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The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child
Meredith Webber


The unexpected father When she first saw the stranger he was holding her precious son in his arms, out of the danger of the road. Now the man’s touch set her body on fire. She sensed she knew him – but how could she? She’d never met him before…Since losing her memory in an accident ten years ago, the only reminder Lauren Henderson has of her previous life is her little son, Joe. She doesn’t remember who Joe’s father is – or why her mind has blocked him out – but Jean-Luc Fournier, the darkly handsome new paediatric cardiologist at Jimmie’s Children’s Hospital, is about to turn her world upside-down…Jimmie’s Children’s Unit …where hearts are mended!







Had she met the man before?

Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deep set under black brows. Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eye to well-shaped lips.

Kissable lips!

Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?

And why?

Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?


Meredith Webber says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new medical authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

Recent titles by the same author:

CHILDREN’S DOCTOR, MEANT-TO-BE WIFE†

THE SHEIKH SURGEON’S BABY*

DESERT DOCTOR, SECRET SHEIKH*

A PREGNANT NURSE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

THE NURSE HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR†

*Desert Doctors †Crocodile Creek




THE HEART SURGEON’S SECRET CHILD


BY

MEREDITH WEBBER




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT

The Children’s Cardiac Unit, St James’s Hospital, Sydney. A specialist unit where the dedicated staff mend children’s hearts…and their own!

Don’t miss the second book in this long-awaited return to Jimmie’s Children’s Unit—coming next month from Meredith Webber and Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance!

JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT …where hearts are mended!




PROLOGUE


‘IT’S a love letter, you can’t deny that!’

The tall, slim young woman stood in front of him, anger sparking from her greeny-brown eyes, hurt and defiance yelling at him from the taut white face and tense lines of her body. ‘You’ve a wife at home, and you’ve betrayed her with me! Men!’

‘But it was over with. There—’

She didn’t let him finish, turning away to lift one, then two, then three babies into her arms, while outside the orphanage an even wilder storm raged, nature gone berserk.

‘Not as far as she was concerned, that’s obvious from an envelope festooned with pink hearts,’ Lauren snapped. ‘Not to mention “Je t’aime” which even an Aussie idiot can recognise as French for I love you. And the name—Therese Fournier—I doubt she’s your sister!’

She stood there, clasping the babies, her body vibrating with her rage. Jean-Luc wrapped a threadbare blanket around her shoulders then around the babies. It would offer poor protection from the slashing rain that fell outside but he had to try. He had to try to calm her, too, to explain, although he knew he’d failed, her rejection obvious as she shrugged off the fingers he let linger on her arm.

‘I should have known,’ she continued, anger still reverberating from every cell as she walked swiftly towards the door, body bent above the precious bundles in her arms. ‘Should have known a man as good-looking and sophisticated and worldly as you are wouldn’t really have been interested in a naïve little idiot like me! Except for sex, of course!’

‘It wasn’t like that but this isn’t the time—’ Jean-Luc began, but Lauren was too wound up—too wounded—to listen to anything he had to say.

‘Of course it’s the time,’ she retorted, as quick as a pistol shot. ‘There’s a typhoon raging out there, and we’re all about to be swept away. If we can’t tell the truth now, when can we? Now, open the door so I can get these little ones over to the church. It’s bad enough they have to hear the storm without them hearing us argue as well, poor wee darlings.’

He opened the door, dodging so the force of the wind behind it didn’t knock him over, then he put his arms around Lauren and the babies and they pushed into the wind, dodging as flying debris came close, needing the strength of their combined efforts to get them across the twenty yards separating the orphanage and the church.

Once inside, Lauren threw off the sodden blanket and took her damp charges up towards the altar beneath which she and Jean-Luc had already nestled five other infants and laid in a supply of water, powdered milk, feeding bottles and dry biscuits. Father Joe had suggested they put the babies beneath the altar, thinking the tiny church building, built of brick, was more likely to stand against the typhoon’s force than the larger but less well-built orphanage building. The only trouble was the church was little more than a chapel, too small for the older children and staff to cram into, so he, Jean-Luc and the nuns had built a kind of fortress within the orphanage, using beds and tables for walls and mattresses for a ceiling. There they intended to huddle until the typhoon passed over them and the wild winds and seas diminished.

‘Lauren—’ Jean-Luc began, hating to leave her alone with the babies but especially hating to leave her like this—angry and hurt.

‘Go, Jean-Luc, the others need you.’

‘But…’

She looked at him across the stone altar, babies cradled in her arms and such sadness in her face he thought his heart would break.

‘It’s as much my fault as yours,’ she said bitterly. ‘I loved you, so I trusted you. I believed you when you said you loved me. Look at you—how could I not love you, and, loving you, how could I not believe? Put it down to my stupidity! Now, go!’

She disappeared from view, kneeling down to put her babies with the others, to lift and soothe one already there, crying softly, as all the babies did from time to time.

Indecision held him—he wanted so much to stay, to explain he and Therese had been separated for months, and to offer whatever protection he might to this woman with whom, against all the odds, he’d fallen in love—but the nuns were old and frail and Father Joe needed him to help with the older children. If he hesitated a moment longer, getting back to the orphanage building might be impossible.

‘We’ll talk later,’ he said desperately, torn in two by having to leave her but hurrying anyway towards the door.

‘Oh, no, we won’t.’

The words came from beneath the altar, ominous words, cold and angry, although he had no idea how prophetic they would be. Three days later, lying in hospital with a shattered leg, and less serious injuries too numerous to list, he recalled how, only two hours after he’d left Lauren and the babies in the church, the freak wave that had washed away the orphanage and carried him up into the foothills beyond the village had also reduced the church to a pile of bricks and rubble.

Lauren was dead…


CHAPTER ONE

JEAN-LUC sniffed the air as he walked the short distance from the hospital to his temporary home. The huge park that stretched out on the opposite side of the road made it hard to believe he was in a big city. Not that he’d seen much of it, apart from this small corner, but flying in he’d seen the harbour and the fabled Opera House, and he knew the beach-side suburbs of Bondi and Coogee—such strange names—were not far away.

Sydney! Ten years ago he’d listened to a twenty-one-year-old young woman talk with rapture and enthusiasm of the place that was her home, the memory returning when he’d had to choose between this city and Cincinnati, both places offering a chance to work with a first-class paediatric cardiac surgical team.

Now Lauren, with whom he’d fallen so unexpectedly in love back then, walked beside him like a ghost—perhaps a ghost that had lingered in his mind for far too long, affecting his relationships with other women…

Zut! How had such sentimental thoughts crept into his mind? The long flight must have left him more tired than he’d realised, to be thinking such nonsense. His engagement had ended because Justine couldn’t handle his devotion to his work and his marriage to Therese had broken up long before he’d gone to India.

