looked as if some of the food had disappeared.
‘I know that trick,’ his colleague said, leaning a little
closer so she could speak quietly, a drift of a very femi-
nine perfume—orange blossom?—assailing his nos-
trils. ‘I’ve done it myself many a time. I’m sorry if I
upset you, asking about your wife. I didn’t mean to. It
was just the way you said seven years—it sounded
as if you’d been counting. That means it must have
hurt.’
He’d been determined to ignore her, but from the
very formal way she spoke he guessed apologising was
rare for her, and one look into the crystalline blue eyes
confirmed that she was upset.
And so was he, but for more dubious reasons! Those
eyes held the same fascination as her pursed lips had
earlier and he definitely didn’t do relationships with col-
leagues.
Although she was only here for six months—
No! He had to stop this!
Now!
‘We had a car accident, our daughter died, my wife
MEREDITH WEBBER
25
blamed me, but it is my daughter’s death that’s im-
printed on my mind, not my wife leaving me.’
Grace reared back in her seat, feeling as winded as
if he’d struck her with his hand.
How did she get herself into these situations?
Because she had a one-track mind, that’s how!
Why couldn’t she do normal chit-chat, like other
women?
Theo had pushed his plate away and was standing up,
and much as she’d have liked to stand up with him, to
follow him wherever he was going so she could apolo-
gise, she knew he’d revealed his pain to a virtual stranger
for one reason and one reason only—to repel her.
She watched him, aware everyone at the table must
be wondering what the South African woman had done
to upset him.
‘Eat your pizza, act normal—that’s if you know how
to!’ he muttered to her as he bent to push his chair back
into place. Then he straightened and faced the rest of
the gathering. ‘Sorry, folks, not feeling the best.’
He walked away, stopping to talk to the waitress
who’d served them, money changing hands.
‘He must have been feeling a bit off all along,’
Jasmine said. ‘Ordering steak when he always orders
the Creole pizza.’
Grace looked at the pizza growing colder on her
plate and understood why he hadn’t ordered it. But
he’d been right, she had to eat some of it because not
eating it would look suspicious. She picked up a slice
and bit into it, recognising that the mix of flavours was
indeed delicious, although the food seemed to be
turning to sawdust in her mouth.
26
THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE
A car accident—losing a daughter. The poor man!
And for all he was so perfect, she’d have to cross him
off the list.
Although…
She thought it through, looking at the idea from all
angles, finally coming to the conclusion that maybe
what she was offering was just what Theo needed.
In the back of her head she heard her father warning
her that her solutions might not always be what was
best for other people, but that had been when she’d
been dealing with some of the poor families at home,
ruthlessly reorganising their lives into some sem-
blance of order.
This was different.
A child that was yet wasn’t his.
No responsibility.
No need to get emotionally involved.
With either her or the child…
Yes, it could work.
‘Does he live somewhere nearby?’ she heard herself
ask Jasmine, then, in case the question was too obvi-
ous, she added, ‘Perhaps someone should call in and
see if he’s OK.’
Jasmine looked at her, then smiled.
‘He’s OK and even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t want
anyone fussing over him,’ she said. ‘He’s a very pri-
vate man, our Theo. I’d better tell you that he never
gets involved with colleagues. Believe me, many have
tried but none have succeeded. It’s kind of like a
golden rule with him.’
Well, really! Grace thought, annoyed with Jasmine
for assuming—quite correctly—that she was inter-
MEREDITH WEBBER
27
ested in Theo, and horrified with herself for being so
obvious about it.
‘It’s a good rule,’ she managed, realising some re-
sponse was necessary. ‘Relationships at work can get
very messy.’
‘Or can work brilliantly,’ Jasmine said, nodding
towards Maggie and Phil, who were laughing together
at the far end of the table. ‘We had three couples fall in
love within the unit only last year, so don’t think you’ll
be immune to love while you’re here in Oz.’
She paused and studied Grace for a moment.
‘Unless, of course, there’s a very special man back
home in South Africa?’ she teased.
Grace thought of the very special man back home
and smiled.
‘Oh, yes, there is,’ she said, but she didn’t add that
it was because of him—well, partly because of him—
that she was interested in Theo. Someone like Jasmine,
recently engaged to the man she loved, would never un-
derstand Grace’s plan or the means by which she hoped
to implement it…
CHAPTER TWO
THEO watched as Grace attached the PVC tube from the
bypass machine to the cannula inserted into the right
side of little Adelaide Matthews’s heart. She worked
quickly but carefully, her movements so precise and
economical he had to admire them.
