Raphael’s heart was lost...

Until he found Maggie again!

Brooding surgeon Dr. Raphael Boucher finds his way to Sydney and the one woman he could never forget. Working together it’s clear Maggie Louis is the only one who can make him feel alive again. But first Raphael must return to Paris and resolve his past before they can finally be together.

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

One Night, Twin Consequences

The Nightshift Before Christmas

Santiago’s Convenient Fiancée

Her Hot Highland Doc

Healing the Sheikh’s Heart

Her Knight Under the Mistletoe

Italian Royals miniseries

Tempted by the Bridesmaid

Claiming His Pregnant Princess

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Reunited with Her Parisian Surgeon

Annie O’Neil

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07490-2

REUNITED WITH HER PARISIAN SURGEON

© 2018 Annie O’Neil

Published in Great Britain 2018

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.

This one definitely goes out to my readers. Without you this book literally could not have been made. You are the ones who built this hero and heroine... I hope you enjoy their story.

Annie O xx

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

SCENT. SOUND. TASTE. Even the air felt different in Australia; so did the sea water he was ploughing through. But as the days had bled into weeks, then months, Raphael had come to know that travelling halfway round the world hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. He was still carrying the same hollowed-out heart, weighted with an anvil’s worth of guilt. Leaving Paris hadn’t done a damn thing towards relieving the burden.

Volunteering had done nothing. Neither had working in conflict zones. Nor donating blood and platelets. He would have pulled his heart right out of his chest if he’d thought it would help. Working all day and all night hadn’t helped. And then there was money. Heaven knew he’d tried to throw enough of that at the situation, only to make a bad situation worse.

Jean-Luc didn’t want any of his money. Not anymore.

The truth was a simple one. Nothing could change the fact that his best friend’s daughter had died on his operating table.

He’d known he was too close to her. He’d known he shouldn’t have raised so much as a scalpel when he’d seen who the patient was. The injuries she’d suffered. But there had been no one more qualified. And Jean-Luc had begged him. Begged him to save his daughter’s life.

Raphael thought through each excruciatingly long minute they’d been in surgery for the millionth time.

Clamps. Suction. Closing the massive traumatic aortic rupture only to have another present itself. Clamps. More suction. Stiches. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. He could see his fingers knotting each one in place. Ensuring blood flow returned to her kidneys. Her heart.

Her young body had responded incredibly well to the surgery. A miracle really, considering the massive trauma she’d suffered when the car had slammed into hers. All that had been left to do when he’d been called to the adjacent operating theatre was close her up.

No matter how many times he went through it, he stalled at the critical moment. There’d been two choices. He’d taken one path. He should’ve chosen the other. His one fatal error had built to that leaden silence when he’d returned to the operating theatre to see his junior lifting his hands up and away from her small, lifeless body.

They’d looked to him to call the time of death.

Raphael swam to the edge of the pool, blinking away the sea water, almost surprised to see that the sun was beginning to set. He pulled himself up and out of the pool in one fluid move, vaguely aware of how the exertion came easily now that he was trying to burn away the memories with lap after lap.

He was tired now. Exhausted, if he was being truly honest. Coming here to Sydney was his last-ditch attempt to find the man he had once been. The man buried beneath a grief he feared would haunt him until his dying day. He was driving himself to swim harder than he ever had before—churning the seaside pool into a boiling froth around him as he hit one side, dove, twisted, and then started again to see how soon he could hit the other—but his burning lungs did nothing to assuage the heaviness of his heart.

Love could.

And forgiveness could do so much more.

In fewer than twenty-four hours he’d see Maggie...

The years since he’d seen her last seemed incalculable. He remembered her vividly. A clear-eyed, open-hearted exchange student from Australia. Apart from Jean-Luc there had been no one in his life who had ever known him so well, who had seen straight through to his soul.

If, when they met again, she could see a glimmer of the man she’d known all those years ago he’d know there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

After toweling off in the disappearing rays of the sun, he tugged on a long-sleeved T-shirt and headed for the exit, already conditioned to look toward the white fence on the right, leading out of the baths towards the coastal path.

Le petit monstre de la mer.

He was still there. The cock-eared mutt that had been following him from his rented accommodation, along the coastal path to the Bronte Baths and back since he’d arrived in Sydney a week ago.

A reject from former tenants?

There were no tags, no chips. Nothing to identify him or his owners.

It shocked him that he’d cared enough to take the dog to a vet the day before.

At least it proved there was still a heart thumping away in his chest, doing more than was mechanically required.

He huffed out a mirthless laugh.

Or was it just proof that he desperately needed one soul in his life who wasn’t judging him? Who still wanted his company?

He winced away the thought. That wasn’t fair. After over a decade of virtually no contact, Maggie hadn’t merely agreed to meet up with him tomorrow night. She’d found him a job at her paramedic station. She’d gone above and beyond the call of a long-ago friendship.

