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Surprisingly, once she let go she found herself enjoying the predatory nature of chair-dancing and the aggressive power it gave her—over the object, over her body. For once she had nothing to prove to anyone, and without the pressure she revelled in her sensuality.
In total abandon, she threw her head back and gave herself over to it—only to lock on to a familiar pair of male chocolate-caramel eyes staring down at her.
‘Well, hello, down there…’ The masculine French accent mocked her.
From her upside down view it seemed a long way up to find the voice. A pair of muscular jean-clad thighs filled her direct line of sight, but as she glanced up along the slim-fitting blue checked shirt emphasising a solid torso, she met the last face on earth she’d wanted to see smirking back at her.
‘Dr Benoit.’ Surprise at seeing the head of her department coupled with her awkward position in the chair turned Lola’s voice into a husky rasp. Clearly there was a two-for-one deal on nightmares coming true that she hadn’t been aware of.
‘Dr Roberts.’ He gave a slight nod of his head, that lopsided grin never leaving him.
Shame flushed through Lola’s system, bringing tension to every muscle as she withdrew into herself. With as much dignity as was available to her in the circumstances, she unhooked her legs and swivelled around to sit in a more civilised pose.
Without the cover of her fellow juniors she had an unimpeded view of her uninvited guest’s handsome looks. There was no denying that the strong smooth jaw and the slightly too-long black hair curling around his ears, along with that accent, gave him all the ingredients for the ultimate heartthrob. But not for her. In her experience good looks tended to hide cruel hearts, and thus far he’d proved no exception.
This little performance simply provided him with more ammo against her. As if it was needed.
‘So this is how you spend your time off?’ he asked.
Lola got the impression that he thought she would be better employed brushing up on her medical know-how.
The injustice of being caught out on her one night of respite and the sticky heat of embarrassment at her compromising situation crept along her body and made her snap. ‘It is no one’s business but mine what I do outside hospital hours. So if you’ll excuse me…?’
She thought her heart would pound out of her chest as she retaliated. Normally she wouldn’t dream of speaking to her superior in such a fashion, but she felt trapped, vulnerable beneath his stare, and she’d learned to fight back whenever she was placed in that situation. She pulled off the suffocating feather boa and made to get up from her chair.
Angelique appeared at her side and placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Stay where you are. Henri’s just leaving—aren’t you, dear?’
She batted her false lashes and shooed him away—much to Lola’s relief.
Henri slunk to the back of the room to take a seat, shaking his head in bewilderment. The familiar scene that had met him behind the studio doors—cackling females sticking their asses out—usually didn’t impress him at all. But tonight, seeing one of his staff in Ange’s ragtag bunch, had caught him totally off guard.
Lola—that was her name. It really didn’t suit her. ‘Lola’ conjured up images of a showgirl, confident and sure of her every move. The opposite of what she’d shown today. As her supervisor, it now fell to him to draw those qualities from her. One more responsibility to add to his load, and certainly one he could do without.
She obviously had the book smarts to have got this far in her career, but as first appearances went…he was not impressed. He didn’t tolerate slacking in his department. Not when he’d already stood by and watched his sister let her medical career slip away without a fight.
Even now Lola appeared to have separated herself from the rest of the group, hiding away in the corner. Although the assertive nature he’d witnessed when he’d walked in and her feisty tone when she’d put him in his place was a complete departure from the hesitant junior doctor he’d encountered earlier.
Relegated to the role of peeping Tom, watching her from the shadows, he was mesmerised by her body-rolls. Every move of her hips showed off the lace-topped stockings under that minuscule skirt and called to his basest needs. Clearly it had been too long since his last hook-up with the opposite sex if the sultry fashion in which Lola straddled the chair seat was making him envy the damn thing!
It wasn’t a good idea to be thinking about his new recruit with her bouncy little blonde ponytail and ridiculous pink stethoscope this way. She’d already distracted him from the small matter of his niece’s apparent truancy, which he’d come to discuss with Angelique.