With the ingoing tube attached to the cannula al-
ready inserted into the aorta, she stepped back to let
Phil get closer.
‘On pump,’ Phil said, the order crisp and quiet, and
Theo started the machine, watching closely to see that
the heparin given to thin the blood had been sufficient
to prevent clotting, watching the pressure—Adelaide
was three and needed more pressure than a baby but less
than a five-year-old—watching for anything to go
wrong.
‘Plege on.’ Now Phil fed the cardioplegia—a potas-
sium poison—into the heart to stop it beating. When it
worked, in a matter of minutes, he could begin.
The operation, to correct a problem with the coronary
arteries which had been repositioned during an earlier op-
eration for transposition of the great arteries, shouldn’t
MEREDITH WEBBER
29
have been difficult, but scans had shown that one of the
coronary arteries had grown through the wall of the heart,
like a hose going in through the side of a bucket then back
out again, and needed total repositioning.
Aware it could take some time, Theo was overly
conscious of his patient’s status, checking the monitors
constantly, noting the various pressures, the ECG, co-
agulation values, blood gases and electrolytes. But
mainly it was controlling the pump that absorbed him.
Too little blood flow and the patient could suffer
oxygen deprivation to her brain, too much and it could
blow her delicate little blood vessels apart.
Why did a surgeon turn to this job? Grace had asked,
but the satisfaction he found in getting a patient through
an often long and complex operation in as good a con-
dition as possible, was a source of enormous satisfac-
tion, and already some of his refinements to the bypass
machine were being used worldwide.
Why not?
He looked across at Grace—well, at the hooded,
gowned, bespectacled figure he knew was Grace—and
was sorry he hadn’t answered that particular question.
Wouldn’t have an opportunity now, having spoken
so abruptly to her the previous evening…
‘Theo?’
Knowing what Phil was asking, he recited all the in-
formation he had to hand, adding that Adelaide was
doing very well.
‘So why change from surgery?’
Three operations later, he’d just emerged from the
shower in the theatre changing rooms, a towel wrapped
30
THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE
around his waist, when Grace, in bra and panties—her
figure was superb—asked the question he’d decided she
would never ask again.
He stared at her, debating whether to answer, but as
everyone else was gone—he always stayed back to
ensure personally that the machine was properly steril-
ised and sealed—there was really no reason why he
shouldn’t tell her.
Particularly as she was pulling on a crisp white shirt,
buttoning it up, drawing his attention to her breasts in
a way that was totally out of order—he changed with
women all the time and never looked at their breasts!
‘I injured my hands—for a while I couldn’t oper-
ate—but the world of paediatric cardiac surgery had
been my focus as I trained, through basic surgery, then
cardiac surgery. I’d finally made it as a registrar on the
paeds cardiac team and I didn’t want to leave it. Prob-
ably out of pity, my old boss, the chief surgeon at the
hospital, suggested I have a go at perfusion while my
hands healed. I did a course, learned even more from
the woman who had run the machine for our team, then
began to see possibilities of improving the system,
which was when I became hooked. To me, keeping a
child as stable as possible while on pump—and even
more importantly while on ECMO—has become my
obsession.’
‘So much so you never considered going back to
operating?’
He paused, looking at his hands.
‘My hands were burnt, the tendons damaged, and
although they healed, it worried me that they had prob-
ably lost some sensitivity.’
MEREDITH WEBBER
31
He paused, remembering the pain of those years—
so much pain, the least of it physical.
‘I wondered if I would still have the feel you need
to put a stitch the size of a pinhead into a vein with the
diameter of a hair. I decided I couldn’t take the risk.’
‘That’s an incredibly honest answer,’ she said, look-
ing puzzled again.
‘Did you think I’d lie?’ he demanded angrily, his
emotions already stirred up with memories. And on top
of that, it was the puzzled look he caught on her face that
gave the impression of vulnerability despite suspecting
she was about as vulnerable as a slab of concrete.
Although more shapely…
She grinned at him, totally disarming him.
‘No, I suppose not, but it’s the kind of thing I might
have said and I’m forever being told I should pretty
things up more. Too blunt, too abrasive, too intrusive—
I’m all those “toos”!’
