A Return, A Reunion, A Wedding

* * *

Sam read the final page of the report, then put it on his desk. He turned and looked at his patient. ‘So, if I’m reading this right, it’s bedrest for the next couple of months, then...eh, Mags?’

‘Madness! I can’t do that,’ his patient wailed. ‘There are the children, first of all. Connor’s got all sorts of things on, and Cailey’s set to have her first ever sports day. The teashop has Dolly, of course, but that place needs my cake-baking skills. Then there’s the village fete. I’m on the committee. Obvs.’

Sam smiled. Maggie was on all the committees.

‘And then there’s the fundraiser for the automatic external defibrillator that the village desperately needs. The art fair that I haven’t even begun to—’

‘Whoa! Slow down. What’s most important here, Mags? You and the babies. The ones in there.’ He pointed at her generously arced tummy. ‘Everything else we’ll get it sorted, all right?’

Tears pooled in Maggie’s eyes as she pressed her fingers to her mouth and nodded.

It was at moments like these that Sam Crenshaw understood exactly why some GPs preferred to start their practices in villages where they hadn’t known their patients since they were toddlers. Delivering bad news to someone he used to make mud pies with wasn’t easy.

Maggie had been to the maternity and children’s hospital just outside of Oxford earlier in the day, and had come to him in tears with a sheaf of paperwork detailing just how complicated her pregnancy had become. She’d also told him she’d come up with a solution, but they hadn’t quite got to that part yet. Sometimes a patient needed to vent before they could listen...so for now he’d listen. And dole out tissues.

Wiping away a friend’s tears was hard...and yet it was precisely why he’d wanted to be a general practitioner right here in Whitticombe. Just like his grandfather.

Their shared love of medicine wasn’t genetic. He’d been adopted. Too early to have remembered otherwise but even so the generosity of the Crenshaws, bringing a stranger’s child into their already full home, lived in his heart like a beacon. Their credo was to treat people as you wanted to be treated. Lovingly and honestly. That way you never had to hide anything. He liked that.

His family’s honesty, openness and love were his foundation. The reason why he’d decided to pursue medicine in the very building where his grandfather had worked for the last forty-odd years. The very building his grandfather refused to retire from!

The bright-eyed rascal loved it. Said he’d have to be dragged from the building rather than retire. Sam was the last person to suggest otherwise. His grandfather was still a highly valued member of the community, and even though Sam had been a GP here for three years now some people still thought of him as the little boy in shorts who’d used to refill the boxes of cotton buds and tongue depressors.

All of which culminated in moments like this. If a person felt vulnerable they should have someone they trusted to come to. If they were frightened or scared? Same thing. And if they were going to hear some very bad news it should come from someone who knew them.

Which was why now he wheeled his chair over to Maggie, took her hands in his and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Maggie. I know you’re Wonder Woman, but you cannot do this alone. Pre-eclampsia is serious. You need someone who knows you to help out. With your parents in Australia, I’ll do what I can. We can set up a rota to help with the kids. I can make some calls about your committees—’

His very pregnant patient cut him off with a roll of her eyes. ‘You think I haven’t thought of all that? I’ve got it covered. Someone’s coming to stay. She’s just...’ She picked up her phone and gave it a couple of swipes with her finger. ‘She should be here any minute. I was hoping you might be able to talk her through everything. With Nate gone and all—’

Maggie’s voice hitched and she only just managed to stem another sob. Sam’s heart ached for her. Her day had been riddled with bad news. Pre-eclampsia. Danger of premature birth for her twins. Enforced bedrest. And all of this with her Air Force pilot husband stuck in the Middle East until the twins were due. Not to mention taking care of their two little ones.

He hoped this friend of hers had stamina. He could already tell that Maggie was going to run whoever it was ragged.

He went to the supplies cupboard to get a fresh box of tissues and gave himself a stern look in the mirror as he passed. He should carve out more time for Maggie. He was meant to be going for a casual drink with his receptionist’s niece tonight. His divorce had gone through over a year ago, so technically it was time to move on. Old news. Today’s fish and chip paper, as his grandad would say.

His mum’s death earlier in the year had really kicked him in the teeth. Cancer wasn’t kind to anyone, and the only blessing that had come from it was that his mother was no longer suffering.