And Sydney had been the obvious choice because he’d met Alex Attwood at a conference and been impressed by the man. Working on his team would be enjoyable as well as a privilege.

He shoved the transient memory of Lauren back where it belonged—into the past. This was now, and his first day in the unit had been fascinating, although he’d have to start taking notes if he was to remember all the new ideas and subtle innovations he wanted to take back with him to Marseilles.

Work. It had been his focus as he’d recovered from his injuries ten years ago—indeed, with Lauren dead and his leg shattered it had been a reason to keep on living—and since then it had brought its own rewards, especially now with the offer to head up his own paediatric cardiac surgery unit at the new hospital in Marseilles!

He sniffed the air again, thinking of Marseilles and his home village of Cassis nearby—wanting to smell the sea this time—but he must be too far from those beaches.

And getting soft in the head to be thinking of such things!

‘Aagh!’

The shrill cry drew him out of his imaginings and he looked around. Ahead of him a small school bus was receding into the distance and on the footpath opposite a youth was flying along on a skateboard.

Had he called out?

The cry had turned to a wail of distress and as Jean-Luc crossed the road, certain that’s where the noise had originated, he saw the small child lying in a crumpled heap, wailing piteously.

It wasn’t hard to put the accident together—the school bus, the youth on the skateboard, getting away as fast as he could, no thought at all for his small victim. Jean-Luc reached the child and knelt beside him.

‘I’m a doctor,’ he said gently, removing a floppy-brimmed hat so he could see the child. ‘Can you tell me where it hurts?’

The small head turned and Jean-Luc recognised the epicanthic eyelid folds of Down’s Syndrome. Anger at the youth who’d knocked the little fellow over heated Jean-Luc’s blood, but right now he needed to check the little boy.

‘Did he run over you or just knock you down?’ he asked, while dark blue eyes continued to stare at him. ‘Does your head hurt?’

A nod, which could be answering anything—Jean-Luc realised he’d asked too many questions. The little boy straightened to a sitting position and brushed the back of his hand across his face to clear the tears that streaked his cheeks.

‘I got a fright,’ he said. ‘And hurt my hand.’

He held out his hand for inspection and, sure enough, the fall had grazed it, blood welling amidst the dirty scratches. He’d grazed his left knee and leg as well but possibly those injuries weren’t hurting as much as the hand and the child hadn’t noticed.

Jean-Luc looked around. Surely if the bus had dropped the little boy off, someone would be waiting for him, but all the houses showed blank faces to the street, no anxious mother peering out a window or a door.

What was wrong with people that they let a vulnerable child like this out on his own?

‘Do you live near here?’ he asked, as his patient sniffed and dragged his schoolbag onto his lap.

A nod, then the uninjured hand lifted and a finger pointed to the house outside which they squatted.

‘Number thirty,’ the boy said proudly. ‘Number thirty, Kensington Terrace.’

He had reason to be proud, Jean-Luc thought. For so young a child with developmental difficulties, knowing his address was a remarkable achievement.

‘What if I carry you inside?’ Jean-Luc suggested. ‘Will your mother be at home?’

The boy nodded. ‘Mum or Gran or Bill or Russ, someone’s always at home.’

Then why aren’t they looking out for you? Jean-Luc wondered, thinking Mum and Gran and Bill and Russ must all be remarkably laid-back or plain careless that they hadn’t been watching for the bus. People these days were just too casual about the safety of their children!

He lifted the child easily, and had just stood up when a frantic barking began across the road, then the blast of a car horn, a squeal of brakes, a desperate cry of ‘Lucy!’ and a golden Labrador landed on the footpath right in front of them, teeth bared as he greeted Jean-Luc with a deep-throated growl.

Put that child down!

The command was implicit in the threatening noise while the child’s delighted ‘Lucy!’ confirmed the dog was indeed the child’s pet.

Before Jean-Luc could decide on his next move—would the dog bite if he moved?—a long-legged woman came racing across the road, once again causing car horns to blare and brakes to squeal. Long, dark, red-brown hair flew behind her, flopping against her head as she slid to a halt in front of Jean-Luc, green-brown eyes flashing fire.

‘Put him down! How dare you? Who are you, touching my child like that?’

The dog, perhaps taking the woman’s demands as permission to get more involved, began to dance around Jean-Luc, barking furiously, the entire situation developing into something very like a farce.

Except that comedy was the last thing in Jean-Luc’s mind as he stared at the woman who reached out for the child, now wriggling in Jean-Luc’s absent-minded grasp.

It couldn’t be!

His mind was playing tricks.

It was because he’d been thinking of her.

‘He’s a doctor, Mum,’ the little boy said. ‘A big boy knocked me down!’

‘Lucy, sit!’ the woman commanded, then she snatched her child from Jean-Luc’s arms.

The dog sat, but kept his dark brown eyes fixed firmly on Jean-Luc. One false move and your hand is mine!

‘Oh, Joe, are you hurt? What big boy? Was it someone we know? Didn’t the bus driver see?’

She was too busy searching her son’s body for injury to notice Jean-Luc, which was perhaps just as well, for he was staring at her, dumbstruck, certain he was seeing a ghost returned to life.

That it was Lauren he had no doubt—the voice, slightly husky as if she always had a cold, the face, the freckles, the long, long legs—but for some strange reason the coincidence of running into her like this was not nearly as hard to believe as the fact that she was alive.

That was the miracle!

‘Oh, you’ve hurt your hand—but everything else? You’re all right?’

The little boy assured her he was OK and she hugged him to her body, finally acknowledging the presence of another person and looking across the child at Jean-Luc.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, offering an apologetic smile to underline the words. ‘I overreacted. Thank you for coming to the rescue. The bus must have been early. Lucy and I were just coming back from our walk. Did you see what happened? See who knocked him over?’

Jean-Luc stared at her, unable to believe she could be so oblivious. It was unthinkable that she had no idea who he was! That he could have changed so much, or been so forgettable…

‘You don’t remember me?’

She frowned, her lovely hazel eyes now studying him more intently, although he guessed most of her attention was still on her child and she was anxious to get him inside so she could check for herself that he wasn’t seriously injured.

‘Should I know you?’ she asked, her smile now polite, but very distant. ‘Oh, Joe said you’re a doctor. You work at the hospital. Of course!’ Another smile, more polite than the first and with as little meaning. ‘You must forgive me. I had an accident years ago and it affected my memory, especially my memory for faces.’

A third smile, this one genuine enough to spark lights in the eyes that had once shone with love for him.

‘At least, that’s my excuse.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Lauren Henderson and this is Joe. Thank you once again.’

