‘new’ Jayne only came at Christmas. She spent an hour at the pub. No more, often less. Years back they had chatted. Awkwardly. How else could a man exchange Yuletide greetings with the girl he’d thought he’d marry? It wasn’t as if he’d asked for the ring back.
At the time—over seven years ago now—he’d actually suggested she keep it. Think about it. Consider the consequences of giving up everything they’d dreamed of. He knew she’d been grieving. Trying to wrap her head round her sister’s senseless death. But in the end he’d run out of suggestions. Realised with a cold, numbing clarity that she’d chosen a new path. One that didn’t involve him.
As the years had passed their strangulated chit-chat had become a wave. Then a nod. Three years ago, when he’d met and married Marie, it had dissolved into nothing at all. Last Christmas he’d stayed at home because his mum had been so ill. He hadn’t let himself consider the option that seeing Jayne so soon after his divorce might reopen wounds he wasn’t ready to examine.
Jayne’s smile was as unnatural as his own felt. ‘Hey, Sam. I hope it’s all right that Maggie invited me along?’
As Jayne and Maggie exchanged a quick glance he flexed his hands, willing them not to curl into themselves. He wasn’t this guy. Tense. Edgy. Protectively defending his decision to live the life he’d—they’d—always dreamed of having.
The life his wife had left behind.
The last three years of his life flashed past in an instant. He’d thought he and Marie were happy. They’d enjoyed a year-long courtship when he’d finished med school. A classic country wedding. A solid year of marriage. The next year hadn’t been quite as rosy, but he’d thought he’d made it clear to her that he’d be busy. Extremely busy. The house to build... The medical practice to haul into the twenty-first century... His mother’s cancer in full attack mode.
Sure, he’d been vaguely aware of hairline fissures in their relationship, but when Marie had told him she wanted out it had shocked him. She’d said getting married so soon had been a mistake. She’d laid out the truth as she’d seen it.
Sam’s priorities were the surgery, refurbishing the old barn and his family. She didn’t feel she factored anywhere on that list, and for that reason she wanted to cut her losses before the wounds ran too deep. She’d told him this as she’d served him with divorce papers.
He’d had a card from her after his mother had died, and from the sounds of things she’d already found her special someone.
The fact that he was genuinely happy for her spoke volumes. Nothing like an ounce of truth landing like a ton of bricks in your gut. Which all circled back to the here and now, and the fact that Jayne Sinclair was still registering on his personal Richter scale just like she shouldn’t.
He scrubbed the back of his neck and pasted on what he hoped was a passable smile. His focus should be on Maggie, not his debacle of a love-life.
‘Come on in.’
He ushered Jayne in, showed her to a chair, accidentally inhaling as that all too familiar scent of sweet peas and nutmeg swept round his heart and squeezed a beat out of it. The way it always had.
The Jayne Sinclair Effect.
How could he have forgotten about that?
You didn’t. You put it in a box and hoped it would never get opened again.
‘Ta-da!’ Maggie waggled jazz hands. ‘Here’s my friend!’
Jayne put out her hands and heaved her friend up for a hug. Maggie’s head just about reached Jayne’s chin. Jayne’s eyes met and locked with Sam’s. A familiar energy that he hadn’t felt in years shunted through him. The type of energy that came from being with the person who made him feel whole again.
‘You look good,’ she muttered above Maggie’s pile of auburn curls.
She did too. Different. But good. She was all woman now. As if she’d finally grown in to all five feet nine inches of herself. Still slender. Still with a quirky dress sense that spoke of a woman whose life revolved around a children’s hospital. She wore an A-line skirt embroidered with polka dots. A well-worn T-shirt with a unicorn on it. Flip-flops with red satin roses stitched across the straps.
Her black hair was still long. She had a chunky fringe now. The rest of her hair was pulled back into the requisite ‘doctor’s ponytail’. A brush or two of mascara framed those kaleidoscope blue eyes of hers. Ocean-blue one minute. Dark as the midnight sky the next. Nothing on her lips apart from a swoosh of gloss. They didn’t need anything else.
Except, perhaps, for him to find out if her gloss still tasted of vanilla and mint.
He smashed the thought into submission.
That type of impulse was meant to have died a long time ago. Right about the moment she’d handed his ring back to him.
Jayne blinked and hitched her nose against an obvious sting of emotion. When she opened her eyes again they held tight with his.
Oh, hell.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to read all the secrets she held in those jewel-like eyes of hers.
They’d used to light up when they were planning their wedding. Dreaming of finally refurbishing the old barn. Talking about Jayne’s plan to specialise in paediatrics. Sam in geriatrics. They’d used to light up when she saw him come round a corner.
Her sister’s death had knocked the light out of her eyes. Even so, he’d refused to believe her when she’d said she didn’t love him any more. She’d been through a trauma. She was bound to be different for a while.
Jayne had loved Jules as he loved his own family. Fiercely. Protectively. There was no fighting with a ghost. He got that. He’d thought he could wait it out. Be there for her. But she’d refused his support, again and again. Months had gone by before he’d finally seen the change of heart she’d said she felt. The change that had seen her handing him back his ring for good.
That was the day her eyes had lit up again. Glazed with tears, sure, but he’d felt the flare of life return to her as acutely as he would have felt a lightning strike. And it hadn’t been him who had put it there. Holding the ring between them, she’d told him she’d changed disciplines. She wanted to be a paediatric cardiologist. She didn’t want to move back to Whitticombe. She’d taken over Jules’s flat in London. She’d told him it was time for him to find someone else to run the surgery with.
That had been the blow that had struck the deepest. She had always known more than anyone how much he valued his family and how important running his grandfather’s surgery was to him. His family was his adoptive family—they’d never made any secret of it—but he’d never felt anything less than family. When he’d finally been old enough to register that his future might have been completely different—alone in an orphanage—he’d vowed to stick with them as loyally and as lovingly as they’d stuck with him as they’d brought him up. With all of his heart.
It was then that he’d known he had no choice but to walk away from Jayne and get on with his own life. It had broken his heart to do it, but doing anything else would have been living a lie.
Their intense eye contact broke as Maggie pulled
