to stay, we can come to—’
‘That would be great.’ It was Lizzie interrupting now. Trying and failing to sound blasé, but a furnished flat within walking distance would save a fortune, not just on rental but on travel. Lizzie had moved from Brighton to London a couple of years ago and had found it fiercely expensive, especially with all her parents’ nursing-home bills. She wasn’t used to perks and certainly not one of this magnitude. ‘The flat would be marvellous.’
‘Good,’ Leo clipped. ‘Gwen, the clinic manager, will be in touch with all the details and I’ll see you in the New Year.’
Happy New Year, Lizzie thought as she looked out of the window, marvelling at the glimpse of Regent’s Park, unable to believe all this was really happening to her.
Leo’s brother, Ethan, had been a patient of Lizzie’s. He had returned injured from Afghanistan and Lizzie had been making home visits, treating his badly injured legs. She’d known Ethan was a doctor but had had no idea of his dazzling family history. Ethan had been silent and brooding and, knowing some of what he had been through, Lizzie hadn’t taken it remotely personally. Instead she had filled the long silences with chatter about her own life—her aging parents, her mother’s Alzheimer’s, the on-going concern she had for them despite the fact they were both in a home. How the decision to sell the family home had been a hard one. How expensive it all was. How she tried to get down to Brighton to visit them most of her days off.
How it hurt that her mother rarely recognised her.
Her tongs had paused in mid-dressing, she had been talking more to herself, but it had been Ethan who had, for once, broken the silence.
‘They’re lucky to have you.’
‘No.’ Lizzie had smiled, glad to hear him engaging. ‘I’m lucky to have them.’
Slowly Ethan had started talking and when he had told her that he was thinking of working in the family business, heading up the charity side of his brother’s cosmetic and reconstructive clinic, Lizzie had taken an interest, more because she’d been glad that Ethan was finally communicating.
It had never entered her head that he would put her forward for the position of Head Nurse at the clinic. More than that, she had never thought she would be accepted.
Lizzie was plagued with insecurity about the sudden change in her career, sure that one look at the very fresh-faced Lizzie and Leo Hunter would change his mind.
She wandered through the flat and to the gorgeous bathroom and stared at her reflection in the large mirror, wondering what head nurse to a renowned cosmetic surgeon ought to look like.
Lizzie looked at her light brown wavy hair and brown eyes and a face that rarely wore make-up and thought of all the celebrities and beauties she would be facing come Monday.
She thought too of facing Leo.
Of course she had looked him up and life hadn’t been the same since!
It was rather like the day her blushing mother had told a very naïve Lizzie the facts of life. The autumn crocus in her elderly parents’ lives, Lizzie had been cosseted and protected from such things. The day they’d had the talk, suddenly it had seemed that periods and sex were everywhere—from adverts on television to full pages in magazines.
It was the same with Leo Hunter—he was everywhere now.
He was the chiselled-jawed, blue-eyed hunk that cavorted on snow-capped mountaintops behind royalty as they were photographed.
Black hair brushed back, he was that beautiful face on the table next to a celebrity, he was that man walking beside a stunning model as she tripped on her way out of a nightclub.
Lizzie had just never paid attention till now.
Leo Hunter was a heartbreaker, surgeon to the stars, irredeemable playboy and, as of Monday, he would also be her boss.
‘I HIRED HER, didn’t I?’ Leo’s response to his brother was terse. ‘So why wouldn’t I be nice to her?’
‘You know what I mean, Leo.’
Rarely was Ethan the one to walk away. He turned on his heel and attempted to stalk out of his brother’s plush office but despite the simmering anger, despite ten years, no, a lifetime of rivalry, Leo’s jaws clamped together at the painful sight of his brother’s attempt to stalk off.
God only knew the mess of Ethan’s legs, Leo thought. Ethan certainly never spoke about them and Leo had only read about them. Leo could still remember the pain and humiliation of having to learn from a news article that his brother was recovering in hospital.
So much for being next of kin.
Ethan’s time in Afghanistan was something Ethan chose not to discuss but his pain was evident and, yes, Leo wished his brother would share, open up, but why would he? Leo thought.
They’d never been close.
Their father had seen to that long ago.
‘You’re not proving anything by refusing to use a walking stick.’ Leo watched as Ethan’s shoulders stiffened but, hell, if his older brother couldn’t say it then who could?
‘If I want a further opinion I’ll go to someone who …’ Ethan didn’t finish, he didn’t have to—that was the dark beauty of being brothers, there was enough history to know exactly what the other meant without having to spell things out. As Ethan’s disdain for Leo’s work briefly broke through the tense, simmering surface, exposing the rivalry beneath, Leo merely shrugged.
‘Mock it all you like,’ he said, as Ethan turned to face him. ‘But I’ll tell you this much—my patients walk out of here feeling one hell of a lot better than they did when they first walked in, and,’ he added, ‘might I remind you that it’s my work and subsequently my patients’ word of mouth that have pulled the Hunter name out of the gutter. While you were busy playing soldiers …’ Leo broke off, wishing he could retrieve his own words, because Ethan hadn’t been playing at anything. Ethan’s injuries were a product of war. He was a hero by anyone’s standards—especially Leo’s. ‘That was below the belt,’ he admitted.
‘Yes, and so is the shrapnel.’
Leo just stood there silent for a moment. His appalling playboy reputation combined with a passion for fast living meant that having a wounded soldier for a younger brother needled on so many levels. ‘While you’re peering down your nose at your celebrity surgeon brother, just remember that my work allows the charity side of things to happen,’ Leo pointed out. ‘Without the money coming into the Hunter Clinic those charity beds at the Lighthouse Hospital and Kate’s wouldn’t be funded and you wouldn’t be working here.’
‘I get it,’ Ethan growled.
‘You abhor it, though …’ Leo said, as his eyes drifted to the crystal decanter that sat on the walnut table in his office. ‘But you don’t seem to mind extravagance when you’re knocking back the hundred-year-old malt …’ He walked over and lifted the decanter. ‘I must remember to replace the stopper more carefully in future.’ His voice was dripping with sarcasm. ‘It seems to be evaporating at a rate of knots.’
Ethan said nothing. It was Leo who chose not to leave it. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to, Ethan? I’m assuming that you crashed here again last night …’
It was an obvious assumption. Ethan was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and was the antitheses of the impeccably groomed Leo who, despite a late night at an A-list function and an energetic romp with yet another blonde beauty in his bed, had been out for a run at dawn, before showering and heading to work.
Ethan, it would seem, had crashed again on Leo’s leather sofa.
‘I