The memory of her bright green eyes softened the hard set of his jaw.

From what she’d said in her emails, the under-staffed ambulance station sounded like a non-stop grind. Perhaps, at long last, this would be the beginning of the healing he’d been seeking, after eighteen months on the run from the pain he’d caused.

He certainly didn’t trust himself on a surgical ward. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps never.

“Allons-y, Monster.” He tipped his head towards the street and the dog quickly met his long-stride pace. “Let’s see if we can find you some supper.”

CHAPTER TWO

TICK-TOCK. TICK-TOCK.

Why had she brought him to a movie?

Raphael was going to think she hated him. But, no, she was just socially inept. And she wasn’t quite ready for him to meet the “real” Maggie.

Maggie’s phone buzzed in her backpack, adding to her mortification. She dragged the bag out from under her seat and fished around until she found it. Working in the emergency services meant checking your phone every time it beeped or buzzed, whether or not you were sitting next to your teenage crush from the most perfect year you’d ever had.

A year in Paris.

Raphael Bouchon.

Match. Made. In. Heaven.

Not that there’d been any romance. Just a one-sided crush that had come to an abrupt end when she’d boarded the plane back to Australia.

She pushed the button on her phone to read the message.

Dags, Dad needs more of those hyper-socks next time you come.

She speed-typed back.

They’re compression socks, you dill.

Her expression softened. Her brothers were doing their best in the face of their father’s ever-changing blood pressure. They were mechanics, not medics.

She glanced across at Raphael. I could’ve been a surgeon, like you.

An unexpected sting of tears hit her at the back of her throat so she refocused on her phone.

See you in a couple of weeks with a fresh supply. Maggie xx

She jammed the phone back into her backpack and suppressed the inevitable sigh of frustration. Moving to Sydney was more of a hassle than it was worth sometimes. But staying in Broken Hill forever? Uh-uh. Not an option.

She dropped her pack beneath her chair and readjusted in her stadium-style seat, only to succeed in doing what she’d been trying to avoid all night—grazing her thigh along Raphael’s.

“Desolé.” Raphael put his hand where his knee had just knocked Maggie’s and gave it an apologetic pat.

She stared at his hand. Long, gorgeous, surgeon’s fingers. Strong. Assured. Not the type of fingers that caressed the likes of her lowly paramedic’s knees.

Wait a minute.

Had it been a caress? If it had been then this whole high school reunion thing was swiftly turning into a dream come true. If not...

She glanced across at him and saw he wasn’t even looking at her. His bright blue eyes were glued to the flickering screen twenty or so rows ahead of them. Fair enough, considering they were at a movie, but...

“Non, c’est—it’s all right.”

Maggie fumbled her way through an unnecessary response, all the while crossing her legs, tucking her toes behind her calf to weave her legs together and make herself as small as possible. If they didn’t touch again, and she could somehow drill it into her pea-sized brain that Raphael wasn’t fabricating excuses to touch her, then maybe—just maybe—she’d stop feeling as if she’d just regressed back to her sixteen-year-old, in-love-with-Raphael self.

Ha! Fat chance of that happening.

Tall, dark and broodingly handsome, Raphael Bouchon would have to head back to France without so much as a C’est la vie! if she were ever going to give up the ghost of a dream that there had once been something between them to build upon.

The second she’d laid eyes on him tonight Maggie’s body had been swept straight back to the giddy sensations she’d felt as a teen.

Two hours in, she was still feeling the effects. Despite the typically warm, late-summer Australian evening, all the delicate hairs on her arms were standing straight up. The hundredth wave of goose pimples was rippling along her spine, keeping time with the swoosh and wash of waves upon the shores of Botany Bay. Off in the distance, the magical lights of Sydney’s famed harbor-front were glowing and twinkling, mimicking the warm sensation of fireflies dancing around her belly.

The outdoor cinema in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens was the perfect atmosphere for romance. Perfect, that was, if Raphael had been showing the slightest bit of interest in her.

It would’ve helped if she didn’t feel like a Class A fraud. Yammering on about living the high life in Sydney as they’d walked through the gardens toward the cinema instead of being honest had been a bad move. How could she tell him, after he’d achieved so much, that her “high life” entailed a pokey flat that needed an epic cleaning session, a virtually round-the-clock work schedule and quarterly trips to the Outback to tackle the piles of laundry her brothers had left undone.

Hardly the life of a glamorous city girl.

She was such a fraud!

Not to mention all of the appalling “Franglais” that had been falling out of her mouth since she and Raphael had met at the entrance to the gardens. Every single stern word she’d had with herself on the bus journey there had all but disappeared from her head. Including the reminder that this was not a date. Just an old friend showing another old friend around town.

