Playing With the Playboy's Sweatheart

HUGH LINTON CAME with a warning attached. Emily hadn’t even put on her scrubs for her first shift as theatre nurse at The Royal—a busy London hospital—before being told by Louise, one of the other nurses, that the surgical registrar who was operating this Monday morning was, by anyone’s standards, a heartbreaker. ‘Is Candy very upset?’ Louise asked a colleague as she tucked her long blonde hair into her hat. ‘What do you think?’ came the response. ‘I just saw her in the canteen, crying her eyes out with a little crowd gathered!’ She smiled at Emily. ‘I’m Annie.’ ‘Hi, Annie,’ Emily said, but Annie was already back talking to Louise. ‘Mind you,’ Annie continued, ‘I don’t get why she’s carrying on so much—surely everyone should know that if you go into any sort of a relationship with Hugh it’s going to be fleeting at best, heartbreak at worst.’ ‘Watch yourself.’ Louise winked at Emily. ‘No need to,’ Emily said, ‘because he shan’t be breaking mine!’ But though she had laughed as she’d said it, in fact she wasn’t joking. Emily loathed anything remotely fleeting and no one would get close enough to break her heart. She had decided that many, many years ago. Still, she was somewhat sideswiped by Hugh Linton’s exceedingly good looks because when he first walked into the operating theatre Emily found out first-hand what the word ‘presence’ meant. He was very tall and his hair was as blond as Emily’s was dark. He had the greenest eyes that she had ever seen and his voice was deep and clear, the type who rarely needed to repeat themselves. His smile, as he chatted with Louise and then caught Emily’s eye, did make a slight blush spread across Emily’s cheeks and confirmed what she already knew—Hugh Linton was far from her ideal man! ‘Morning, everyone!’ Alex, the senior consultant, came in, having just been in to have a last word with the patient before surgery. ‘It’s going to be a long one,’ he warned as he went off to scrub. The operation was for the removal of an abdominal tumour in a twenty-six-year-old man. It was a complex tumour and before the operation commenced and the patient was brought in, Alex explained why he was doing open surgery as opposed to keyhole, which was his speciality. Then there was time for a little chat.