Falling For The Single Dad Surgeon (A Summer In São Paulo Book 2)

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘Brady told me.’ Oz had sounded surprised. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  No. He hadn’t. Because the fact was that Brady barely exchanged a word with him, if he didn’t have to. Which told him altogether too much about the kind of absent uncle he’d been—and he didn’t like it.

  ‘Okay, that’s the next step done.’ Oz had confirmed his focus squarely back on the patient—not that it had ever really left—and Jake was grateful for the change of topic. ‘Just one more and you can finally show me this tumour paint close-up. Man, I’d have killed to get this clinical trial of yours.’

  ‘What can I say? They only choose the best.’

  ‘You’d think you’d won awards for your research or something...’ Oz had stopped abruptly, his entire demeanour changing in an instant. ‘Ah, wait, is that it?’

  He’d moved aside to give Jake room.

  ‘Kill the lights, please,’ Jake had instructed, all trace of their former banter gone as they’d focused on the task in hand.

  The operating room had turned eerily dark, with only the light from the monitors casting out around the area. Then he’d shone a near-infrared light over the patient’s brain and a pink-purplish glow had lit up.

  ‘That’s it,’ Jake had confirmed with satisfaction. ‘That’s the chlorotoxin we injected last night.’

  The chlorotoxin that Flávia Maura had worked on.

  The thought had rattled through Jake’s brain before he could stop it, proving that, even before tonight, with the vision of her in front of him, the woman had been positively haunting him. And no matter how many times he told himself it was purely professional interest, a part of him knew there was more to it.

  ‘It’s lit the tumour up like Christmas lights in a grotto.’ Oz had shaken his head. ‘I’ve seen it on footage but never in person like this. She’s quite the beauty.’

  ‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ Jake had concurred, staring at the tumour. ‘The engineered toxin fluoresces every cancer cell, yet leaves every single healthy cell around dark.’

  ‘My God, it shows me every last bit of the tumour which I’d need to remove without worrying about margins and without fear of leaving anything behind, causing a recurrence. The only question will be whether it also interferes with the centres of the lad’s brain responsible for speech or motor control.’

  ‘That’s your call.’ Jake had nodded. ‘How about get it out so that my patient can get his life back.’

  ‘Okay, you’re ready for the brain mapping? Can we go ahead and wake the patient, please?’

  For the next hour or so, Jake had worked with the neurologist, using flash cards, asking questions and just generally keeping his patient talking whilst Oz had sent light electrical currents down the nerves to stimulate each part of the brain, then worked on removing the tumour.

  And then Oz had given the signal that it was time to anaesthetise the patient again so that they could close up.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ Jake had told his patient. ‘Next time you wake up, you’ll be out of surgery.’

  ‘You’ll be with me?’ the lad had managed.

  ‘I’ll come and see you as soon as I can and we’ll talk you through how it’s all gone,’ Jake had confirmed, moving back to allow the anaesthetist to take over.

  ‘Want to see?’ Oz had offered when he was confident the lad was out again, but Jake had already been making his way around the table.

  ‘I don’t see any fluoresced areas.’ He’d frowned in disbelief. ‘You were actually able to get all of it?’

  ‘Every last bit.’ Triumph had reverberated through his mate’s voice. ‘Your patient might have to relearn his grade-two flute from when he was a kid, but if any tumour recurs in this guy, then it won’t be because of anything I had to leave behind. You need to complete these clinical trials so we can get our hands on this stuff for every patient.’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ Jake had replied grimly. ‘You know how long these things take.’

  ‘Yeah, too long, when we’ve got patients to try to save. You’d better ask Ms Maura what else she has up her sleeve. And how long.’

  And he’d filed it away as though professional interest was the only reason he was planning on talking to Flávia Maura.

  They’d worked carefully, precisely, for a little longer.

  ‘Now bone flap.’

  Using plates and wires, they had secured the segment of skull they had removed in order to access the patient’s brain. And then the surgery had been completed, and Flávia Maura had still been in residence in Jake’s head.

  ‘Nice,’ Jake had congratulated as he and Oz left the OR together, trying to shake her, though not too hard. ‘Good going.’

  ‘Yeah, well, when you see the delectable Ms Maura, don’t go doing anything I wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that leaves pretty much everything on the table—’ Jake remembered ignoring the jolt of anticipation which shot through him ‘—Brady will be with me. So my interactions will be strictly professional.’

  Yet now, only three days later, and watching the woman agitatedly shift her weight from one foot to the other before finally taking her leave from the other women, he realised that his intentions towards Flávia Maura were far from strictly professional.

  This he admitted as he strode forward and cut a slick path through the crowd to Isabella Sanchez—the woman running the gala evening’s slick operation.

  * * *

  Three more nights, Flávia Maura chanted silently to herself as she took her leave from her colleagues, Doctors Krysta Simpson and Amy Woodell, and edged her way through the crowded ballroom with something approaching relief.

  Three more nights of awkward social hospital events and then she could be out of the city and back to the rainforest, where she felt most at home.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Krysta or Amy—far from it. She admired both women, who were incredibly accomplished in their careers and who seemed as kind as they were successful. She’d simply never been very good with crowds.

