The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

Had she met the man before?

Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deep set under black brows. Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eye to well-shaped lips.

Kissable lips!

Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?

And why?

Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?

Meredith Webber says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new medical authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

Recent titles by the same author:

CHILDREN’S DOCTOR, MEANT-TO-BE WIFE†

THE SHEIKH SURGEON’S BABY*

DESERT DOCTOR, SECRET SHEIKH*

A PREGNANT NURSE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

THE NURSE HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR†

*Desert Doctors †Crocodile Creek

THE HEART SURGEON’S SECRET CHILD

BY

MEREDITH WEBBER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT

The Children’s Cardiac Unit, St James’s Hospital, Sydney. A specialist unit where the dedicated staff mend children’s hearts…and their own!

Don’t miss the second book in this long-awaited return to Jimmie’s Children’s Unit—coming next month from Meredith Webber and Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance!

JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT …where hearts are mended!

PROLOGUE

‘IT’S a love letter, you can’t deny that!’

The tall, slim young woman stood in front of him, anger sparking from her greeny-brown eyes, hurt and defiance yelling at him from the taut white face and tense lines of her body. ‘You’ve a wife at home, and you’ve betrayed her with me! Men!’

‘But it was over with. There—’

She didn’t let him finish, turning away to lift one, then two, then three babies into her arms, while outside the orphanage an even wilder storm raged, nature gone berserk.

‘Not as far as she was concerned, that’s obvious from an envelope festooned with pink hearts,’ Lauren snapped. ‘Not to mention “Je t’aime” which even an Aussie idiot can recognise as French for I love you. And the name—Therese Fournier—I doubt she’s your sister!’

She stood there, clasping the babies, her body vibrating with her rage. Jean-Luc wrapped a threadbare blanket around her shoulders then around the babies. It would offer poor protection from the slashing rain that fell outside but he had to try. He had to try to calm her, too, to explain, although he knew he’d failed, her rejection obvious as she shrugged off the fingers he let linger on her arm.

‘I should have known,’ she continued, anger still reverberating from every cell as she walked swiftly towards the door, body bent above the precious bundles in her arms. ‘Should have known a man as good-looking and sophisticated and worldly as you are wouldn’t really have been interested in a naïve little idiot like me! Except for sex, of course!’

‘It wasn’t like that but this isn’t the time—’ Jean-Luc began, but Lauren was too wound up—too wounded—to listen to anything he had to say.

‘Of course it’s the time,’ she retorted, as quick as a pistol shot. ‘There’s a typhoon raging out there, and we’re all about to be swept away. If we can’t tell the truth now, when can we? Now, open the door so I can get these little ones over to the church. It’s bad enough they have to hear the storm without them hearing us argue as well, poor wee darlings.’

He opened the door, dodging so the force of the wind behind it didn’t knock him over, then he put his arms around Lauren and the babies and they pushed into the wind, dodging as flying debris came close, needing the strength of their combined efforts to get them across the twenty yards separating the orphanage and the church.

Once inside, Lauren threw off the sodden blanket and took her damp charges up towards the altar beneath which she and Jean-Luc had already nestled five other infants and laid in a supply of water, powdered milk, feeding bottles and dry biscuits. Father Joe had suggested they put the babies beneath the altar, thinking the tiny church building, built of brick, was more likely to stand against the typhoon’s force than the larger but less well-built orphanage building. The only trouble was the church was little more than a chapel, too small for the older children and staff to cram into, so he, Jean-Luc and the nuns had built a kind of fortress within the orphanage, using beds and tables for walls and mattresses for a ceiling. There they intended to huddle until the typhoon passed over them and the wild winds and seas diminished.

‘Lauren—’ Jean-Luc began, hating to leave her alone with the babies but especially hating to leave her like this—angry and hurt.

‘Go, Jean-Luc, the others need you.’

‘But…’

She looked at him across the stone altar, babies cradled in her arms and such sadness in her face he thought his heart would break.

‘It’s as much my fault as yours,’ she said bitterly. ‘I loved you, so I trusted you. I believed you when you said you loved me. Look at you—how could I not love you, and, loving you, how could I not believe? Put it down to my stupidity! Now, go!’

She disappeared from view, kneeling down to put her babies with the others, to lift and soothe one already there, crying softly, as all the babies did from time to time.

Indecision held him—he wanted so much to stay, to explain he and Therese had been separated for months, and to offer whatever protection he might to this woman with whom, against all the odds, he’d fallen in love—but the nuns were old and frail and Father Joe needed him to help with the older children. If he hesitated a moment longer, getting back to the orphanage building might be impossible.

‘We’ll talk later,’ he said desperately, torn in two by having to leave her but hurrying anyway towards the door.

