.

“Just call for the car when you need it, then. Jensen won’t mind.”

      “Of course.”

      Only she wouldn’t. She’d take the tube to Holland Park. She may not be from London, but she knew her way around public transportation just fine. She just wouldn’t tell her father that. He would have a thousand fits if he knew that she was taking public transportation like a commoner. Only that was what she was.

      She may talk in a refined way, because she worked hard to drop the rough accent she’d had since childhood, but she didn’t belong in this world she’d just been thrust into.

      The first time she’d had a formal dinner at her father’s large Holland Park home she’d been so confused by the number of forks she’d made an excuse about not being hungry and had left the table.

      Her father had been less than thrilled to find that she’d walked down the street to the local pub and had had something to eat there.

      What am I doing here?

      She tried to tell herself that she was getting to know her estranged father, taking the opportunity of a lifetime of inheriting a lucrative practice in Harley Street, but she wasn’t sure that was it.

      There was a buzz on the intercom, snapping Geri out of her reverie. She got up and pushed the button.

      “Dr. Collins, I’m surprised to see you up there,” Thomas said, not looking up at her.

      “Well, Lord Twinsbury did mention that he wanted me close by.”

      Thomas glanced up and there was a twinkle in his eyes. “So he did. Why don’t you scrub in and come down here? You can keep me company.”

      “I thought since I wasn’t a surgeon my place wasn’t in the operating theater.”

      He chuckled. “So I did, but I think this once I can make an exception for my new partner. Will you come down?”

      “I’ll be right there.” Geri let go of the buzzer and made her way down to the change room, where she found some scrubs. A nurse led her to the scrub room, where she scrubbed down and then entered the operating theater. She kept a discreet distance so she didn’t contaminate the sterile field. She’d missed being in the operating theater. It had been so long.

      “I wanted to apologize, Mr. Ashwood,” she said.

      “Whatever for?” he asked absently, in that haughty way that drove her insane.

      “I think you know.”

      He shook his head. “No apology needed. I might’ve been too harsh on you. You’re allowed to have an opinion.”

      Geraldine was shocked. Frederick would’ve never admitted that to another surgeon or doctor.

      “I really think—”

      “No. It’s done. More suction, please.” Thomas didn’t look at her as he continued the surgery. “Lord Twinsbury is a friend of my father’s. I’ve known him for quite some time. I get a little overprotective of him.”

      “I see. Is your father friends with my father?”

      Thomas smiled behind his mask, she could tell by the way his eyes crinkled. “No, in fact they were nemesis...or is that nemeses?”

      Geri chuckled. “Rivals?”

      “In some respects,” Thomas said. “Although my father was not in the medical profession. I believe they were both rapscallions in their youth. Playing the field and going after the same women.”

      Geri’s stomach twisted in a knot and she had a hard time picturing her father as a rapscallion. “Is that a fact?”

      “Yes. I was surprised when your father brought me on when I completed my surgical residency. He had the most prestigious cardiology practice in Harley Street and I was willing to give my eyeteeth to work with him. I had to convince him that taking on a surgeon was a good business decision.”

      That was more believable. In the short time she’d known her father she’d gathered he wasn’t one to take chances.

      “Well, you seemed to have won him over.”

      “He never told me about you, though, not until a couple of months ago when he said you were joining us.” This time he looked up from the surgery to fix her with those dark eyes that seemed to see past her facade into her very soul.

      “My father and I don’t have the best relationship. Or at least we didn’t. I’m hoping to rectify that now.” She hoped he didn’t know she was lying through her teeth and under his hard stare she felt a bit uncomfortable.

      “You’re not even listed in Debrett’s.”

      “Should I be?” Geri asked, hoping her voice didn’t rise with her nervousness.

      “Your parents were legally married.”

      “Briefly. I believe the divorce was finalized just after I was born. My mother left before she knew she was pregnant with me.”

      “So you should be in Debrett’s, given that your father has a seat in the House of Lords.”

      “You seem to know a lot about me.”

      “I know nothing about you and that’s the problem.” He held out a hand while a scrub nurse passed him an instrument. “You’re a complete mystery.”

      “Why are you even looking me up in Debrett’s? What does it matter if I’m listed in there? It’s a pretty useless publication, if you ask me.” She crossed her arms, hugging herself, as if that would hide the fact that she was the estranged daughter of an aristocrat.

      She’d read this story a million times in the romance novels she cherished. Only those novels were fiction and fantasy. This was real life.

      And she was a doctor, a darned good doctor who was specializing in cardiology, and she had no interest, at the moment, in anything beyond medicine and helping her patients.

      “It is that,” Thomas agreed. “I mean, who needs to know who is thirty-seventh in line to the throne?”

      “Exactly. I don’t know and I really don’t care.”

      “So what do you care about?” he asked.

      “Medicine. It’s all I care about.”

      He chuckled and shook his head. “You should’ve been a surgeon.”

      “And why is that?”

      “You’re cold. Detached. Vicious.”

      “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.

      “I meant it as one,” Thomas said. “But surely you have some interest beyond medicine. Reading, travelling...crochet?”

      “Crochet?” she asked, trying not to laugh at the absurdity.

      “It’s good for the hands. Keeps the fingers strong and the mind sharp.”

      “Do you crochet, then?”

      “Good lord, no.”

      “Then who told you that crocheting keeps the fingers strong and the mind sharp?”

      “My grandmother, but then again she was a bit batty.”

      Geri couldn’t help but smile. “So what do you do, then?”

      “I paint.”

      Now she was intrigued. “What do you paint?”

      “Nudes mostly.” And he waggled his eyebrows at her over his surgical mask. She couldn’t help but laugh along with the others in the room.

      Frederick would never joke like this.

      It was beneath him and Geri found herself liking this laid-back camaraderie. There was a light in the darkness of a serious surgery.