Nothing. More.

The second she’d laid eyes on him...

Total implosion of all her platonic intentions.

Whether it was because thirty-year-old Raphael was even better looking than seventeen-year-old Raphael, or whether it was the fact that looking just a little...haunted added yet another layer of intriguing magnetism to the man, she wasn’t sure. Either way, Raphael had the same powerful effect on her that he’d had the first time they’d met at her host family’s home all those years ago.

Jean-Luc. A twist of guilt because she hadn’t kept in touch with him either cinched her heart.

She’d had a lot on her plate when she’d come home. She wasn’t Super Girl. She couldn’t do everything.

She readjusted in her seat and gave herself a little shake. Just watch the movie and act normal!

About three seconds passed before she unwove her legs and twisted them the other way round. She’d seen Casablanca a thousand times—could quote it line for line and had planned to do so tonight, back when she’d had just the one ticket...

Maggie dropped her eyelids and attempted another sidelong glimpse at the man she’d known as a boy.

His expression was intense and focused, though the rest of the audience was chuckling at one of Humphrey Bogart’s dry comments. Smiling was not Raphael’s thing.

Not anymore, anyway.

Back in Paris it had been an entirely different story. At least when they’d been together. His laugh had brightened everything, every day. It had made life appear in Technicolor.

Not that his surprise reconnection on social media had come in the form of an emotional email declaring his undying love for her—a love that demanded to be sated in the form of his flying halfway across the world to fulfil a lifelong dream of making sweet, magical love to her.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

His email had been polite. To the point. Bereft of what her father called “frilly girlie add-ons”. Silly her for thinking that vital little details like why he’d decided to get in touch and move to Sydney after years of successfully pursuing an emergency medicine surgical career without so much as a bonjour were “facts.”

Picking a movie as their first meeting hadn’t exactly been a prime choice in eliciting more information either. It had just seemed a simpler way of easing back into a friendship she wasn’t entirely sure existed anymore.

Back in Paris he might not have had romantic feelings for her, but there had been no doubting that their friendship had been as tight as they came.

Her eyes shifted in Raphael’s direction. Seeing the sorrow, or something a lot like it, etched into his features had near enough stopped Maggie’s heart from beating when they’d met up earlier that evening. Not that he was the only one who had changed...

She shivered, remembering the day she’d flown home from France as vividly as if it were yesterday. Seeing her brothers at the arrivals gate instead of her mum...their expressions as sorrowful as she had ever known them...

Leaving France had felt physically painful, but arriving home...

Arriving home had been devastating.

How could she not have known her mother was so ill?

She dug her fingernails into her palms and blew a tight breath between her lips.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just...life.

Her breath lodged in her throat as Raphael’s gaze shifted from the massive outdoor cinema screen to Maggie’s arms.

He leaned in closer, his voice soft as he asked, “T’as froid?”

“Cold? Me? No. This is Australia! Sydney, anyway,” Maggie corrected, her nervous laugh jangling in her ears as she rubbed her hands briskly along her arms. Just about the most ridiculous way to prove she was actually quite warm enough, thank you very much.

Being in lust did that to a girl.

That, and haphazardly wading her way through a state of complete and utter mental mayhem.

Sitting next to Raphael Bouchon was like being torn in two. Half of her heart was beating with huge, oxygen-filled thumps of exhilaration, while the other half was pounding like the hoofbeats of a racehorse hell-bent on being anywhere but here.

Raphael shifted in his chair and pulled his linen jacket off the back of his seat, brushing his knee against hers as he did. Accidentally. Of course. That was the only way things like that happened to her.

Just like Raphael “deciding on a change” and moving to Australia to become a paramedic. At her local station.

Sure she’d offered to help him, completely convinced it would never actually happen. And yet here they were, thigh to thigh, sitting in the middle of the Botanical Gardens, watching a movie under another balmy summer night’s sky.

Raphael held his linen jacket up to her with an It’s yours if you want it expression on his face. He was so earnest. And kind. Not to mention knee-wobblingly gorgeous.

“Megarooni gorge”, as her friend Kelly would say. Kelly would’ve been slipping into that jacket and climbing onto Raphael’s lap in the blink of an eye. Kelly had confidence.

Maggie...? Not so much. Just the thought of climbing onto Raphael’s lap reduced her insides to a jittery mass of unfulfillable expectation.

So she waved off his kind gesture, mouthing, No, thank you, all the while rubbing her hands together and blowing on them as she did.

Nutter. What are you doing?

“Please,” Raphael whispered, and his French accent danced along the back of her neck as he shifted the silk lining of the coat over her shoulders. “I insist.”

“Merci.” She braved the tiniest soupçon of French as she pulled the jacket and Raphael’s spicy man-scent closer round her. She mentally thunked herself on the forehead. Why was she acting like such a dill?

