St Matthew's Passion: A Medical Romance (6 page)

It didn’t, and after fifteen minutes of trying to force oblivion upon himself he gave up and allowed the forbidden topic to claim his attention.

It had been unmistakable, the look in Melissa’s eyes that afternoon after he’d performed the thoracotomy on the young footballer. Not just admiration, even awe, though both had been present in large quantities. Her inability to keep her eyes off him in the aftermath had been blatant, and almost embarrassing, though he didn’t think anyone else in the room had noticed. And instead of briskly taking it in his stride, he knew he’d responded, meeting her gaze with an honesty of his own. Sometimes it was better not to fake and suppress. Sometimes, a simple expression of one’s feelings wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

His attraction to her was intense, stronger than it had been towards any other woman in recent memory. Perhaps ever. It was as though they were alone in the room, everybody else turned to shadows. If he was truly honest with himself – and why not be, since he’d gone this far? – Fin had wanted then and there to take her in his arms, feel the firm heat of her against him, her hair pressed against his nose and mouth, to give over to the wave of animal feeling that was consuming him, and her as well.

He’d fought the urge with every sinew, and once reasonably confident that he had himself under control, he took trouble to make sure that for the rest of the day and night he was never alone with her. Later she assisted him in theatre in trying to save a man with a stab wound to the liver – their efforts proved unsuccessful after four hours – and although they made eye contact frequently, and there was a residue of the connection they’d made earlier, the fire had died down and he was more able to concentrate on what he was doing.

He wanted her, and yes, in
that
way, but Fin was self-aware enough that he could tell this was no mere physical yearning. It wasn’t even that he merely liked her as a person. Her drive, her intellectual curiosity about everything to do with their specialty, her compassion towards patients: all of these were immensely likeable qualities. But at one point during the evening, quite out of nowhere, the thought had struck him that one day she’d be gone, having completed her training with him and off on the next leg of her career, and he’d been almost floored by a pang of sadness and regret so powerful it had been like a physical force.

Fin sat up abruptly, gritting his teeth. These thoughts were doing him no good at all. He was a man who understood implicitly the value of time, and the importance of not wasting it. Wallowing in fantasy and speculation when he needed to be sleeping was poor time management. Closing his eyes, he allowed to loom into his consciousness the other knowledge that he’d pushed to one side. It didn’t need a lot of coaxing to show itself. It was the reason he could never, not in a thousand years, consider any kind of personal relationship with Melissa, regardless of his feelings for her or of hers for him. It was the reason he was condemned to be alone in this well-appointed bachelor apartment for the rest of his days.

It was a sentence of solitude, passed not by any external judge but by Fin himself. Punishment for the terrible thing he’d done.

The unforgiveable thing.

Numbed by the old thoughts, and memories, Fin sank into an unsettled sleep.

Chapter Four

Melissa wasn’t normally a superstitious person, but she did wonder if she’d somehow managed to jinx herself.

It was a Friday in early December and she was taking a rare long weekend off. Her older brother, whom she hadn’t seen since the Christmas before, was arriving from Australia and she was going to meet him down at their parent’s home in Devon. Melissa had been planning an early start on the Saturday morning and was hoping for a good night’s sleep in preparation for the six-hour drive. The reason she thought she might have jinxed herself was that she’d told half a dozen people that with any luck she’d get out of work by six at the latest.

She came out of the scrub room and glanced at the clock in the corridor outside. Just after two in the morning.

It was just one of those things. Melissa had learned early on in her career – as a medical student, in fact – that medicine wasn’t like a nine-to-five job, in which work not completed by home time could be left for the next day. So when Mrs Mendes had developed post-operative complications at a little before five in the afternoon, Melissa had taken her back into theatre without a thought of the clock. And after the bleeding had been controlled and Mrs Mendes was safely back in the recovery room, the injured cyclist had appeared needing urgent attention, which delayed Melissa’s leaving theatre.

As she made her way towards the office she shared with Emma, the other registrar, Melissa considered her options. The last Underground train would have departed, so there was no getting back to her flat that way. She considered a night bus, but they were infrequent and unpredictable. Although it was a considerable distance from St Matthew’s to Bayswater, Melissa wouldn’t have minded the walk, but it was a raw December night with the suggestion of sleet through the windows.

No, she’d have to find the night porter and ask if there were any spare on-call rooms she could crash out in for a few hours. Failing that, there was a moth-eaten old arm chair in her office that was comfortable enough to sit in, though she’d never tried sleeping in it.

She was letting herself into the office to look up the porter’s number when Fin’s voice made her turn.

‘Melissa? You’re here late. I thought you’d gone hours ago.’

He was halfway out the door of his own office down the corridor, looking as if he was about to depart. As always, Melissa felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart quicken. Even at this hour he looked good. No, he looked great. His silk shirt was a little creased, the knot of his tie pulled a few degrees askew; his dark hair was rumpled. But his skin glowed, and his eyes were as intense as they were when he faced the first case of the day.

She smiled, shrugged. ‘One of those evenings.’ She told him briefly about Mrs Mendes and then the cyclist. He listened closely, nodded, and made no comment. Melissa had noticed that he was questioning her less and less about her management of her cases, and although he wasn’t exactly gushing with praise, she took it as a sign that he was becomingly increasingly satisfied with her work as an independent surgeon.

‘You heading home now?’ he asked.

‘The last train’s gone. I’ll find a room here.’ She tried to sound as nonchalant as she could, as though this was a minor inconvenience to be taken in her stride.

‘Nonsense.’ He tipped his head. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

‘No, that’s all right –’ she began, but he held up a hand.

