The Pregnant Surgeon

‘In Theatre? What do you mean that he’s in Theatre?’ It was impossible to hide her annoyance and Joanna saw the young secretary look anxiously at her.

‘A and E phoned to ask you to see a patient who’d been brought in. Dylan…I mean, Dr Archer was here at the time and he offered to go instead because you hadn’t arrived.’ Lisa sounded flustered as she tried to explain what had happened. ‘Evidently, the man needed surgery urgently so Dr Archer took him to Theatre.’

‘I see. Thank you, Lisa. In that case you may as well forget the coffee for now. I’ll go down to Theatre and see if Dr Archer needs a hand.’

Joanna summoned a smile before she went into her office but she couldn’t deny that she was furiously angry. The fact that Dr Archer had taken it upon himself to operate after she had expressly told him that she wanted to monitor his work was bad enough. However, hearing her secretary refer to the registrar by his first name just seemed to make matters worse, though she couldn’t understand why it should have annoyed her so much.

Although she preferred the junior staff to address her as Ms Martin, what business was it of hers if Dr Archer liked to be known by his first name? A lot of surgeons had dispensed with formality and Dylan Archer was obviously one of them. Nevertheless, Joanna couldn’t help feeling irritated by the thought that her new registrar had made his presence felt so quickly. He’d been in the hospital for less than an hour and already her secretary was calling him Dylan and passing on messages for him!

Joanna’s grey eyes darkened as she clipped her beeper to the waistband of her tailored black skirt. She wasn’t used to her staff deliberately flouting her orders and wasn’t prepared to put up with it from the newest member of her team. Smoothing the collar of her white silk blouse over the lapels of her suit jacket, she left her office and made her way to the stairs. The theatres were on the floor below and it wasn’t worth waiting for the lift. The sooner she made it clear to Dr Archer that she expected him to toe the line the happier everyone would be.

Elective surgery had already started that day but Joanna bypassed Theatres one and two where members of her team were hard at work. She was confident that she could leave them to deal with their patients because she had spent hours supervising their training. It was the surgeon who was operating in Theatre three she needed to check on. Although Dr Archer’s references had been excellent, she wanted to see for herself if he really was as good as his previous employers had claimed. It was an unwritten rule that everyone who joined her department should undergo a period of supervision, but Dr Archer obviously considered himself to be above that. However, there was no way that Joanna was prepared to compromise for anyone.

Just for a moment she found herself wondering if she might be overreacting before she dismissed the thought. This had nothing whatsoever to do with her personal feelings towards Dylan Archer. She hardly knew the man so how could she have any feelings about him of a personal nature? No, this was a strictly professional matter and she would make sure that he understood that.

She strode into the changing room and stripped off her suit jacket. She would scrub up and observe Dr Archer while he worked. And if there was the slightest doubt in her mind that he wasn’t equal to the job, she would terminate his contract immediately.

‘It’s a real mess in here. The sooner we get this spleen out, the happier I’ll be.’ Dylan nodded his thanks as Lucy Porter, the sister in charge of Theatre three that day, swabbed away the blood that was leaking from the damaged organ.

The patient was a young man in his twenties who had been found unconscious in the street. He’d been beaten up and probably robbed as well because he’d had no money or any means of identification on him when he’d been found. The police were currently trying to find out who he was but the patient’s identity was the least of Dylan’s problems. His main concern was to make sure the young man didn’t die from his injuries, and it was going to be a very close call from the look of him.

He deftly began clamping and severing the blood vessels leading to and from the spleen in readiness to removing it. The organ was badly damaged and it was difficult to see what he was doing because of the amount of blood. Lucy swabbed once more and once again Dylan nodded his thanks.

He’d been impressed by the whole team’s professionalism from the minute they had entered Theatre. There had been none of the usual awkwardness that often arose when working with a new group of people. Everyone knew what he or she should be doing and got on with it, although he really wouldn’t have expected anything else. He couldn’t imagine Joanna Martin settling for second best where work was concerned.

Dylan’s heart squeezed in an extra beat as an image of the beautiful head of surgery sprang to mind and he cursed under his breath. He wished it wouldn’t keep doing that! The last time he’d reacted this way had been in his teens when he’d had a crush on his chemistry teacher. Every time the woman had entered the classroom, his heart had run riot. Maybe there’d been an excuse for such pathetic behaviour at seventeen but he was thirty-five years of age and he should be well past that stage by now, yet he couldn’t seem to stop it happening. Every time he thought about Joanna Martin—and he seemed to think about her rather a lot—then wham, bang and his heart set off again. It was extremely worrying because the last thing he’d anticipated when he’d applied for this job had been that he would develop a crush on his boss!

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.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c9990b02-04cb-5994-b868-666bc140c6ed)

‘I THINK we need to have a word, Dr Archer. If you would come to my office….’

‘I’m sorry.’

Joanna jumped when Dylan interrupted her. He smiled but his green eyes were full of something which made her skin suddenly start to prickle. Why was he looking at her as though he’d never really seen her before? She had no idea but it was hard to hide her alarm when he continued.

‘Obviously I’ve upset you and I apologise. It’s the last thing I wanted to happen on my first day.’

Joanna cleared her throat, praying that he couldn’t tell how off balance she felt. She wasn’t sure what was going on but something was definitely wrong. Just for a second she found herself wondering if it was the fact that Dylan Archer was such a handsome man that had upset her equilibrium before she dismissed the idea. Dr Archer was a member of her staff, not a would-be suitor, and his looks had no bearing whatsoever on the situation.

‘I am not upset, Dr Archer, I assure you,’ she said firmly. ‘However, it’s obvious there are a few points we need to discuss—’

‘Like me waltzing off to Theatre with a patient before you could check me out?’

Once again he cut in before she could finish and Joanna’s mouth thinned. She’d spent too many years fighting her corner whilst various male colleagues had tried to talk above her to let a new junior colleague get away with such tactics.