Ange stalked over to his corner to wag a finger at him. ‘I can’t afford to have you scaring off my customers, Henri.’
His older sister gave him that withering look guaranteed to make him regress back into the role of reprimanded teenager. Given the years he’d spent under her wing, he’d had many a rap on the knuckles from her—but he still respected her, and would never purposely do anything to make her regret the sacrifices she had made for him.
‘I only said hello,’ he muttered, still unable to take his eyes off the performance behind her.
‘Well, you shouldn’t be in here anyway,’ she huffed.
Angelique saved him the trouble of leaving by turning her back on him and ending the session with a round of applause for her trainee dancers.
‘Très bien. Great stuff, guys. I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight. I hope you’ve had fun.’
The flushed, smiling faces staring back at her said it all. Never one to miss an opportunity, she left him to go and hand out her business cards.
‘I know this lesson was probably intended as a one-off, but if you want to join us I run classes most evenings. It’s a great way to stay in shape and keep the man in your life very happy.’
The girls tittered. Henri groaned. He still couldn’t quite come to terms with her line of work. Especially when it was his fault she’d traded in a proper career to earn money dancing half naked. If their parents hadn’t been killed in that car crash, if Angelique hadn’t had to raise a teenage boy on her own, she might have been a respected medical professional by now.
All her studying had gone to waste, her bright future gone in a puff of smoke, in order for her to put food on the table for her little brother. They’d both been handed a life sentence that cold winter’s day which had robbed them of their mother and father. And where Angelique seemed to have made peace with the outcome, Henri knew he never would. He’d only managed to follow his dreams at the price of his sister’s.
The one consolation was that Ange’s audience these days mainly consisted of fun-loving females who wanted to learn burlesque, rather than inebriated leering men. If it hadn’t been for one of those men in particular, neither Henri nor Angelique would ever have left Paris for the rain-soaked streets of Northern Ireland. Then again, without the beau who’d enticed his sister to Belfast they wouldn’t have Gabrielle and Bastien in their lives—and that was unthinkable, even on the most trying of days.
Henri was forced to wait until Angelique’s students had heaped their praises and thanks upon her before he could get a word in.
His patience was wearing thin. They had much more important things to be doing—like trying to figure out why Gabrielle had decided to start skipping school. With Angelique’s ex-husband out of the picture, Henri felt even more obligated to his sibling. So much so that he’d undertaken a lot of parental responsibility for the children whose father had long since abandoned them. They needed to get to the bottom of Gabrielle’s recent behaviour, but it wasn’t a conversation he wished to have with an audience.
‘Can we go now? I’m not comfortable as the only eligible male in the company of so many desperate women.’
Angelique turned to him, and only then did Henri realise she wasn’t alone. The highlight of his evening stood open-mouthed behind her, emerald eyes now glittering with contempt.
Hands on hips, Lola took a step forward. ‘Funny—I didn’t get the memo that said we “desperate women” were dancing for anyone else’s benefit other than our own.’
Henri cursed himself for the overheard harsh words that had caused Lola’s soft pink lips to draw into a tight line.
Her features only softened when she addressed her instructor again. ‘Thanks for an enjoyable night and it was lovely to meet you.’
Lola tossed her golden mane of hair over her shoulder and, with self-righteous grace, made her exit, Henri put firmly in his place. The woman definitely had bite, and that had succeeded in piquing his interest. If only he could get her to show that passion and spirit in the workplace…
‘Idiot!’
Ange brought him back into the room. With half their lives having been spent living and working in Northern Ireland their native tongue had almost been rendered a distant memory, but her accent increased when she was angry—and, boy, was she angry.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just—’
‘I know you don’t like what I do, Henri, but this is how I make my living and you can’t be rude to my customers. Maybe it’s better if you stay away from now on.’
Ange didn’t give him a chance to explain his irritability as she threw props back into the box with a ferocity Henri knew she wanted to direct at him.