Jean-Luc took her hand and introduced himself, eyeing her carefully, certain he’d see a spark of recognition and probably embarrassment when he said his name, but far from uttering a delighted cry of ‘Jean-Luc’ and exclaiming over wonderful twists of fate, all she did was shake his hand and release it, her fingers dropping his so abruptly he knew her thoughts were back on the little boy.

He should have said more—reminded her of India—but she was so totally oblivious and the little boy was claiming pain in his injured hand. So Jean-Luc settled for saying goodbye and watched her scurry back towards the house, head bent as she spoke quietly to her child, the dog they’d called Lucy—surely a female name and it was definitely a male dog—following close behind them, though turning from time to time to check Jean-Luc posed no further danger. The front door opened and all three disappeared inside, the door closing behind them.

Maybe she was a ghost—the whole episode a figment of his imagination, brought about because he’d been thinking about Lauren and her description of her home town…

Had she met that man before? Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deepset under black brows. Black hair, neatly trimmed, greying slightly at the temples—a cliché surely! Maybe he dyed it grey to look distinguished. If so, he’d certainly achieved his aim! Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, puckered even in places, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eyes to well-shaped lips.

Kissable lips!

Lauren set Joe down on the kitchen table the better to examine his injuries. Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?

And why?

Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?

Of course not! She’d been strung up over seeing Joe in a stranger’s arms—then to hear he’d been injured…

The tingling had been apprehension…

It had only happened when he’d touched her.

She used a clean cloth to wipe the grazes on Joe’s hand and leg, chatting to him, asking about the accident, although her mind was not on Joe’s explanations of the skateboard rider crashing into him but on the man who had rescued her son.

A stranger.

Just an ordinary man.

No! Not in the wildest flights of any woman’s imagination could that man be classed as ordinary.

Or forgettable—yet she certainly had no recollection of ever having met him.

‘Did he say he was a doctor?’ Lauren asked, pushing her memory to bring up some hint of a meeting.

‘Who?’

‘The man who picked you up.’

‘Yes.’

Big help!

‘At the hospital?’

‘Dunno. Mum, can I go and play?’

‘A snack first,’ Lauren said. What was she doing, cross-examining her own child about a man she’d probably never see again? She lifted Joe off the table and sent him to wash his hands.

Although the man had been walking down the road…

And most of the houses in the area were hospital houses…

She shook her head at her own stupidity. As if a man like that would ever look at someone like her, and then there was her track record with men. Most men who took her out were interested right up until the stage they met Joe and realised he was part of the package, after which they disappeared, never to be heard from again.

She put a glass of milk and a plate of cheese with fruit and vegetable sticks on the table, and settled Joe in front of them. Then she ruffled his hair and bent to kiss the top of his head.

She’d rather have Joe than a thousand handsome men, although now and then she wondered wistfully about his father. Had his touch made her skin tingle?

The next morning Jean-Luc stood at the bedroom window of the flat that would be his home for the next six months. It was two doors down from the one where the ghost of Lauren lived—except she wasn’t a ghost, she was real. Even her name, Lauren Henderson, was real.

It was unbelievable—first that she was alive, and then the coincidence of running into her, although Lauren had been set on a medical career and from what he’d been told most of the houses in the area were home to medical personnel from St James’s Hospital. Jimmie’s, the staff all called it—

Not what he should be thinking about—nicknames for hospitals. What he had to consider was why he was even thinking about her. So she was alive! She had obviously survived the typhoon though how, when he’d seen photos of the collapsed church and couldn’t imagine anyone surviving beneath the rubble, he didn’t know.

Was that the accident she’d spoken of? Was the memory loss amnesia?

Which brought him neatly back to the fact that it didn’t matter. So, an old girlfriend was living two doors away—so what?

It certainly wasn’t important as far as Lauren was concerned, for she didn’t have a clue who he was.

And there was no reason why things couldn’t stay that way.

Except that he’d spent the night tossing and turning in his bed, fragments of their time together returning to haunt his dreams, images of how she looked now intruding into his sleep, which was extremely aggravating.

And her not remembering him made him feel…not angry but definitely put out.

‘Are you coming?’

The old house in which he was living was hospital property, available for rent by visiting specialists. It was divided into two flats, and Grace Sutherland, the second of the surgical fellows working with Alex Attwood’s team this term, was occupying the other one. She was tapping at his door, as she did most mornings, so they could walk to work together.

Grace chattered as they walked, talking about Theo, the Greek perfusionist on the surgical team. Was Grace really interested in the mechanics of, and possibilities of improvement to, the heart bypass machine or was her interest more personal? Jean-Luc and Grace had been in Australia less than a week, and had only met the members of the surgical team a couple of days earlier—could she be interested in a man so quickly?

Women—he would never understand them, and now he no longer tried. He’d already chalked up one failed marriage, and since the end of his engagement to Justine—she’d accused him, perhaps justly, of being more interested in work than he was in her—he had found there were plenty of women who didn’t want to be understood any more than they wanted permanence, women happy to enjoy an affair with no strings attached on either side.

And if, at times, he felt an emptiness in his life, he knew he had only to return to work—to see the babies and children he treated—and he would feel fulfilled and whole again. There was something in their innocence and trust that allowed him to forget about his relationship failures—forget even his cynicism about life in general. Being withhis small patients renewed his determination to provide them all with the best possible chance at life.

‘Just being with these children brings me indescribable joy,’ Lauren had once said, talking of the children in the orphanage, and in his head he had often echoed those words, thinking her long gone yet finding comfort and confirmation in them.

Except she wasn’t long gone—wasn’t dead at all.

He strode out along the footpath, aware his steps must have slowed as he thought about Lauren, so he was trailing behind Grace who moved with athletic ease.

‘Did you leave a beautiful woman behind in France? Is that why you’re dreaming your way up the road?’ Grace asked, stopping at the lights to wait for him to catch up.

‘No beautiful woman left behind,’ he told her. ‘No non-beautiful woman either, except, of course, my mother and my grandmother, a brace of aunts and a horde of female cousins.’

Grace studied him.

‘You’re far too good-looking not to have women falling over themselves to be with you, so what’s the story?’

He had to smile. His new colleague didn’t know the meaning of subtle—all her questions and observations were equally blunt and often intrusive.

‘Maybe I’m not interested in women,’ he said, hoping to stop her probing, but she greeted this remark with a laugh, then took his arm to cross the road, the lights now showing green and a crowd hustling all around them.

‘The consulting rooms and team-meeting rooms are above the theatre and PICU,’ Grace reminded him as they went into the big building.

‘I remember, but I’ll stop on the floor below and check the babies before I go up,’ he said. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’

Grace seemed surprised, but checking the babies in his care was always the first thing he did when he entered a hospital. It was more than a habit, because even when he didn’t need to see them to boost his spirits, he felt it centred him—concentrated his mind on his work, and most of all reminded him why he did what he did. So the tiny scraps of humanity on whom they operated would have a chance to live normal, useful, happy lives.

