it,’ he said.
‘No, I insist,’ she said, taking out her mobile. ‘I’ll put you in my contacts.’ Her slim, beautifully manicured fingers poised over the data entry key.
And that’s when he saw it.
The diamond engagement ring on her finger seemed to be glinting at him like an evil eye, mocking him, taunting him.
Engaged.
He felt his throat seize up.
Lexi was engaged.
His mouth was suddenly so dry he couldn’t speak. His chest felt as if someone had backed over it with a steamroller. He couldn’t inflate his lungs enough to draw in a breath. His reaction surprised him. No, damn it, it shocked the hell out of him. She was nothing to him. What did it matter if she was engaged? It wasn’t as if he had any claim on her, certainly not an emotional one. He didn’t do emotion. He didn’t even like her, for goodness’ sake. She was an attention-seeking little tramp who thought bedding a boy from the bush was something to giggle about with her vacuous, equally shallow socialite girlfriends. Good luck to the man who was fool enough to tie himself to her.
Lexi looked up at him with an expectant expression. ‘Your number?’ she prompted.
Sam reluctantly rattled it off in a monotone he hardly recognised as his own voice. He had changed his number five years ago as a way of completely cutting all ties. He hadn’t wanted her calling him or texting him or emailing him. He didn’t want that soft sexy voice purring in his ear. It had taken years to get the sound of her voice out of his head.
Engaged.
Sam wondered what her fiancé was like. No, on second thought he didn’t want to know. He’d bet he was a preppy sort, probably hadn’t done a decent day’s work in his life.
Lexi was engaged. Engaged!
It was a two-sentence chant he couldn’t get out of his head. Cruel words he didn’t want to hear.
‘Do you want mine?’ she asked, tucking another wayward strand of platinum-blonde hair away from her face with her free hand. It had snagged on her shiny lip gloss. He guessed it was strawberry flavoured. He hadn’t eaten a strawberry in five years without thinking of the taste of her mouth.
He blinked. ‘Your … er what?’
‘My number,’ she said. ‘In case you want to contact me about the repairs?’
Sam swallowed the walnut-sized restriction in his throat. ‘Your car isn’t damaged.’
She looked at him for a moment before she closed her phone and popped it back in her bag. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s made of much tougher stuff, apparently.’
Sam’s gaze kept tracking to her ring. It was like a magnet he had no power to resist. He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to think about her planning a future with some other nameless, faceless man.
He didn’t want to think about her in that nameless, faceless man’s bed, her arms around his neck and her lips on his.
‘You’re engaged.’
He hadn’t realised he had spoken the words out loud until she answered, ‘Yes.’
‘Congratulations,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
Sam’s gaze tracked back to the ring. It was expensive. It suited her hand. It was a perfect fit. It looked like it had been there a while.
His chest cramped again, harder this time.
He brought his eyes back to hers, forcing his voice to sound just mildly interested. ‘So, when’s the wedding?’
‘November,’ she said, a flicker of something moving over her face like a shadow. ‘We’ve booked the cathedral for the tenth.’
The silence crawled from the dark corners of the basement, slowly but surely surrounding them.
Sam heard the scrape of one of her heels as she took a step backwards. ‘Well, I’d better let you get to work,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t be good to be late for your first day on the job.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That might not go down so well.’
The silence crept up to his knees again before he added, ‘It was nice to see you again, Alexis.’
She gave a tight smile by way of answer and walked off towards the lift, the sound of her heels click-clacking on the concrete floor striking totally unexpected and equally inexplicable hammer blows of regret in Sam’s heart.
CHAPTER TWO
LEXI got out on the medical ward floor with her heart still racing. She had to control her spiralling emotions, but how? How was she supposed to act as if nothing was wrong?
Sam was back.
The shock was still reverberating through her like a dinner gong struck too hard. Her head was aching from the tattoo beating inside her brain.
Sam was back.
She drew in a calming breath. She would have to act as if nothing was wrong. It wouldn’t do to reveal to everyone how shocked she was by his appointment. Had no one told her because they were worried how she would react or because they thought she wouldn’t even remember him? And how could she ask without drawing attention to feelings she didn’t want—shouldn’t want—to examine?
‘Hi, Lexi,’ one of the nurses called out to her. ‘I just bought my tickets for the ball. I can’t wait. You should see the mask I bought online. It’s fabulous.’
Lexi’s face felt like she was cracking half-dry paint when she smiled. ‘Great!’
The ball was the thing she was supposed to be focussed on, not Sam Bailey. It was the event of the year and she was solely responsible for it. It was no secret that some people at SHH were sceptical over whether she would be up to the task. Rumours of nepotism abounded, which made her all the more determined to prove everyone wrong. The proceeds she raised would go to the transplant unit for the purchase of a new state-of-the-art heart-lung bypass machine. Government funding was never enough. It took the hard work of her and her fundraising team to bring to the unit those extras that made all the difference for a patient’s outcome.
And her older sister Bella was one of those patients.
Lexi pushed open the door of Bella’s room, a bright smile already fixed in place. ‘Hi, Bells.’
‘Oh, hi, Lexi …’ Bella said, her voice sagging over the weight of the words.
Lexi could always tell when Bella had just finished a session with the hospital physiotherapist. She looked even more gaunt and pale than usual. Her sister’s thin, frail body lying so listlessly on the bed reminded her of a skeleton shrink-wrapped in skin. She had always found it hard to look at her older sister without feeling horribly guilty. Guilty that she was so robustly healthy, so outgoing and confident … well,
