Her Brooding Italian Surgeon by Fiona Lowe

kids. Do you think you qualify?’
    â€˜ Sì . Absolutely. I love kids.’
    Her heart lurched again. She loved kids too and had wanted a child of her own but that dream had been discarded, along with her tattered dreams of happy families. Now she worked with kids from the shelter, completely understanding their bewilderment at how their family life had suddenly been turned upside down.
    â€˜Great. Then meet me tomorrow night at the old jetty for canoeing on the river.’
    Like water connecting with flames, the twinkling light in his eyes doused. The hovering tension that often surrounded him zoomed back in, firmly front and centre, and all traces of the charismatic man vanished. ‘I can’t do that.’
    Abbie blinked in surprise at his steely tone as an irrational and unwanted streak of disappointment shot through her. ‘But you just said you’re up for anything.’
    His tanned skin tightened across his high cheekbones as his left hand brushed the scar on his chin. ‘I have to scrub.’ Without another word, he disappeared through the door.
    Abbie’s feet stayed still as if glued to the floor while her head spun, dizzy with unanswered questions. What had just happened? She couldn’t match up the flirting charm with the man who’d just walked away from her. She’d seen Leo in action wearing many guises—the determined grandson, the calm professional and talented surgeon, the super-smooth playboy—but she’d never imagined he’d be a man who’d just walk away from something.
    It’s no big deal, it’s just canoeing. Perhaps he had a prior engagement and the timing clashed? What did it matter that he’d said no? She should be relieved and happy. She’d kept her side of the bargain and issued the invitation, which meant he had to honour his promise of not asking her out. This was a totally win-win situation for her.
    But the relief she knew she should feel didn’t come. If his ‘no’ was to do with not being available then surely he would have said so instead of walking away. And he had walked away.
    He’d said he loved kids so it wasn’t that. A gazillion questions zoomed around in her head as she tried to work out his uncharacteristic behaviour but she couldn’t fathom any reason for it. It made no sense and yet something about canoeing had made him turn pale and turn on his heel.
    Her beeper sounded and she snapped her attention back to work. A patient was waiting for her to administer a general anaesthetic and that came ahead of an enigmatic surgeon. At least it did for now.
    Â 
    Leo stripped off his gloves and dropped them into the bin. The cholecystectomy he’d just performed had been straightforward and uneventful and now the patient was in recovery. As the surgeon, he should be filled with a sense of satisfaction at a job well done. Instead, he kept thinking about how he’d almost lost the plot when Abbie had invited him canoeing.
    Several times during the course of the operation he’d caught her staring at him over the top of her mask. Usually he welcomed the gaze of a beautiful woman, loving how much flirting could take place with eyes alone when the rest of the face was hidden. But today there’d been no flirting and he’d found himself ducking her penetrating and insightful stare, hating the fact that his guard had not merely slipped but had plummeted and smashed to pieces at the mention of the river.
    Being in Bandarra was bad enough but using the river—that was something he’d never do.
    He’d been thankful that as the surgeon he could leave the theatre earlier than the anaesthetist, which meant Abbie was still tied up in Recovery and not able to verbalise all the questions he’d seen flashing in her eyes. But, no matter how many questions she had, he didn’t talk about Dom to anyone—not even Nonna—and he had no plans to start talking now.
    Damn it,