‘You do your thing with the babies and I’ll go on ahead,’ Grace told him, her tone of voice and the look she gave him suggesting she was humouring him in some way.

Well, Grace could think what she liked. He was going to visit the babies!

Jean-Luc found his way into the PICU, where he spoke to the sister watching the monitor and learned that all the babies in the unit were stable, some doing better than others, but all progressing. He visited each one of them, learning names—Mollie, Jake, Tom—finding himself translating them into the French equivalents because that made them more personal to him. He talked to parents sitting by the cribs, introducing himself to those he hadn’t met before, assuring and reassuring them.

But always the focus of his attention was the infants, most of whom slept peacefully or watched him pass with wide-open eyes.

He was leaving one of the single rooms after a quiet chat with the parents of a three-year-old recovering from a septal defect repair when a voice, so familiar he shivered at hearing it, penetrated his consciousness.

Movement on the far side of the bigger room attracted his attention and he watched as a tall woman in the smock and headscarf of a nurse led a distressed couple out of a door.

They disappeared from view but now they were outside the room he could hear their voices more clearly.

‘But he’s so tiny, how can he survive?’ a woman wailed.

‘Because he’s had the best team in Australia operating on him,’ came the confident answer. ‘Yes, it was a traumatic operation for such a tiny baby but, believe me, the men and women in that theatre know their jobs. If anyone can sort out the problems your Jake had with his heart, that lot could. Now all we have to do is get him better.’

Impossible! Coincidence couldn’t stretch that far. Although his mother always said things happened in threes and here was Lauren alive, number one, then living all but next door, number two, now working in the same unit, number three.

Impossible!

Yet this third coincidence—or twist of fate—had shaken him and he went into the small tearoom and sat down for a moment. Could he work with Lauren and not tell her of their shared past?

All their shared past?

She had a child and presumably a husband although she was still using her maiden name.

Lauren married?

It shouldn’t hurt—it had been ten years…

And if she’d forgotten him, then surely that was that. No need to tell her, to remind her.

The idea made him feel extremely uneasy, and digging deep into his confused mind he decided it was pique. He felt upset that she’d forgotten him—betrayed…

Lauren led Brian and Shelley Appleton out of the PICU and into a small quiet room, one of several set aside for parents. She offered them tea or coffee but Brian was too uptight to do more than wave away the offer with his hand, pacing back and forth in the small space between the four comfortable chairs and the coffee-table.

Lauren knew she had to try again to calm the man.

‘There’s no guarantee he’ll need another operation,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been reading up on it and know that in some cases children with coarctation of the aorta do need further surgery as they grow, but it doesn’t happen in all cases. The surgeons have removed the narrow part of Jake’s aorta that was causing him problems and rejoined the blood vessel without any difficulty or the need for a man-made tube so the outlook for him is really good.’

She looked hopefully at Brian, and knew immediately he hadn’t been mollified. Though Shelley had sunk down into one of the armchairs and closed her eyes, as if removing herself from the discussion.

‘Except that he’ll have to keep seeing specialists, and he could get endocarditis or even golden staph.’

‘Brian!’

Shelley’s voice held appeal, but beyond that was exhaustion. Lauren shifted her attention.

‘Can I get something for you, Shelley? A cup of something or a cold drink, a sandwich?’

‘We’ve been living on sandwiches for the last month!’ Brian stormed. ‘What makes you think we’d want more of them?’

Lauren swallowed a sigh. Baby Jake had been in hospital since his birth a month earlier—of course his parents would be sick of sandwiches. But Shelley obviously needed food, and probably a change of scenery.

‘Look,’ Lauren said, touching Brian’s arm to make him stop pacing and look at her. ‘I know you’re upset, and you’ve reason to be, but you’re being too negative about this. You’re also both exhausted, mentally and physically. Why don’t you get out of this place for a while? Go for a walk in the park. Stop in the shade for a hug and a kiss. There’s a terrific Italian restaurant on the other side of the park—get some breakfast there and a cup of real coffee, breathe fresh air, and be thankful young Jake was born in a hospital where there are facilities to treat his condition, and extra thankful he’s got through the operation so well. I’ve spent the last three years in this kind of unit and I’ve never seen a baby come through an op like his as well as he did. So go somewhere and think about yourselves for a change. Think about each other, talk to each other—about yourselves not Jake.’

Brian stared at her and Lauren wondered if he’d heard a word she’d said, then he grinned, looking about ten years younger, more like his real age, which she knew was thirty.

‘A hug and a kiss sounds OK,’ he said, then he turned to his wife. ‘Shell?’

Shelley smiled, though tiredly, and looked at Lauren, who nodded firmly, mouthing, ‘Go.’

‘OK, we’ll take a walk.’

Shelley stood up and linked her arm through her husband’s.

‘But I’m not making any promises about hugs or kisses,’ she added, a real smile this time taking years off her face, too. ‘You’ll look after Jake?’

‘As if he were my own,’ Lauren promised, not bothering to add she should have finished her night shift several hours ago. These people had needed her, and though Jake didn’t—he’d have extremely competent nurses watching him—she’d stay, because she’d said she would.

She watched the Appletons walk towards the lift, then returned to the room which Jake was sharing with two other post-op babies.

‘You’re off duty,’ Jasmine Wells, who’d relieved her, reminded her.

‘I promised Shelley I’d stay with Jake while they get away from the hospital for a while.’

‘As if he’d know whether you were there or not,’ Jasmine scoffed. ‘That kid’s the best sleeper we’ve ever had in here. But if you’re going to watch him, that leaves me free to do the rosters for next week. You OK working nights over the weekend or have you got a hot date with Theo?’

Lauren smiled.

‘I don’t do hot dates,’ she reminded her friend. ‘You know full well the only reason I’ve been seeing Theo from time to time is that he’s been trying to persuade me to go to the States and do a perfusionist’s course. He keeps pulling info off the internet for me.’

She paused then added, ‘And I have to admit I’m tempted. However, it would mean such a change, and uprooting Joe, not only from school but from all the other activities he enjoys.’

‘He’d adapt,’ Jasmine said. ‘You know he would. In fact, he’d probably love it, especially if you could get into a school close to one of the Disneylands. Think about that! Then think about all those gorgeous American doctors we see on TV—think about them.’

‘Go and do the rosters,’ Lauren said, waving her hand to chase Jasmine away, afraid if they kept talking she’d admit just how much she wanted to do the course. Well, not how much she wanted to do the course as such, but how much she wanted a change in her life.

