day, perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been in touch with him after the typhoon—wanting to see something!
Anything!
But the green-brown eyes that met his held no hint of embarrassed recollection, just politeness as she nodded.
‘Ah, that explains it,’ she said, then turned her attention back to Phil. ‘I met Dr Fournier yesterday—he rescued Joe when he was knocked over on the footpath.’
To Jean-Luc she added, ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue so promptly.’ She smiled. ‘Again!’
Jean-Luc felt his body respond to that smile and knew that responding to her was even more impossible than finding her. How could this be after ten years?
Was it leftover lust?
Not a thought he could pursue when Phil was talking to him, thanking him for stepping in.
‘You’ll be a useful chap to have around,’ Phil finished, waving his hand for Jean-Luc to precede him out of the room.
Jean-Luc swung back towards Lauren, but she was once again fiddling with monitor leads, no doubt detaching them preparatory to taking the infant back to the PICU.
Who was she now?
And why was he wondering?
She was married, with a child—end of story!
Or was it?
Surely something of the woman he had fallen so deeply and desperately in love with still lingered within her.
His thoughts left him so unsettled he wanted to go back in and look at the babies in the unit but he was expected upstairs.
Consultations awaited…
Had some of the love dust landed on her after all that she was going weak-kneed whenever the new surgeon was around? Lauren wheeled Jake back into the big room and reattached his monitor leads, thankful Shelley and Brian had missed the little drama, forcing herself to think of them, not of blue eyes that had looked, almost angrily, into hers.
No, she had to be imagining the anger. He couldn’t possibly be angry that she didn’t remember some chance meeting they’d had earlier, although it could only have been within the last few days—the new team members hadn’t been here all that long.
And her memory wasn’t usually that bad!
It was a puzzle but not one she needed to bother with right now. Although the image of possibly angry blue eyes lingered in her mind and she was distracted as she listened to Brian and Shelley thank her for sending them away, the walk, Brian assured her, having done them both the world of good. Now he would sit with Jake while Shelley had a sleep, and Lauren could go home to sleep herself—No, she couldn’t! It was consultation day. She had to sit in on Alex’s consultations before she could go anywhere.
She sighed but hurried through to the locker rooms to have a wash and run a brush through her hair, which had been knotted up under the scarf all night. Her face was pale and she smeared some lipstick on her lips then put some on her finger and rubbed it into her cheeks. It didn’t help much but she looked 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