‘I won’t say another word. Promise. I’ll help you get locked up and then I’ll take you home.’
Where they could both confront his niece about what was going on. The only reason he hadn’t said anything to Gabrielle himself since the phone call from her headmistress was because he didn’t want to step on Angelique’s toes. It was her daughter they were dealing with, after all.
‘Thanks, but I’ll walk.’ She pulled on a mac over her scant outfit and flicked off the lights.
‘You can’t go out there like that!’
Henri forgot himself and once again voiced his concern about her fashion sense, regardless that she’d reminded him time and time again that he wasn’t her father. He couldn’t help himself. It didn’t bear thinking about that something should happen to the only important woman in his life and he hadn’t attempted to prevent it.
‘I’m an adult, Henri. I can look after myself, and sooner or later you’re going to have to realise that.’
She all but shoved him out through the door, and Henri was given the brush-off by a second woman in as many minutes.
Lola kept her back ramrod-straight until she reached her car and crumpled into the front seat. She had taken the opportunity to have a private word with Angelique when Jules and the others had gone on to the pub, toying with the idea of continuing the lessons in an effort to kick-start her self-esteem.
Textbooks were great for swotting up, but they didn’t help her deal with people face-to-face—and, for her, that remained the most daunting element of her job. For every model citizen she encountered, there were going to be times when she was alone with aggressive patients, or cocky men who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. She knew that, and accepted it, but she also knew she needed to get into the right frame of mind to deal with it effectively.
The protocol for those situations probably wasn’t to burst into tears and curl into a ball. It would take even more bravery than she’d mustered to leave home and go through medical school, to tell potential troublemakers to back off with any authority.
Until this evening she hadn’t realised how much inner strength she possessed. Dancing had helped her explore a side of herself she hadn’t known existed, and she would embrace all the help available to embark on this new phase of her life and overcome her fears. It was too bad that Mr Ego of the Year had taken that sliver of newfound confidence and crushed it underfoot.
Lola groaned, predicting that the repercussions of tonight’s ill-tempered exchange would surely be felt at work.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to anyone like that—never mind a man with the power to make or break her career. But the fault totally lay at Henri Benoit’s feet. He had no business crossing paths with her outside the hospital and insulting her when she’d been so exposed. For an unguarded moment she’d let light break through the darkness, only for him to cast her back in shadow. The problem was she had no way of explaining that—or her defensive reaction to it—if he decided to haul her over the coals tomorrow.
‘I won’t cry,’ she said out loud, determined not to let another arrogant male reduce her to a gibbering wreck.
Engine started, she threw her Mini into Reverse and put her foot on the accelerator.
A loud bang and the jolt of the car caused her to slam on the brakes.
She didn’t dare look.
Whatever she’d hit, she couldn’t afford it.
Outside, she heard a car door open and close, heavy footsteps coming towards her. She switched off the ignition and braced herself, but the footsteps had stopped—no doubt to survey the damage.
‘Mon Dieu!’
The foreign curse instantly gave away the identity of her victim.
Lola closed her eyes. Oh, please. Not him!
She slowly unclipped her seat belt and got out of the car to enter into the fearful realm of the Frenchman’s ire.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, knowing she didn’t sound a fraction apologetic.
He bent down to inspect the cracked registration plate of his red sports car. Typical. She couldn’t have hit a clapped-out rust heap—it would have to be this shiny status symbol.
‘Is this payback for what I said in there?’
The patronising tone he used grated on Lola’s already sensitive last nerve.
‘I’m not that petty. Besides, it’s only the number plate that looks damaged.’ It wasn’t as though she’d written off his boy toy altogether.
‘Does your clown car not come with mirrors fitted?’
He looked down his high-bridged nose at her with a smug expression she wanted to slap off his face. The car she drove was a luxury, allowed her by the generosity of her brothers, who’d painstakingly restored it from its rusty former self and made it hers with a bubblegum-pink re-spray. Not everyone was afforded the life of privilege she imagined he’d led, and any snooty slight against her family was the one thing guaranteed to make her blood boil.