Now she did sigh, but baby Jake didn’t notice, and, having let go of a little frustration with the release of air, she shook off the vague feeling of depression that had been hovering around her lately. It was Jasmine’s fault. Only two weeks ago she’d announced her engagement, while the week before Becky, the unit secretary, had decided on a wedding date. It felt to Lauren as if the love fairy was back at work, not only in the hospital but right here in the unit. Last year it had touched the lives of three couples connected with the unit and now it was back, the malicious imp, sprinkling love dust willy-nilly.

Thankfully none had landed on her.

Her fingers tingled and she remembered the man who’d shaken her hand the previous afternoon.

‘As if!’ she muttered to herself, knowing such a man was probably married with two point four children, and even if he wasn’t, why would he be interested in her? And then there was Joe.

So she was thankful the love dust had missed her.

Of course she was. She nodded confirmation of this to the sleeping Jake. If thinking about studying in the US was causing her major confusion, how much more confusion would love cause?

She gave the baby a wistful smile.

It would have been nice to have remembered love…

Then love was forgotten as she realised all was not well with Jake. A swelling on his hand where a cannula was sited suggested his vein had collapsed. She pressed the help button, knowing whoever was manning the central monitor would call a doctor, and began to disconnect Jake’s leads from the monitor.

She would be the monitor while she took him through to the procedures room—to the machine responsible for seeing he kept breathing.


CHAPTER TWO

JEAN-LUC was leaving the unit, his mind on coincidence and betrayal, when he all but collided with the crib a nurse—the nurse—was pushing out the door.

‘Good grief, you’re the doctor who rescued Joe! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘So your memory’s not all that bad,’ he snapped, as the pique he’d been feeling since she’d failed to recognise him surfaced. ‘I’m one of the new visiting surgeons on Alex Attwood’s team.’

He tapped the ID that was clipped onto his belt.

‘Thank heavens—just who I need,’ Lauren said, ignoring his jibe and smiling happily. ‘You do seem to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time. Jake’s vein’s collapsed and he’ll need a new catheter put in. I’m just taking him through to the procedure room. I’ve asked Jasmine to put out a call for a doctor, but as you’re here, you can do it.’

She manoeuvred the crib into the small room and, though busy reattaching monitor leads to the monitor in there, she continued talking.

‘It would happen when I’ve sent his parents away from the hospital for the first time since he was born!’

Although he knew a collapsed vein wasn’t life-threatening, Jean-Luc’s training kicked in and he washed his hands then bent over the infant, checking his size, seeing the chest scar of a recent operation.

‘Fill me in.’

Lauren was unwrapping a fine-bore cannula, but she responded to his abrupt order without pause. A good nurse…

‘Jake Appleton, coarctation of the aorta. Phil caught the case. He tried prostaglandin to keep the ductus arteriosis open, heart medication, diuretics, but Jake continued to suffer congestive heart failure. Cardiac catheterisation with balloon angioplasty to widen the aorta didn’t work and in the end Phil had to operate to remove the narrowed section. Jake’s been doing well, until this.’

Lauren stepped back, but although her eyes should have been on Jake she found she was now studying the doctor who bent over him, his hands firm but gentle as he lifted Jake’s limbs, searching for a viable vein in the baby’s already over-taxed and -treated body. Every touch assured her this man not only knew what he was doing but had an instinctive rapport with his little patients.

She couldn’t possibly have met him before. His eyes were blue, she knew that now, while as for the rest of his face—well, further scrutiny confirmed the opinion she’d formed yesterday. He was definitely unforgettable!

So presumably she’d met him as Alex had taken him through the unit on a guided tour of some kind. Lauren was aware there were two new staff members, one French—this one, from the accent that curled around his words—the other from South Africa. Both would be working in the unit for six months, improving their skills and no doubt passing on their own expertise to Alex and Phil’s surgical teams.

‘Problems?’

Phil Park, the head of the second surgical team, arrived but Lauren could see the new doctor had already sited the cannula and was reattaching the drip.

‘Collapsed vein,’ Lauren said to Phil. ‘I could see the fluid leaking out beneath his skin. Dr…’

She looked from the man, still bent over Jake, to Phil, then back to the man.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

The newcomer muttered something under his breath and Lauren, who talked quietly to her charges all the time, assumed he was speaking to Jake. She turned to Phil, who answered for her.

‘Fournier,’ he said. ‘Jean-Luc Fournier. Actually, you’ll probably be seeing him around as he and Dr Sutherland, the South African surgeon who is also joining us, will be living near you in the flats at Number 26.’

Satisfied the cannula was sited safely, Jean-Luc had remained bent over the baby, wanting to see the fluid flowing again before he was one hundred per cent certain. With babies’ tiny veins…

But as Phil said his name, Jean-Luc looked up, interested in Lauren’s reaction—hoping to see shame that she hadn’t recognised him the previous day, perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been in touch with him after the typhoon—wanting to see something!

Anything!

But the green-brown eyes that met his held no hint of embarrassed recollection, just politeness as she nodded.

‘Ah, that explains it,’ she said, then turned her attention back to Phil. ‘I met Dr Fournier yesterday—he rescued Joe when he was knocked over on the footpath.’

To Jean-Luc she added, ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue so promptly.’ She smiled. ‘Again!’

Jean-Luc felt his body respond to that smile and knew that responding to her was even more impossible than finding her. How could this be after ten years?

Was it leftover lust?

Not a thought he could pursue when Phil was talking to him, thanking him for stepping in.

‘You’ll be a useful chap to have around,’ Phil finished, waving his hand for Jean-Luc to precede him out of the room.

Jean-Luc swung back towards Lauren, but she was once again fiddling with monitor leads, no doubt detaching them preparatory to taking the infant back to the PICU.

Who was she now?

And why was he wondering?

She was married, with a child—end of story!

Or was it?

Surely something of the woman he had fallen so deeply and desperately in love with still lingered within her.

His thoughts left him so unsettled he wanted to go back in and look at the babies in the unit but he was expected upstairs.

Consultations awaited…

Had some of the love dust landed on her after all that she was going weak-kneed whenever the new surgeon was around? Lauren wheeled Jake back into the big room and reattached his monitor leads, thankful Shelley and Brian had missed the little drama, forcing herself to think of them, not of blue eyes that had looked, almost angrily, into hers.

No, she had to be imagining the anger. He couldn’t possibly be angry that she didn’t remember some chance meeting they’d had earlier, although it could only have been within the last few days—the new team members hadn’t been here all that long.

And her memory wasn’t usually that bad!

It was a puzzle but not one she needed to bother with right now. Although the image of possibly angry blue eyes lingered in her mind and she was distracted as she listened to Brian and Shelley thank her for sending them away, the walk, Brian assured her, having done them both the world of good. Now he would sit with Jake while Shelley had a sleep, and Lauren could go home to sleep herself—No, she couldn’t! It was consultation day. She had to sit in on Alex’s consultations before she could go anywhere.

