‘Shut the fuck up,’ Pav snapped, and Lucas’s mouth fell open. ‘Sit down.’ Still gaping at Pav, his mouth opening and closing in shock, Lucas sank down into his seat.
Pav was a ‘good lad’. He was charming, sometimes outrageous, mostly easy-going; he did not issue sharp orders at meetings with an almost fierce expression on his face.
‘Now you listen up,mate. I’m going to let it go this time that your knowledge of the subspecialty you have been specifically employed to deal with is woefully lacking. Open removal should only be used as a second- or even third-line option; even with a stone this large. I will be asking for an audit of your other cases to see if the management decisions were evidence-based or not. Millie might not be a consultant … yet. But that makes the fact she knows a hell of a lot more about this, frankly, quite scary.’
Lucas narrowed his eyes and his mouth flattened into a disapproving line, but he sat back in his chair. Pav was the Surgical Director. Lucas had to accept his opinion, but from the way he glared at Millie through the rest of the meeting it was obvious he did not like it at all. Millie’s hands stayed clenched so tightly it had to be cutting off the blood supply to her fingers, and when she wasn’t doing that she kept straightening her files and lining up pens in front of her.
So when the meeting came to a close and Millie bolted for the conference-room doors Pav decided to let her go. She needed to calm down in her office. He would check on her later.
‘So, she’sMillieto you is she, Pavlos?’ Lucas sneered as Pav pushed up from his seat. ‘Okay, I get it. First name terms and all that. Not a single other person I know calls her anything other than Dr Morrison – well, that is if you don’t count Nuclear Winter as an actual name – but you, foryoushe’s Millie.’
‘Careful, Luc,’ Pav muttered, feeling a muscle jump in his cheek.
‘This proves once and for all that you will fuck anything that moves,’ Lucas said as the room started to empty out. ‘Christ, I already thought your standards were low after that locum last year, but I did at least think you went for actual live females rather than poorly reanimated corpses with as much personality as a badly programmed android. Jesus, didn’t she freeze your dick off the first time?’
Pav’s vision clouded with fury. It wasn’t a totally alien feeling; with three beautiful sisters at the same school as him and a lot of arseholes wanting to trash-talk them when they couldn’t get into their pants, Pav was no stranger to this type of anger. But it had been years since he’d been driven to it. Without thinking he spun around and stalked over to Lucas. His expression must have communicated just how angry he was, as Lucas took a quick step back, lost his balance and fell into one of the chairs behind him. Pav leaned over Lucas’s shocked frame and pointed a finger into his chest.
‘Don’t youevertalk about her like that again or I swear to God it won’t just be your career that’s fucked up.’
After Lucas gave him a sharp nod Pav released him and stepped back. Movement at the doorway of the conference room caught his eye and he turned to see Millie a few feet inside, her eyes wide and her mouth open as she regarded the two men in front of her. Lucas, still breathing heavily and bristling with fury, flew out of the chair and stormed around the table, before skirting Millie without giving her a second look.
‘I … I came back for my bag,’ Millie’s shaky voice came to Pav, and he watched her retrieve it from under the table. ‘I thought everyone would have left. I … um …’ She started backing away towards the exit and Pav moved quickly to cut her off.
He took a deep breath to help calm himself down as she spun to face him. Not only had that stupid twat wound him up, but also he found himself unreasonably annoyed that he should always be trying to block Millie’s escape from him in some way or another. Why couldn’t she be like the vast majority of the other females Pav interacted with? None of those women ran the other way.
‘Uh … hey, Mils,’ he said softly, watching with satisfaction as heat hit her cheeks and her lips parted on a sudden exhale, ‘how much did you hear?’
‘I … um … you … you were very angry,’ Millie whispered.
‘Yes, I was,’ Pav told her, narrowing his eyes as she took a small step back. ‘I’m sorry, Millie, but in my opinion he deserved a lot worse. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to know how much of that shit you heard.’
‘I … you …’ Millie spread her hands in front of her. ‘Do you do that a lot?’
‘What?’ Pav asked, frowning at her and cocking his head to the side.
‘Get angry and … shout at people. Do you do that a lot?’
‘He can take it, Millie,’ Pav told her. ‘If it makes you feel any better he likes to play Head or Gut when he’s drunk: nearly broke my jaw last year. There’s no way he’s reporting me to HR for …encouraginghim to sit in a chair.’
‘Head or Gut? What on earth is –’
‘So, now we’ve established that the little prick deserved it,’ Pav said, cutting her off, as he had no intention of explaining the dynamics of Head or Gut to Millie and giving her any more ammunition to keep backing away from him, ‘now, I’d like to know what you heard.’
Millie looked beyond him to the door and sighed. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Believe me. I don’t even blame people for disliking me.’
The matter-of-fact way Millie spoke about something Pav knew had to hurt her made his gut clench. He walked to her slowly, relieved that she wasn’t backing away from him anymore, and reached up to put his hands on her shoulders.
‘They don’t know you.’
Millie rolled her eyes. ‘If they knew me they would think I was evenmoreweird than they already do.’
She said it as if she was telling him the weather. To anybody else it would seem that it was all the same to her, like she was just stating a fact. But Pav could feel the tension in her shoulders under his hands. He was great at reading people, always had been. Millie might be the most complicated, guarded woman he’d ever met but he knew that, whatever she said, other people’s opinionsmatteredto her. He knew that although her words sounded practiced, as if she’d accepted and become used to the situation, it still hurt her. But he also knew that he wasn’t going to be able to change the way she viewed her life right now. He had to pick his battles.
‘Tonight,’ he said, and she frowned in confusion at the rapid subject change. ‘I’m taking you out for dinner tonight. Okay?’
She bit her lip. ‘I can’t tonight.’
‘Look, it’s just dinner, I swear. I don–’