‘I know you’re off for the weekend. You don’t want to spend it with a stiff neck and back after enduring a night on one of these beds. I’ve experienced them myself.’ He put a palm behind her back in a gently ushering movement, not quite making contact, though she felt a small thrill between her shoulder blades as if he’d touched her.

The hospital corridors, while not quite empty, were far less busy at that hour, and their footsteps echoed off the walls. Melissa strode along beside Fin, feeling as awkward and as tongue-tied as a sixteen-year-old. When Fin asked, reasonably enough, where she lived, for a few heartstopping moments she couldn’t remember. Then she collected herself, faked a coughing fit to cover her silence, and told him.

His car was a bottle-green Jaguar XK8, not new but well-looked after. She sank into the leather passenger seat, revelling in the luxury of it. The aroma in the cockpit-like interior was that of the leather itself, plus aftershave and a hint of something she couldn’t at first identify. Later she grasped it. It was the smell of Fin himself, a subtle, indescribable scent that was subliminal and unique to him.

He swung the car up the ramp with practised ease and into the streets above. The icy sleet was coming down at a slant, its bleakness failing to hide the grandeur of the London river view, one that never failed to captivate her: the quirkiness of the London Eye against the spectacle of the Palace of Westminster.

They spoke about work, as doctors find themselves doing even when off-duty. Melissa kept up her end of the conversation without fully paying attention to it. Instead, her awareness was focused on physical sensations: the snug fit of the leather under her bottom and thighs, warmed by her own body heat; the maddening, delirious aroma she’d noticed immediately on climbing in; and above all, the presence of Fin beside her, the closest he’d ever been to her for this length of time. She glanced at his strong, deft hand curled around the steering wheel, the fingers ringless, a simple silver link securing the white shirt cuff at his wrist. From time to time she looked at his profile, a perfectly natural thing to do when he was talking, and marvelled at the cleanness of the lines of his face, the smooth straight nose, the wryly curving lips, the firm jaw with a dusting of night stubble. And every now and again he looked across at her in return, and his gaze pinned her to her seat and tightened her chest.

All too quickly the Jaguar reached the bohemian streets of Bayswater. She almost told him the wrong turn-off, wanting to prolong the journey by even a minute, but she bit her tongue. He pulled down the narrow mews and she pointed to the block of flats.

‘Here we are.’

‘Nice little street.’ He peered out the window, glancing around.

Melissa was suddenly gripped by a crazy notion. An idea so outrageous it could only have come from the wild region inside everyone that doesn’t care about rules or propriety or any of those civilised trappings.

What if I invite him in?

There could be no coyness about it. No ambiguously innocent enquiry if he’d like to “come in for coffee”. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning. He was a man, she was a woman, and there were feelings between them which she knew he was aware of as much as she was, even if they’d never come remotely close to discussing them or even referring to them. If she invited him in, and he accepted, they would both know exactly where things were going to lead.

It would force the issue out into the open, that was for sure. Put an end to this tension which, however giddying and perversely pleasurable, was quite frankly tearing her apart. If she asked him in and he accepted, their lives would change irreversibly. Her future, until a few weeks ago so mapped out, so dominated by a single goal, would at one stroke become a vast, frightening expanse of uncertainty.

And if he said no?

If he said no, her future would remain on track. She’d suffer humiliation, and horrified embarrassment, and a small part of her would wither and die and form a scar that would distort her soul a little.

Melissa had seconds to decide, every passing moment an eloquent statement in itself. The rush of physical sensation had become a torrent now. Fin sat watching her, the Jaguar’s engine idling. Had he leaned towards her a little or was she imagining it? Inadvertently she felt herself lean towards him. His face was close enough that his eyes, so grey and yet expressive, were flicking back and forth between hers. His mouth moved, the sensuous lips parting a fraction as if his breathing was deepening and he needed to inhale and exhale using more than his nose.

‘Hope you get some sleep,’ he murmured, raising his eyebrows.

The moment was gone, whipped away like a whisper into a hurricane, and Melissa was stammering her thanks and slamming the door and fumbling for her keys. When he didn’t immediately pull away she realised he was waiting to see her safely inside her flat, so she waved and walked to the entrance of the flats, trying to make it a saunter but feeling like a foal taking its first steps.

Her hand shook so much that it took her four attempts to push the key into the lock, and by the time she reached the warmth of her rooms the tremors had taken hold of her entire body so that she flopped on to her bed, fully clothed, weak and drained and in utter turmoil.

***

In Fin’s dream, she was before him, real in the sense that there was nothing hazy or insubstantial about her but ethereal in that he couldn’t touch her.

Melissa wore an evening dress, a shimmering blue number that bared her back and shoulders and sheathed her figure tightly and ended above her knees. Her blonde hair was piled artfully on top of her head and her lips and eyes were touched just lightly with makeup.

She moved in a slow dance in front of him, her huge eyes fixed on his, her limbs and hips shimmying to music only she could hear. He watched the slow pursing of her mouth, the liquid wink of light off moisture on the lower lip. His gaze travelled down the soft line of her throat to the hollow at its base, to her slim exposed shoulders and then further, over the swell of her breasts, their slopes pushed forward by the dress and shadowed in between. Still lower, he took in her tight waist and the slowly swinging curves of her hips, down her long slender legs to the narrow ankles and feet.

Almost imperceptibly she advanced towards him, not walking so much as gliding. As she drew nearer he became aware of tiny pinprick beads of perspiration in the dip between her breasts. Mesmerised, he reached out a hand to run a finger across the moisture, but found that even though she was close enough to touch he somehow couldn’t quite reach her.

She smiled, showing beautiful even white teeth, her red tongue playing behind the upper row, teasing.