‘Oh, no, we won’t.’

The words came from beneath the altar, ominous words, cold and angry, although he had no idea how prophetic they would be. Three days later, lying in hospital with a shattered leg, and less serious injuries too numerous to list, he recalled how, only two hours after he’d left Lauren and the babies in the church, the freak wave that had washed away the orphanage and carried him up into the foothills beyond the village had also reduced the church to a pile of bricks and rubble.

Lauren was dead…

CHAPTER ONE

JEAN-LUC sniffed the air as he walked the short distance from the hospital to his temporary home. The huge park that stretched out on the opposite side of the road made it hard to believe he was in a big city. Not that he’d seen much of it, apart from this small corner, but flying in he’d seen the harbour and the fabled Opera House, and he knew the beach-side suburbs of Bondi and Coogee—such strange names—were not far away.

Sydney! Ten years ago he’d listened to a twenty-one-year-old young woman talk with rapture and enthusiasm of the place that was her home, the memory returning when he’d had to choose between this city and Cincinnati, both places offering a chance to work with a first-class paediatric cardiac surgical team.

Now Lauren, with whom he’d fallen so unexpectedly in love back then, walked beside him like a ghost—perhaps a ghost that had lingered in his mind for far too long, affecting his relationships with other women…

Zut! How had such sentimental thoughts crept into his mind? The long flight must have left him more tired than he’d realised, to be thinking such nonsense. His engagement had ended because Justine couldn’t handle his devotion to his work and his marriage to Therese had broken up long before he’d gone to India.

And Sydney had been the obvious choice because he’d met Alex Attwood at a conference and been impressed by the man. Working on his team would be enjoyable as well as a privilege.

He shoved the transient memory of Lauren back where it belonged—into the past. This was now, and his first day in the unit had been fascinating, although he’d have to start taking notes if he was to remember all the new ideas and subtle innovations he wanted to take back with him to Marseilles.

Work. It had been his focus as he’d recovered from his injuries ten years ago—indeed, with Lauren dead and his leg shattered it had been a reason to keep on living—and since then it had brought its own rewards, especially now with the offer to head up his own paediatric cardiac surgery unit at the new hospital in Marseilles!

He sniffed the air again, thinking of Marseilles and his home village of Cassis nearby—wanting to smell the sea this time—but he must be too far from those beaches.

And getting soft in the head to be thinking of such things!

‘Aagh!’

The shrill cry drew him out of his imaginings and he looked around. Ahead of him a small school bus was receding into the distance and on the footpath opposite a youth was flying along on a skateboard.

Had he called out?

The cry had turned to a wail of distress and as Jean-Luc crossed the road, certain that’s where the noise had originated, he saw the small child lying in a crumpled heap, wailing piteously.

It wasn’t hard to put the accident together—the school bus, the youth on the skateboard, getting away as fast as he could, no thought at all for his small victim. Jean-Luc reached the child and knelt beside him.

‘I’m a doctor,’ he said gently, removing a floppy-brimmed hat so he could see the child. ‘Can you tell me where it hurts?’

The small head turned and Jean-Luc recognised the epicanthic eyelid folds of Down’s Syndrome. Anger at the youth who’d knocked the little fellow over heated Jean-Luc’s blood, but right now he needed to check the little boy.

‘Did he run over you or just knock you down?’ he asked, while dark blue eyes continued to stare at him. ‘Does your head hurt?’

A nod, which could be answering anything—Jean-Luc realised he’d asked too many questions. The little boy straightened to a sitting position and brushed the back of his hand across his face to clear the tears that streaked his cheeks.

‘I got a fright,’ he said. ‘And hurt my hand.’

He held out his hand for inspection and, sure enough, the fall had grazed it, blood welling amidst the dirty scratches. He’d grazed his left knee and leg as well but possibly those injuries weren’t hurting as much as the hand and the child hadn’t noticed.

Jean-Luc looked around. Surely if the bus had dropped the little boy off, someone would be waiting for him, but all the houses showed blank faces to the street, no anxious mother peering out a window or a door.

What was wrong with people that they let a vulnerable child like this out on his own?

‘Do you live near here?’ he asked, as his patient sniffed and dragged his schoolbag onto his lap.

A nod, then the uninjured hand lifted and a finger pointed to the house outside which they squatted.

‘Number thirty,’ the boy said proudly. ‘Number thirty, Kensington Terrace.’

He had reason to be proud, Jean-Luc thought. For so young a child with developmental difficulties, knowing his address was a remarkable achievement.

‘What if I carry you inside?’ Jean-Luc suggested. ‘Will your mother be at home?’