‘You are too,’ he said, suddenly liking her, for all the
intrusiveness and abrasion. Although she didn’t smile
at his feeble joke and he wondered if he could really
like someone with no sense of humour.
Grace knew she should have smiled, but it was a
feeble attempt at a joke and she had just put him back
onto her list of possibles again. In fact, it was hardly a
list—his being the only name on it.
‘And being blunt and abrasive…’ she said, deciding
it was better to get things out into the open as soon as
possible. That way she’d know where she stood. ‘I won-
dered if I could ask you something.’
‘You didn’t ask if you could ask before asking me
all kinds of personal questions yesterday,’ he reminded
32
THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE
her, leaning back against the doorjamb in a way that
made all the muscles of his chest stand out so all of a
sudden he was an extremely sexy man as well as a col-
league.
Sexy man? What was she thinking?
She forced her mind back to her problem.
‘Well, this is really very personal to me and very
private so I have to believe that if I ask, you won’t repeat
it.’
He didn’t answer, which she took for assent, but the
words she needed were jammed in her throat.
Not easy words to say in any circumstances and
she’d got off on the wrong foot with this man…
‘Are you finished for the day? I feel after last night
I owe you a meal. I ruined your dinner, firstly by
ordering your favourite pizza, although you could still
have ordered it, then by asking intrusive questions.
Could we go there again—or somewhere else—and I’ll
pay?’
What was with this woman? Theo watched her as
she pulled on a skirt, tucking the shirt she’d put on
earlier efficiently into the waistband. Even the way she
dressed said a lot about her—neat, classy in an under-
stated way, yet still…prim was the only word! But the
questions she’d been asking didn’t go with that image
any more than the classic but boring clothes could suc-
cessfully hide her sexy body.
Although if he hadn’t seen her nearly naked, might
he have been quite so aware of it?
And was it because of the sexy body or because of
MEREDITH WEBBER
33
the inconsistencies he kept finding in her that he heard
himself agreeing to have dinner with her?
‘An early dinner—I want to spend some time at the
hospital later this evening.’
He wasn’t sure why he’d added the stipulation. True,
he liked to spend time at the hospital but he often came
late at night when the unit was quiet and most of the
parents were sleeping as fitfully as their hopes and fears
for their child would allow.
‘Now?’
He studied Grace. Of course he knew why he’d
&n
bsp; added the stipulation! He was suspicious of her—and
doubly suspicious of her interest in him. Most women,
even in these enlightened days, were happy to let the
men make the running in a developing relationship—
and most women were adept at reading the ‘not inter-
ested’ sign he hung around himself at work.
So what was with Grace? Was she so inexperienced—
at thirty-five?—that she didn’t know the rules, couldn’t
read the signs? Or did she have some agenda of her own?
Well, yes to the latter, she’d told him as much, but
she wasn’t giving off ‘I’d like to get to know you better’
vibes, so what other agenda could it be?
‘Of course now, if that suits you,’ he said, wonder-
ing what he was getting into, suspecting his assumption
of her inexperience might be true and intrigued in spite
of himself. ‘I was always curious.’
She gave him a sharp, assessing look—no fool, this
woman—then shrugged.
‘I don’t mind that,’ she assured him. ‘In fact, it might
be a point in my favour.’
34
THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE
Not smiling so it wasn’t a joke—but a point in her
favour? In favour of what?
‘Shall we continue this mysterious conversation all
evening, or should we discuss something else—there’s
always work—until we’ve eaten?’
Now she did smile, and although the expression held
a degree of uncertainty it confirmed his initial reaction
to her—she was beautiful.
But beautiful women usually radiated confidence,
and although Grace gave the impression of being in
control, and certainly seemed confident in her work, he
kept getting the feeling that her personal confidence
was something she’d manufactured, like a cloak, that
she wrapped around herself to protect the person she
really was.
Or was he being fanciful? Seeing something of his
own self-protective instincts and habits in her?
They left the hospital and walked down the road, by-
passing Scoozi by unspoken but mutual consent and
wandering towards a little brasserie, far enough from
the hospital to be less populated by medical people.
‘Is there pizza on the menu here?’ Grace asked, hesi-
tating on the footpath beside the trellised outdoor
garden.
‘I don’t only eat pizza and, in fact, this place does the
best moussaka outside my aunt’s house in Melbourne.’
Grace glanced at him and he waited, expecting more
questions, but none came and he realised that although