Or was it?
He no longer knew, although this Lauren wasn’t so different—giving up a day off to sit with a single mother while her baby had an operation. Driving down here to find some support for that young mother. Caring, generous, selfless and giving, the young Lauren had been all those things and he suspected she was just the same at thirty-one.
And beautiful!
So why had she not married?
The puzzle was simmering in his brain as he reached her, and in an effort to distract himself from the tug of her physical beauty he asked.
‘Have you never married? Never thought of marrying?’
She shook her head and the dark hair, streaked with rich red in the sun, swirled and tossed in the sea breeze.
‘Not many men are interested in a woman who has a child, especially when that child has a disability.’
‘But some men would have accepted Joe as part of the package,’ he argued, seeing her beauty stripped almost bare in front of him and knowing how attractive she would be to men of any age.
She studied him for a moment, then she sighed.
‘I didn’t just want marriage, Jean-Luc,’ she said quietly. ‘This might sound foolish, but somewhere deep inside me I knew I’d already experienced love and I didn’t want to denigrate that love by accepting some kind of compromise. And the relationships I had felt like that—like compromise.’
He shook his head.
‘That is exactly the kind of thing my Lauren would have said. Honest as the day was long, my Lauren.’
Her eyes darkened and she frowned slightly, and he wondered what he’d said to upset her. Then she shook her head and was about to walk away, down to the water, when he stopped her with a touch on her arm.
‘What is it?’ he asked quietly.
Still she hesitated, then finally a small, embarrassed smile chased across her lips.
‘Do you think that way?’ she asked. ‘Think of that Lauren as someone else? Not me at all?’
He knew this was important to her so he searched for how to put it, but in the end what could he tell her but the truth?
‘I knew that Lauren,’ he explained. ‘Knew you as you were ten years ago. But you must know how much you’ve changed—how you’ve grown and matured. You’ve studied, worked, had a child and had to conquer all the hassles of his early upbringing, to say nothing of the challenges of his disability. You have become independent, for all your family are close by, so you can run your own life. You aren’t my Lauren any more than I am the same man you fell in love with at St Catherine’s. I’m a stranger to you because you have no memory of me, but you are no less a stranger to me.’
She studied him for a moment longer then nodded her head, accepting what he’d said but obviously still thinking about it.
Finally she smiled, a broad, joyous grin.
‘Well, at least we’re both strangers,’ she said. ‘Race you to the water!’
And across the years he heard the echo of that cry, so as he followed her—she’d always started first—he wasn’t sure just how true the words he’d spoken really were.
The water was so invitingly cool he dived beneath the waves, then joined her as she surfed back to shore, catching her ankle as she tried to stand in the shallows where the waves had deposited them.
She fell across him, laughing, her wet hair tangled across her face so he raised his hand to lift a strand free of her mouth.
Free of her lips, now slightly parted as she regained her breath, but this was not Lauren of the past, or a stranger—this was a woman to whom he was infinitely attracted and who, he suspected, was in turn attracted to him.
He still held her ankle in one hand and he tugged on it so she slid through the shallows until she was lying in the water right beside him, hair now splaying out, floating on the surface.
‘Mermaid’s hair,’ he whispered, and ran his hand across it to smooth it out. ‘Mermaid’s lips, pink-red and inviting. Is kissing on a beach permitted or will the lifesavers come after us and throw us into jail?’
And once again she didn’t answer straight away, her gaze roaming his face as if to read some answers to unspoken questions.
‘Kissing is OK,’ she finally said, and if she sounded breathless, well, that was all right, his chest was feeling kind of tight as well.
He half floated beside her, one hand on the sand, anchoring him, the other resting on her shoulder. Then he touched his lips to hers, a suggestion of a kiss, knowing this was Lauren now, not Lauren then, and they were starting a whole new voyage of discovery.
Nibbling kisses, lips and bodies touching and moving apart, both of them still at the mercy of the waves, sometimes floating, sometimes on the sand or half-afloat, depending on the depth of water washing in and out.
But even as he was kissing Lauren—and enjoying it—he knew it was a diversion. While he was kissing Lauren he didn’t have to think—didn’t have to consider the implications of the child he’d fathered but didn’t know, or where the future might lead as far as that child was concerned.
How could he possibly be a father to a child who lived thousands of miles away?
Did he want to be involved?
A clenching of his gut told him the question was ridiculous. How could he not want involvement?
‘Hey, you’re going to drown me.’
Lauren eased away from under his body, which seemed to have floated over hers while he was distracted. And he must have looked distracted because she smiled and said lightly, ‘Is kissing in the shallows such a worry?’
‘I was thinking about Joe.’
She sat up in the shallow water, her wet hair tangled around her head, sand showing in the black strands, but the hazel eyes that met his held no indication that she cared about her appearance—sand in her hair the least of her worries.
‘I’ve thought of nothing else since last night—not of Joe, but of how you must feel and what you might want to do,’ she said, and she reached out and took his hand, as a friend might, offering comfort or support. ‘You need to get to know him a little at least before you can make any decisions, and he doesn’t need to be lumped with a father just like that, so I thought…’
Her eyes looked anxious and he realised she hadn’t changed very much at all, still worrying about other people and trying to do what was best for them. He lifted the hand that held his to his lips and pressed a kiss on the back of it.