‘I would have thought your ego was big enough to use as a force field and deflect the Pink Peril.’
With three elder brothers, exchanging childish insults came as naturally as breathing for Lola. She already had a black mark against her for squaring up to him, so she might as well make it count. Besides, he’d gone down the snarky route first.
‘The Pink Peril?’ he echoed incredulously and the grin grew into a full-on beaming smile.
He was treading on dangerous ground now.
‘My brothers named it,’ she huffed, and told her easily pleased inner schoolgirl, which was squealing with hormonal appreciation at the appearance of man dimples, to shut up. It was surely another sign of trauma manifesting itself that she found a man insulting her attractive.
‘Do I take it that’s a reference to your driving skills?’ His eyes shone with suppressed laughter, the skin creasing at the corners to elevate his hunk status.
‘I have excellent driving skills,’ she protested.
‘So I see.’ He lifted a thick dark brow as he glanced back at the damage.
‘Look, I’ve apologised. I’ll pay for repairs. So, if we’re done here…?’
It was time she left—before she completely shot down her career. This man seemingly brought out the worst in her, and that wasn’t conducive to a happy six weeks under his tutelage.
Far from helping her get over the day’s trials and tribulations, this whole evening had simply heaped more stress upon her. At least with this latest disaster she knew she could count on her brothers to make any necessary repairs with the minimum of fuss. If only they could come to work with her tomorrow and clear up the mess she’d made there, too, she might have a chance of clawing back some respect.
‘I think I have an apology of my own to make. I didn’t mean to insult you in there.’
Henri ignored her need to end the conversation and perched his butt on the bonnet of his precious car.
‘And yet you did.’ She folded her arms across her chest as he brought up the subject of his slur against her character once more. He couldn’t know the throwaway insult had hit her on such a personal level, but that didn’t give him the right to end up the good guy here.
‘The problem is between Angelique and myself. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It’s fair to say I don’t exactly approve of the work she does.’ A shake of his head emphasised his dismay.
‘She seems like a woman who knows her own mind.’ Lola didn’t imagine a free spirit such as Angelique needed his permission to do something she obviously loved.
‘Ah, but Ange doesn’t always know what’s best for her.’
The sincerity Henri expressed brought goosebumps along Lola’s skin. Even though he might not agree with his other half’s lifestyle choice, his devotion was beyond doubt. The only unconditional love Lola had ever had was from her brothers. The tragic tale of her failed past relationships was entirely to do with her reluctance to let anyone else get close. She considered Angelique a very lucky woman.
‘It’s chilly out here, so if we could get back to rectifying this mess I would like to get home. I really think your licence plate took the full impact, and I can get my brother to order you a new one. I hardly think it warrants involving insurance companies.’
What went on behind the doors of chez Benoit was none of her business—she certainly didn’t want to warm towards the man responsible for ruining her entire day. All she wanted to do now was call it quits and start afresh tomorrow.
‘In that case we can sort the details out at work. I can see you’re in a hurry.’
He finally took the hint and Lola dashed back to her car to wait for him to move.
As she sat with her arms locked out straight, holding on to the steering wheel for dear life, she exhaled slowly. Everything seemed to hit her at once, and her heart started drumming so hard she thought she might just pass out.
One night of escapism, thinking she could be ‘normal’, and she’d played stripper, crashed her car and had another run-in with her boss—embarrassing herself at every step. It was more excitement in her life than she cared for.
The next six weeks working under Henri Benoit stretched before her like a prison sentence. One with absolutely no chance of getting time off for good behaviour.
CHAPTER TWO
BUILT TO SERVE the influx of inhabitants to the rejuvenated city, the predominantly glass and marble structure of the Belfast Community Hospital was bright and modern. Even now she was in the bustling corridors, under the glare of fluorescent light, Lola thought it a beautiful building.
