Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection. Kate Hardy

his posh accent, there was also something engaging and decidedly un-British about his lopsided and cheeky grin. It wasn’t a smile one associated with a consultant. It would break over the stark planes of his cheeks, vanquishing the esteemed surgeon and give rise to the remnants of a cheeky and mischievous little boy. But it wasn’t so much the smile that undid her—it was the glint in his slate-grey eyes. He had the ability to focus his attention on a person and make them feel as if they were the only human being on the planet.

      ‘Welcome to the castle, Mitchell,’ he’d said to her on her first day.

      As she’d shaken his outstretched hand and felt his firm pressure wrap around her fingers and travel up her arm, she’d been horrified to feel herself just a little bit breathless. Her planned speech had vanished and she’d found herself replying in her broadest Australian accent, ‘Thanks. It’s great to be here.’

      It had taken less than a week for her to realise that Alistair North’s cheeky grin almost always flagged that he was about to break the rules and wreak havoc on a grand scale. She’d also learned that his eyes alone, with their dancing smoky hue and intense gaze that made the person in their sights feel like they mattered to him like no one else, were frequently used with devastating ease to tempt women into his bed.

      She conceded that, perhaps, on her first day when she’d felt momentarily breathless, she’d succumbed to the hypnotic effect of his gaze. Now, after working closely with him for weeks, she was immune to its effects. She’d spent ten years slogging her way up the medical career ladder, spending more hours in hospitals than out of them, and she wasn’t about to risk it all by landing up in the boss’s bed. More importantly, she didn’t like Alistair North, so even if he were the last man on earth, she wouldn’t be tempted.

      Apparently, she was virtually the only woman at the castle with that thought. Over the past few weeks she’d been stunned to find herself sought out by hopeful women seeking information about Alistair North’s proclivities, or worse still, being asked to act as go-between for disappointed and sometimes furious women whom he’d dated and then hadn’t bothered to call. All things considered, from his casual disregard of the rules to his blasé treatment of women, there was no way on God’s green earth or in the fiery depths of hell that she was attracted to that man. Not now. Not never.

      The stories about Alistair North that circulated around the hospital held fable qualities. If she hadn’t been working closely with him as his speciality registrar, she’d have laughed on being told the tales. She’d have said, ‘They’ve got to be the invention of an overactive imagination.’ But she did work with him. Sadly, she’d seen enough evidence to know at least two of the stories she’d heard were true so she had no reason not to believe the others. As hard as she tried to focus solely on Alistair North’s immense skill as a neurosurgeon and block out the excited noise that seemed to permanently spin and jangle around him, it was impossible.

      Everywhere she turned, people talked about his exploits in and out of the operating theatre. Gossip about who he was currently dating or dumping and who he’d been seen with driving into work that morning ran rife along the hospital corridors. It was as if speculation about the man was the hospital’s secondary power supply. What she hated most of all was the legendary status the young male house officers gave him, while she was the one left trailing behind, picking up the pieces.

      No, the sensation she got every time she was in the same space as Mr Alistair North was antagonism. The man may be brilliant and talented in the operating theatre but outside of it he was utterly unprofessional. He was stuck permanently in adolescence, and at thirty-nine that was not only ridiculous, it was sad. Most of his contemporaries were married with children but she supposed it would take a brave—or more likely deluded—woman to risk all on him. The only thing Claire would risk on Alistair North was her brain. Despite what she thought of the man, she couldn’t deny the doctor was the best neurosurgeon in the country.

      The little girl on Alistair North’s back was now waving enthusiastically at her. Claire blinked behind her glasses, suddenly realising it was Lacey—the little girl they were operating on in an hour’s time. Why wasn’t she tucked up in her bed quiet and calm?

      ‘Wave back, Kanga,’ Alistair North said, his clear and precise Oxford accent teasing her. ‘It won’t break your arm.’

      Claire’s blood heated to boiling point. Did the man know that kangaroos boxed? The thought of bopping him on his fake nose was far too tempting. She felt the expectant gaze of the ward staff fixed firmly on her and suddenly she was thrown back in time. She was in Gundiwindi, standing in front of the class, with fifteen sets of eyes boring into her. She could see the red dust motes dancing in the starkly bright and uncompromising summer sunshine and the strained smile of her teacher slipping as his mouth turned down into a resigned and grumpy line. She could hear the shuffling and coughing of her peers—the sound that always preceded the one or two brutal comments that managed to escape from their mouths before Mr Phillips regained control.

      Moron. Idiot.

      Stop it. She hauled her mind back to the present, reminding herself sternly that she wasn’t either of those things. She’d spent two decades proving it. She was a woman in a difficult and male dominated speciality and she was eleven months away from sitting her final neurosurgery exams. She’d fought prejudice and sexism to get this far and she’d fought herself. She refused to allow anyone to make her feel diminished and she sure as hell wasn’t going to accept an order to wave from a man who needed to grow up. She would, however, do what she always did—she’d restore order.

      In heels, Claire came close to matching Alistair North’s height, and although her preference had always been to wear ballet flats, she’d taken herself shoe shopping at the end of her first week of working with him. The added inches said, Don’t mess with me. She took a few steps forward until she was standing side on to him but facing Lacey. Ignoring Alistair North completely, and most definitely ignoring his scent of freshly laundered cotton with a piquant of sunshine that made her unexpectedly homesick, she opened her arms out wide towards the waving child.

      ‘Do you want to come for a hop with Kanga?’

      ‘Yes, please.’

      Lacey, a ward of the state, transferred almost too easily into her arms, snuggling in against her chest and chanting, ‘Boing, boing, boing.’

      Claire pulled her white coat over her charge, creating a makeshift pouch, and then she turned her back on Alistair North. She strode quickly down the ward carrying an overexcited Lacey back to her bed. As she lowered her down and tried to tuck her under the blankets, the little girl bounced on the mattress.

      Thanks for nothing, Alistair, Claire muttered to herself. It was going to take twice as long as normal to do all the routine preoperative checks. Yet another day would run late before it had even started.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ALASTAIR NORTH MOVED his lower jaw sideways and then back again behind his surgical mask, mulling over the conundrum that was his incredibly perfectionist and frustratingly annoying speciality registrar. She’d more than competently created a skin pouch to hold the vagus nerve stimulator she was inserting into Lacey Clarke. Now she was delicately wrapping the wire around the left vagus nerve and hopefully its presence would effectively minimise Lacey’s seizures in a way medication had so far failed to achieve.

      A bit of electricity, he mused, could kill or save a life. He knew all about that. Too much or too little of the stuff left a man dead for a very long time. What he didn’t know was why Claire Mitchell was permanently strung so tight a tune could be plucked on her tendons.

      Based on her skills and glowing references from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide, she’d outranked twenty-five other talented applicants from the Commonwealth. With her small steady hands and deft strokes, she had the best clinical skills of all the trainees who’d applied to work with him. She’d beaten twenty-four men to win the scholarship and that alone should tell her she was the best. Surely she knew that?