She sighed but hurried through to the locker rooms to have a wash and run a brush through her hair, which had been knotted up under the scarf all night. Her face was pale and she smeared some lipstick on her lips then put some on her finger and rubbed it into her cheeks. It didn’t help much but she looked less ghostly and hopefully more proficient. Alex insisted on at least one member of the nursing staff sitting in on pre-op consultations because he believed the parents were more confident if they already knew the nurses who would be caring for their infant or child. But seeing a colourless ghost might make them less, not more at ease…

‘I’m just explaining to Jean-Luc why we have a nurse sitting in,’ Alex said, as she met up with him and the Frenchman outside the door of his consulting room.

‘As well as being reassuring for the parents,’ Alex continued, ‘it helps that the nurse—Lauren in this case—knows exactly what we intend to do in the operation. The parents never take it all in at once, it’s just too much for them, and we’ve found, prior to an op, they are so strung up that they forget what they do take in, so if the nurse can explain to them afterwards, or at least answer their questions, things go a lot more smoothly.’

‘For the parents,’ Lauren explained. ‘They are such an important part of the equation and if they have to wait to see a doctor to ask their questions, then the doctors get overworked and the parents get over-anxious and the situation becomes fraught.’

Could she really not remember him?

How would she react if he said India?

Jean-Luc knew he should be concentrating on what he was being told, not on the lack of recognition in the beautiful eyes that met his so trustingly.

‘It is so sensible, the idea of the nurse sitting in, I am surprised other places do not do it,’ he managed, glad he could be honest—it was a good idea—even though he was distracted.

‘Coffee first,’ Alex declared. ‘While we drink we’ll run through the list of patients we’ll be seeing this morning so you both have some idea of what lies ahead. Lauren, I know you’re white with one. Jean-Luc, how do you take your coffee?’

‘Straight black, no sugar,’ Jean-Luc replied, then was surprised when Alex left the comfortable consulting room.

‘He will get the coffee himself?’ Jean-Luc asked Lauren, who grinned at him in reply.

‘Not used to men getting the coffee?’ she teased, the smile still playing around her soft lips.

Jean-Luc shrugged, too busy watching the smile and fighting his reaction to it—not leftover lust at all, but attraction, still alive and well—to answer.

‘Actually,’ Lauren continued, ‘he’ll go to the reception desk out front, pick up his pile of case files and ask Becky, the unit secretary, to organise some coffee.’

‘Ah!’

The man smiled and Lauren felt a totally inappropriate response. It was deep down in her belly and it felt shivery and hot at the same time, then shock that she could react to something as innocuous as a stranger’s smile rushed through her.

Jasmine had a theory that unused emotions and responses grew slack and lazy, like unused muscles. It was a theory she’d propounded often to Lauren, urging her to go out more, to find a man to have a bit of fun with—even sex. ‘Because sex is just so good for you—for your general well-being and for your skin—it makes you glow,’ Jasmine would usually add, glowing herself because obviously her sex life was very satisfactory.

But Jasmine’s theory must be wrong, because there was nothing slack or lazy about the response in Lauren’s belly. Or in the way her skin heated, and the tiny hairs on her forearms prickled with awareness…

Jean-Luc saw colour rise in her cheeks, barely visible beneath the freckled olive skin, but there, nonetheless.

Did she remember him?

But, if so, why deny it?

Because she was now married to Joe’s father—that would be the most likely explanation—and having a lover from the past come back into her life would be awkward.

Except that awkward wasn’t the vibe he was getting from her. Anxiety, yes, as if he worried her in some way, but not the way an old lover would.

Although they were alone together, so surely this was the time—

‘You really don’t remember me.’

He cursed himself the instant he’d said it, hearing it like an accusation, although he hadn’t intended it to be.

She frowned at him, genuinely puzzled.

‘Did we meet properly before yesterday?’ she asked, and he felt his lips tighten and a frown drag his eyebrows together.

‘I’m not talking about recent meetings,’ he growled, then regretted his stupid anger—he couldn’t make her remember—as she looked upset.

The soft, full lips spread to a hesitant smile. ‘Have you been to Australia before? I know I’ve never been to France.’

Her bewilderment was genuine—he had no doubt about that—and hurt pride brought anger in its train.

‘Not France—India,’ he said, far too abruptly, then caught her arm as the flush faded from beneath her skin and she seemed to stagger. She steadied herself, withdrew a little so he was no longer touching her, and her dark hazel eyes met his with a mix of apprehension and entreaty.

‘You were in India? You met me at St Catherine’s?’

The words were little more than a hushed whisper, but the desperation he heard in them was reflected in her eyes.

Why?

Was the memory of India—whatever memory she did have—so horrific? Of course it would be! His own memory of the typhoon was confused, disjointed, then blurred by pain, but she, who’d been buried alive…

‘Did you—?’

The whispered words had barely left her lips when Alex strode back into the room.

‘Coffee’s on the way and the first patient is in fifteen minutes so we’ll skip quickly through these files while we drink it.’ He dropped the files on his desk, and pulled two chairs close to it so they could all see the records as he leafed through them.

‘Alex, I—’ Lauren began, then she shook her head and added, ‘The files, of course. Let’s get on with them.’

But she shot another look in Jean-Luc’s direction, a searching look that turned to despair before she shook her head again and dropped into one of the chairs by Alex’s desk.

Jean-Luc took the other chair, too close to Lauren, so he was conscious of the tension in her body and of her attempts to relax, breathing deeply, holding her hands clasped tightly in her lap to still their trembling.

Once she had trembled in his arms, but this reaction—this was pain or fear or something else he couldn’t understand.

He cursed himself for upsetting her so badly at the beginning of a working day, but why was she so upset?

‘Sorry, Alex, I know I’ve got to stop blaming jet-lag but I was distracted again. Would you please tell me the child’s name once more?’

Jean-Luc forced himself to set all thoughts of the past aside and concentrate on what Alex was saying—after all, these would be his patients very shortly. An operation was only the beginning of some children’s relationship with their cardiac surgeon—follow-up visits might go on for years.

‘Cain Cardella. He was brought to the hospital with aortic stenosis. A balloon catheterisation at the regional hospital failed and we did an open-heart op to repair the aortic valve. There were complications with his coronary artery as well, but he came through the op well and now he’s back for a twelve-month check-up.’

Alex passed the file to Jean-Luc, who opened it and began to read, surprised to see that the ‘complications’ Alex had spoken of so casually had been quite complex, with the left coronary artery having to be repositioned.

‘It was quite a long operation,’ Alex said, apparently reading Jean-Luc’s surprise. ‘Very tricky, but as you will see, Cain’s done surprisingly well.’