  Animals were fine, but people...? Not so much. In fact, not only had her six-and nine-year-old nieces spent the previous weekend trying to give her a crash course in superficial conversation, but their mother—her own sister—had spent two hours this afternoon primping and preening her like some fun pet project.

  Typical bossy Maria, Flávia thought fondly even as she anxiously tried to keep her balance in the unfamiliar skyscraper heels, and smoothed down her long gown. Her sister had practically bullied her into this dress tonight, and although it would undoubtedly look sleek and sophisticated on any other woman, it was all such a far cry from her usual uniform of trusty hiking boots and sensible, light grey cargo pants with a black tee that she felt like she might as well have been wearing little more than a scantily clad, samba carnival dancer.

  Either that or like a little girl trying on her mother’s clothes and high heels and lipstick, as her nieces had taken to doing with Maria’s clothes. Flávia grinned to herself at the image of them playing princesses, even as an uncharacteristically melancholic pang shot through her. She loved the two little girls with all her heart, but sometimes—just occasionally—their lives reminded her of all that she and Maria had missed in their own childhoods. Not least the fact that their own mother had never stuck around long enough to give the sisters time to grow up and start to play dress-up in her clothes.

  No. Their beloved papai, Eduardo, had raised them single-handedly, usually under the canopy of the Amazon or Atlantic rainforests, with explorer clothes instead of princess gowns, and animals for company rather than people. And Flávia had never regretted a moment of it.

  Except when it came to taking life lessons from her nieces and then walking in on her sister stuffing condoms into her purse just before the taxi had arrived this evening, with an encoura
ging, If you meet a cute doctor, why not try having a little fun for once in your life, Livvy?

  But she didn’t want to have a little fun. She was here because her boss demanded it, not because she had any desire to be; the sooner the night was over, the better.

  She’d take a deadly bushmaster viper, a Brazilian wandering spider or a poison dart frog over trying to make conversation with a normal human being any day of the week. So between the hospital’s packed social calendars, it was proving to be a particularly tense week.

  Still moving—or rather, teetering—Flávia desperately scanned the ballroom, telling herself that she didn’t need an escape route but searching for one all the same. Before her eyes alighted on the doors at the far end and a sense of consolation poured through her.

  The botanical gardens were quite busy during the day, but at this time of evening they would probably be closed. If she could sneak in, it would give her a much-needed chance to regroup, and to quell the unfamiliar sensation of champagne bubbles up her nose from the glass she’d been trying to drink for the past hour.

  She turned direction sharply, almost straight into one of her least favourite surgeons.

  ‘The hospital should be more careful of their reputation,’ the condescending tones of Dr Silvio Delgado—clearly pitched to be heard by as many luminaries as possible, as though by denigrating everyone else he somehow elevated himself—reached her ears. ‘First they hire the crazy selvagem woman, then the gigolo, and to add insult to injury, they then bring some frump in to lecture. This one looks like a street person.’

  A better person, a stronger person, would have carried on walking, not letting that interminably pompous man get under their skin. But Flávia froze, shame momentarily rendering her immobile before eventually allowing her to twist herself around uncomfortably, a scowl pulling her features taut despite her best efforts not to react.

  Selvagem—jungle woman.

  It wasn’t the term itself—she’d been called selvagem plenty of times and it didn’t usually bother her—so much as the utter contempt in this particular man’s tone. The pejorative way he spat out the word—selvagem—as if she was as feral as the animals found in the rainforest. Or was that just because Delgado had said as much to her face, many times in the past?

  Perhaps that was why Flávia tried telling herself it was the fact that he was also insulting a new colleague—a visitor to Paulista’s—which rattled her most.

  Frump.

  As though what Krysta wore mattered more than the fact that the woman was a focused, driven individual, already a leader in the combined fields of otolaryngology and facial reconstruction.

  Flávia felt as though she ought to say something. She wished she could. Then again, what was to be gained from drawing attention to something half the crowd mercifully hadn’t understood, anyway, given that Delgado had spoken in Portuguese? Anyway, he’d only laugh her off, and she would probably let him.

  All the more reason to get to the gardens and be alone.

  Flávia gritted her teeth and gingerly lifted her foot, hoping she wasn’t about to do something as stupid as catching the heel in the hem.

  ‘Is that guy always such an abhorrent boor?’

  Perhaps it was the clear-cut English accent which gave away the fact that the speaker was Dr Jacob Cooper. Or it could have been the rich, utterly masculine timbre, suggesting a barely restrained dynamism. Or maybe it was the fact that she remembered that voice only too well. It had featured in her pitiful dreams several times over the past eight months—and in those it wasn’t just asking that one question after her lecture.

  Whatever the truth, sensations skittered this way and that, like interlopers, inside Flávia’s chest. The mere sound of his voice ignited every inch of her nerve endings, leaving her feeling as though her entire body was...itching. On fire.

  An effect that no one had ever had on her before. Not even Enrico, the man who she had once called her fiancé.

