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Lily pressed back against the ancient wall, hoping that she would be invisible in the deep shadows of the colonnade
She had no idea what had woken her. Perhaps the sound of Razak’s voice through the open door that led out to the atrium—although she hadn’t realized it was open until she saw the filmy curtain billowing gently.
“Why him?” she breathed, closing her eyes tight against the threat of tears. Why did she have to go and fall in love with someone so unattainable?
She must have made a sound, because the next thing she knew he was there in front of her, a dark silhouette against the beaten silver of the moonlit pool behind him.
“Lily?” he murmured, framing her shoulders with the gentle warmth of his hands and angling his head to peer into her face. “You should go inside, away from the breeze,” he said. But when she thought he would usher her into her room and return to his own, he accompanied her through the gauzy curtains and turned her to face him again.
“Don’t look away,” he whispered, cupping his fingers around her face and tilting it up toward his again. And she was lost, gazing into those dark eyes that had captivated her the first time she’d seen them.
Dear Reader,
When Razak Khan appeared in A Family To Come Home To, so good-looking and charming, he was only supposed to be a minor character. Then I started wondering about him—about his background, about his career and his private life, about the things that were important to him and his future.
Then I wondered what it would do to all his plans if he were to meet someone who challenged him and his view of the future.
To Lily, her career had been her main focus since she was a young girl, so meeting a man like Razak—a man who made her aware that she was a woman as well as a surgeon—was bound to turn everything on its head. How was she going to resist him when they were spending so many hours a day in each other’s company, their eyes speaking volumes over the tops of their masks without a word being said?
The obstacles between them and the way they are overcome only go to prove something I have always believed—that anything worth having is something worth fighting for.
I hope you enjoy their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Happy reading,
Josie
Sheikh Surgeon, Surprise Bride
Josie Metcalfe
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
‘SO, HAVE you hooked yourself a doctor, yet, Lil?’ her sister Iris asked, but the question could just as well have been put by anyone of the noisy group gathered in her parents’ cramped living room.
‘I’m not trying to hook one. I don’t need to because I’m a doctor myself,’ Lily pointed out rationally, but that cut no ice with her family.
‘A complete waste of time and money, that’s what I call it,’ her mother pronounced—as usual—as she heaved herself off ‘her’ corner of the settee to put the kettle on again. ‘You’ve got more debts than your father and I have had our whole lives and you still can’t find yourself a husband. By the time I was your age, I’d already had five children and there was another one on the way.’
Lily had heard that particular refrain so many times that it was easy to tune it out. Her mother wouldn’t deliberately hurt any of her children, although her habit of speaking her mind had caused more than a few hidden bruises.
It was her sisters and sisters-in-law that she found it harder to deal with. Their pitying glances in her direction and their conversations were just quiet enough for them to pretend that she wasn’t supposed to hear but loud enough that she was left in no doubt what they thought of the ‘uppity cow’ trying to pretend that she was so much better than they were.
She stifled a sigh when her father gave a pointed jerk of his head to tell her that, as the eldest, she should have followed her mother out of the room to help her get his meal. She couldn’t remember the first time she’d done it. It had been so many years ago that it was hidden in the mists of time, along with the memory of the first time she’d spooned food into her younger siblings’ mouths and changed their nappies.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered coming home at all when it felt as if she had to spend the whole time apologising for who she was and the choices she’d made. Of course, she knew why she did come—because she loved her family, no matter what. It was just that sometimes she wished…
‘Do you still remember how to peel potatoes, now that you can afford to eat out all the time?’ demanded her mother, as she bustled around a kitchen that had hardly changed from the day Lily had been born. Appliances had been replaced as they had given out and the cupboards had been repainted, but the colour scheme was the same magnolia and white it had always been. It was ironic that tastes in interior decorating had turned full circle so that it was back in fashion again.
‘Doctors don’t have time to eat out all the time, even if they could afford it,’ she said quietly, as she reached for the peeler and the first of a mountain of potatoes. ‘As students, we’re so short of money we can barely afford to eat and once we’ve qualified, we’re left with massive debts to pay off, so we still can’t afford it.’
‘So where was the point in doing all that studying?’ Rose Langley demanded impatiently. ‘Your father started working shifts as soon as he left school but at least the two of us got time to see each other. You seem to do nothing but work, and men don’t like it when a woman doesn’t pay them any attention…’ Lily saw her throw a sideways glance at her eldest’s well-worn jeans and generic sweatshirt. ‘Or when she doesn’t make the effort to do herself up a bit.’
That jab hit a sensitive spot and Lily winced. In spite of her sisters’ taunts that there was ‘no point in gilding the Lily’, it was still a fact that she was the plain one of the family, even if she had been the only one of the girls to inherit her father’s long, lean build.
‘Everything I wear is clean, bought and paid for,’ she pointed out defensively. ‘I have to dress smartly to meet the patients in the orthopaedic clinic but when I’m in the operating theatre I’m in cotton scrubs.’
‘I’ve seen them on the telly. Totally shapeless green pyjamas,’ her mother said, and tut-tutted with distaste. ‘How is any man going to be attracted to you in that? Now, if you had a boob job, or something, to give you a bit of shape…’