A second chance with her GP...

Dare she follow her heart this time?

Jayne had been so happy! Engaged to gorgeous Sam Crenshaw, planning an idyllic life together as GPs in Whitticombe’s close-knit community. Until the day her twin sister died, compelling Jayne to leave the man she loved to fulfill her sister’s dreams. Now a pediatric cardiologist, Jayne’s hit crisis point—and coming home to heal reminds her that her own dream is still a life with Sam!

ANNIE O’NEIL spent most of her childhood with her leg draped over the family rocking chair and a book in her hand. Novels, baking, and writing too much teenage angst poetry ate up most of her youth. Now Annie splits her time between corralling her husband into helping her with their cows, baking, reading, barrel racing (not really!) and spending some very happy hours at her computer, writing.

Also by Annie O’Neil

Healing the Sheikh’s Heart

Her Knight Under the Mistletoe

Reunited with Her Parisian Surgeon

One Night with Dr Nikolaides

The Army Doc’s Christmas Angel

Tempted by Her Single Dad Boss

The Doctor’s Marriage for a Month

Italian Royals miniseries

Tempted by the Bridesmaid

Claiming His Pregnant Princess

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

A Return, A Reunion, A Wedding

Annie O’Neil

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09011-7

A RETURN, A REUNION, A WEDDING

© 2019 Annie O’Neil

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

This book goes, without reservation,

to my new editor Sheila.

I asked her to help make me a better writer

and she took me at my word.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy the results!

May it be the first in a long list of HEAs

we craft together xo

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

JAYNE SHOULD HAVE been getting fist-bumps right now. High-fives. A group hug. Not watching a mass exodus from her operating theatre.

What on earth was going on?

She pulled off her surgical gown, gave her face a quick scrub, and deposited it into the laundry bin.

‘All right there, Dr Sinclair?’

The hospital’s favourite surgical nurse, Sana, didn’t body-block her, exactly, but... Why was the rest of the surgical team high-tailing it out of there?

Peculiar.

Maybe they all had hot dates. Or on-call rooms to collapse in.

Ten hours of heart transplant surgery was tiring. For most people, anyway. Sana looked as energetic as ever. Maybe it was the dancing unicorns on her scrubs.

Sana fixed Jayne with her bright smile. ‘Somebody’s frown is upside down. And we don’t do that here at the London Merryweather Children’s Hospital. Not after a successful surgery.’

‘I’m not frowning.’ Jayne fought to smooth the furrow between her eyes.

Okay, fine. The surgery had been tough...but it wasn’t as if she wanted to talk about it.

‘The Jayne Sinclair I know doesn’t frown. So...’ Sana popped her hands on to her hips. ‘Are you going to explain to me what’s broken your smiley face or am I going to have to start pulling teeth?’

Jayne tried to look away and couldn’t.

Oh, crumbs. So this was The Sana Look.

Five years at the Merryweather and she’d never once seen it. If the rumour mill was anything to go by it was pointless to resist.

The Sana Look, as it was known in hospital parlance, was something to actively avoid. It was responsible for all sorts of madness. The Head of Paediatric Surgery had buckled under its strength, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Registrars fled to cosy cottages in Devon to tackle long-neglected ‘To Read’ piles. Nurses skipped around theme parks in Florida. Even the aptly named Dr Stayer, who was rumoured never to have once taken a day of holiday in his thirty years of practice, had handed in his notice and was learning how to surf in Bali at this very moment.

No one was immune.

When Sana gave The Look, the HR department listened. As did the hospital’s Chief Executive. It was that powerful. It meant one thing and one thing only: someone needed to take a holiday.

Jayne shuddered. Already she could see her six weeks of unused holiday waiting to pounce and attack.

Nooo!

She didn’t do breaks. Or downtime. She certainly didn’t casually hand in holiday requests. She did surgery. And extra shifts. And proactively offered a helping hand wherever she could in the hospital so that she could become the best paediatric cardiologist possible. This was her happy place. Here she could fix things. Out there she... Well, she and London had never exactly bonded.

She swept her hands across her face and turned her frown into a smile. ‘Nothing to worry about on this front, Sana. See?’ She struck a jaunty pose. ‘Happy face!’

Sana gave her one of those slow head-to-toe scans that said, Girlfriend...try telling that to the judge.

Jayne shifted uncomfortably.

‘You did a great job...’ Sana said, in a way that had a big fat ‘but’ lying in wait.

‘Always a good day when I can fix a heart.’ If only she could fix her own.

Sana arched an eyebrow as if she’d heard the silent plea.

