“I was actually surprised by how easy it was to get my working papers. Something about a shortage of Mobile Intensive Care paramedics?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Maggie nodded, her brain more at ease in work mode. “They’ve really been struggling over in Victoria. Well, everywhere, I think. The most skilled mobile intensive care paramedics seem to be running off to the Middle East, where the pay is better. Well, not all of them. And it’s not because working here is horrible or anything... I mean it’s actually pretty great, when you consider the range of services we provide to the community—and of course to the whole of New South Wales when they need it. Like when there are forest fires. Or big crashes out in the back of beyond.”
She was rambling now. And in serious danger of sending Raphael packing.
He was one of the only people in her life who had known her before her mum had passed. There was something about that link that felt precious. Like a tiny priceless jewel she’d do everything in her power to protect.
Maggie looked up, her eyes widening as Raphael’s expression softened into an inquisitive smile. The trees behind him were laced with fairy lights and the buzz and whoosh of the city faded into a gentle murmur as her eyes met with his.
A flash of pure, undiluted longing flooded her chest so powerfully that she had to pull in a deep breath to stave off the dizzying effect of being the sole object of those beautiful blue eyes of his. The ache twisting in her lungs tightened into a yearning for something deeper. How mad would the world have to become for him to feel the same way?
Slowly he reached out his hands and placed them on her shoulders. The heat from his fingers seared straight through her light top, sending out a spray of response along her collarbone that gathered in sensual tingles along the soft curves of her breasts. He tipped his chin to one side as he parted his lips.
Was Raphael Bouchon, man of her dreams, going to kiss her?
“I think this is where I catch my bus.” Raphael pointed up to the sign above them. “I am afraid I will need my jacket back if we are going to part ways here. Will you be all right?”
“Of course!” she answered, too loudly, tugging off his jacket and checking her volume as she continued. “I’m the one who should be asking you that, anyway. Where was it you got a place again?”
It was the one thing she hadn’t helped with. Finding him a place. He’d told her it was already sorted, but that didn’t stop a case of The Guilts from settling in.
She should’ve offered him a bed...well, a sofa...while he sorted something out. Played tour guide. Called estate agents. Cleared the ever-accruing mess off of her countertops and made him dinner.
Not invited him to a movie and then scarpered.
But that level of support would have been slipping straight into the mode she was still trying to release herself from with her family.
The girl who did all the chores no one else wanted to do.
Besides, her home was her castle and there wasn’t a chance on God’s green earth that she would be inviting him round—or anyone, for that matter. She’d had almost seven years of looking after her brothers and father—enough housekeeping, laundry and “When’s the tucker gunna hit the table, Daggie?” to last a lifetime.
“It’s a place I found on the internet, near Bondi Beach. I thought it sounded...” he paused for effect “...Australian.”
Maggie laughed good-naturedly and leant forward to punch him on the arm. At the same time he leant down to kiss her on the cheek. Their lips collided and skidded off of each other’s—but not before Maggie caught the most perfect essence of what it would be like to actually kiss him.
Pure magic.
Raphael caught the sides of her arms with his hands, as if to steady them both, and this time when their eyes met there was something new shining straight at her. That glint. The shiny spark in Raphael’s almond-shaped eyes that erased every single thought from her harried brain except for one: I could spend the rest of my life with you.
The fear that followed in its wake chilled her to the bone.
* * *
An hour later Maggie held a staring contest with herself in her poorly lit bathroom mirror. Red-haired, freckle-faced, and every bit as unsure whether she was a country mouse or a city mouse as she had been thirteen years ago.
Closing her eyes, she traced her fingers along her lips, trying to relive the brush of Raphael’s mouth against hers. It came easily. Too easily. Especially when she had been in love with him for almost half her life.
Her eyes flickered open and there in the mirror was the same ol’ Maggie. The one who would never live in Paris. The one barely making a go of it in the big smoke. The girl born and raised and most likely to return to a town so far from Sydney it had its own time zone. In other words, she could dream all she wanted, but a future with Raphael Bouchon was never going to be a reality.
RAPHAEL TUGGED HIS fingers through hair that probably could have done with a bit of a trim. He chided himself for not putting in a bit more effort. For not trying to look as if he cared as much as he genuinely did.
Seeing Maggie yesterday had done what he’d hoped. It had re-awoken a part of him he’d feared had died alongside Amalie that day in the operating theatre.
When their lips had accidentally brushed last night there’d been a spark.
He was sure of it.
Enough so that he sorely regretted not kissing her all those years ago. But Jean-Luc’s mother’s warning had been a stark one. “Hands off!” she’d said, and so he had obeyed.
If he hadn’t been relying so heavily on Jean-Luc’s family for that vital sense of stability his parents had been unable to provide he would’ve gladly risked his pride and seen if Maggie had felt the same way.
For an instant last night he’d been certain of it.
This morning... Not so much.
Not that Maggie was taking a blind bit of notice of his does-she-doesn’t-she? conundrum.
Listening to her now, reeling off the contents of the ambulance they’d be working on, was like being in the middle of an auctioneer’s rapid-fire pitch.
From the moment she’d arrived at the station she’d barely been able to look him in the eye. More proof, if he needed it, that he hadn’t meant to her what she’d meant to him. After all, who took someone to a movie when they hadn’t seen each other in over thirteen years?
Someone with a life. Someone who’d moved on.
“Raphael?” She clapped a hand on the back door of the ambulance to gain his attention. “Are you getting this?”
He nodded, not having the heart to tell her he’d actually spent the long flight over memorizing the equipment breakdowns and layouts he’d been sent along with the confirmation of his posting.
“And over here we’ve got your pneumocath, advanced drugs, syringe pumps and cold intravenous fluids. It’s not so much a problem this time of year. The hypothermia. What with it being summer. But...” She screwed up her face and asked, “Is hypothermia a problem in Paris?”
She quickly flicked her green eyes towards him, then whisked them back to the supply bins as if looking at him for longer than three seconds would give her a rash.
“Well, you’ve got snow, so I suppose so,” she answered for him. Then, almost sheepishly, she turned back to him and said, “Neige, right?”
He nodded, parting his lips to say he was actually ready to head out if she was, but she had already turned back toward the ambulance and was reeling off yet another