  Holding herself steady, Flávia spun slowly back around to face the speaker.

  And promptly wished she hadn’t.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MAN WAS—her brain faltered, flailing to understand what her eyes were seeing—simply extraordinary.

  Last time she’d seen him, he’d been one figure in a sea of faces, every one of them clad in work suits, and yet, to her, he’d stood out. Now, he wore the same impeccable tuxedo as every other man. His hair the same, neat style as every other man. He was well groomed, with intelligent eyes the same blue as roughly three hundred million other human beings in the world. And yet...he wasn’t the same as them.

  There was nothing the same about Jacob Cooper, whatsoever. Indeed, far from her memory making more of the man than had ever really been, Flávia now realised, to her horror, that her brain hadn’t nearly recalled quite how magnetic he was.

  Flávia couldn’t quite put her finger on it and yet it was there, nonetheless. Maybe it was that he seemed infinitely leaner, taller, more powerful, than any other man she’d ever known. Perhaps it was the way those eyes—as blue as a morpho butterfly—rooted her to the wooden dance floor. And yet simultaneously made her feel as though she was floating a good foot or so above it. Or possibly, it was the fact that the air around her seemed to be heating up, as if flowing right from this stranger’s body straight into hers.

  Like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

  She eyed the empty champagne glass accusingly. Evidently, the alcohol had allowed her sister’s ridiculous have a little fun instruction to get into her head, and now it was running riot, upending the customarily neatly arranged compartments in her brain.

  Vaguely, she recalled that he’d levelled a question at her, although for the life of her she couldn’t remember what that question had been.

  Her mind spun, the cogs slipping in their haste.

  Ah, something to do with Delgado being a boor.

  She really ought to speak, but how could her brain form words when it couldn’t even think straight? Flávia slid a discreet tongue over her teeth, unsticking them from her suddenly parched lips, and forced her vocal cords back into operation. And if her tone was a touch huskier than usual, well, was he really to know? From one lecture?

  ‘You speak Portuguese?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘That’s unusual.’

  He didn’t so much as shrug to give the semblance of it.

  ‘I made it my business to learn the language when I got the invitation to this summer’s teaching programme and I knew that your man over there was head of the oncology department.’

  Interesting.

  ‘Why do that?’ she couldn’t help but ask. ‘There are so many countries attending these annual summer teaching programmes that the common language is generally English, anyway.’

  For a moment she wasn’t sure he was going to answer her. His eyes bored into her and she felt something unfurl from her toes right the way up. Then, suddenly, he spoke.

  ‘Let’s just say that I make it my business to understand the nature of the people with whom I’ll be working closely over the next few months. I like to know their character and I like to know their mettle.’

  He smiled. Or, at least, he bared his teeth into something which could equally have been a smile, or a grimace. And Flávia couldn’t have said why it made her think that she pitied anyone who tried to stir things up with this man.

  It also made her more open with him than she might otherwise have intended.

  ‘Dr Silvio Delgado’s grandfather was one of the founding contributors to this hospital.’ As the man was all too fond of telling people at every opportunity. ‘He believes that gives him an inalienable right to insult whoever he pleases.’

  Like calling her ‘jungle woman’ and turning it into an insult.

  Then again, was it surprising she was sensitive to it? A childhood of being m
ocked by the other kids—her sister leaping in to fight her battles—had left more of a scar than Flávia would have liked. Yet she suspected, right at this moment, that it was the idea of Jacob Cooper thinking she was a bit...odd that bothered her more than anything that idiot Delgado could ever say.

  ‘Indeed,’ he offered in a tone so neutral that Flávia couldn’t ascertain anything from it.

  It irritated her that she was trying.

  Why should she care what this stranger thought?

  ‘Jacob Cooper,’ he introduced himself, his words like the sweetest caramel moving through her veins.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Of course?’ he echoed, a hint of a smile toying with his altogether too-mesmerising mouth. ‘I didn’t think we’d met.’

  Flávia blinked, heat rushing to her cheeks. She could only hope that her colouring, and the light levels, concealed her embarrassment.

  ‘Well, I mean...of course I know the name. After all, who, with any connection to the oncology world, doesn’t?’ She was babbling, but for the life of herself she couldn’t stop. ‘Dr Jacob Cooper...that is, you...have a reputation for pushing boundaries. Running clinical trials that others were too afraid to touch, like the scorpion-venom-based fluorescent dye which lights up cancer cells like some kind of personal beacon. Making Hail Marys look like a proverbial walk in the park.’

  Oh, Lord, now she sounded like she was fangirling. This was why she hated people. She really had no idea how to talk to them without coming across as either aloof, or a bit of a fool. A bobo.

  ‘Well, I’m flattered.’ His voice sounded all the richer, and more luxurious, and Flávia wasn’t sure she cared for the effect it was having on her.

  Turning her into even more of an idiota.

  She didn’t want to shake his hand. She feared what that contact might do to her given the effect the mere sight of him had. Yet she watched her arm reach out nonetheless, as if under some form of energy other than her own muscles.