looking after her and she told him frostily, ‘I’ll be fine, thanks just the same. It seems as if you have quite rightly decided who I am, so how about introducing yourself?’
‘Lucas Devereux,’ he said evenly, ‘recuperating in the countryside and involving myself in medicine at a slower pace.’
She held out a smooth ringless hand and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, Dr Devereux.’
He hesitated for a second then took it in a firm clasp and instead of greeting her in a similar fashion merely said, ‘Nice of you to say so.’
The receptionist had replaced the phone and he didn’t waste a second in saying, ‘And now, if you will excuse me, I have a patient waiting.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and seek out someone that I know after I’ve introduced myself to this lady.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘JENNA! So you really are back! I didn’t believe Ethan when he told me he’d seen you this morning,’ Lucy Watson cried when she opened the door of the nurses’ room to her knock.
‘Hello, Aunt Lucy’ she said, hugging the sparse frame of her mother’s only friend and confidante. ‘Dad phoned to ask me to come home because of how Mum is, and I came as soon as I could. I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes when I went away or I would never have gone, and now that I’ve seen her I’m appalled.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you are,’ her mother’s friend said consolingly. She had been senior practice nurse for almost as long as Barbara had been in charge of the coastal medical centre. ‘I told your mother countless times that she should put you in the picture, but we both know what she’s like. Barbara will choke on her own pride one of these days.
‘But enough of the past. Let’s talk about the present. Ethan tells me that you’re going to join us part time and spend the rest looking after your mother. That is really good news. Your father has been coping wonderfully but Keith needs some help, so who better than his lovely daughter who is also a nurse?
‘Any problems will come from your mother’s side of the arrangement. She is so used to dealing with the sick and suffering that becoming one of them herself has been hard to accept, as you can imagine. What sort of a welcome did you get?’
Jenna smiled. ‘Reasonable enough. We actually had a laugh together.’
‘Wow!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘Seriously, though, be patient with her, Jenna. Her life has changed unbelievably.’
‘I’m not short on patience,’ she said soberly. ‘One needs it in plenty to be a nurse. It’s my mum who has always been short on it, at least where Dad and I are concerned.’
The other woman sighed. ‘Yes, I agree, but knowing your father, Keith won’t let you take on too much of the burden. The situation is that now Barbara needs a woman’s care. The fact that you are home and will be around and are about to join us here at the practice is wonderful news.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Jenna said wryly, ‘but I’ve just had a lukewarm reception from the cardiologist who is now part of the practice and Ethan wants me to assist him with his clinic on the two afternoons that he’s here. We’ve already met briefly on two occasions and I get the feeling that he disapproves of me for some reason so he won’t be laying down the red carpet for his new assistant.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Don’t be put off by his manner. Lucas Devereux is quite something in the medical world in these parts. Until recently he was top cardiologist at Hunters Hill Hospital and we couldn’t believe it when he agreed to move here at Ethan’s suggestion. It seems that the two of them are friends from way back.’
‘Even so, why lower his sights to that extent if he was top dog at The Hill?’
‘Some guy went berserk and attacked him when one of his family died during an operation that he was performing, and Lucas nearly lost his life as well.
‘I’ve also heard tales of a broken engagement round about that time, so it’s not surprising that he isn’t full of the joys of spring, or should I say summer.’
Before Jenna had time to digest the distressing facts that Lucy had just passed on to her, Ethan’s voice could be heard outside in the corridor. A moment later he appeared, smiling his pleasure to see her there, and she thought that here was a man who was always the same, no matter what life dealt out to him, and he’d had his own share of ups and downs in the not so recent past.
‘I’ve just spoken to Lucas,’ he told her, ‘and he says that the two of you have already met.’
‘Yes, we bumped into each other on the beach yesterday, and when I went for a stroll yesterday evening he was cutting the grass outside The Old Chart House, which he told me now belongs to him.’
‘Hmm, that is so,’ he said. He turned to Lucy. ‘Do you mind if I take Jenna away from you for a little while?’
The elderly practice nurse was smiling as she told him, ‘Of course not, Dr Lomax. Knowing that she’s back and is joining the practice has brightened my day.’
‘So are you really ready to come and join us here at The Tides?’ Ethan asked when they were seated in the office at the back of the surgery building.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘if you’re sure that you want me on the staff, but as I said this morning I want to help look after my mother too.’
‘Of course you do,’ he agreed, ‘but you are going to need some life away from the house, Jenna. You are young and bright and will liven up this place. The patients will love you and so will the staff.’
‘Oh, yes?’ she said doubtfully, with the memory of Lucas’s critical appraisal still very clear.
Ignoring the comment, he said, ‘So how about mornings, eight-thirty until twelve, and Monday and Thursday afternoons assisting Lucas in the heart clinic? Do you think you could manage that with your mother to care for as well?’
This is the moment to say I can manage the mornings but not the afternoons, she was thinking. Did she want to work in such close contact with Lucas Devereux?
‘I can certainly manage the mornings,’ she told him. ‘Mum is always up early. I can see to it that she is bathed and dressed before I leave and Dad will organise their breakfasts. Could I give the afternoons a trial before I commit myself on that?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said easily. ‘I haven’t mentioned it to Lucas yet so a trial it shall be, say, for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll have another chat.’
Unaware that he was the subject of their conversation, Lucas had just seen his last patient on their way and was thinking about his meetings with Jenna Balfour. Why couldn’t he have been more pleasant, he thought, instead of giving in to an insane urge to put out her light for no other reason than someone had extinguished his own?
When he’d seen her frolicking around with the lifeguard on the beach the day before, his lip had curled at the spectacle, but who was he to criticise the light-hearted actions of others because his heart lay heavy as a stone?
Taking his jacket off a hanger behind the door, he picked up his case and went