‘So who’s this friend, then? Why don’t you tell me about her? It is a she, right?’

‘Yup. Yes.’ Maggie suddenly refused to meet his eye. ‘She’s female all right. Um...’

A quiet tapping sounded at his door. Maggie sat as bolt upright as a woman pregnant with twins could.

‘That might be her now.’

Sam crossed the office, opened the door—and there, looking every bit as perfect as she had the day she’d handed him back his diamond solitaire, stood Jayne Sinclair.

She gave a shy little waist-height wave and then, as if they’d rehearsed it, she and Maggie said in tandem, ‘Surprise!’

CHAPTER TWO

IF ONE OF Sam’s patients had called in with the same physiological responses to a surprise he would have rung an ambulance. Immediately.

Heart slamming against his ribcage. Pulse hitting the red zone. Blood pumping to all the wrong places.

Great. In a little less than the blink of an eye Sam’s well-worked theory that the next time he saw Jayne Sinclair it wouldn’t so much as register on his heart monitor was blowing up in his face.

He slammed on a mental emergency brake and pulled a sharp U-turn.

Jayne had caught him unawares, that was all. The collapse of their relationship wasn’t the only hurdle he’d overcome. He had a marriage, a divorce and his mother’s death under his belt now. Making peace with his mountains of emotional baggage had been tough, but he’d done it. Maybe he had a few more grey hairs than he would have thought average for a thirty-one-year-old, but, that which does not kill us...

Jayne had had to tackle her own set of emotional hurdles, but time hadn’t touched her Snow White aesthetic. Glossy black hair. Bright blue eyes. An English rose complexion that was looking slightly pale considering it was early summer. The Jayne he’d known would have had the kiss of the sun and a smattering of freckles appearing on her nose about this time of year. Twenty-three at the last count.

He forced himself to update his memory banks.

She wasn’t the woman he knew any more. That Jayne had all but disappeared the day her sister had been killed.

The ‘new’ Jayne only came at Christmas. She spent an hour at the pub. No more, often less. Years back they had chatted. Awkwardly. How else could a man exchange Yuletide greetings with the girl he’d thought he’d marry? It wasn’t as if he’d asked for the ring back.

At the time—over seven years ago now—he’d actually suggested she keep it. Think about it. Consider the consequences of giving up everything they’d dreamed of. He knew she’d been grieving. Trying to wrap her head round her sister’s senseless death. But in the end he’d run out of suggestions. Realised with a cold, numbing clarity that she’d chosen a new path. One that didn’t involve him.

As the years had passed their strangulated chit-chat had become a wave. Then a nod. Three years ago, when he’d met and married Marie, it had dissolved into nothing at all. Last Christmas he’d stayed at home because his mum had been so ill. He hadn’t let himself consider the option that seeing Jayne so soon after his divorce might reopen wounds he wasn’t ready to examine.

Jayne’s smile was as unnatural as his own felt. ‘Hey, Sam. I hope it’s all right that Maggie invited me along?’

As Jayne and Maggie exchanged a quick glance he flexed his hands, willing them not to curl into themselves. He wasn’t this guy. Tense. Edgy. Protectively defending his decision to live the life he’d—they’d—always dreamed of having.

The life his wife had left behind.

The last three years of his life flashed past in an instant. He’d thought he and Marie were happy. They’d enjoyed a year-long courtship when he’d finished med school. A classic country wedding. A solid year of marriage. The next year hadn’t been quite as rosy, but he’d thought he’d made it clear to her that he’d be busy. Extremely busy. The house to build... The medical practice to haul into the twenty-first century... His mother’s cancer in full attack mode.

Sure, he’d been vaguely aware of hairline fissures in their relationship, but when Marie had told him she wanted out it had shocked him. She’d said getting married so soon had been a mistake. She’d laid out the truth as she’d seen it.

Sam’s priorities were the surgery, refurbishing the old barn and his family. She didn’t feel she factored anywhere on that list, and for that reason she wanted to cut her losses before the wounds ran too deep. She’d told him this as she’d served him with divorce papers.

He’d had a card from her after his mother had died, and from the sounds of things she’d already found her special someone.