Coffee arrived and the three of them continued to work through the patient files, Alex giving Jean-Luc a précis of each patient’s problem while Lauren added information about the families of the children.

‘Now, this one,’ Alex said, when they’d reached the final file, ‘will be yours. Unless Annie has the baby early, I’ll still be here, but I’ve been reading of your success with the latest septal occluder. We’ve never used this particular device so we’d all like to see how you use it and to learn why you prefer it. We’ll discuss it further at a full unit meeting prior to the op, but for now the patient, Jeremy Willis, is four years old. The specialist who was seeing him over at the Children’s Hospital had already decided he’d need to do a closure, then he heard you were coming and contacted us to ask if we’d get you to do it.’

Alex passed the file to Jean-Luc and as the new unit member took it in his long, slender fingers and began to read through the information, Lauren seized the opportunity to study this man who had, so suddenly and surprisingly, announced he’d known her in India.

Not that she hadn’t studied him—surreptitiously—earlier. Her reaction to his smile—his touch—had been so extreme, she’d taken every opportunity she’d had to have a good look at him, trying to work out why he affected her as he did.

Was it the scarring here and there on his cheeks—an accident at some time, which would explain his limp—that added an extra something to the man’s appeal? Made him look more attractive?

Fascinating!

Manly!

She shook her head. Theo was a manly man—gorgeous, in fact—but he didn’t raise goose-bumps on Lauren’s arms when she brushed past him, or make her stomach feel squirmy and uneasy just sitting next to him.

Perhaps it was some fragment of memory in the bit of the past that had never come back to her that made Jean-Luc so appealing.

Had he known her well, or simply met her in passing? Surely it must be the latter, or he would have said more when they’d met the previous day.

Had he been, perhaps, one of the backpackers she’d written about in her emails home—young people who’d sometimes called in and spent a night at the mission, doing jobs around the place in return for shelter and food?

Or had he been something more?

Fear, apprehension and despair all gripped her heart, squeezing it hard enough to cause physical pain in her chest.

Though, doing the maths, Jean-Luc Fournier would have been in his late twenties ten years ago and there was no way such a man—a worldly, handsome, French man—would have looked twice at the lanky, freckly, immature twenty-one-year-old she’d been.

The fear subsided though apprehension remained, useless anger building from despair that she couldn’t remember!

‘So, are we ready? Can I buzz Becky and ask her to send the Cardella family in?’

Alex’s question interrupted Lauren’s tortured thoughts, and she thrust away the nightmare of a past that was a total blank to concentrate on the present.

‘I’ll go out and bring them in,’ she said, hoping movement would ease the tension in her body and help her mind focus on her work. Even better, she could show them in then take an unobtrusive seat at the back of the office, away from Jean-Luc and his disturbing physical presence.

Jean-Luc watched Lauren leave the room, surprised that the way she moved, treading lightly and lithely, should still be so familiar to him. Surprised that his body could still react to that movement.

‘She’s a first-class nurse.’

Startled out of his reverie, Jean-Luc turned back to Alex, trying to read what lay behind the casual comment. Had Alex seen something more than casual interest in Jean-Luc’s observation of Lauren? Or was Alex, as word in the paediatric cardiac surgical world had it, omnipotent?

Alex’s face revealed nothing—in fact, he was no longer looking at Jean-Luc, but at Cain Cardella’s file.

Zut! You must forget Lauren and concentrate on what you are here for, Jean-Luc reminded himself, pulling Jeremy Willis’s file from the bottom of the pile and opening it, needing something on which he could focus his full attention.

Then Lauren was back with the patient and his parents and the consultation fell into such a familiar pattern Jean-Luc was swept along, listening, talking, asking questions, learning all he could of each and every patient and the problems the team had been called upon to fix.

‘Jean-Luc will be the major surgeon for Jeremy’s operation,’ Alex explained to Rosemary Willis two hours later when the consultations were drawing to a close. ‘I will be assisting but Jean-Luc has more experience with the new type of closure we are anxious to try.’

Rosemary frowned as she looked from Alex to Jean-Luc.

‘I don’t want you doing experimental things on Jeremy,’ she said, speaking quietly so the little boy, whom Lauren had drawn into a corner to play with blocks, didn’t hear. ‘You must have tried and true ways of closing this hole, so why would you use something new?’

‘In the past,’ Alex explained, ‘in a case like Jeremy’s, we stitched the hole up, or put a patch in there. We cut the patch from some other tissue in the patient’s body so that made another wound that had to heal. In order to get in there, we had to do a major operation, opening the patient’s chest, then putting him or her on the heart-lung bypass machine and opening the heart. With the new occluders, it can be done through cardiac catheterisation, which is much less invasive surgery.’

‘He’s had cardiac catheter stuff already,’ Rosemary said, turning from Alex to Jean-Luc. ‘They put a tube up from his groin into his heart to see the hole when he was a baby. If you can do this now, why didn’t they do it then and save him all this trouble?’

Jean-Luc smiled at her.

‘You would think it would have made sense,’ he said, speaking gently for he could feel the woman’s agitation and understood it. ‘But quite often these defects will right themselves during the first three years of a child’s life—in fact, about eighty per cent of them close of their own accord before the child is two. You must see it would be better if Jeremy’s body had fixed the problem than if we interfered too early.’

Rosemary nodded, but her eyes strayed to her son, who was knocking down the towers of blocks with great gusto.

‘It is such a worry,’ she murmured.

‘Of course it is,’ Jean-Luc said, although his mind had been diverted for a moment as Lauren had lifted the little boy onto her knee and had bent her head close to his, whispering to him—making him smile. Lauren’s dark hair had fallen forward and the image of the woman and child reminded Jean-Luc of a stained-glass window in the cathedral near the hospital back at home.

What was he thinking?

How could he be so easily diverted?

He turned his full attention back to Rosemary.

‘But you must realise the operation we plan for Jeremy will be far easier on him than a full open-heart operation, and in France we have been using this occluder for several years now. In America there are others which have also been used successfully, so you can be sure Jeremy is not being used as an experiment.’

But if he was expecting instant approval he was disappointed. Rosemary studied him for a moment then turned to Alex.

‘You agree this is best?’ she asked.

‘Not only agree but recommend it. In fact, I would choose that option and do the catheterisation myself but with Jean-Luc here we have someone who has performed it many times, and I am anxious to watch and learn from him.’

‘What do you think?’

Rosemary directed her query at Lauren this time.

‘A catheterisation is so much less invasive than open heart surgery, it’s a no-brainer,’ Lauren responded. ‘We do caths in the lab beside the ward all the time, it doesn’t even need the theatre, although for Jeremy I would think they’ll use a theatre because there’ll be a full team on hand as everyone is anxious to learn.’

