The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

by Meredith Webber

  So he and Maggie had comforted and counselled her while his own world fell to pieces all around him!

  He shook his head. Surely he couldn’t be placing such importance on Lauren’s anger.

  On Lauren herself?

  Not when his work had always been his focus—and his solace.

  A dull ache inside his chest suggested that focus might be shifting but, thoroughly exhausted, he knew he couldn’t think about it now.

  He went to bed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THAT Lauren had become important in his life—and probably always had been—became more apparent as the days passed with no more than a polite nod from her when he was in the PICU or a purely medical discussion if they happened to be together in team meetings.

  And while his body ached for her, he suspected the attraction went far beyond the physical, but he had no idea how to bridge the gap between them. Tentative suggestions about dinner when they’d sat on the beach and watched Joe come last in the flag races had met with a cool look and a polite ‘I think not’ and a request that they sit down and talk had been similarly disregarded.

  A week had passed in this way and now he had Joe’s birthday party to look forward to—or dread—the following day. He should be on top of the world, work going well, Jeremy Willis’s death behind him, about to attend his son’s birthday party for the first time, and he was sitting alone in his empty flat, feeling sorry for himself.

  ‘Well, not so much sorry for myself as confused,’ he said to the microwave that was heating his frozen meal. ‘Now I’m talking to myself like she does—I’ve got it bad!’

  He might have continued the conversation—after all, microwaves didn’t answer back—had not furious barking attracted his attention. It was outside his front door and from the sound of the bark it was Lucy.

  Had the dog heard about his break-up with Lauren and come to kill him?

  The barking continued and he left the microwave beeping its own message and hurried to the door where, from the sound of things, Lucy was now hurling his body against the panels.

  He opened the door and Lucy sprang back, barking and hurrying up the path, so obviously wanting Jean-Luc to follow that he grabbed his door-key from the hook on the wall, shut the door and hurried after the dog.

  At number thirty a white-faced Joe stood peering anxiously out the open front door, and at the sight of Jean-Luc he ran forward and threw himself into his arms.

  Jean-Luc grabbed his son and held him hard, feeling the little body shaking all over, but Lucy was barking again and, carrying Joe, Jean-Luc walked inside.

  An older woman he didn’t know was lying on the floor. He knelt beside her and felt a thready pulse, listened for breath sounds, then tipped her on her back to begin expired air resuscitation.

  Joe stood and watched, explaining in a tearful voice, Jean-Luc taking in the gist of it while he breathed air into the woman’s lungs.

  ‘It’s Mrs West, she minds me when everyone is out. She went “Aaargh” and fell down,’ Joe explained, watching the procedure with wondering eyes. ‘I rang all the Os and told someone number thirty Kensington Terrace but the person kept on asking things I didn’t know.’

  Joe was crying now and though Jean-Luc longed to hold and comfort his son, he knew Mrs West was his priority. Besides, Lucy was sitting close to Joe now and he had his arms firmly around the dog’s neck so he was getting some comfort.

  ‘You did a great job. You gave the address and they’ll send an ambulance,’ Jean-Luc told him, praying he was right. They were so close to the hospital he’d soon know and if necessary he could phone again.

  He continued breathing while Joe went on to explain he’d sent Lucy to get John and wasn’t Lucy clever?

  ‘Very clever!’

  Unfortunately it was a police car, not an ambulance, that turned up at number thirty, directed to check if the call had been a hoax. The police constable called for an ambulance, which arrived only minutes later, and Mrs West was attached to oxygen and monitors and wheeled out.

  ‘Now who’ll look after me?’ Joe asked, as the ambulance drove off.

  ‘I will,’ Jean-Luc told him. ‘Shall we read a story?’

  Even Lucy seemed to approve and while Jean-Luc sat in a big armchair with Joe on his knee, Lucy lay on the floor at their feet, his head resting on Jean-Luc’s shoe.

  ‘Although that was probably only so she could bite off my leg if I tried to take Joe away,’ Jean-Luc said to Russ who, having been on duty, was the first of the family to arrive back and, seeing the flat door open, had come in.

  Jean-Luc had just finished explaining to Russ what had happened when Bill and Lauren arrived, Mrs Henderson having stayed on at the gallery to discuss sales—good sales, according to Bill—with the owner.

  ‘So Mrs West’s in hospital. At Big Jimmie’s?’ Lauren asked.

  Jean-Luc nodded, but he smiled at the name given to the adult hospital up the road. All the staff at the children’s hospital called the original service Big Jimmie’s.

  I wish he wouldn’t smile, Lauren thought—a totally unnecessary and intrusive thought considering she should be concentrating on Mrs West, her well-being and who in her family to contact.

  ‘I’d better go up to the hospital and see Mrs West,’ she said, ‘so when I phone the family I can tell them what’s happening.’

  ‘I’ve phoned the hospital—it was a heart attack and she’s resting easily now. You stay here and put Joe to bed, he’s had a shock,’ Russ told her. ‘I’ll go up to the hospital and deal with whatever we need to deal with there.’