The fact that he was genuinely happy for her spoke volumes. Nothing like an ounce of truth landing like a ton of bricks in your gut. Which all circled back to the here and now, and the fact that Jayne Sinclair was still registering on his personal Richter scale just like she shouldn’t.

He scrubbed the back of his neck and pasted on what he hoped was a passable smile. His focus should be on Maggie, not his debacle of a love-life.

‘Come on in.’

He ushered Jayne in, showed her to a chair, accidentally inhaling as that all too familiar scent of sweet peas and nutmeg swept round his heart and squeezed a beat out of it. The way it always had.

The Jayne Sinclair Effect.

How could he have forgotten about that?

You didn’t. You put it in a box and hoped it would never get opened again.

‘Ta-da!’ Maggie waggled jazz hands. ‘Here’s my friend!’

Jayne put out her hands and heaved her friend up for a hug. Maggie’s head just about reached Jayne’s chin. Jayne’s eyes met and locked with Sam’s. A familiar energy that he hadn’t felt in years shunted through him. The type of energy that came from being with the person who made him feel whole again.

‘You look good,’ she muttered above Maggie’s pile of auburn curls.

She did too. Different. But good. She was all woman now. As if she’d finally grown in to all five feet nine inches of herself. Still slender. Still with a quirky dress sense that spoke of a woman whose life revolved around a children’s hospital. She wore an A-line skirt embroidered with polka dots. A well-worn T-shirt with a unicorn on it. Flip-flops with red satin roses stitched across the straps.

Her black hair was still long. She had a chunky fringe now. The rest of her hair was pulled back into the requisite ‘doctor’s ponytail’. A brush or two of mascara framed those kaleidoscope blue eyes of hers. Ocean-blue one minute. Dark as the midnight sky the next. Nothing on her lips apart from a swoosh of gloss. They didn’t need anything else.

Except, perhaps, for him to find out if her gloss still tasted of vanilla and mint.

He smashed the thought into submission.

That type of impulse was meant to have died a long time ago. Right about the moment she’d handed his ring back to him.

Jayne blinked and hitched her nose against an obvious sting of emotion. When she opened her eyes again they held tight with his.

Oh, hell.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to read all the secrets she held in those jewel-like eyes of hers.

They’d used to light up when they were planning their wedding. Dreaming of finally refurbishing the old barn. Talking about Jayne’s plan to specialise in paediatrics. Sam in geriatrics. They’d used to light up when she saw him come round a corner.

Her sister’s death had knocked the light out of her eyes. Even so, he’d refused to believe her when she’d said she didn’t love him any more. She’d been through a trauma. She was bound to be different for a while.

Jayne had loved Jules as he loved his own family. Fiercely. Protectively. There was no fighting with a ghost. He got that. He’d thought he could wait it out. Be there for her. But she’d refused his support, again and again. Months had gone by before he’d finally seen the change of heart she’d said she felt. The change that had seen her handing him back his ring for good.

That was the day her eyes had lit up again. Glazed with tears, sure, but he’d felt the flare of life return to her as acutely as he would have felt a lightning strike. And it hadn’t been him who had put it there. Holding the ring between them, she’d told him she’d changed disciplines. She wanted to be a paediatric cardiologist. She didn’t want to move back to Whitticombe. She’d taken over Jules’s flat in London. She’d told him it was time for him to find someone else to run the surgery with.

That had been the blow that had struck the deepest. She had always known more than anyone how much he valued his family and how important running his grandfather’s surgery was to him. His family was his adoptive family—they’d never made any secret of it—but he’d never felt anything less than family. When he’d finally been old enough to register that his future might have been completely different—alone in an orphanage—he’d vowed to stick with them as loyally and as lovingly as they’d stuck with him as they’d brought him up. With all of his heart.

It was then that he’d known he had no choice but to walk away from Jayne and get on with his own life. It had broken his heart to do it, but doing anything else would have been living a lie.

Their intense eye contact broke as Maggie pulled back from the hug and hooked her arm round Jayne’s waist so that the pair of them were facing Sam.