‘You’re really such an expert?’ Rosemary demanded, turning back to Jean-Luc.

He smiled at the anxious mother.

‘Modesty should prevent me saying so but, yes, in this particular procedure I am,’ he said, knowing she needed reassurance more than anything. ‘I use a yardstick—that’s the right word?—to judge operations before I suggest them to a parent. I ask myself, would I do this—use this method or that treatment—on my own child, and if I can answer yes, then I know it is the right thing to do.’

‘Oh, you’ve got children yourself? That’s so good to know!’ Rosemary said, reaching out and taking Jean-Luc’s hand in both of hers and squeezing it. ‘Then I will trust you to do what’s right for Jeremy.’

It was only when Jeremy wriggled off her knee that Lauren realised she’d been holding the little boy too tightly, her hands unconsciously tightening their grip when Jean-Luc had mentioned children.

Of course he’d have children—didn’t most men in their late thirties? She’d already figured that out.

And why should she care?

Because she found him attractive?

Or because he knew her from the past?

Surely she hadn’t been thinking he might be the one…

She shook her head at the appallingly ridiculous thought. He was French, sophisticated, gorgeous—hardly the kind of man who would have been smitten by her young self!

‘I’ll see Mrs Willis and Jeremy out,’ she said, getting up and taking Jeremy’s hand, then adding to Rosemary, ‘Becky will make the appointment for Jeremy’s procedure and give you all the information you need for his hospital stay.’

She’s escaping, Jean-Luc thought, then he wondered why he would think such a thing, and what there was to escape? ‘T’es fou!’ he muttered to himself. He must stop thinking about Lauren—or letting thoughts of her divert his mind from the work he was there to do.

‘Do you spend this much time with all your patients and their families? If so, how do you find time for your other work?’

‘We find time spent with patients and their families preop pays off in the long run. These kids are going to be put through terrible trauma and it’s agonising for their families. The more the families know what to expect, the better they seem to handle it, so it’s time gained in the long run. Of course, parents are still very distressed when they see their child post-op, but if they understand as much as possible about the procedure they are able to accept that, of course, it knocked their infant around.’

Jean-Luc nodded. He could understand the thinking, but most of his experience had been in major hospitals where time taken to talk to parents was a luxury they sometimes couldn’t afford.

‘It is a system I would like to set up in the new unit at home,’ he said. ‘And I like the idea of the nurse being there. Rosemary turned to Lauren for further reassurance before she agreed, and if it is Lauren who will care for Jeremy before and after the procedure, then there is already a small bond formed which will make it easier.’

Alex nodded.

‘All the nursing staff are good with the parents, but Lauren seems to have a special talent in winning confidence. Perhaps because her own child has heart problems, although only the families who get close to her would learn about that. Other people must just sense it.’

Alex’s explanation echoed in Jean-Luc’s head, making no sense because his brain had been blocked by three words—‘child’and ‘heartproblems’. Little Joe had heart problems?

Heart defects were not uncommon in children with Down’s syndrome, so why was he upset?

Because it was another burden Lauren had to bear?

Surely not!


CHAPTER THREE

THE consultations over, Lauren headed home, distracted by the idea that the new surgeon on the team had known her in India. The irritation of knowing so little and needing to learn so much more niggled at her as she tried to sleep, and distracted her later as she talked to Joe about his day, and helped him make plans for the local Cubs’ sock drive. Together they drew a map of the places he could visit. Many of the houses in the area were divided into flats, so without going too far afield Joe could knock on a lot of doors. But with that done, the thought of Jean-Luc Fournier living just up the road began to burn inside her.

It was no good—she had to know more. Had to! Had to talk to the man to see if he could unlock the secrets of the past.

Would he be at home? It was eight o’clock. Would he have had his dinner?

Didn’t Europeans eat later?

Certainly they’d eat later than people with nine-year-old boys in their family.

Although he had children himself…

She phoned her mother who lived in the flat above hers, far enough away for her and Joe to lead independent lives but close enough to be there for Joe when Lauren was working.

‘I’m just going down the road, Mum,’ she said. ‘Something I need to talk about with the new surgeon. Can you watch Joe?’

Her mother agreed to come down, used to the fact that, with the strong medical contingent in the neighbourhood, people popping in and out of each other’s houses was quite normal.

Lauren let her mother in and was about to walk out the front door when she realised she was still in the old clothes she’d pulled on when she’d got home from work.

So?

She shook her head but raced back to her bedroom where she grabbed her favourite jeans and a dark green top that Theo had told her made her eyes look greener.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. The words echoed in her head as she showered and rubbed herself dry. They grew louder as she brushed her hair until it shone, and louder still as she smeared foundation over her freckled skin, and touched lip-gloss to her lips.

But what was wrong with looking as attractive as she could?

She had no answer, although the excitement that had begun inside her when she’d decided to visit her new neighbour was now turning to a fluttery feeling in her stomach.

More akin to panic than excitement.

The make-up was for courage, she decided as she let herself out of the house and headed for number 26.

But make-up or not, her footsteps faltered and doubts grew like mushroom clouds in her mind.

He probably won’t be at home.

She pushed her feet along the pavement, her reluctance now mixed with fear.

He might not know.

That was what was really worrying her.

For ten years that part of her life had been a blank—retrograde amnesia caused by a hit on her head. And though most of her memory had returned over time, the period immediately preceding the injury—six weeks, her mother had told her—remained tantalisingly hidden away.

What puzzled the doctors was that it was such a long period of time. It wasn’t uncommon for memory of the twenty-four or even forty-eight hours preceding a head injury to be lost, but six weeks?

It might be due to some earlier trauma just before she was buried under the bricks, they suggested, but to Lauren that was hardly reassuring.

Now here she was, about to talk to someone who had been there. But did she really want to find out what happened—did she want to fill in all the blanks?

She did and she didn’t…

She had to!

Pushing open the gate to 26, her hands trembled.

‘Of course you want to know—you need to know,’ she told herself, angry that she was becoming so emotional about it. ‘And, anyway, he might not be able to tell you much—he might only have been passing through.’

‘Ah, so you still talk aloud to yourself.’

The voice made her turn, to see Jean-Luc, green supermarket shopping bags dangling from his fingers, standing right behind her. She stared at him, unable to take in not the sight of him but the words he’d spoken. It wouldn’t have been more shocking if the camellia bush by the path had spoken.

‘You know that?’ she whispered, stiff with fear and a weird reluctance.

‘Come on, move along, don’t block the path!’

A woman’s voice! The tall, blonde beauty was right behind Jean-Luc, so Lauren had no choice but to step off the path and let the couple pass by with their groceries.

She looked behind them, expecting to see the trailing two point four children but none appeared, although knowing the new surgeon was married was a very different thing to supposing he would be.




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