I haven't seen her for over a year.'

  Annie was sure her jaw dropped. Fiona, married? To someone else? She felt a little surge of something that could have been hope, and suppressed it ruthlessly. So what if he was free? She wasn't. Not truly. She had obligations, responsibilities.

  So does he, her alter ego reminded her, but she ignored it. Only if she involved him would her obligations affect him, and she wasn't sure she could do that. Wasn't sure she dared. And anyway, there might be someone else in his life. Probably was. Bound to be.

  Whatever, now was not the time. She slapped open the door to Theatre with the palm of her hand and breezed through it, smiling at everyone with everything except her eyes. 'Morning, all. This is our new consultant...'

  Annie floundered, suddenly realising that she couldn't introduce him by his first name and she still didn't know his surname. How ridiculous, after all that had passed! She looked to him for help, but he was there already, smiling and holding out his hand.

  'Williamson—Max Williamson. Good to meet you all.'

  He shook hands with the theatre crew—the scrub nurse, Moira, the circulating nurse Annie thought was called Angie, Dick the anaesthetist. They merged into a blur and all smiled and joked and chatted while she stood there and suppressed her irrational urge to burst into tears or scream.

  What on earth was she going to do? She couldn't work with him every day and not tell him, it wasn't in her nature, but—hell's teeth, what a can of worms!

  'Right, I'm going to scrub. We've got the first coming up in about ten minutes.'

  They all looked at her as one, and she realised her crisp voice had sliced through their banter and brought a slightly shocked silence to the room. She offered a tentative smile and fled to the changing room.

  Annie was nervous, not surprisingly. Max remembered operating in front of his consultant for the first time, and he could distinctly recall the adrenaline rash and the wild urge to hyperventilate.

  He smiled at her, but his mask was in the way and, anyway, she wasn't looking at his eyes. Anywhere else but, he thought, and gave a quiet sigh. She was married. Their brief meeting had been an aberration, a very short-lived hiccup in the even tenor of her life. He could hardly expect her to look at him with devotion, even if she had, once, for just a few very short hours.

  He forced himself to concentrate on her hands, and noticed they were trembling.

  'Take your time,' he said quietly. 'Nice light, smooth strokes with the scalpel. Don't fidget with it— that's lovely. Bit more, give yourself room to move. Better. OK. Now the next layer.'

  He cauterised a tiny vessel and the scrub nurse swabbed to keep the field clear so she could see what she was doing, and gradually she relaxed into her work.

  She was good, he had to admit. A natural. There were things she needed to learn, but she had the ability in her to be a very good surgeon. Not everybody did, no matter what their inclination. It took more than just the desire to be a surgeon to make you into one.

  The patient was having a colostomy reversed after a section of bowel had been rested to heal the ulceration and perforation following neglected diverticular disease, so she told him. Now, a few weeks after the initial operation, the end of the bowel that had been brought out onto the abdomen to form an outlet was being reattached to the recovered lower part of the bowel, and once healed should restore normal function and dignity to the patient.

  Provided, of course, that a correct diet and treatment regime was followed and the patient didn't stoically and erroneously struggle on regardless if it flared up again.

  Under his supervision and instruction she performed the whole operation faultlessly, and he had the feeling she was simply tolerating his running commentary and knew exactly what to do anyway.

  Fortunately she could
n't see his self-deprecating smile under the mask—or maybe unfortunately. If she only ever looked at him it would be an improvement, but maybe this was the way it had to be.

  With a sigh he stepped back from the table and snapped off his gloves as he left the room, throwing them and the gown and mask into the bin and heading for the coffee-machine. She'd finished closing and was just swabbing the patient down, and she didn't need him any more.

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed again. She never had needed him. He'd just been a moment's amusement, a little diversion to take her out of the humdrum routine of her marriage. Hell's teeth, it had only been one day, for goodness' sake! Hardly anything, really, except for the last brief hour that had changed the carefully orchestrated course of his life.

  And it was more than obvious to him now that she wanted to forget it, to move on and leave the past behind, where it belonged.

  Fine. That suited him. He had to work with her, and it was probably easier this way—or it would be, if his body would only take the hint and leave him alone. But it remembered her, the feel of her skin, the touch of her hands, the soft fullness of her breasts pillowed against his chest—

  With a growl of frustration he smacked the coffee-cup down on the worktop, splashing his hand. He stared at it, watching the dark liquid dribble over his skin and catch on the fine hairs across the back of his knuckles. Would he never stop wanting her? Never stop remembering that day?

  He heard her voice as she came out of the operating room, talking to one of the nurses. She was laughing, but it sounded dutiful to his ears.

  Crazy. He didn't, surely, know her well enough to know if she was truly amused or simply being polite? And then he turned and met her eyes, arid they were anguished, and he knew that she remembered too, and was tormented by it.

  He should have felt better, but instead he just felt sad, because nothing had really changed. She was still married, and still off limits, whatever had happened in his life.

  He washed his hands and poured himself another coffee, retreating with it to a chair. There were plenty of seats. It would be interesting to see if she joined him.