‘Can you believe it? Jayne rang a few days ago and said she had some time off. So I was all You’ve got to come back to the village! Nate’s away. We’ve got the cricket tournament on. And the fete. And the art show. She was supposed to come tomorrow, but when I rang her from the hospital this morning, to tell her about the pre-eclampsia diagnosis, she dropped everything and came straight away.’

Wow. That got his attention. Jayne didn’t drop anything to leave the hospital. He dipped his head so he could look into her eyes again. See if he’d missed anything.

As his eyes met hers she looked away and said, ‘I have a lot of accrued holiday HR were threatening to give away, so...’ She gave a half-shrug and a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes.

Something was off here. Had something gone wrong at the hospital? In her private life? Whatever it was, his gut told him she wasn’t here for a bit of R&R. She’d come back to Whitticombe because she needed to.

She’d been back before. There were the annual Christmas trips, and he had seen her at his mum’s funeral in January. Right at the back of the church, flanked by her parents. He hadn’t been surprised when she’d disappeared before the wake, even though he knew as well as she did that his parents had all but considered Jayne part of the family. More so, he was beginning to realise with hindsight, than they ever had Marie.

Anyway... She’d made the gesture. It had been noted.

He forced his thoughts back into their cupboard and slammed the door shut. His complicated past with Jayne wasn’t the priority in this scenario. Maggie was.

Maggie who was now talking and laughing as if years of history wasn’t humming like electricity between her two childhood friends.

‘I just can’t believe you had holiday exactly when I needed you. It’s like kismet!’

She threw a smirk at Sam, as if he’d spent the past half-hour pooh-poohing her choice rather than being blindsided by his own past.

He felt Jane’s eyes on him, met them and held her gaze. Kismet. That had been ‘their’ word.

They’d known each other from school, of course, but they had been busy being kids and, as a twin, Jayne had been pretty inseparable from Jules. The magical ‘click’ had come when their secondary school teacher had decided to throw out the alphabetical seating plan and change things around. They’d shared a table from that day on. Along with a whole lot of other things.

As he dragged himself along memory lane he could hear Maggie saying something about the cricket tournament. He only managed to tune back in when Jayne mock-admonished Maggie.

‘We are doing no such thing, young woman! You’re meant to be resting.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

They both looked at him as if he’d just missed a large gorilla walking through the room in a tutu.

Jayne put on a gently disapproving face. ‘This minx here thinks we should take the kids to the cricket tournament tonight for their supper. Ridiculous, right?’

‘Uh...not if we want to eat properly,’ Maggie said, as if it were obvious.

She had a point. For all her plus points, Jayne was not a cook.

Sam and Maggie looked at Jayne as one.

Her cheeks pinked up. ‘What?’

‘Well, let’s see... How I can put this gently?’ Maggie teased. ‘I can barely reach the counter and I’m meant to be on bedrest anyway.’ She feigned fanning herself like a French countess. ‘And, as I remember, your cooking skills are about as good as your ability to stick around in Whitticombe.’

‘Ouch, woman! Kick a girl when she’s down!’

Jayne poked Maggie in the arm, then threw a quick look in Sam’s direction. One long enough for him to see the comment had hit its mark. A protectiveness he hadn’t realised he still possessed flared in him. What did that mean? ‘Kick a girl when she’s down’?

Maggie realised she’d gone too far and started apologising, blaming her hormones, blaming Nate for being gone, blaming life for making her pre-eclampsic at her busiest time of year.

Speaking over her apologies, Jayne was trying to accept the blame herself. She was being too sensitive. She knew Maggie was teasing. It had obviously been a joke. She was here. Maggie could rely on her. Please, please, please don’t worry.

‘Maggie’s right, Jayne. About supper,’ Sam intervened, before everyone’s blood pressure went in the wrong direction. ‘The cricket club is putting on a proper barbecue tonight and it would be a shame to miss it. The kids will love it. There’s going to be a minis’ match to kick things off. Sausages. Burgers. I think there are even marshmallows.’

He resisted the temptation to reach out as he would have in the old days and put a reassuring hand on Jayne’s shoulder.

‘You’ve had a long drive, no doubt. And Maggie’s definitely supposed to be taking it easy. Amongst others, my sisters are cooking. I heard one of them mention potato salad at the coffee shop this morning.’