‘You thought…’ he prompted, his heart suddenly thudding in his chest, but whether because he was holding Lauren’s hand or because he was uncertain what she was about to say, he didn’t know.
‘I thought, when you had time, you might do things with us.’
She tried to tug her hand away and he could see pinkness in her cheeks as if the kiss—or her suggestion?—had embarrassed her. But he held onto it, even kissed it again.
And because he didn’t answer she rushed to fill the silence that was growing thicker by the second.
‘He’s already disposed to like you—he calls you John, which is probably the best he can manage with Jean-Luc.’
‘He talks about me?’
Jean-Luc was sufficiently distracted by this information to allow Lauren to retrieve her hand and now with it safely out of kissing distance she smiled at him.
‘You did buy twenty pairs of socks,’ she reminded him. ‘Such munificence looms large in a young mind. He tells everyone about his friend John.’
‘So, what kind of expeditions did you have in mind?’
And although she’d sounded so confident when she’d made the first suggestion, Jean-Luc sensed a hesitation in her now.
Because of Joe, or for herself?
‘Well, we walk Lucy in the park most days and next week there’s an open day at Joe’s school, and Saturday morning is Nippers—you can come along and sit on the beach and see what Nippers do—then in a couple of weeks the Cub group is running a sausage sizzle at the local hardware store—that’s a Saturday morning. All this would depend on
when you’re available and also how much you want to do…’
How much did he want to do?
Lauren’s suggestion was excellent, all the suggestions she’d made would be natural ways for him to ease himself into Joe’s life, but that was for now.
The future beyond now yawned like a deep black hole.
And what about Lauren’s life?
Would he be easing himself into it at the same time?
Did he want that?
Did she?
‘It was easier when we were kissing,’ he said, as a bigger wave tumbled her closer and he caught her in his arms—a tall, shapely, vibrant woman. Why wouldn’t his body respond?
They left the water eventually and walked up the beach, Lauren reaching the towels first, lifting one and handing it to him, then lifting her own and shaking the sand off it.
And as she shook it the car keys fell out, and he bent to pick them up for her. A small bunch, no doubt just the car key and door keys for the house and flat, but what caught his attention was the silver heart attached to the keyring. He stared at it, then rubbed his forefinger around it, tracing the shape of the heart, for that was all it was, a heart shaped piece of metal, probably not silver at all.
‘I gave you this,’ he said, still staring at the object, unable to believe how strongly the past had come rushing over him.
‘This is how my heart will be—empty—when we part,’ he’d said.
Lauren turned to face him, a puzzled frown on her face.
‘My car keys?’
‘This heart—or one very like it. I bought it at the silversmith’s in the village near St Catherine’s and he didn’t have a chain so you wore it on a leather thong around your neck.’
‘Oh, Jean-Luc,’ she whispered, wonder thickening her voice. ‘It’s all I had when they found me. My clothes were in tatters but this heart was around my neck. Apparently someone tried to take it off, thinking it might choke me if I had a seizure, but I refused to let anyone touch it. Then, when I got home, I didn’t want to wear it because people kept asking me where I’d got it and I didn’t know, but I wanted it with me anyway.’
He took her in his arms and kissed her once again, kissed her as he’d kissed her when he’d hung the heart around her neck—when they’d both been young, and loving had been easy and uncomplicated…
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘SO, TELL me why a male dog is called Lucy?’
Without doubt her suggestion that Jean-Luc spend time with Joe was the worst idea Lauren had ever had. The man had become a constant presence in her life—at work, forever in the PICU, checking the babies, chatting to parents, his accented voice sending shivers down her spine and reminders of his kisses deep into her belly.
Now here they were in the park, Joe throwing sticks for Lucy while Jean-Luc sat, far too close to her, on the seat beside the ornamental lake.
‘He’s a failed seeing-eye dog,’ Lauren replied, glad to have something to talk about, though talking did little to distract her body from its pathetic behaviour—heating up, shivering, producing tremors when he accidentally touched her—whenever Jean-Luc was around.
‘A failed seeing-eye dog?’
Her companion sounded so incredulous she had to smile and now she turned to face him, although looking at those blue eyes and the scars on his cheeks made her want to touch him so sitting on her hands seemed the only option.
‘He was born in the kennels of the Blind Association but when it came to doing the final training, he didn’t make it. These dogs are still really well trained so they are often offered to people with disabilities as companion dogs. Russ called him Lucifer—the fallen angel—but of course that soon became Lucy. But he’s trained to alert us if Joe gets into trouble—if he should faint or fall and hurt himself. Some dogs are trained to respond to changes in their human’s chemical make-up so they know when their human is going to have an epileptic fit, for example.’
‘I have heard of these dogs, but Joe, there is danger of him fainting? You, or someone, spoke of a heart condition—was his problem fixed?’
‘He was born with a ventricular septal defect, but it was small and seems to have closed itself. There’s still a slight murmur but not enough to put him through an operation, or so Alex says and I agree.’
