LITMIR.BIZ

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her sappy little heart over the years, and the urge to fix Ethan Hunter had withered and died a long time ago. He was a big boy who could take care of himself.

      Leo looked from one to the other as she and Ethan stood awkwardly in front of his desk. ‘Let’s get down to it, shall we?’ he suggested.

      ‘Yes,’ they both said in unison, and then glanced guiltily at each other before simultaneously looking away.

      Leo sighed. ‘Take a seat,’ he said, indicating the chairs opposite him, and Olivia wasn’t sure whose butt was on whose respective chair faster—hers or Ethan’s.

      Clearly Ethan was keen to get this over with.

      Good.

      That made two of them.

      Ethan strode into the Lighthouse Children’s Hospital just prior to lunch. He’d walked from Harley Street. Last night the thought of walking any distance had been beyond him, but he usually walked from the clinic to the Lighthouse, and also to Princess Catherine’s Hospital, time permitting.

      The Hunter Clinic and its team of surgeons had operating privileges at both hospitals and neither was far to walk. Still, after Olivia’s dressing-down last night he was using his stick, even if he did have plans to abandon it just prior to seeing his patients.

      Olivia had accused him of vanity last night and he’d set her straight on that. Drawing attention to himself, to his injuries, wasn’t something he was keen on. But it was more than that. A surgeon with a walking stick just sent the wrong kind of message. Especially in the world of plastics and reconstructive surgery. Patients wondered about a surgeon who couldn’t heal himself.

      Leaving his stick in one of the empty offices, he did his rounds. Being a visiting surgeon, he didn’t have any junior doctors to accompany him but always made sure one of the nursing staff on each ward did. Nothing annoyed the nurses more than a doctor coming in and making changes to treatment and then leaving again without informing them.

      And Ethan had learned a long time ago never to upset the nursing staff. That nurses were a vital part of the medical team—the interface between the doctor and the patient.

      And you annoyed them at your own peril.

      He prided himself on having good relationships with the nursing staff wherever he went, and at the Lighthouse particularly.

      He left Ama to last. There was a lot that needed to be done before she went to Theatre next week and he wanted to have a clean plate today so he could focus solely on her. Plus Olivia was with her, and for some reason he was unaccountably nervous. It was obvious from her briefing this morning that this case was dear to her and he found himself not wanting to disappoint her.

      He’d done that once already and was desperate to make amends.

      He made his way to Ama’s room by himself, assuring Ama’s nurse, who was busy with another of her patients, that he would keep her up to date with the tests and procedures he was ordering. He heard laughter as he approached—Olivia’s laughter. With her petite frame she looked as if she’d have one of those light and tinkly girly laughs, but it was surprisingly deep and throaty and it always came out at full roar—coming not just from her belly but from her heart.

      He remembered it well from back when she used to smile at him, when she used to laugh.

      It evoked powerful memories of a turbulent time in his life. A time when her laughter had helped ease a lot of his frustrations.

      She had her back to the door when he pulled up and he lounged against the frame, observing her for long moments. She was sitting on the bed opposite a little girl who sat cross-legged in the lap of an older woman. Their skin was as dark and burnished as the finest ebony.

      Ama and her mother, he assumed. Although he could only see them in profile and therefore the defect, which he knew to be quite significant, wasn’t showing, given that it was the other side of Ama’s face. He also noted the colourful headscarf that Ama wore draped over her affected side, obscuring it completely.

      Looked at from this vantage point, Ama looked perfectly normal. But he’d seen the pictures—NOMA had ravaged the right side of her face, leaving her terribly disfigured.

      A chequerboard sat between them and they were engrossed in a lively game. A third person—a young woman with skin more of a mocha colouring—sat on a chair beside the bed, also involved, switching between English and an unfamiliar language and laughing as Ama made a run of the board.

      ‘Ama, you are getting much too good at this,’ Olivia said, and laughed that full throaty laugh again.

      The woman in the chair spoke to Ama in what he presumed was her own language and the girl giggled, her eyes sparkling in absolute delight.

      Ethan was struck by how intimate the cosy little circle appeared. They all seemed very comfortable in each other’s company. Ama’s mother was looking at Olivia as if she was some kind of saint and Ama was smiling so big at Olivia, her eyes sparkling so brightly, it was like the sun shining.

      Olivia passed over a red chequer piece to Ama and Ama laughed again, the whites of her eyes flashing as she held on to Olivia’s hand for long moments before accepting the spoils and crowning her victorious piece.

      Ama said something in her own tongue and the woman Ethan assumed was the translator said, ‘Ama thinks she’s winning.’

      Olivia laughed again, and even with the distance between them, it whispered against his skin.

      ‘Oh, does she, now?’ Olivia said with mock indignation. ‘We’ll see how easy it is for her to win when I’m tickling her,’ she announced, raising her hands and wiggling her fingers in Ama’s direction before launching a tickle attack on a giggling, squealing Ama.

      The chequerboard was upended, but nobody seemed to mind as general pandemonium ensued.

      Ethan was struck by the genuine connection between Olivia and Ama and her mother. There was nothing forced or stilted—just an easy familiarity. But there was also an unspoken trust in their byplay, and Ethan knew how hard Olivia would have had to work to gain that trust. To take them out of their own country, away from everything they knew and trusted, and bring them to a strange place with strange people and strange customs.

      But most of all it was just a joy to see the return of the Olivia he’d once known. Last night she’d fluctuated from reserved to distant to tense, and this morning she’d been polite and professional. Hell, even when she’d been angry with him there’d been an aloofness that he’d never seen in her before.

      But this was the Olivia of old. The one who got way too close to her patients. Who’d spend time at the end of a very long intern shift playing games or reading books to the kids in her charge, or stopping in at the shop to buy a favourite snack or a goofy toy for a child in her care.

      Their bosses had frowned upon it, and he had teased her about it endlessly, but it was what made Olivia so good at what she did—she wasn’t just their doctor, she was their friend.

      That had, of course, led to tears on occasions. Every death or negative outcome she’d taken to heart. She’d considered herself a partner in a patient’s journey and she’d felt it deeply when things went wrong.

      Many a time he’d been a shoulder for her to cry on.

      And he’d been worried last night, when she’d looked at him with such reserve and distance, that the old Olivia was gone forever. That maybe he’d been responsible for killing her off.

      He was glad to see he hadn’t.

      She might have developed a harder shell, but it was good to know that she still had her gooey centre. It wasn’t a particularly smart trait, or conducive to longevity in the profession, but as someone who also became a little too invested in the lives of the people he operated on Ethan recognised, on a subliminal level, that Olivia Fairchild was a kindred spirit.

      It was why he’d chosen the army and humanitarian work over the more lucrative field of cosmetic surgery,

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