As quickly as he was trying to put up the blocks, she was tearing them down. Coming up to him and looping her arms around his neck as she wielded her body like a weapon against him.

The most effective weapon he’d ever known.

And when she pressed her soft breasts, with the taut nipples, against his chest, letting her lips brush against his, Liam let her.

After all, he was only a man, and not always a good one, at that. And then he saw the shimmering in her eyes and automatically he held his arms out for her to go to him; drawing her into his embrace as if he was a different man.

Scooping her into his arms, he carried her across the room, laying her down almost reverently on the bed, before he began stripping her. Taking his time and turning the whole thing into some elaborate show that seemed to have Talia as transfixed as he felt.

Her shoes came off first, followed by her flirty skirt, then her cropped tee, and the removal of each garment was punctuated by long, hot kisses as he reacquainted himself with every swell and every hollow.

As if the more tenderness he showed, the better he could protect her from whatever demons were loose inside himself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TALIA HELD HER breath as Liam gowned up, ready to operate on little Lucy Wells. And once he made his first incision—a four-centimetre incision in the midclavicular line—the procedure would finally be underway.

The past few days had been more like a dream than anything else. Pure bliss. The workplace had been harmonious, even sharing a few cases both in The Island Clinic, as well as at St Vic hospital. And when they’d been alone again, she’d lost count of the number of times he’d reached for her, and still that feeling of being sated had only lasted a short time before she’d found herself craving him again.

Like an itch she couldn’t quite scratch, she thought, grinning to herself as she imagined his aghast reaction if she ever dared to use that expression with him.

Perhaps she should, just for fun.

It was as though that moment in the alley when he had finally, shockingly, let her into a tiny part of his past had brought them closer. As she’d always hoped it might.

Was it too much to hope that his barriers were at last beginning to, if not crumble, at least soften? And she didn’t know if it was the years that had passed, or the fact that they weren’t the same people they had been back then, or simply the enchanting location of St Victoria, but it felt so tantalisingly close to the life she had once begun to imagine for her and Liam.

And now they were working together again, just like old times, and little Lucy was at last ready for her procedure. Talia couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a portentous day.

Even as she finished gowning Liam, he was speaking with the anaesthetist, confirming the wholly intravenous anaesthesia, and trans-oesophageal echocardiography that would allow Liam to monitor the heart and valve function without the lungs or ribs getting in the way.

The next time Talia had time to think, the operation was well underway.

A pillow had been positioned under the little girl’s right shoulder, a soft tissue retractor helping to open up her chest wall, over the right ventricle, and Talia watched as Liam pulled three deep stay sutures towards him to ensure optimal surgical exposure as she passed him the necessary equipment.

He worked quickly and efficiently, his experience and skill more than evident. And still he talked through what he was doing, allowing her to learn as he went. As if he understood how nervous she was feeling given that that the rest of the surgical team had experience of this procedure with the previous cardiothoracic surgeon.

There was no doubt that Lucy was in the best possible hands, and Talia felt a lance of pride as Liam worked.

So far so good.

‘So now I’m placing these pursestring sutures to avoid any haematoma of the ascending aorta wall,’ he showed her, as she peered over the little girl’s body.

‘Yes, I see,’ Talia confirmed, studying the way he placed the venous pursestring around the left atrial appendage—a small ear-shaped sac in the muscle wall of the left atrium—and reinforced it using suture pledgets.

If she remembered everything correctly, he would first place a venous cannula, using the inside of the left ventricle. Then an antegrade flow cannula would be inserted in the ascending aorta.

But still, watching him work was mesmerising. It made her feel privileged to be a part of something truly special, and Talia realised that was something she’d been missing ever since leaving Dukes.

Leaving Liam.

If she had been more a part of Isak’s team, it might have helped. But she suspected that was only part of it.

‘Once we’ve initiated perfusion, we’ll stop the heart and remove the aortic valve,’ he glanced up at her as though reading her thoughts.

This was the part of the operation she didn’t know at all. Even though Liam had used this approach back at Duke’s she’d never actually been on one of those procedures with him. She tried to remember what she’d read about him suturing the non-stented graft to the left subclavian artery, but as she watched the surgery unfold, it was easier just to watch and absorb than to try to over think it.

Time passed so quickly in the OR, especially watching someone like Liam work, that Talia was almost shocked when Liam concluded his closing.

Tags: Charlotte Hawkes Romance
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