He had asked her that with a smile still in his voice. She lifted her face again to look into his eyes, her face now serious.
‘Yes, I trust you.’
There was a weight behind her words. Pav felt like she was giving him another gift. His smile dropped and he nodded once, trying to convey that he didn’t take her trust lightly. As he pulled her lips to his he decided that supper could wait, at least for a little while.
Chapter 26
You’re not trying hard enough
Millie smiled down at her notes as she listened to what could only be Pav’s arrival at the meeting. She knew it was him without having to look up. He was without exception the loudest, most extrovert person in any room. Even his footsteps seemed louder than the average person. She could usually hear him approaching her office a good five minutes before he actually reached her door.
When he burst through the double doors of the meeting room greetings were called, jokes exchanged, backs slapped; he lit up the space with his smile, his laughter, his energy. As a lifelong, confirmed introvert with a history of slipping into rooms unnoticed and doing the least possible to draw attention to herself, Millie still found Pav’s ability to sail through life without any awkwardness slightly intimidating, but also incredibly magnetic. He was five minutes late but that didn’t faze him, and he certainly didn’t let it inhibit him.
In the month since they’d finally slept together he’d been like a tornado sweeping through her life. It was both exhilarating and terrifying. They spent the majority of nights together now and he was steadily working his way under her defences with a lethal combination of affection, charm and sex … lots and lots of sex. Millie had not realised what she’d been missing out on all these years but she was certainly making up for lost time now.
‘Right, team,’ he said, pulling a chair from the wall and squeezing it between Millie and Jamie once he’d given Jamie a shove to the side (nearly knocking him off his chair) and Jamie had punched him in the arm. ‘I’m pumped for the morbid stuff – lets get it on.’
‘Glad you decided to join us, Mr Martakis,’ said Mr Crawley, the head of the urology department. ‘Your excitement for the quarterly morbidity and mortality meeting is commendable. Let’s hope your figures hold up to scrutiny shall we?’
Pav grinned. ‘You betcha, Bossman.’ Mr Crawley sighed the sigh of a man who had tolerated Pavlos for the last ten years.
He had not been Pav’s ‘Bossman’ for at least two of those years, but before Pav had been appointed as a consultant at St George’s he had trained under him. Mr Crawley liked to act as though Pav was the bane of his existence, but was, like most people Pav interacted with, quite obviously charmed by him. This was evidenced by the fact he had appointed Pav as a consultant after his training had finished, and that the corners of his mouth were twitching even as he rolled his eyes at Pav’s antics.
‘If we start with the interventional radiology and the ureteric stenting. Do we have someone to present?’
Millie looked down at her hands and breathed out a slow sigh of relief. She had written up the figures and pulled the presentation together, then given it all to one of the other registrars. There was no way she was presenting anything to the meeting. As the registrar started going through the slides Pav touched her forearm and leaned down to whisper in her ear.
‘Hey, I watched you write that up. Why are you letting Dullard up there take all the credit?’
She breathed in deeply and shivered, happy to be surrounded by his scent and to feel his breath on her cheek. Just being close to him eased the anxiety she always felt at meetings like this, but there was no way she was going to speak, even in a whisper. Instead she wrote on her paper in front of her:You know why.
Pav frowned and his mouth tightened but he gave a short nod.
It had been a while since he’d brought up the conference. She knew he still wanted her to go and speak, but even after all the confidence-building stuff she’d done with the girls and the extra CBT she was having with Anwar, after seeing her at the Grand Round and the palaver it caused, Pav had to understand that was impossible.
Another hour later, after going through all the complications from any urology procedure over the last three months, the meeting was over. Millie attempted to make her standard rapid, low-profile exit but Marcus, the radiology registrar who had given her presentation, blocked her way to the door.
‘Thanks, Millie,’ he said, a wide smile lighting his face. ‘A couple of us are off down the pub after work. I could buy you a drink tonight if you were keen? It’s the least I could do in the circumstances.’
Ever since Millie’s collapse and subsequent rehabilitation this had been happening with alarming frequency. Men had been approaching her, talking to her, asking her out. After years of zero male interest it was more than a little confusing. She wasn’t sure if it was the humanising effect of the collapse that did it, or the fact she was maybe starting to act alittlemore normal. To her horror Pav caught hold of her hand.
‘Sorry, mate, we’ve got plans tonight,’ he said, his naturally louder-than-average voice carrying over the sounds of people leaving. ‘I could bring Millie along to the pub on the way though, if it’s a radiology social?’
The challenge in Pav’s voice was hard to miss and his chest had visibly puffed up as he faced the other man.
‘Well, it’s not exactly a social … just, like, a couple of us. You know.’ Marcus trailed off and shifted uncomfortably in front of them.
‘Oh yeah?’ Pav asked, his eyebrows rising and his tone full of fake curiousity. ‘I know a good few peeps down in x-ray. Who’s up for it?’
‘Well … uh …’ Marcus scowled at Pav and took a small step back before he looked at Millie again. ‘Maybe another time then,’ he mumbled.
‘Yeah, yeah,maybe,’ Pav said. ‘So, Mils, what time shall I pick you up tonight?’
Millie saw multiple heads had turned in their direction and felt heat burn in her cheeks. There was no way her voice was going to function with this many eyes on her. Pav frowned and cocked his head to the side in obvious confusion, moving right into her personal space, which drew even more attention from the room.
Jamie came to her rescue. He drew up next to them and shielded her from the majority of the curious eyes watching her.
‘Pav, you’re embarrassing Millie,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go.’