It had been one tear. Just the one! A tear that had been shed well after the critical part of the surgery had been finished. Jayne’s hands had been clear of the patient. The other surgeons had been closing under her supervision. Nothing for Sana to get all Looky over.

Sana crossed her arms over her chest and started humming. She was patient. More than that... She was well-versed in cocky young surgeons lying about their feelings after particularly tough surgeries.

If only she knew just how tough this one had been...

Jayne’s patient—a gorgeous, bright and very funny fourteen-year-old called Stella—had been on a mechanical heart for five months now. An epic stretch of time for anyone to endure that level of heart failure, let alone a kid. Her family was exhausted from putting on a brave face. Not to mention bearing the weight of constant fear that came with the simple fact that one day Stella’s body simply might not be able to handle being put through the mill any more.

When a donor heart had become available early that morning Jayne and her team had been elated. They’d pulled in every favour in the book to get it to London and into the patient’s chest, where it was now beating away all on its own.

It should have been a landmark moment. For Stella, obviously. But for Jayne, too.

She’d spent over ten years of her life training, studying, and fine-tuning herself to become a paediatric cardiologist—just as her twin sister Jules had imagined she would be one day.

Her heart seized so hard and tight she could hardly breathe. She needed to get out of here.

Her eyes darted to the doors of the operating theatre and once again Sana’s brown eyes appeared in front of her. Looking.

This wasn’t how she’d pictured this moment. Completing a full heart transplant surgery was meant to have been an epically happy day for her. The day that she finally fulfilled her sister’s dream.

As she shrank under Sana’s unblinking gaze she felt her blood begin to chill in her veins. Maybe fulfilling someone else’s destiny didn’t work that way.

If she were Jules she’d be leading a parade to the pub right now. Buying the first round. Toasting her team of fellow surgeons, nurses, nephrologists, immunologists and all the other medical professionals who’d helped make this critical surgery a reality. Daring everyone to join her in a charity skydive.

Not being stared down by Sana.

Okay, fine! Blubbing over a patient wasn’t the done thing in transplant surgery. Which was why there were rules in place. And yet the one rule...the only rule...of her operating theatre when she was about to place one person’s vital organ into another person? Oh, that rule had been well and truly broken.

No. Unnecessary. Details.

A good heart was a good heart. Origin stories weren’t necessary. They made her emotional. There wasn’t a person on earth who was served well by an emotional surgeon.

Committed? Passionate? Intense?

Absolutely. Jayne admitted to all those things. Proudly.

Sure, it was important to know some things about donor organs. Suitability. Viability. Accessibility. Jayne always checked the facts. She also ran a slew of tests. Bloods, X-rays, tomography, MRIs, ultrasounds. Not to mention the coronary angiography and the cardiac catheterisation. She’d done each and every one of them with the exacting scientific precision they had required. And then asked for the flow of information to stop there.

One of the junior surgeons on her team simply hadn’t got it. Just as she’d lifted the heart into her hands he’d blurted out the origin story of the donor.

That was when the first sting of tears had hit.

She’d crushed them, of course.

But it had been tough.

The donor heart had come with strings attached. Strings that went all the way back to the worst day in Jayne’s life. The heart she had successfully transplanted into Stella had belonged to a young woman who’d been out for a bicycle ride on a country lane.

Just like Jules. Jayne’s twin.

Neither young woman had returned home. Neither had heard their sister calling frantically for the car to stop. Neither one had lived to fulfil their destinies. Because both of them had been declared brain-dead at the scene. So if Jayne’s smile wasn’t hitting her eyes she had a damn good reason why.

She heard a page on the intercom and made a dash for the door. ‘Pretty sure that’s Stella’s room.’

Sana started laughing and body-blocked her. ‘Easy there, tiger. That was for Dr Lewis. It’s his wife.’

‘How do you even know that?’ She’d not heard a single word of the page.

Sana’s face softened with one of those warm, all-knowing smiles of hers. ‘She always rings around now, to find out whether or not she should put his supper on.’

‘Ah.’

A twist of envy squeezed the air out of her chest. She could have had that too. Someone who loved her enough to make her supper...cared enough not to burn it...cared if she came home at all...

An image of Sam popped into her head and swiftly she swept it away. No point in swan-diving into ancient history. Even so, she’d bet he wouldn’t be fazed by Sana’s Look. He’d shoot her one of those crooked smiles of his. Give her a wink, a hug, and promise they’d sit and talk all she wanted over a cup of tea and a scone down by the river.

He was one of those men who made time for everyone and the expression on his face when she’d handed him back his ring...

