Dylan’s green eyes were wry as he applied himself to the task at hand. Fortunately, he’d performed this same operation a number of times before so there was little danger of him making a hash of it by letting his mind wander for the odd moment. He deftly clamped and snipped until he was ready to remove the organ, quickly depositing it in the dish Lucy offered him.
‘Thanks.’ Bending over the table again, he rinsed out the cavity then checked for any further soft tissue damage. He heard the soft whoosh as the doors into Theatre opened but didn’t look up. He wanted to be absolutely sure that everything was fine before he started to close up…
The skin on the back of Dylan’s neck suddenly began to prickle and his hands stilled. He knew that someone was standing behind him and had to fight the urge to turn round because he also knew who he would see. His heart suddenly seemed to fit in three beats where one would have been ample and he groaned in dismay. Hell and damnation! Surely he wasn’t about to go to pieces because Joanna Martin was standing behind him and watching what he was doing with those sexy grey eyes?
‘Is there a problem, Dr Archer?’
Her voice was as just cool as her expression had been throughout his interview so Dylan couldn’t blame that for the rush of heat which invaded his body. He couldn’t even blame her for the fact that she’d felt it necessary to check up on him even though it rankled just a little. In her shoes, he probably would have done the same thing—made sure the newcomer was up to the job. No, he only had himself to blame for the way he felt at that moment and he was willing, if not exactly eager, to admit it.
Joanna Martin had affected him in the strangest of ways from the moment he’d seen her in the interview room. She’d been wearing a tailored grey suit that day and as he had shaken her hand, he’d realised that the colour had exactly matched the colour of her eyes. It had been such a crazily irrelevant thought in the circumstances that it had been difficult to concentrate while the rest of the panel had introduced themselves. His gaze had kept returning to the woman sitting in the middle of the group as he’d taken stock of all sorts of other inconsequential details, like how velvety-soft her skin had looked and how her honey-blonde hair had seemed to shimmer as though sprinkled with stardust when it had caught the light from the chandelier…
‘Dr Archer?’
Dylan exhaled sharply when Joanna Martin tersely reminded him that she was waiting for an answer. He saw Lucy glance at him curiously and felt a wash of colour run up his face. Fortunately the mask spared him from the embarrassment of having everyone notice his reaction, but he knew what had happened and it worried him. A lot. Making a fool of himself for any reason wasn’t something he was in the habit of doing.
‘Everything is fine, Ms Martin. Thank you.’
His tone was just as cool as Joanna’s had been and he relaxed when he realised he had himself under control once more. He carried on with what he’d been doing—carefully checking that each of the blood vessels he’d needed to sever was firmly tied off. Even though the procedure wasn’t a difficult one, he prided himself on always doing a good job and today it seemed more important than ever that he should be on his mettle when Joanna Martin was watching. He didn’t intend to give her an opportunity to find fault with his work.
Now where had that idea sprung from?
Dylan had no idea why the thought should have popped into his head but all of a sudden he knew as surely as God made little green apples that Joanna Martin wanted to find fault with him. A frown crossed his handsome face as he deftly closed the incision in the patient’s upper left abdomen because it didn’t make sense.
‘I see you decided to use a horizontal incision rather than a vertical one to remove the spleen, Dr Archer. What reason did you have for making that choice?’
Dylan’s hands didn’t falter even if his heart did when Joanna shot the question at him. Whereas before it had fitted in an extra beat now it seemed to have missed a couple. He gritted his teeth as he tried to control his annoyance at having his expertise called into question. If Ms Martin had any doubts about his capabilities she should have voiced them at his interview. That way he could have saved them both a great deal of inconvenience by not accepting the job as her registrar.
‘Experience.’
His tone was clipped as he bit out the answer and he saw Lucy look at him again although there was a hint of sympathy in her eyes this time. Did Joanna Martin make a habit of interrogating her staff like this, perhaps? he wondered. Maybe she was some kind of a control freak and hadn’t singled him out for special treatment but always behaved this way with a new member of the team?
The thought should have been reassuring but for some reason Dylan found it depressing to realise that Joanna might be treating him the same as everyone else. Even though he resented her interference he preferred to think that she viewed him as more than just one of the crowd.
The sheer stupidity of that thought made him laugh out loud and he had to hastily turn it into a cough because he really didn’t want to have to explain what was so amusing. He finished closing up then glanced at Tom Barnes, the anaesthetist, relieved that the operation was over. Never had such a routine piece of surgery turned out to be so stressful.
‘That’s it, then. How’s he doing?’
‘Better than when he came in,’ Tom replied laconically. He was a positive giant of a man with a mop of blond hair crammed under his Theatre hat. He’d been in the changing room when Dylan had arrived and had introduced himself, which had been a good job because otherwise Dylan would never have believed he was a bona fide medico.
Dressed in combat trousers and a tatty T-shirt bearing a surfing motif across its front, Tom hadn’t looked like anyone’s idea of a doctor. However, the minute they had stepped into Theatre Dylan had realised that Tom knew exactly what he was doing, which was probably why Joanna accepted him as part of her team. She was prepared to overlook Tom’s appalling dress sense if it meant she had the calibre of staff she wanted working for her.
For some reason that thought didn’t gel with the image he’d been building up of Joanna Martin. As Dylan thanked the staff and left Theatre, he found himself wondering about a woman who dressed as conservatively as Joanna did and yet who was prepared to overlook such obvious quirks in those who worked for her. It simply didn’t add up to someone who needed to be in control all the time and that naturally made him wonder why she’d been so keen to check up on him…
Unless she had been as eager to see him as he’d been to see her, of course. He could lie to himself until the grass turned blue but the reason why he’d arrived for work so early that morning had been because he had been longing to see Joanna again.
Dylan groaned as he dragged off his Theatre hat and raked an impatient hand through his black hair. He had to stop this nonsense before he made a complete ass of himself. He’d spoken to Joanna Martin for what? An hour, maybe a little more if he counted that conversation they’d had on the phone yesterday. And yet he was behaving as though—as though they were on the brink of having an affair!
Joanna Martin was his boss. Period. He had to get that fact into his head once and for all. However, when the door opened and he saw her coming out of Theatre he knew it wasn’t going to be easy to think of her purely as that.
His vision suddenly blurred so that it seemed as though the room was lit by the glow of a million stars rather than by the glare from a neon striplight. Maybe it was crazy, and maybe he was crazy for thinking it, but he knew in his heart that the woman standing in front of him was going to mean a lot more to him than just someone he worked with. He might not like the idea and was sure that Joanna would hate it if she had any inkling of what he was thinking, but there was no way he could pretend about something so important.
Joanna Martin was the woman he was destined to fall in love with.