The Neurosurgeon's Unexpected Family
Page 16
She made a mental note to speak to Lewis Parker’s form tutor as soon as she got the chance. Arming the victim as well as addressing the bad behaviour—or the underlying causes of the bad behaviour—often worked. What was going on in Lewis’s life that made him need to bully others?
A sharp rap on the door had her turning round. It was Andrea, one of the school administrators. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Briana, but I didn’t know how long you were going to be—’
‘I’m going, miss. Got to see Mr Wilson.’ Alfie put the ice pack down and shouldered his school bag. The bruise on his chin was dark and swollen and he did not look happy about the prospect of seeing the head teacher.
‘Okay, Alfie. Come back tomorrow morning so I can have a look at those bruises.’ And check on his well-being. Arm him with more strategies.
With kids like Alfie, the best way of helping his emotional needs was to disguise it as dealing with his physical ones. Crafty, but it worked.
Andrea smiled as the boy dashed out of the door. ‘The new doctor’s here. I’ve done a walk-round to show him the layout and explained how the clinic works, but he’s going to need the full Briana Barclay orientation.’
‘As much as I know after only being here for a term.’
‘You know more than him, that’s always a start, right? Oh...’ Andrea leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘Prepare yourself. He is hot, hot, hot.’
‘Who? The new doctor that should have been here an hour ago? No one’s hot when they can’t be relied on to be on time.’
‘To be fair, he said the email had confirmed a two-thirty start.’ Andrea shrugged. ‘Maybe he got it wrong? Can’t have beauty and brains, right?’
‘I don’t care how good looking he is, if he isn’t here on time to see the students they’ll leave. It’s hard enough to get them to attend appointments. They won’t wait. They get the jitters, second-guess themselves and leave.’
‘Did I mention he was hot?’ Andrea fanned her face. Her cheeks were reddening, her eyes bright and dancing behind her reading glasses. She looked like a teenager swooning instead of a motherly fifty-something woman who should know better.
Bri laughed as she stalked into the waiting room with Andrea in her wake. ‘Right, where is he? Let’s get this over with. I have far more important things to do than mollycoddle a man—’
Oh, God. No.
‘Bri...’ Andrea was grinning and her eyes were wide, as if to say, Ta-da! I present to you the hot new doctor. ‘This is Fraser Moore. Our new adolescent health specialist. All the way from London.’
He was standing in the middle of the room, filling it with his enigmatic presence and good-natured smile that she knew were just masking the real Fraser Moore. And, yes, she could see how Andrea might think him hot with his wide, haunting dark eyes. The short dark hair that was well groomed in a stylish city-boy look. The tan-coloured chinos and pale blue merino sweater that skimmed his rugged body. Oh, yes...she could see that someone who didn’t know him would think him off-the-scale gorgeous, as she had done once upon a deluded time. Even the girls in the waiting room were staring at him as if a famous actor had just walked in.
But Bri knew better. She knew all about Fraser Moore.
Behind him a group of giggling girls burst into the waiting room. One of them stopped short, stared first at her then Fraser, her mouth gaping. She was about fifteen years old, hair pulled back into a long ponytail, dark eyes. She looked so familiar but Bri hadn’t seen her around the school before.
Fraser’s eyes widened and he looked guilty as hell, enough that Bri iintsinctively knew who this girl was.
Lily? Sweet, sweet Lily. Her heart lifted and hurt at the same time. All grown up with that teenager-going-on-twenty coquettishness.
All those missed years and missed chances.
Emotions hit her in the chest like bullets. Pain, sadness, rage, love. Bri’s heart pounded, white noise filled her ears. She had no chance to gather herself and take stock. No chance to breathe. To try to drag on an expression that wasn’t one of pure shock.
They lived here in the Lake District now?
Why? Fraser was a confirmed and devoted city man. When he’d visited years ago with Ellen and baby Lily he’d made it clear he couldn’t breathe in all this space. Hated the crap public transport, the lack of buzz. The inward-looking parochialism of it all. So why here and why now?
And still Andrea was talking in her sugar-sweet voice, oblivious to the fact that the only hot things in the room right now were the daggers zipping between Bri and the man she’d hoped she’d never see again. ‘Dr Fraser, this is our lovely school nurse, Briana Barclay.’
Briana closed her eyes and tried to stop her body from shaking. ‘Fraser? What the actual hell are you doing here?’
The man who’d stolen the last few years of the most precious and dear friendship of her life. Who had prevented her from seeing her dying best friend in her last months of need. The man who’d blanked her and ghosted her. And now he was here to...what? To cause her pain? All over again?
Like hell he would.
Copyright © 2021 by Louisa George
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ISBN-13: 9781488075056
The Neurosurgeon’s Unexpected Family
Copyright © 2021 by Denise Chavers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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