  Lauren knew it made sense, but that meant she would have to stay here with Jean-Luc—although Bill was here, or he would have been if he hadn’t immediately decided he’d go up to the hospital with Russ.

  Resigning herself to her fate, Lauren crossed the room, intending to lift her sleeping son off Jean-Luc’s knee, but he forestalled her, standing up with Joe in his arms.

  ‘I’ll carry him to his bedroom,’ he said. ‘You’d better come along. You know better than I do about his pyjamas and things.’

  The tiredness in Jean-Luc’s voice hurt Lauren’s heart, and she studied him as he carried Joe through to his bedroom.

  Was he all right, Jean-Luc? Although she’d seen—and sometimes kissed—the dreadful scars from operations he’d had on his leg, she’d never asked about other injuries he might have had from the typhoon. Or from other accidents in the past ten years. Or from illnesses.

  She knew absolutely nothing about the man, yet had fallen so deeply in love with him that hearing tiredness in his voice made her heart hurt.

  Once in Joe’s room, she changed her sleepy son into his pyjamas, steered him into the bathroom to use the toilet, then cleaned his teeth and tucked him into bed.

  ‘He won’t remember any of this in the morning—the going-to-bed part,’ she told Jean-Luc, because talking to him about commonplace things was easier than thinking about him. ‘It’s happened before that I’ve had to change him when he’s already fallen asleep and he goes straight back to sleep as if he was never disturbed.’

  Jean-Luc gave her a glance that seemed to say, OK, let’s talk commonplaces.

  ‘He did well, dialling triple O and giving his address. It wasn’t his fault they sent a police car rather than an ambulance.’

  ‘I can’t take any credit for that,’ Lauren said. They were standing in the doorway of Joe’s room, looking at him, relaxed and breathing easily in his sleep. ‘He was taught that at school. All the kids learn and even the most disabled ones know their names and addresses or have a tag they can show people. It’s wonderful to find that the teaching actually works in a real-life situation.’

  She turned out the light and moved away and, knowing Jean-Luc was following, added, ‘Thank you for coming to his rescue. He must have been terrified, being here on his own in an emergency.’

  ‘He was sensible enough to tell Lucy to get me,’ Jean-Luc reminded her, ‘and as it turned out, while
I’m sorry it took Mrs West being ill, the incident has done me a big favour.’

  Lauren was halfway down the passageway and she halted, looking back at him.

  ‘A big favour?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied but said no more, so she continued in the direction of the front door.

  Did he want her to ask what it was? Was this a ploy to get her talking to him?

  She hovered at the door to the sitting room, looking towards the front door of the flat because she didn’t want to look at Jean-Luc.

  ‘May I stay and tell you what it was?’

  He was right beside her, paler than ever, and it was all she could do not to lift her hand and cup it around his cheek as she had done so many times before.

  ‘Well, I can hardly kick you out when you’ve come to the rescue so valiantly this evening, now can I?’ Lauren grouched, but though Jean-Luc usually smiled when she was grumpy, he didn’t smile this time.

  ‘Not exactly welcoming me with open arms, but it will do,’ he said, his voice sounding as strained as his face looked. ‘In the kitchen or the living room?’

  ‘The living room,’ Lauren said. ‘You sound very serious and the kitchen is a casual place.’

  He nodded and led the way, taking the chair in which he’d been sitting earlier, holding Joe in his arms.

  ‘I had time, before Russ came home, to do a lot of thinking,’ he began, while Lauren, sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her, tried to pretend this was just a chat.

  ‘And I realised I don’t want to be on the outside of Joe’s life.’

  So this is about Joe, not me, she thought, so uncertain whether to be relieved or pleased that she didn’t take in the meaning of the words.

  ‘I don’t want to not know who’s minding him. He’s my son, and though he might not understand how and why, I think he should know that, and he should live with me. I know that’s awkward, the way things are between you and I, but he is my son and he should be my family as well as yours.’

  The words weren’t even beginning to make sense. Lauren frowned at him.

  ‘I’ve no worries about telling him you’re his father, but living with you—Jean-Luc, the reason I still live so close to my mother at my age is because someone always has to be here for Joe when he’s at home and I’d rather have family minding him than a series of nannies or au pairs. You’re at work all day and sometimes half the night—how can you look after a little boy?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I am not explaining myself very well,’ he said, then he muttered away in French, not to her, she thought, but to himself. ‘What I am saying is that I want us to be a family—you and me and Joe. Your family, of course, will still be part of his life and in time he will know my family as well, but it is the three of us that are the family unit and that is what I want.’

  Lauren stared at him.

  ‘Are you talking marriage between you and me?’ she demanded.

  He shrugged.

  ‘If that is what it takes.’

  ‘Boy, that’s romance for you!’ Lauren exploded. ‘If that’s what it takes! What woman could resist such a passionate proposal? And what happened to you not wanting to marry again? Didn’t you postpone our love-making so you could make it very clear to me you didn’t intend marriage? And don’t tell me that was before you knew about Joe, because it wasn’t!’

  ‘That was then, before I knew I wanted him—before tonight, when I realised I should have been here for him, not up the road where Lucy had to get me, but here.’

