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