Sana gave Jayne’s arm a gentle squeeze. ‘Go home. Take a bath. Do whatever you do to unwind. Then take some real time off. You’ve dedicated yourself to Stella for months. This is when you let the rest of the team look after her.’

Jayne bristled. ‘No way. Until her body accepts that heart I’m staying.’

The Look reared up, strong and powerful. ‘When’s the last time you took a holiday? And I’m not talking about the two days a year you take off to throw some Christmas presents at your parents, either.’

Ouch.

‘You cried. In surgery.’ Sana rolled her finger. ‘And the reason why was...?’

Jayne tried to turn away, but it was as if Sana’s eyes were pouring invisible cement into her trainers. Lemon juice into her seven-years-old wounds.

Was this what The Sana Look did? Brought things to the surface that you’d tried for years to hide?

Sana blinked. Deliberately.

The tiniest hint of perspiration broke out on Jayne’s forehead.

Suddenly Jayne was beginning to see the advantage of taking a break. A chance to regroup. Get her emotions back under control. She could go to a boot camp. Or a Mastering Your Inner Ninja week.

The flash of another option sent a complication of emotions pouring through her heart. Maybe she could just...go home?

Sana had a point. Everyone’s life needed balance, and her life was one hundred per cent devotion to her job. She had no life outside the hospital. She’d tried clubbing, rock-climbing, wild city breaks in Europe’s party places, and yet, years later it turned out partying till she dropped, terrifying herself with adrenaline-laced activities and fixing someone else’s heart, was never, ever going to bring her sister back.

Which meant...maybe going home to heal some wounds might be a good thing.

Oh. My. Word. What was happening to her?

It was The Look. No doubt about it.

Sana put her hands on Jayne’s shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes.

‘Jayne.’ Sana’s voice was kind—loving, even. ‘You need some time off. What about your parents? They’re out near Oxford somewhere, aren’t they? Surely they’d love a visit from their surgeon daughter?’

Jayne shook herself free of Sana’s hands. Her relationship with her parents had altered irrevocably the day Jules had died. She knew they loved her, but Jules had been one of those rare souls who’d taken people’s breath away for all the right reasons. Beautiful, vivacious, crazy, smart...

Risk-taker. Unsettled. Adrenaline junkie.

All the things Jayne wasn’t.

‘My parents tend to go away in the summer.’

It was Scotland this year. Was it the Outer Hebrides? Somewhere remote, she knew. The fewer cars the better. She had the address in her phone, but the remit was always the same. No cars. Her mother, who’d once shone with a bright passion for life, had been all but literally wrapped in cotton wool ever since the accident.

‘Friends, then?’ Sana persisted. ‘Surely you’ve got someone back in Whitticombe who’d love to see you?’

‘Not really,’ she lied.

Her bestie, Maggie, would put her up in a heartbeat.

As if Sana’s inquisition was wringing the truth out of her, she silently admitted there were two very simple reasons she hated going home.

One: she couldn’t think of Whitticombe without thinking of her sister’s death. A death that never would have happened if she hadn’t asked Jules to come home that day to celebrate her engagement. Which led to reason number two. The only thing more painful than helplessly watching the life slip away from her sister had been handing her engagement ring back to Sam.

Urgh!

Sana’s suggestion was impossible. Six whole weeks of avoiding The Romance That Might Have Been? The Marriage She’d Always Wanted? The Life She Could Have Had?

Impossible.

She’d missed that boat a long time ago—had practically thrown him the oars. Besides, if Maggie’s newsy emails were anything to go by there’d been a whole lot of water under Sam’s bridge over the last few years. A marriage. A divorce. His mother’s death.

And yet here she was, still stuck on That Day...

If she shut her eyes she could see it all in fine detail. It had been sunny. Tourists had been beginning to flood into town to enjoy the iconic sandstone cottages and, of course, the beautiful stone-lined river that lazily wound its way through the heart of the village. It had been early June, as it was now. The usual riot of flowers had been in bloom.

She’d had a shiny new diamond solitaire on her finger.

Jayne had come home from med school to see Sam and he had proposed. Of course she’d said yes. He was the love of her life. Had been since the first perfect kiss they’d shared the day she’d turned sixteen.

Jules had dropped everything and raced home from London. The family’s golden girl. They’d all adored her. As usual, she hadn’t wanted to settle for anything simple like a toast to celebrate. Jayne had suggested they ride their old bicycles down the lane and on to the pub they’d visited when they were in pigtails. Only this time they’d order a glass of fizz instead of the squash they’d used to ask for.

Jules had been pulling out their bicycles as soon as the suggestion was out there.

