‘You make a bloody entrance like you’re the rooster in a hen house,’ muttered Don. He tried to look annoyed but Millie couldn’t miss his lips twitching. Don liked Pav, and for some reason he liked Pav for Millie.
‘You’re just as much of an attention whore, you sly old dog,’ Pav teased as he plucked Millie out of her seat, sat in it himself and settled her back down on his lap. ‘I’ve seen you working the radiographers like a potter at his wheel. They’re all over you up there.’
‘Bugger off,’ Don muttered, his cheeks pink as he went back to his one-finger typing.
‘Don, I don’t mind doing that for you. If you just –’
‘You keep your fancy-man entertained and out of my business,’ Don said, determinedly stabbing at the keys one at a time.
‘I shouldn’t be sitting on you,’ Millie whispered, and tried to get up but Pav’s arms around her waist kept her firmly in place.
‘He told you to keep me entertained,’ Pav said. ‘Maybe you should do a dance or something?’
Millie rolled her eyes and stopped struggling to get up. Pav tended to get his way. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as one of his arms released her waist and his hand started stroking through her hair.
This was the thing about Pav. Casual affection seemed to be hard-wired into his DNA. And he was slowly but surely getting Millie accustomed to it. After years – in fact if truth be known practically her whole life – of little or no physical affection, it took some getting used to. What scared Millie the most was that she was not only growing accustomed to it, she had almost begun to crave it. The buzz she felt being this close to him, how secure she felt in the circle of his arms, the way his warmth and charm calmed her anxiety. It was all incredibly addictive, and when it was taken away she wasn’t sure how she was going to handle it.
Millie would love to be the type of person who just shrugged and decided to ‘cross that bridge when I come to it’, but she was a natural worrier, a planner, much more an ‘analyse the data, predict all the possible outcomes and obsess over them in a futile fashion’-type person.
‘We’ve got to talk about the conference,’ he told her, and the warmth that had seeped through her in his presence was chased away by fear. She knew Pav was treading carefully with this. She knew he didn’t want to push her too far again, not after witnessing how bad she could get that day in the lecture theatre; but she also knew he was determined that she consider it. Having had no luck in convincing Millie to speak, the conference organisers were now going to anyone they thought could make her go. She’d had the CEO of the hospital down here twice to discuss it with her. The head of the radiology department cornered her at every available opportunity to see if she would change her mind. And Pav, being the Surgical Director, was being contacted as well.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, pulling away firmly this time to stand next to her desk and cross her arms over her chest.
‘It’s groundbreaking stuff, Millie,’ Pav told her, his voice betraying some of the understandable frustration he must be feeling with her. ‘You have to at leastgoto the conference. I know it’s hard but –’
‘No,’ she said, taking a step back from him and feeling her nails dig into her forearm. Of course Pav didn’t miss a thing. He frowned and his eyes dropped to her folded arms; then he stood, walked forward into her personal space and gently prised her arms apart. He gave the red marks on her forearms a dark stare before looking back up at her and searching her face.
‘Okay,’ he said, his voice now soft and the frustration from a moment ago gone. ‘We’ll talk about it another time. But you know I can go with you. I wouldn’t let you do it on your own.’
Millie nodded and let out a slow breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She knew Pav was convinced he could change her mind. He understood her, to a certain extent – but the reality of her limits wasn’t something he could fully comprehend. Going to a conference with hundreds of strange people and actually speaking in front of them: that was so far beyond her limits he may as well be asking her to fly to the moon.
She knew the frustration in his voice from earlier was just the beginning. He wouldn’t put up with her neuroses forever. Eventually they would annoy him too much. But until then she had decided to simply enjoy being with him.
‘Right, so Saturday,’ he said, and she blinked up at him.
‘Uh … what about Saturday?’
‘My sister is engaged.’
Millie cocked her head to the side and frowned.
‘Oh … um, congratulations?’
‘You’re coming to the engagement party.’
Millie’s eyes went wide and she tried to pull her hands together but they were being held firmly by Pav’s much stronger ones.
‘I … I can’t meet your family,’ she whispered.
‘Why not?’ Pav was frowning. He was genuinely confused, as if meeting his family was not a massive deal and as if she would not be a complete embarrassment to him.
‘I just … I …’
‘They’ll love you. My mama loves everybody.’
Chapter 18
Unique