  Lauren shook her head.

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ she told him, and to her surprise he agreed.

  ‘I know, because I can’t totally explain it even to myself. But sense or not, it’s what I want so you may as well get used to the idea and start thinking about how we can make it work,’ he said. ‘I’ll go now!’

  And he did! He stood up and walked out of the room, opened the front door and before Lauren could unwind off the couch, she heard it shut.

  Which left her precisely where?

  Not trusting the man who’d suddenly decided he wanted to marry her.

  Not for love, of course, but for more access to his son!

  No, she couldn’t think about that—it hurt too much.

  And just where was he expecting to live this married life?

  Back in France?

  That thought excited her. Now she remembered the young Jean-Luc talking of his village, of the deep blue Mediterranean curling around the cliffs at Cassis, she felt a longing to see it and experience a different way of life.

  Wouldn’t this be better than going to the US to become a perfusionist?

  More of a challenge?

  And as her mind warmed to the idea her body heated, betraying her by wanting him, although she didn’t trust him.

  ‘Don’t worry about me in making your decision,’ her mother said when she returned and Lauren told her of Jean-Luc’s sudden proposal. ‘I’d love nothing more than to spend time in the south of France. The light is supposed to be magic, and the scenery—a whole new world to paint. I could come over each year for a few months, rent a cottage so I’m not in the way, and Russ and Bill would visit, you know that.’

  ‘Mum!’ Lauren protested. ‘You coming to visit isn’t the issue here. What I’m worried about is marrying the man.’

  ‘Why? You love him. That’s obvious enough. And if you love him, why not marry him?’

  Lauren stared at her mother.

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ she protested. ‘He only wants to marry me so he can have Joe—so we can be a family!’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘It’s what he said.’

  ‘Ah, but men don’t always get it right when they say things,’ her mother said.

  Lauren huffed her ridicule.

  ‘I can hardly mistake “I want us to be a family” for “I love you”, now, can I?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’re impossible!’

  Her mother smiled but it was the saddest expression Lauren had ever seen on her mother’s face. ‘Your father never said “I love you” to me, not once, but it was there in every flower he planted in the garden, every pay cheque he brought home and gave to me, every kiss he gave you and Russ, and every time he took me in his arms.’

  Lauren stared at her mother. She’d been too young to remember her father, who had been killed in a car crash, and this was the first time she’d ever heard her mother talk of him that way—talk of love!

  ‘Is love enough?’ she asked her mother. ‘Even when you’ve doubts?’

  ‘I think it’s enough,’ her mother said. ‘I’ll sleep in your flat in case you decide you want to talk to him.’

  Lauren shook her head, her mind once again in such a muddle she didn’t know where to start thinking.

  She could, of course, ask him.

  But tonight? It was after midnight and he’d looked very tired.

  He’d look more tired in the morning if he couldn’t sleep, wondering whether she’d accept his strange proposal.

  She walked outside and looked along the street. There were lights on in the downstairs flat at number twenty-six.

  Slowly she made her way along the footpath, her feet barely lifting, her shoulders bowed as if the distance between their houses was a million miles. Up the path to the front door—she lifted her hand, hesitated, wanting to scoot right back home.

  Then knocked.

  ‘Lauren!’

  Good, he seemed surprised, though she doubted she’d caught him as much off guard as he’d caught her earlier.

  ‘Are you going to ask me in?’

  His turn to hesitate, then he opened the door wider and with an expansive gesture waved her in. And as she passed him she caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath, explained when she entered the sitting room and saw the brandy bottle and the balloon glass, dark liquid in the base of it.

  ‘One brandy and that not even finished,’ he assured her, as
if guessing she might not talk to him if he’d been drinking. ‘Do you want one? It’s the cognac you liked at the restaurant.’

  Before we came home and made love all night.

  ‘No, thank you. I just came to ask you something.’

  He waited until she’d curled up on the couch then he sat down and picked up his glass, cradling the rounded shape of it in his hands and slowly swirling the liquid round and round.

  Brandy tastes better slightly warm, she remembered him saying at the restaurant, then realised she was allowing herself to be distracted because she really didn’t want to ask him what she’d come to ask.

  ‘So, you have a question?’ he prompted, and though she tried to read his mood in his face, his eyes, his voice, he seemed to have shut himself off from her.

  As she had from him over the past week…

  ‘Do you love me?’

  The words blurted from her lips. It had seemed the only way to get them out and now they hung there in the air between them, like sleeping bats—dark and somehow dangerous for all their stillness.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, a suggestion of a smile flirting around his lips.

  It was the smile that aggravated her the most.

  ‘That’s easy to say but why should I believe you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and took a sip of brandy. ‘I believe it’s about trust. That’s what it’s always been about between us, Lauren. Ten years ago you accused me of betraying Therese and, because, to a certain extent, that was true, I couldn’t deny it. But Therese and I had been separated for months before I went to India—before, against all the odds, I met a young woman from Australia and fell desperately in love. I told you then—the day we quarrelled—that it was you I loved, and even when I thought you were dead, I still loved you.’