Reunited With Her Parisian Surgeon. Annie O'Neil

      Had she stuck her foot in it with the whole “you’re too French” thing?

      “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I really enjoy working on the ambos, and the fact you have extra language skills is great. Work is different every day. And it was an amazing way for me to get my bearings when I moved to Sydney.”

      “I’m not sure I’ll be at the wheel. I haven’t qualified for driving yet. All I know is I’m going to be working on an MIC Ambulance.”

      Luckily Raphael missed her wide-eyed No! That’s what I do! response as he scanned the area, then turned towards the main bus stop outside the Botanical Gardens as if he’d been doing it every day of his life. He’d been born and bred in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities—acclimatizing to another must be a piece of cake.

      “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.