The boy nodded. ‘Mum or Gran or Bill or Russ, someone’s always at home.’

Then why aren’t they looking out for you? Jean-Luc wondered, thinking Mum and Gran and Bill and Russ must all be remarkably laid-back or plain careless that they hadn’t been watching for the bus. People these days were just too casual about the safety of their children!

He lifted the child easily, and had just stood up when a frantic barking began across the road, then the blast of a car horn, a squeal of brakes, a desperate cry of ‘Lucy!’ and a golden Labrador landed on the footpath right in front of them, teeth bared as he greeted Jean-Luc with a deep-throated growl.

Put that child down!

The command was implicit in the threatening noise while the child’s delighted ‘Lucy!’ confirmed the dog was indeed the child’s pet.

Before Jean-Luc could decide on his next move—would the dog bite if he moved?—a long-legged woman came racing across the road, once again causing car horns to blare and brakes to squeal. Long, dark, red-brown hair flew behind her, flopping against her head as she slid to a halt in front of Jean-Luc, green-brown eyes flashing fire.

‘Put him down! How dare you? Who are you, touching my child like that?’

The dog, perhaps taking the woman’s demands as permission to get more involved, began to dance around Jean-Luc, barking furiously, the entire situation developing into something very like a farce.

Except that comedy was the last thing in Jean-Luc’s mind as he stared at the woman who reached out for the child, now wriggling in Jean-Luc’s absent-minded grasp.

It couldn’t be!

His mind was playing tricks.

It was because he’d been thinking of her.

‘He’s a doctor, Mum,’ the little boy said. ‘A big boy knocked me down!’

‘Lucy, sit!’ the woman commanded, then she snatched her child from Jean-Luc’s arms.

The dog sat, but kept his dark brown eyes fixed firmly on Jean-Luc. One false move and your hand is mine!

‘Oh, Joe, are you hurt? What big boy? Was it someone we know? Didn’t the bus driver see?’

She was too busy searching her son’s body for injury to notice Jean-Luc, which was perhaps just as well, for he was staring at her, dumbstruck, certain he was seeing a ghost returned to life.

That it was Lauren he had no doubt—the voice, slightly husky as if she always had a cold, the face, the freckles, the long, long legs—but for some strange reason the coincidence of running into her like this was not nearly as hard to believe as the fact that she was alive.

That was the miracle!

‘Oh, you’ve hurt your hand—but everything else? You’re all right?’

The little boy assured her he was OK and she hugged him to her body, finally acknowledging the presence of another person and looking across the child at Jean-Luc.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, offering an apologetic smile to underline the words. ‘I overreacted. Thank you for coming to the rescue. The bus must have been early. Lucy and I were just coming back from our walk. Did you see what happened? See who knocked him over?’

Jean-Luc stared at her, unable to believe she could be so oblivious. It was unthinkable that she had no idea who he was! That he could have changed so much, or been so forgettable…

‘You don’t remember me?’

She frowned, her lovely hazel eyes now studying him more intently, although he guessed most of her attention was still on her child and she was anxious to get him inside so she could check for herself that he wasn’t seriously injured.

‘Should I know you?’ she asked, her smile now polite, but very distant. ‘Oh, Joe said you’re a doctor. You work at the hospital. Of course!’ Another smile, more polite than the first and with as little meaning. ‘You must forgive me. I had an accident years ago and it affected my memory, especially my memory for faces.’

A third smile, this one genuine enough to spark lights in the eyes that had once shone with love for him.

‘At least, that’s my excuse.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Lauren Henderson and this is Joe. Thank you once again.’

Jean-Luc took her hand and introduced himself, eyeing her carefully, certain he’d see a spark of recognition and probably embarrassment when he said his name, but far from uttering a delighted cry of ‘Jean-Luc’ and exclaiming over wonderful twists of fate, all she did was shake his hand and release it, her fingers dropping his so abruptly he knew her thoughts were back on the little boy.

He should have said more—reminded her of India—but she was so totally oblivious and the little boy was claiming pain in his injured hand. So Jean-Luc settled for saying goodbye and watched her scurry back towards the house, head bent as she spoke quietly to her child, the dog they’d called Lucy—surely a female name and it was definitely a male dog—following close behind them, though turning from time to time to check Jean-Luc posed no further danger. The front door opened and all three disappeared inside, the door closing behind them.

Maybe she was a ghost—the whole episode a figment of his imagination, brought about because he’d been thinking about Lauren and her description of her home town…

Had she met that man before? Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deepset under black brows. Black hair, neatly trimmed, greying slightly at the temples—a cliché surely! Maybe he dyed it grey to look distinguished. If so, he’d certainly achieved his aim! Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, puckered even in places, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eyes to well-shaped lips.

