‘I know her at the hospital,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘And of course I’ll buy some socks. How many pairs can I have?’
‘Twenty?’ Joe said hopefully.
An innocent or a good salesman?
‘How can I wear twenty pairs when I’ve only got two feet?’ Jean-Luc teased gently, but Joe was not to be deterred.
‘Bill says socks are very good Christmas presents,’ he said.
Bill again?
‘And who is Bill?’
Jean-Luc asked the question before he could get too hung up over the ethical issues of questioning a child about his mother’s life. In the context, he assured himself, it was kind of all right to ask.
‘Bill’s my friend!’
Serves you right! Jean-Luc admitted to himself.
‘Well, Bill’s right,’ he said. ‘Socks make very good Christmas presents. I will take twenty pairs.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THAT'S Mum!’
Busy writing his order in an order book that had also come out of the satchel, Jean-Luc barely noticed the first call, but when Lauren called again he answered.
‘He’s here!’ Jean-Luc moved off the porch and waved to Lauren, who was standing at her front gate.
She came swiftly towards them, her anxiety evident in the sharp tone she used as she scolded Joe.
‘It’s nearly dark, Joe. You know you should come home before it gets dark.’
‘But John was buying socks,’ Joe protested, while Jean-Luc looked from the child to his mother and, as the attraction that had been there from his first meeting with Lauren sparked again in his body, he wondered about Bill.
‘You don’t have to buy socks.’ Lauren, more disturbed than ever in Jean-Luc’s presence, hastened into speech. ‘I’m sure you can buy wonderful socks in France.’
‘One can never have too many pairs of socks,’ her colleague replied. He turned back to Joe. ‘What else do I need to write down?’
‘You write your name and where you live and how many socks you want,’ he said.
Lauren watched as Jean-Luc filled in the order form. Watched closely, trying to work out why this man affected her as he did—trying even harder to remember him.
It was useless! There was nothing at all familiar about him, and if she’d ever felt these strange internal reactions to him before—well, she couldn’t remember that either. But she doubted she’d have been reacting to the man’s attraction at the time when she’d been in love with Joe’s father, so maybe, back then in the blank space in her life, her body hadn’t warmed, and her skin hadn’t tingled when she’d seen Jean-Luc Fournier.
Could she ask?
Not about her reaction to him, of course—there’d be no mention of that and hopefully it wasn’t showing—but about the blank—about the time they’d met before. Mum was at home—she could send Joe to her place for his dinner, and perhaps have a talk with Jean-Luc.
Although being alone with him would undoubtedly make all the strange manifestations of attraction she was feeling far worse. And did she really want to know—to fill in the blanks?
For Joe’s sake, yes. He was entitled to know who his father was.
‘There, that’s done.’
Jean-Luc handed the order book back to Joe, who thanked him politely then looked at the paper.
‘Wow! You really are buying twenty pairs. My six will beat the others.’
‘You don’t need to buy twenty pairs of socks,’ Lauren protested, staring at the man she didn’t know. ‘What on earth will you do with them?’
She knew she was talking to dispel the uneasiness that churned inside her whenever she was near him, but her question brought a smile to his face and the uneasiness turned to heat.
‘I can give them away as Christmas presents. I have it on very good authority that socks make excellent Christmas presents.’ He paused, studying her, while Joe, delighted with his order, and with Lucy at his heels, headed up the path and turned towards his house.
Lauren watched them go and knew she had to ask, waiting until Joe was safely inside the gate at home before turning back to the man who was causing her so much turmoil.
‘Did you know me at the orphanage?’ The question blurted from her lips before she could dither any more.
The dark blue eyes looked gravely into hers.
‘Yes,’ he said, and the word, though as forceful as a punch in her stomach, was not enough, the tension in her body tightening so much her muscles ached.
‘I hit my head. I don’t remember—You must have thought me rude—not recognising you. It’s so hard.’
The disjointed scraps of information spilled into the gathering darkness, and she knew she had to do better. She took a deep breath and tried again.
‘Did you work at the orphanage? Were you a volunteer there—or were you one of the backpackers who stayed a night or two then moved on?’
She studied his face, the scarred skin, the strong planes of cheekbones, the jut of chin, desperately seeking a glimmer of recognition—some hint of remembrance.
‘I was there, but your memory loss…I don’t know much about amnesia. Are you sure you want to know? Are you sure it won’t be harmful? Hurt you in some way?’
He seemed hesitant, even emotional, yet she must be picking up the wrong vibrations. What reason did such an assured man have to be uncertain?
And did his uncertainty matter when she was on the point of filling in that terrible blank space once and for all? Of finding out who’d fathered Joe?
Although that question brought its own fear in its train…
‘I have to know,’ she whispered.
He reached out and touched her arm.
‘Of course,’ he said, his voice as strained as hers had been. ‘But here it is impersonal, the flat…’
Jean-Luc hesitated. It wasn’t going to be easy to talk anywhere! How did you tell a woman she’d been your lover once?