These last few shifts had shown her that any chance for silent contemplation ended on the far side of the double doors, and Lola braced herself for the madness of A&E on a Friday night as she pushed them open.
‘Nurse! Nurse!’
The loud, slurred speech of a waiting patient greeted her. A hand shot out and clamped around her wrist, immediately regressing her to that time in her life when she hadn’t had the strength to fight back.
She screwed her eyes tightly shut, in an attempt to fend off the memories assaulting her, but it only succeeded in leaving her alone in the dark with them.
The busy reception area faded away, and the walls closed in until she was back in that small room crammed full of grinning faces. Her limbs were immobile, pinned down by unseen forces, leaving her completely at the mercy of her attackers. They were too strong for her, their hands tugging at her clothes until she was naked and shivering beneath them.
The actual assault had lasted only minutes—long enough to satisfy their cruel need to break her spirit. Once her humiliation was complete, the matter of her sexuality no longer an issue, they’d thrown her clothes at her and walked away. In hindsight, her ordeal could have been much worse, even though it hadn’t felt like that at the time.
A shudder racked through Lola’s body as she contemplated the alternative. It had taken her years even to let another man touch her after that betrayal, and she doubted she would ever have recovered if that band of delinquents had decided to take things any further.
The intervening years had been tough for her as she’d tried to come to terms with what her bullies had probably deemed no more than a prank. For her, the experience had left her wanting to run from the room screaming if a man so much as put his hands on her uninvited. Only her desire to practice medicine on the general public had put her on the road to recovery and stopped her freaking out completely at times like this.
The pressure eased from around her forearm, immediately releasing her from her torment. She blinked her eyes open to see a man she guessed to be in his sixties slumped in a plastic chair beside her. After a deep breath she extricated his fingers from her person and reminded herself that she wasn’t a helpless teen any more.
‘I’m Dr Roberts. I’m sure one of the nurses will be along shortly to assess your condition, sir.’
He had a small gash on his right cheek, which was letting a small trickle of blood further colour his already ruddy features, but she suspected from the stench of alcohol closing in around her that alcohol was the main reason behind his hospital visit.
‘Am I dying, Doctor?’ Red-rimmed eyes tried to focus on her, and it soon became obvious he was more of a danger to himself than anyone else.
It buoyed her confidence to know she was the one in control of the situation here, and she was able to reassure him with a pat on the hand. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re not dying, but I’ll send someone over to see you as soon as possible.’
‘Good.’ He sank back into the chair, placated for now, and the sound of tuneless singing followed her on her way.
With the patient’s concerns passed on to one of the nurses, with the advice that it might be wise to have him seen to and discharged before he settled down for the night, Lola lifted a file from the stack on the desk.
Her first patient was an elderly woman experiencing dizziness and fatigue. Possible dehydration, since the notes indicated an increased thirst and decreased skin turgor. No doubt this lady had been specifically left for Lola to deal with because of the apparently straightforward nature of the ailment, but she didn’t mind. The role of general dogsbody gave her inner wallflower a chance to disappear under paperwork and the smaller jobs more experienced doctors deemed too trivial to waste their talents on. These small steps into the medical field would carry her through until it was her moment to shine. At which point she might need some anti-anxiety pills to hand.
With her bits and pieces gathered together from the storeroom, she made her way to the cubicle. The sight of the elderly lady waiting for her behind the curtain immediately put her at ease.
‘Now, then, Mrs Jackson. I’m just going to take a wee blood sample from you, if that’s all right?’ A UE blood test would tell if the electrolytes and sodium were off—a further indication of dehydration.
The old woman smiled, the skin at the corners of her pale blue eyes creasing with laughter. ‘Sure, I’m like a pin cushion these days anyway.’
Lola noted how sunken her eyes looked, and the dryness of her lips when she smiled. The dry mucus membranes were another sure sign her diagnosis was correct.
‘So I don’t need to worry about you passing out when you see this needle?’ If only all her patients were this cooperative it would make her job a whole lot easier.