Kissable lips!

Lauren set Joe down on the kitchen table the better to examine his injuries. Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?

And why?

Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?

Of course not! She’d been strung up over seeing Joe in a stranger’s arms—then to hear he’d been injured…

The tingling had been apprehension…

It had only happened when he’d touched her.

She used a clean cloth to wipe the grazes on Joe’s hand and leg, chatting to him, asking about the accident, although her mind was not on Joe’s explanations of the skateboard rider crashing into him but on the man who had rescued her son.

A stranger.

Just an ordinary man.

No! Not in the wildest flights of any woman’s imagination could that man be classed as ordinary.

Or forgettable—yet she certainly had no recollection of ever having met him.

‘Did he say he was a doctor?’ Lauren asked, pushing her memory to bring up some hint of a meeting.

‘Who?’

‘The man who picked you up.’

‘Yes.’

Big help!

‘At the hospital?’

‘Dunno. Mum, can I go and play?’

‘A snack first,’ Lauren said. What was she doing, cross-examining her own child about a man she’d probably never see again? She lifted Joe off the table and sent him to wash his hands.

Although the man had been walking down the road…

And most of the houses in the area were hospital houses…

She shook her head at her own stupidity. As if a man like that would ever look at someone like her, and then there was her track record with men. Most men who took her out were interested right up until the stage they met Joe and realised he was part of the package, after which they disappeared, never to be heard from again.

She put a glass of milk and a plate of cheese with fruit and vegetable sticks on the table, and settled Joe in front of them. Then she ruffled his hair and bent to kiss the top of his head.

She’d rather have Joe than a thousand handsome men, although now and then she wondered wistfully about his father. Had his touch made her skin tingle?

The next morning Jean-Luc stood at the bedroom window of the flat that would be his home for the next six months. It was two doors down from the one where the ghost of Lauren lived—except she wasn’t a ghost, she was real. Even her name, Lauren Henderson, was real.

It was unbelievable—first that she was alive, and then the coincidence of running into her, although Lauren had been set on a medical career and from what he’d been told most of the houses in the area were home to medical personnel from St James’s Hospital. Jimmie’s, the staff all called it—

Not what he should be thinking about—nicknames for hospitals. What he had to consider was why he was even thinking about her. So she was alive! She had obviously survived the typhoon though how, when he’d seen photos of the collapsed church and couldn’t imagine anyone surviving beneath the rubble, he didn’t know.

Was that the accident she’d spoken of? Was the memory loss amnesia?

Which brought him neatly back to the fact that it didn’t matter. So, an old girlfriend was living two doors away—so what?

It certainly wasn’t important as far as Lauren was concerned, for she didn’t have a clue who he was.

And there was no reason why things couldn’t stay that way.

Except that he’d spent the night tossing and turning in his bed, fragments of their time together returning to haunt his dreams, images of how she looked now intruding into his sleep, which was extremely aggravating.

And her not remembering him made him feel…not angry but definitely put out.

‘Are you coming?’

The old house in which he was living was hospital property, available for rent by visiting specialists. It was divided into two flats, and Grace Sutherland, the second of the surgical fellows working with Alex Attwood’s team this term, was occupying the other one. She was tapping at his door, as she did most mornings, so they could walk to work together.

Grace chattered as they walked, talking about Theo, the Greek perfusionist on the surgical team. Was Grace really interested in the mechanics of, and possibilities of improvement to, the heart bypass machine or was her interest more personal? Jean-Luc and Grace had been in Australia less than a week, and had only met the members of the surgical team a couple of days earlier—could she be interested in a man so quickly?

Women—he would never understand them, and now he no longer tried. He’d already chalked up one failed marriage, and since the end of his engagement to Justine—she’d accused him, perhaps justly, of being more interested in work than he was in her—he had found there were plenty of women who didn’t want to be understood any more than they wanted permanence, women happy to enjoy an affair with no strings attached on either side.

And if, at times, he felt an emptiness in his life, he knew he had only to return to work—to see the babies and children he treated—and he would feel fulfilled and whole again. There was something in their innocence and trust that allowed him to forget about his relationship failures—forget even his cynicism about life in general. Being withhis small patients renewed his determination to provide them all with the best possible chance at life.

‘Just being with these children brings me indescribable joy,’ Lauren had once said, talking of the children in the orphanage, and in his head he had often echoed those words, thinking her long gone yet finding comfort and confirmation in them.

Except she wasn’t long gone—wasn’t dead at all.

He strode out along the footpath, aware his steps must have slowed as he thought about Lauren, so he was trailing behind Grace who moved with athletic ease.