Falling for her Mediterranean Boss

Julie ignored him and nodded backwards in the direction of Tom. ‘How is he?’ she asked.

Just for a moment Pierre looked tired. He rubbed a hand across his cheek. ‘The next twenty-four hours are critical. If they manage to stabilise him—if he survives—we’ll start doing skin grafts later on today. You can assist, if you like.’

‘I’d appreciate that,’ she said quietly. ‘I would like to see his treatment through. I feel I owe it to him,’

Pierre looked at her intently. ‘I’ll need you alert and under control,’ he said. ‘There’s no room for emotion in the theatre,’ he said.

Julie realised it was pointless to argue. He had completely misunderstood what she had meant. Suddenly the adrenaline seeped away, and she felt exhausted.

‘You don’t have to take me home,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a taxi.’

The last thing she wanted right at this moment was to find herself in close proximity to this man. A good night’s sleep, or at least a few hours—and there was hardly enough time to get more than that now—would be enough for her to pull herself together and get her emotions under control.

‘Of course I am going to take you home. It is the least I can do.’ He held out his hand. For a stunned moment Julie thought he meant her to take his hand, and almost laid hers in his. Just in time she realised he was expecting his car keys but she was unable to prevent the tell-tale blush flooding her cheeks. Pierre looked at her quizzically, then grinned.

‘You will be perfectly safe with me, Dr McKenzie, whatever people might say.’

Julie shot him a furious look before she could prevent herself and felt herself redden from the tips of her ears to the tips of her toes. Was he actually flirting with her? And what was worse, did he actually think she’d be flattered, grateful even?

‘And why should I think I wouldn’t be safe with you, Dr Favatier?’ she asked in the coldest voice she could summon. He looked at her, then as recognition dawned his blue eyes glinted mischievously.

‘Because people think I drive too fast, of course. What other reason could there be?’

Julie felt her skin shrink with embarrassment. Great start,dr mckenzie, she thought. Way to go, girl!

* * *

Julie sank into the soft leather seat of Pierre’s car. Asking her for her post code, he programmed it into the satellite navigation system of his car.

‘It easier than you telling me how to get there,’ he said, pulling out into the road. ‘You did very well back there, at the fire.’

‘I’m just glad you were there,’ she said. ‘I would have hated having to do a tracheostomy on my own.’ She slid him a look. ‘It’s quite different having to do something out of the hospital setting.’

Pierre turned and flashed her a smile. ‘Something tells me you would have coped okay,’ he said. ‘You stayed very cool.’

Julie felt herself glow at the praise. ‘Skiing teaches you that. How to stay focussed, even when you’re terrified. And I was,’ she admitted.

‘Then you hid it well,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to like having you on my team.’ He drove quickly through the now deserted streets. Julie was acutely conscious of his presence in the cramped interior of his car. Suddenly she felt awkward.

Glancing down at this hand on the gearstick, she noticed that his right hand had been burnt.

‘You hurt your hand,’ she said.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I put some cream on. It will be fine.’

He smiled at her again, his eyes creasing at the corners. Julie felt a tingle run up her spine.

‘Are all Scottish women so reckless?’ he asked. ‘You must know you risked your own life staying inside the burning building to help.’

Julie straightened in her seat. ‘I only did what anyone would have done. I couldn’t stand back and do nothing. I wasn’t being reckless.’

‘I know men who wouldn’t have done what you did,’ he argued.

‘How people behave in a time of crisis has nothing to do with what sex they are!’ Julie said crossly.

This time Pierre laughed out loud.

‘Dis donc,’ he said. ‘So you say.’

Julie felt her skin prickle. He was mocking her. Despite finding him unnervingly attractive, she wondered if she actually liked her new boss—even if he was the kind of surgeon she aspired to be. He seemed to have a pretty sexist view of women. Perhaps that was down to the type of women he spent time with. Julie could just see him with a glamorous simpering model on his arm. Someone who hung onto his every word and liked to have doors opened and him order for her. Someone who was unlike her in every possible way.

‘Anyway, you were pretty reckless yourself,’ she said. ‘You took a risk going to help the DJ.’

Pierre raised an eyebrow, his eyes silver in the semidarkness. ‘A chance you were about to take yourself. In fact, you would have taken a greater risk than I. You would have never been able to get him out of there. And somehow I suspect you would not have left him.’

Hearing the admiration in his voice, Julie felt somewhat mollified. But whatever he thought, she’d only done what anyone in her shoes would have done.

Happily, before she had a chance to think of a response they had pulled up outside her flat in the West End of Edinburgh.

She leapt out of the car, noticing Pierre’s surprise at her almost indecent haste to get away.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later this morning.’ Without waiting for a reply, she turned and was relieved when she heard his car roar off into the night.

Pierre felt strangely unsettled as he drove home. Stopping at a traffic light, his eyes caught an enormous billboard straddling the pavement. The woman advertising a famous make of bath soap reminded him of someone. Almost at once he realised who—Julie. The model had the same glossy-brown hair, sweet smile and charcoal smudged grey eyes radiating warmth, compassion and intelligence.

He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes. Dr Julie McKenzie was brave and cool under pressure, qualities he knew were important in a surgeon, but it was the Julie the woman who intrigued him most. She seemed oblivious to how beautiful she was, even with the scar. Instead, she came across as shy and uncertain of herself as a woman. He couldn’t help recalling the way she had blushed in his company. Had she’d been anyone else he would have felt flattered, even been tempted to show her how attractive she was. But she wasn’t just anyone, he reminded himself. She was his colleague, his junior colleague, and therefore out of bounds. An affair with her was completely out of the question. And not just because she was a colleague but because he guessed she was not someone who would take any relationship lightly. For him, the only relationships he liked were the casual ones. All his lovers knew that. At least he assumed they all did. Until Monique, that was. She had chosen not to believe him even though he had made his position clear right at the start of their relationship. But when he had told her it was over, after it had run its course, she had been devastated and furious. After the most embarrassing scene he had sworn he would never get involved with a colleague again.

It was a pity about Julie, he thought. He had enough of experience of women to suspect that underneath that shy exterior lay a woman of passion. Not that she was really his type. Not even remotely. Why, then, did the knowledge that Julie was off limits leave him feeling bleaker than ever?

Julie yawned as she poured herself another cup of coffee in the duty room. She finished looking over her patients’ charts as the other staff gathered together.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ one of the staff nurses was saying to her colleagues. ‘And as for that accent…’ She shivered with delight. ‘He could have his wicked way with me any time.’

Despite herself, Julie felt her ears prick up. It was obvious who they were talking about.

‘You’ll need to get in line, then,’ Dr Cramond, one of the other junior doctors, replied.

She, unlike Julie, was pretty in that doll-like way most men seemed to admire. She was probably just Pierre’s type, Julie thought, trying to ignore how envious the thought made her.

‘Do you think he’s attached, Julie?’ Dr Cramond asked.

‘Not a clue,’ said Julie, returning to her notes. She really didn’t want to be drawn into a discussion about Pierre with her new colleagues. Even if it made her seem a little standoffish.

‘Bound to be,’ said the nurse, a friendly looking woman with glossy black hair who had introduced herself as Fiona. ‘Very likely he has someone back in France.’

‘But I gather he’s not married,’ Dr Cramond said wistfully, ‘so as far as I am concerned that makes him fair game.’

They stopped talking abruptly when the man himself walked into the duty room. Dressed in a dark grey suit that must have cost an arm and a leg, clean shaven and with just a hint of aftershave, Julie was struck again by his model good looks. He wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a magazine.