Their father had thrown them a distracted wave from his easel—another landscape. Their mother had laughed from her sculpting table and, before waving them off, had done what she’d always done—kissed them each on the cheek, then told them to be safe.

Then she’d thrown in an extra warning to Jayne, as though they were still kids rather than grown women, ‘Keep an eye on your sister. You know what she’s like.’

Stop at the end of the lane. Check for traffic a hundred times. Proceed to pub. That was the procedure.

Only this time Jules hadn’t followed it. She’d taken off at high speed and turned it into a race.

Three hours later...after the ambulance had gone and neighbours had flooded the house to make her parents cup after cup of sweet, milky tea... Jayne had slipped the sparkling ring on and off her finger.

A few months later she’d taken it off for good.

She’d changed in those months. No longer had she been the carefree, optimistic girl Sam had asked to marry him. In her place had come someone more steely-eyed, driven, determined to fulfil the dreams her sister never would.

Jules had always been a bit mad. Her interests wide and varied. But the one thing—the only thing—that had captured Jules’ high-octane energy had been her desire to perform a paediatric heart transplant.

As the days and then months of grief had built and festered after her death, Jayne had felt every bit as helpless as she had performing CPR on her sister, waiting for help to arrive. Her failure to overcome her sister’s catastrophic injuries had set something alight in her that had steered her away from the life she’d planned. A fierce, intense need to make amends for causing her sister’s death. To live the life her sister wouldn’t. Perform the surgeries her sister wouldn’t. Save the lives her sister wouldn’t.

She had done that today. Fulfilled her dream. It was meant to have drawn a line in the sand. Loosened the reins on the strict, driven intensity with which she had pursued this goal. Instead it had only proved what she had feared all along—that she hadn’t moved on at all.

‘Dr Sinclair.’ Sana’s voice forced her back into the operating theatre. ‘If you don’t take care of this...’ she pointed at Jayne’s heart ‘...you aren’t going to be able to look after your patients with this.’ She pointed at Jayne’s head.

Jayne shifted from one hip to the other, then pretended her phone had buzzed.

‘Dr Sinclair at your service!’ Jayne gave Sana a cheeky wink and mouthed Sorry, pointing at the phone. ‘Yes! Absolutely. No. No... Nothing on my schedule. I have all the time in the world.’

Sana rolled her eyes.

A code red sounded. Their eyes clashed. They both knew whose room it belonged to. They both knew exactly what it meant.

* * *

Three days later, when Jayne heard her own hollow voice call the time of death at the end of Stella’s bed, she looked straight into Sana’s eyes. She saw everything she needed to know.

It was time to go home.

Sana was right. She had to heal her heart before she could care for any more patients. They deserved her absolute focus, and Stella’s death had thrown her right back to the starting line of a race she’d thought she’d finally finished.

Trying to outrun her past was impossible. She almost laughed as she thought of the advice she regularly gave her own patients.

If you ignore the problem it will only get worse. If you face it head-on you have a chance to live the rest of your life with a few scars. Scars that will make you stronger.

* * *

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.

If Jayne hadn’t rung Jules...if Jayne hadn’t asked her to ride to the pub...her sister would be alive and well today. If only she’d screamed loud enough. Fast enough.

The sports car had been moving so fast when Jules had whipped round the corner on her bicycle. Jayne’s screams had stayed lodged in her throat. When her sister had been pronounced brain-dead it had been as if they would never stop sounding inside her own head.

As best she could, Jayne conjured up a smile and put away the massage cream, rubbing the residue into her hands. The tingle of the minty gel reminded her of how she’d felt when, just for a nanosecond, Sam had reached forward to put his hand on the small of her back as they’d left his office—until he’d caught her noticing and pulled it back. Fire then ice.

‘Apparently it’s not much of a summer as far as the weather is concerned. They’re up in the farthest reaches of the Scottish isles.’

Maggie pulled a face. ‘I couldn’t live up there. Although I suppose the communities must be close, what with the weather and all. I was talking to the McTavishes—’

Jayne lifted her brow questioningly.

‘They’re the ones who are doing the house-swap with your parents. Really nice couple. They love my kids. Said they don’t have grandkids of their own, so they always pounce on a chance to play with them. Mrs McTavish has been teaching Connor how to sketch. It’s pretty cool!’

It sounded cool. Just the sort of thing her father would have done with her own children if she’d lived down the road in The Old Barn with Sam, as they’d planned. Bundled a child upon his knee and pulled out a huge sketchpad, as he had done with each of them. Jules had taken to it like a duck to water, but Jayne’s artistry had always lain much more firmly in the surgical field. In fixing things.