So where? They could hardly sit over coffee in the restaurant across the park, talking as if it was a normal conversation. And the park at night—the lighted areas were busy with people exercising, the other areas possibly dangerous?
And how could telling of the past in words even in part relate the rapture they had shared, the delight, the tenderness, the passion…
Did he tell her all of that?
His own tension was bad enough yet he was sure he could feel Lauren’s radiating from her body, filling the air around them with high-density vibrations.
This was impossible!
They needed somewhere they could both feel relaxed.
‘In India we often walked on a beach,’ he said, touching her lightly on the forearm, hoping touch might soothe her, if only slightly. But touching her was not a good idea. Apparently, the chemical arrangements in their bodies that had first sparked their attraction were still alive and well—the attraction far from dead.
T’es fou! He had to pull his mind into order.
‘You talked of a beach near where you lived. We shared a liking for beaches for I, too, lived by the sea, although in a village, not a suburb. Is your beach far away? Would it be possible to go there? To walk together on the sand while we talk?’
He was still holding her arm so he felt at least some of the tension drain from her body.
‘Coogee? I told you about Coogee? I must have known you well!’
She smiled with such sincere delight Jean-Luc felt his stomach knot. Would she be equally delighted to learn the rest of what he had to tell her? Or would she, like he, be simply thrown into more confusion?
‘It’s a short drive away,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just duck home and ask Mum to take care of Joe, then get the car and pick you up.’
But as she moved away the sensor light in the porch came on and Jean-Luc saw the smile slide from her face. Yes, she might be glad to think some of the spaces in her memory would be filled in, but she, too, was dubious—perhaps even afraid—about just where more information might lead her.
But then her
parting words echoed in his head. She would tell ‘Mum’ she was going out—Joe’s gran, not Bill, though maybe Bill was at work, which would explain Gran babysitting.
And, really, it was none of Jean-Luc’s business whom Lauren had to tell—or whether she was married to or otherwise involved with this Bill.
So why did it bother him?
Because he still felt the tug of attraction towards her—that’s why.
The small car pulled up in what seemed an incredibly short few moments later, but perhaps he had been dreaming—thinking back to how things might have been had not a typhoon struck the village where they’d worked. The interior light came on as she leaned across and opened the door for him, and he saw apprehension—close to fear—in the way her skin clung tightly to the bones of her face and in her almost colourless lips.
‘Tell me what you do remember,’ he suggested, when he’d shut the door and buckled his seat belt.
She sighed, her eyes on the road as she pulled out into the traffic.
‘Nothing—not one solitary thing. Not even flying off to India, although Mum and my friends tell me there was a great send-off at the airport.’
She braked for a red light and turned towards him.
‘I think that’s the hardest part, not being able to remember emotions. I can imagine that I was feeling happy and sad at the same time—there at the airport. Excited yet apprehensive because I’d found out about St Catherine’s on the internet but had never spoken to anyone who’d ever been there. Mum told me all this, and then there are emails I sent home to family and friends and they tell me what I did—or some of the things I did—and I sound as if I was having a fantastic time, so why can’t I remember it?’
Recalling what he’d read about amnesia, Jean-Luc was intrigued.
‘What do the experts say? I assume you’ve seen specialists—neurologists?’
The lights turned green and she drove on, her concentration on the road and the moderately heavy traffic.
‘Plenty of experts, and most of them have differing opinions. In the beginning, when my brother Russ flew to India from England where he was working and found me in a hospital two hundred miles north of St Catherine’s, I remembered nothing—not who I was, nor him, not even Mum when I got home, yet the weird thing was I remembered how to do things—like clean my teeth.’
She negotiated her way around a large van and turned down a side street, then slid a smile towards Jean-Luc.
‘I was very suspicious of Russ at first. I’d assumed I was Indian and here was this Australian trying to take me away. He had to wait until the consular department issued a replacement passport for me, then show me mine and his and the names and addresses on them both.’
The road dipped and ahead Jean-Luc could see the darkness of the ocean, although any beach was hidden by the tightly packed buildings that must stretch along the shoreline.
‘So, Russ took you home?’ he prompted, as they stopped again at traffic lights.
‘Not straight away, because the doctors didn’t want me to fly for a while. So we went to stay in a holiday village by the sea—a long way from St Catherine’s and the devastation of the typhoon. Then one day when we were walking on the sand, I had what seemed like a vision. I’d been playing on the beach with Russ when we were kids. I’d built a sandcastle and he knocked it down and I cried and cried. I asked him if that was true and he hugged me hard and danced and shouted, and all the quiet, gentle Indians around us on the beach thought he was a madman. But it was true and from then on little bits and pieces came back until I could fit most of my childhood into place, and my teenage years, even my years at university.’
The traffic was moving again, and she stopped talking, but Jean-Luc knew her mind was more on the past—on that blank space in her life—than on the route they were taking to her beach.
‘And India?’
‘All I know about it,’ she said softly, as she turned the car and they started down a hill to where he could finally see the shoreline, and the white foam of the waves that advanced and retreated on the beach, ‘is what Mum and Russ and my friends at home could tell me from the emails I’d sent them before the typhoon struck.’