He nudged this comment in Jayne’s direction. His sisters made Jayne’s favourite potato salad. Unless that had changed, too.

‘Sounds good,’ she conceded with a grateful smile. But that playful look in her eyes was missing. And then it hit him. It hadn’t been there since she’d walked into the room.

Sure, there was the whole awkward ‘running into your ex’ thing, but they’d seen each other before since they’d split up, at the pub over Christmas, and had just about hit the casual acquaintance kind of comfort level. A quick Hi, you look well. So do you. Well...happy Christmas, then! and off they’d go and live their lives for another year.

He narrowed his eyes as Jayne fussed about, picking up Maggie’s bag and the paperwork she’d left on Sam’s desk. She looked a bit tired, but that wasn’t it.

The spark in her eyes had only gone once before, and that had been at her darkest ebb.

A thought jammed itself into place and stuck. This spontaneous trip to the country was definitely loaded with something heavier than just getting HR off of her back. She’d managed to dodge the village for the past seven years, so...why now?

Jayne waved the paperwork at him. ‘All right if I pop in another time to talk through these?’

‘Yeah, sure. Absolutely.’

He caught himself smiling. They’d always enjoyed doing that. Going over patients’ notes together had been one of the myriad reasons they’d planned to work together. Live together. Love together.

Well... He supposed he’d see how much things had changed when she came in. Things he would remind himself of when she left again. Because this wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last. Jayne Sinclair had made it more than clear her future was not in Whitticombe. And not with him.

Jayne bundled Maggie towards the corridor and Sam automatically moved forward to put his hand on the small of Jayne’s back. He saw her notice the movement out of the corner of his eye and pulled it away. Which was ridiculous. What were his fingers going to do? Catch on fire if he touched her?

He gave himself a few extra seconds to regroup before going out to the waiting room to get his next patient. Tommy Stark. A ten-year-old boy who looked as though he’d had a bit of a run-in with a fist in the playground.

‘Oof. That looks sore.’

‘Yup.’ Tommy grinned as he followed Sam into his office with his mother in tow.

His mum explained how her son had managed to insert himself between the school bully and the school chess champion, a rather shy girl called Molly.

‘That was a brave thing to do,’ Sam said.

‘Nah,’ the little boy explained. ‘I did it for love, so it doesn’t hurt.’

Sam hid his rueful smirk as he checked the boy over, then showed them out of the room. If only it were that easy.

* * *

‘Have you gone completely mad?’

A blade of guilt swept through Jayne as words flew out of her mouth and steam poured out of her ears. What was Maggie thinking? The whole point of bedrest was doing just that. Resting. Not pole-vaulting them both straight into the heart of village life.

Maggie was totally unfazed. Perhaps it was the promise of grilled food on the horizon. Or maybe it was the foot-rub Jayne was giving her. The only successful lure to get her active friend to sit down.

‘Ow! Not so hard. It’s the cricket,’ Maggie offered amiably in explanation, then pointed to her foot. ‘You missed a bit.’

Jayne arched an eyebrow. ‘It’s not just “the cricket”, Mags. It’s the whole of freaking Whitticombe coming out to play!’

‘So?’

‘So... I just...’

She didn’t want the entire universe to know she was back. Not en masse, anyway. It was hard enough being home at all, let alone at this time of year. Only two short weeks away from the anniversary of the day her sister died. If they knew it had been her fault they’d... Ugh... It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘It just seems a bit awkward, you know?’

‘Why? You’re a Whitticomber. So’s near enough everyone else. Think of yourself as a stand-in for your parents. Cheer for them, too.’ Her voice softened as she asked, ‘How are they, anyway?’

Another blade of guilt sliced through Jayne’s conscience. ‘They’re all right...’

She’d sent a couple of texts, telling them she was going to be staying with Maggie, and had received a short message in return. They were fine. It was quiet. They were both working a lot.

Nothing more personal than her patient notes.

Brief, informative texts seemed to be the only way they could communicate since Jules had died. As if her twin had been the glue that had held them together. Jayne had stayed home for a couple of months afterwards, but whenever they’d looked at her she’d seen the emptiness in their eyes. They all knew but they never spoke the one simple truth.