That was why she spent all her spare time in the other hospital departments. No way would she ever again fall into the ‘helpless maiden’ category. Not after that horrible day.

Kneeling on the pavement next to Jules after she’d been hit, not caring that her own knees were scraped raw, Jayne had felt so helpless. She’d done CPR, but her sister’s injuries had been so severe the only thing she’d been able to do was keep her heart beating until someone else had told her otherwise. There had been no way she was going to call her own sister’s death.

She hadn’t even thought of becoming a surgeon at that point. It had been general practice with a specialty in paediatrics all the way. Sam would do the ‘oldies’. She’d look after the little ones. And between the two of them they’d take care of everyone ese. It had been a perfect plan for a perfect life.

‘Woo-hoo? Earth to Jayne?’ Maggie pulled back and then suddenly went wide-eyed, as if a lightbulb had gone on inside her head.

‘You aren’t being weird about the cricket because of Sam, are you?’

Jayne made a scoffing noise. ‘No.’

‘Ohmigawd, you totally are.’

She wasn’t. Okay. She was. A bit. But what she felt for Sam was just one piece of a bigger puzzle. Something had been ripped open inside her when she’d called Stella’s time of death. Something she’d thought had healed.

Maggie gave her belly a double-handed rub. ‘You’re not still in love with him, are you?’

Jayne did not dignify the question with an answer. Of course a part of her was. Always would be. Their’s had been a love that ran so deep it could never be completely erased. Even if she’d told him otherwise.

‘Jayne...’ Maggie’s voice held a warning note. ‘If you’re here to win Sam’s heart again you should tread very, very carefully. The man’s been through a lot. His divorce was only a year ago, and of course he’s had to cope with his mum passing. He’s strong, of course. He’s Sam. But—’

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ Jayne snapped, a bit too defensively.

She looked into her friend’s eyes and saw twenty years of friendship shining back at her. Why was she lying? She knew why she was back. She was here because calling Stella’s time of death had made her feel as if she’d killed her sister all over again.

Pain. Anguish. Guilt.

Feelings she wasn’t meant to be having. Not as a top surgeon, anyway. She’d thought placing that heart in Stella’s body would salve the torment she’d been carrying with her all these years. When Stella’s body had rejected the heart Jayne had felt as if it had rejected her too. All of which boiled down to one simple truth: if Jayne didn’t find a way to make genuine amends for her sister’s death, and the emotional wreckage she’d left in her wake, she could not continue as a surgeon. And that was a future she was completely unwilling to imagine.

Maggie tipped her head to the side, looking not unlike the twelve-year-old version of herself who had befriended Jayne after a particularly rough round of netball. ‘Whatever it is that’s brought you back... I just want you to know I’m glad you’re here. If you ever need to talk...’

It was an offer Maggie had given her countless times. But the only person Jayne had come close to confessing the full story to was Sam. No matter how close she felt to Mags, he’d always been the sounding board she’d needed. He was wise beyond his years. Always gave her perspective on things without making her feel stupid.

When she’d handed him back his ring she’d seen every emotion in his eyes. Pain. Anger. Hurt. Frustration. Disbelief. But instead of lashing out he’d leant in and given her cheek the softest kiss.

‘No matter what it is you’re going through,’ he’d said, ‘I want you to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You may not see it now, but you will find the way. You’ll survive this. Believe me when I say you are so much stronger than you think you are.’

If she had believed him would they be together now?

Back then it had seemed impossible. The only path she’d seen was to pursue her sister’s dreams with blinkered, exacting energy. A path so narrow there had been no room for anyone else on it.

It had taken Stella’s death to make her realise just how wrong she’d been. No amount of lives saved would ever bring her sister back.

She forced herself to pop on a smile and clapped her hands together. ‘Honestly—I’m good. Just...you know...it’s always a little bit weird seeing an ex, right?’

Maggie gave an apologetic shrug and automatically gave her wedding ring, now hanging from a chain around her neck, a quick rub. She wouldn’t know. She and Nate had married pretty much straight out of school, before he’d headed off to boot camp. Theirs had been a very similar romance to Jayne and Sam’s. Childhood sweethearts making good on their teenage dreams. Well... Not so similar. But Jayne was happy for them.

She cocked her head to the side at the sound of children laughing. ‘Why don’t I round up those kids of yours and get us to the cricket ground?’

Maggie peered at her for another moment, obviously trying to decide whether or not she should try and force Jayne to talk, and then thought better of it. ‘Let’s do that. The doctor said I was supposed to keep my calorie consumption up—so bring on the burgers!’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.