forgettable…
‘You don’t remember me?’
She frowned, her lovely hazel eyes now studying him more intently, although he guessed most of her attention was still on her child and she was anxious to get him inside so she could check for herself that he wasn’t seriously injured.
‘Should I know you?’ she asked, her smile now polite, but very distant. ‘Oh, Joe said you’re a doctor. You work at the hospital. Of course!’ Another smile, more polite than the first and with as little meaning. ‘You must forgive me. I had an accident years ago and it affected my memory, especially my memory for faces.’
A third smile, this one genuine enough to spark lights in the eyes that had once shone with love for him.
‘At least, that’s my excuse.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Lauren Henderson and this is Joe. Thank you once again.’
Jean-Luc took her hand and introduced himself, eyeing her carefully, certain he’d see a spark of recognition and probably embarrassment when he said his name, but far from uttering a delighted cry of ‘Jean-Luc’ and exclaiming over wonderful twists of fate, all she did was shake his hand and release it, her fingers dropping his so abruptly he knew her thoughts were back on the little boy.
He should have said more—reminded her of India—but she was so totally oblivious and the little boy was claiming pain in his injured hand. So Jean-Luc settled for saying goodbye and watched her scurry back towards the house, head bent as she spoke quietly to her child, the dog they’d called Lucy—surely a female name and it was definitely a male dog—following close behind them, though turning from time to time to check Jean-Luc posed no further danger. The front door opened and all three disappeared inside, the door closing behind them.
Maybe she was a ghost—the whole episode a figment of his imagination, brought about because he’d been thinking about Lauren and her description of her home town…
Had she met that man before? Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deepset under black brows. Black hair, neatly trimmed, greying slightly at the temples—a cliché surely! Maybe he dyed it grey to look distinguished. If so, he’d certainly achieved his aim! Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, puckered even in places, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eyes to well-shaped lips.
Kissable lips!
Lauren set Joe down on the kitchen table the better to examine his injuries. Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?
And why?
Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?
Of course not! She’d been strung up over seeing Joe in a stranger’s arms—then to hear he’d been injured…
The tingling had been apprehension…
It had only happened when he’d touched her.
She used a clean cloth to wipe the grazes on Joe’s hand and leg, chatting to him, asking about the accident, although her mind was not on Joe’s explanations of the skateboard rider crashing into him but on the man who had rescued her son.
A stranger.
Just an ordinary man.
No! Not in the wildest flights of any woman’s imagination could that man be classed as ordinary.
Or forgettable—yet she certainly had no recollection of ever having met him.
‘Did he say he was a doctor?’ Lauren asked, pushing her memory to bring up some hint of a meeting.
‘Who?’
‘The man who picked you up.’
‘Yes.’
Big help!
‘At the hospital?’
‘Dunno. Mum, can I go and play?’
‘A snack first,’ Lauren said. What was she doing, cross-examining her own child about a man she’d probably never see again? She lifted Joe off the table and sent him to wash his hands.
Although the man had been walking down the road…
And most of the houses in the area were hospital houses…
She shook her head at her own stupidity. As if a man like that would ever look at someone like her, and then there was her track record with men. Most men who took her out were interested right up until the stage they met Joe and realised he was part of the package, after which they disappeared, never to be heard from again.
She put a glass of milk and a plate of cheese with fruit and vegetable sticks on the table, and settled Joe in front of them. Then she ruffled his hair and bent to kiss the top of his head.
She’d rather have Joe than a thousand handsome men, although now and then she wondered wistfully about his father. Had his touch made her skin tingle?
The next morning Jean-Luc stood at the bedroom window of the flat that would be his home for the next six months. It was two doors down from the one where the ghost of Lauren lived—except she wasn’t a ghost, she was real. Even her name, Lauren Henderson, was real.
It was unbelievable—first that she was alive, and then the coincidence of running into her, although Lauren had been set on a medical career and from what he’d been told most of the houses in the area were home to medical personnel from St James’s Hospital. Jimmie’s, the staff all called it—
Not what he should be thinking about—nicknames for hospitals. What he had to consider was why he was even thinking about her. So she was alive! She had obviously survived the typhoon though how, when he’d seen photos of the collapsed church and couldn’t imagine anyone surviving beneath the rubble, he didn’t know.
Was that the accident she’d spoken of? Was the memory loss amnesia?
Which brought him neatly back to the fact that it didn’t matter. So, an old girlfriend was living two doors away—so what?
It certainly wasn’t important as far as Lauren was concerned, for she didn’t have a clue who he was.
And there was no reason why things couldn’t stay that way.
Except that he’d spent the night tossing and turning in his bed, fragments of their time together returning to haunt his dreams, images of how she looked now intruding into his sleep, which was extremely aggravating.
And her not remembering him made him feel…not angry but definitely put out.
‘Are you coming?’
The old house in which he was living was hospital property, available for rent by visiting specialists. It was divided into two flats, and Grace Sutherland, the second of the surgical fellows working with Alex Attwood’s team this term, was occupying the other one. She was tapping at his door, as she did most mornings, so they could walk to work together.
Grace chattered as they walked, talking about Theo, the Greek perfusionist on the surgical team. Was Grace really interested in the mechanics of, and possibilities of improvement to, the heart bypass machine or was her interest more personal? Jean-Luc and Grace had been in Australia less than a week, and had only met the members of the surgical team a couple of days earlier—could she be interested in a man so quickly?
Women—he would never understand them, and now he no longer tried. He’d already chalked up one failed marriage, and since the end of his engagement to Justine—she’d accused him, perhaps justly, of being more interested in work than he was in her—he had found there were plenty of women who didn’t want to be understood any more than they wanted permanence, women happy to enjoy an affair with no strings attached on either side.
And if, at times, he felt an emptiness in his life, he knew he had only to return to work—to see the babies