room for some much-needed coffee.
When she opened the door, she stopped dead.
The man she’d seen earlier was there. This time she saw his face rather than his profile, and her heart almost stopped.
It was him.
But why here, why now? It had been twelve years since she’d seen him. His dark hair had the odd grey strand in it, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there during sixth form, and his shoulders had broadened, but he still had that charming smile. The one that had almost stopped her heart when he’d come to sit next to her in the sixth form.
That beautiful mouth. The one that had explored every bit of her body. The mouth that had whispered words of love, of passion: promises he’d never kept.
Oh, Lord. One smile and she’d gone right back to being eighteen years old, naïve enough to believe that ‘I’ll love you till the day I die’ really meant that, was more than just the magic words calculated to get him into her knickers.
She reminded herself sharply that she was thirty years old, and a specialist in emergency medicine. Holly the realist, not Holly the dreamer.
God only knew why David Neave was in the middle of the ED rest room at London City General, drinking coffee and chatting to the senior emergency nurse. Unless…A truly nasty thought hit her. Their new senior registrar was due to start today. David, like Holly, had always planned to become a medic. He was in the rest room, not the relatives’ room. QED: he was their new senior registrar.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d changed a lot in the last twelve years, particularly in the first six months. Not that he would have given a damn, because he’d made quite sure he hadn’t been around when she’d needed him.
Oh, who was she trying to kid? Despite the years, she knew exactly who he was. He’d know her, too. Well, she wasn’t going to skulk around. London City General was her patch. She was going to walk into that room with her head held high and not let him faze her. Everyone knew that Holly Jones was tough. Now was the time to prove it.
‘Morning,’ she said sweetly, aiming her smile at Anna, the senior sister, rather than their new medic, and slotted money into the chocolate machine.
The machine took her money and bleeped. The little coil of metal twisted round, but the chocolate bar stayed balanced at the end of its row.
Oh, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Just when she needed the stuff, even more than she needed coffee. A square of chocolate and she could face the world.
Face David Neave.
‘Is it playing up again?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ll get Siobhan to call Maintenance.’
‘No point. She’ll spend all her time batting her eyes at Mitchell and forget to ask him to sort the machine. I’ll deal with it.’ Holly narrowed her eyes and looked at the machine. ‘Now,’ she said, her voice quiet but very authoritative. She tapped the glass opposite the chocolate bar she’d paid for. And it fell neatly into the tray at the bottom.
‘That’s better,’ she said, unwrapped the foil and broke off a square. Yes. The chocolate rush hit her, and she could cope again.
David wasn’t sure which bit he didn’t believe. The fact that the vending machine had given her the chocolate on her command—or the fact that he was in the same room as her again. The woman who’d broken his heart when he was eighteen. Holly Jones.
Or maybe this woman was her double.
‘Holls, let me introduce you. This is David Neave, our new senior reg. He started this morning and Sue got called away so she asked me to show him round,’ Anna announced. ‘David, this is the woman who scares the chocolate machine into submission. Our registrar—’
‘Holly Jones,’ he cut in. It really was her. Except that her dark hair was now cut in a short, functional style instead of being tied back at the nape of her neck, and her grey eyes were much, much harder.
Or maybe they always had been hard but he’d refused to see it.
Anna blinked in surprise. ‘You two know each other?’
‘We were at school together. A long, long time ago,’ Holly said quickly.
Was it his imagination, or was there a twinge of guilt in her eyes? She’d looked away again almost immediately, as if she was too embarrassed to face him. It was a bit late for an attack of conscience now. She should have thought about that twelve years ago.
And now it looked as if he was going to have to work with her.
Holly Jones was back in his life.
Hell. She was even wearing the same perfume. How could such a tiny thing as a spritz of scent take him spinning right back twelve years? The past, when Holly had been in his arms, kissing him and whispering, ‘I love you.’ Words that had meant everything to him—and absolutely nothing to her.
‘We lost touch,’ David said.
That was one way of putting it. Because the love of his life had walked out on him when they were eighteen. And her timing had been impeccably bad: she’d done it the week before his A-level exams.
Holly could hardly believe her ears. Lost touch? Yeah, right. It had been none of her doing. He’d been the one to lose touch. Deliberately. The first sign of trouble, and he’d been out of there. Hadn’t returned any of her phone calls, hadn’t replied to her letters. When she’d gone to his house to talk it over face to face, he’d been away on holiday. With another girl.
He hadn’t accepted responsibility back then, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit it now.
What a creep.
More proof—as if she needed it—that she was better off without him.
‘So you’re from Liverpool, too?’ Anna asked.
‘I moved away a long time ago,’ David said. ‘I trained in Southampton.’
Holly knew that. She’d been there the day his offer from Southampton had come through. The same day as hers. They’d been offered places for getting the same grades, even. And they’d planned to go to med school together.
Except she hadn’t made it.
And when she’d sat her A levels the following year—and got the straight A grades her teachers had predicted—she’d accepted the offer to train in London. No way could she have faced Southampton, knowing that he was there.
‘I worked in Newcastle for a couple of years, then came here,’ David said.
She knew he was looking at her. Knew he was expecting her to respond. And Anna expected it, too. If Holly followed her instincts and stomped out of the rest room, Anna would start to wonder. And although the senior sister didn’t gossip, the rest of the department did. It wouldn’t take long for rumours to fill in the blanks. The worst thing was, the wildest ones would probably be right on target. ‘I trained here,’ she said shortly.
Then she met his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. Because, for an instant, she’d seen a flash of yearning there. A yearning that was