Alors! She hadn’t told them about him—hadn’t mentioned his name or surely it would have been familiar to her. Had he then been so unimportant to her?
Even with the emotional detachment ten years had brought, he found it impossible to accept. He’d been so in love—and was sure she had felt the same.
‘Here—the beach—Coogee. Did I tell you the name?’
She’d parked the car and was looking at him, uncertain again, anxiety making her voice shaky, although she was doing her best to hide it.
‘You did,’ he answered, but now they were at the beach he wondered why he’d suggested it. Far off on the horizon the moon was rising, sending a silver path across the ocean, right to where white foam flecked the tops of waves and the water washed with a soft shushing sound on the sand.
The scene demanded romance, not devastating revelations, although need the revelations be so devastating?
They’d been lovers—didn’t everyone have a youthful romance somewhere in their past?
‘Lauren,’ he began, so uncertain now his nerves were taut, his muscles tight with anxiety, ‘are you sure about this?’
She stared at him, and in the light from the streetlamps beyond the car he saw her frown.
Then smile!
‘Not at all,’ she murmured, the rueful grin still hovering around her lips. ‘In fact, I’m terrified. But…’
She stopped as if deciding not to tell him whatever it was she’d been about to say, adding only, ‘I need to know.’
But how much? That was Jean-Luc’s problem. It seemed she knew about the kind of work they’d done, for those things would have gone into her emails home. In that case, what other information would she be after?
And why?
‘Shall we walk?’ he said when silence suggested she’d said all she could say right now.
She opened the car door by way of reply and turned in her seat so her legs dangled out, enabling her to slip off her sandals. Removing his shoes and socks and turning up the legs of his trousers took Jean-Luc a little longer, and maybe he didn’t hurry as he wanted to get his body back under control and give his mind time to come up with some easy way to tell Lauren what she needed to know.
Actually, telling her wasn’t the hard part—working out what they would both do with the information afterwards was what blocked his thinking processes.
Perhaps chat would help.
‘So this is Coogee,’ he said, as his feet touched the sand beneath the promenade. ‘You used to laugh because I said a letter to Jean-Luc Fournier, Cassis, France, would always reach me. You said you doubted a letter to Lauren Henderson at Coogee, Australia, would get to you.’
She paused and looked at him and, seeing her face, the beautiful planes of it, the deep-set eyes, he was transported back to that other beach, where they’d walked, and talked, and kissed.
And he wanted to kiss her again—so badly he could feel his body trembling with the need to hold her, touch her, taste her lips.
‘Did you try?’
She obviously wasn’t talking about kisses. His mind tracked back and he moved closer and took her hands.
‘No, I didn’t try, Lauren. I, too, was injured. When I regained consciousness I was told that you had been killed.’
He took a deep breath to chase away remembered pain, then added bluntly, harshly, ‘I thought you were dead!’
She moved away so he had to drop her hands, and shook her head as she stared at him.
‘I was dead to you for all those years, then you see me on the street. You must have thought you’d seen a ghost.’
Her reading of the situation was so exact he felt a little of his tension drain away.
‘I’ve definitely had ghosts haunting me the last few days,’ he admitted.
‘Poor you,’ she said softly
, while huge dark eyes scanned his face and it seemed to him she was trying to read his thoughts when, more likely, she was still trying to find something in his features she remembered.
Finally, she lifted her hand and placed the palm against his torn and puckered skin.
‘These injuries? Your limp? You were badly injured?’
‘Bad enough to be repatriated home on a medical flight then to spend three months in and out of hospital—but that’s a long time in the past and we’re not here to discuss my injuries.’
‘But of course we are, it’s part of what I want to know,’ she said. ‘Three months is a long time—does your leg still bother you? Should we sit and look at the ocean rather than walk?’
‘We’re not walking yet,’ he said, but he turned to walk, because standing close to her—close enough for her to cup his cheek—was so disturbing he couldn’t marshal his thoughts into sensible order.
Couldn’t think at all, in truth, because all he wanted to do was touch her, hold her, kiss her…
Because she’s a symbol of the past—of a time when you were happy—that’s all, his cynical self suggested.
But cynicism didn’t stop the wanting.
She caught up with him, and her question—‘So before the typhoon separated us, were we friends?’—suggested she was far less affected by this reunion than he was.
And why would she be affected by him if she was happily involved with Bill?
Lauren told herself she had to pretend this was nothing more than the fact-finding mission she’d requested. She had to ignore the moon on the water, the shushing of the waves on the beach, the salt tang in the air and all the other ingredients of romance, and just talk to this man.
And more important than banishing the ingredients of romance from her thoughts, she had also to ignore the totally extreme physical sensations the man awoke in her. How could she have touched his cheek, knowing that being close to him was enough to make her knees weak, so touching him would surely be far worse?
It had been! As her hand had curved around that scarred skin, she’d felt her body come alive, sparks of what could only be desire shooting along her nerves, rioting in her blood and making her bones go soft and gooey.
The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child Page 6