She stopped suddenly as she realised the import of what she’d just said.
‘I’m sorry, that sounded very—I don’t know, possessive, I suppose. But I’ve been the one making decisions about his health all this time. I can show you his health records, what I have of them, and as a heart specialist yourself—I don’t know, Jean-Luc, this is so difficult.’
He took her hand and all the physical symptoms of her attraction she’d managed to ignore while she’d talked of Joe came raging back to life.
‘I want to be his father, not his doctor, and I am sure whatever you and Alex decided was correct. Don’t blame yourself, Lauren, or get caught up in guilt. Neither of us intended to be in this situation, and we’re both confused about the path that lies ahead of us, so tell me more about Lucy, or talk of other things. Tomorrow we go to Nippers? Do we go to Coogee? Is that where he belongs?’
Lauren looked at her hand, tanned against Jean-Luc’s paler and larger one, and wondered how she’d landed herself in this situation. For sure, she’d always wanted to find Joe’s father, but she hadn’t intended falling in love with him. Yet that had to be what was happening, had to be why her heart turned over when she saw him and her skin heated when he was close to her and she felt weak-kneed when she saw him pick up a baby. That was more than physical attraction surely.
And as she didn’t remember the man she’d known before, she had to accept it was this man she loved—this virtual stranger.
‘Yes, it’s Coogee,’ she said, sounding very calm for someone who had just suffered a revelation of gigantic proportions. ‘And it’s early. We need to be at the beach at seven so I’ll pick you up at six-thirty—that’s if you really want to go.’
Blue eyes scanned her face—please, heaven, he couldn’t see her thoughts—then he smiled and said, ‘Try to stop me!’
Her heart did its leaping, somersaulting act and it wasn’t the smile that had caused it but the genuine interest he was showing in Joe.
Although, if he grew too interested, might he not want Joe in his life full time?
He lived in France—thousands of miles away.
Joe’s home was here.
With her.
Jean-Luc put his arm along the back of the seat, so his hand was resting just above her shoulder. It was distracting but not so distracting she wasn’t watching what was going on with Joe and Lucy. Now Joe threw the stick into the water this time, and Lucy plunged in after it, Joe following.
‘Brat of a child!’ Lauren said, forgetting distraction and rushing towards the shallow lake. ‘You know not to go into the water in your sneakers,’ she scolded, catching Joe’s arm and hauling him to the shore. ‘And now Lucy is all wet and the water is smelly. Who’s going to wash her?’
‘John will,’ Joe announced, beaming at Jean-Luc who had rapidly become a special champion in his eyes.
‘John wash Lucy?’ he asked, his voice telling them he was confident of agreement.
Lauren turned to see how Jean-Luc would take this request and to her surprise the Frenchman seemed unfazed.
‘Lead me to the tap, Joe,’ he said, and so they all walked home together, where Lauren stood back and watched all three of them get very, very wet, laughing and joking, the hose turning onto Joe and Jean-Luc as well as Lucy, the laughter and delight in her son’s eyes actually hurting her heart.
Yes, Joe had had family all around him from his birth, but he hadn’t had a father…
And her heart kept hurting. It hurt as she and Jean-Luc sat on the beach and watched Joe in Nippers beach races, and when she saw the French surgeon cooking sausages outside the hardware store. Jean-Luc was getting to know his son, and Joe clearly adored the man, but they were no further adva
nced as far as the future was concerned.
‘You have to talk to him, ask him if he’s given any thought to what he wants to do,’ Lauren’s mother urged, three weeks after the afternoon at Thirroul beach, when it seemed that Jean-Luc had become a fixture in their extended family. He went sailing on the harbour with Russ and Bill, exchanged recipes for bouillabaisse with her mother, took Joe to Cubs in Lauren’s little car and generally spent most of his off-duty hours with Joe.
Joe, not her!
True, he’d asked her out to dinner a couple of times—to talk about Joe, of course—but one evening she’d promised to go to a hens’ party for Becky and the next time she’d had a long-standing arrangement to catch up with a friend from nursing school.
So that was that. He hadn’t asked again and as far as she could make out, she wasn’t part of the situation that was Joe—well, not at the moment.
And to be fair, Jean-Luc was working a lot of late shifts so he could see more of Joe during the day…
Or he didn’t want to ask her out.
‘Will you be there when they do the operation?’
Lauren shook away her wandering thoughts, chastising herself for letting them wander at work. The anaesthetist had given Jeremy Willis the pre-med for his operation and Lauren was watching him to make sure it worked, leaving him suitably drowsy.
‘I’m not usually, because they usually do catheterisations in the cath lab and it’s too small for onlookers, but as it’s in theatre, I suppose I could go in, if that would make you feel easier.’
Rosemary hugged her.
‘It really would, if you wouldn’t mind. I’d go in myself only I’d faint for sure, but if you’re there, I’ll feel so much better. I know you have Jeremy’s interests at heart. I know the doctors are good and all that, but to them he’s just another case.’
Lauren started to protest, but Rosemary was in full flow.
‘And that French doctor, the one who’ll do the operation—does he really have children of his own?’
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