As if the answer wasn’t sitting right next to her on the open-air theater’s bleacher seating, looking like a medical journal centerfold.

Raphael Bouchon, Casablanca and the glass of champagne he had insisted upon buying her while they were waiting for the film to start were all adding up to one thing: the most embarrassing exchange student reunion ever. Besides, it wasn’t like a first date, when—

Whoa!

It’s not a date. This is not a date. You are showing an obviously bereaved, gorgeous friend from high school around Sydney. That’s. It. The fact that his arrival coincided with a non-refundable ticket to the Starlight Cinema and the most romantic film ever is sheer coincidence. And practical. Waste not, want not. And that includes Raphael.

At least that was what she’d keep telling herself.

Along with the reminder that this movie ended with a friendship. Nothing more.

She looked down to her fingers when she realized she was totting up the number of short-lived boyfriends who hadn’t made the grade over the years. Expecting anything different when everyone had been held up to The Raphael Standard was hardly a surprise. Inaccessible. Unattainable. Dangerously desirable.

And here she was. Platonically sitting next to the man himself. Not flirting. Not reveling in the protective comfort of his jacket around her shoulders. Not trying to divine any hidden meaning behind the chivalrous gesture no one had ever shown her before. Nor was she sneaking the occasional sidelong glimpse of his full Gallic lips. The cornflower-blue eyes that defied nature. The slightly over-long chestnut hair that all but screamed for someone to run their fingers through it. Someone like her.

And yet...

The mischievous glint in his eyes that she remembered so vividly from high school hadn’t shown up once tonight. And even though he’d only just turned thirty, the salt and pepper look had made significant inroads into his dark brown hair. The little crinkles beside his eyes that she might have ascribed to smiling only appeared when his eyebrows drew close together and his entire visage took on a faraway look, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d found himself almost twenty thousand kilometers away from home.

It didn’t take a mind-reader to figure out that his relocation halfway around the world was a way to put a buffer between himself and some dark memories. This was not a man looking for a carefree year with a Down Under lover.

Not that she would’ve been on his list of possible paramours. She wasn’t anywhere close to Raphael’s league. The fact that she was sitting next to him at all was a “bloody blinder of a miracle” as her Aussie rules footie-playing brothers would say, midway through giving her a roughhouse knuckle duster.

Sigh...

Maggie feigned another quick rearrangement of her hair from one shoulder to the other, trying to divine whether Raphael was genuinely enjoying the al fresco film experience. Or cinema en plein air, as he had reminded her in his chocolate-rich voice as her rusty French returned in dribs and drabs. There hadn’t been much call for it over the years.

She swung her eyes low and to the left. Yup. Still gorgeous.

As opposed to her.

She was a poorly coordinated, fashion-challenged dork in contrast to Raphael’s effortlessly elegant appearance. Not that he’d said anything of the sort when he’d first caught sight of her at their prearranged rendezvous point. Rendezvous? Get her! Far from it. He’d even complimented her on her butterfly print vintage skirt and the “land girl” knotted top she’d dragged out of the back of her closet. Not because it was the prettiest outfit she owned, but because it was the only thing that was ironed apart from her row of fastidiously maintained uniforms.

Appearances weren’t everything. She was proof of that. Freckle-faced redheads were every bit as competent as the next person. Well...maybe not literally, seeing as the person sitting next to her was a surgeon and she was “just” a paramedic. Anyway, her hair was more fiery auburn than carrot-orange. On a good day.

When they’d first met, in the corridors of the Parisian Lycée, she’d shaken off her small-town-girl persona and found the butterfly she’d always thought had been living in her heart. Well...a nerdy butterfly. Raphael had been every bit as nerdy as she back then. Or so she’d thought. But he’d called it...academically minded. He had been the best friend of her host’s brother and she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.

Her mother had been right when she’d cheekily told her daughter to keep her eye on the “Nerd Talent.” Now, at thirty years old, Raphael was little short of movie-star-gorgeous. His tall, reedy body had filled out so that he was six-foot-something of toned man magnificence. His chestnut hair looked rakishly windswept and interesting. He looked like a costume drama hero who’d just jumped off his horse after a long ride along the clifftops in search of his heroine.

Whether his cheekbones were über-pronounced because of the weight he claimed to have lost on his travels or because his genes were plain old superior was unclear. Either way, he was completely out-of-this-world beautiful.

Even the five o’clock shadow that she thought looked ridiculous on most other blokes added a rugged edge to a man who clearly felt at ease in the most sophisticated cities in Europe. Although she would bet her last dollar he’d do just fine in the Outback too. His body confidence spoke of a man who could change a car tire with one hand and chop wood with the other.

Not that she’d been imagining either scenario. Much.

Those blue eyes of his still had those crazy long black lashes...but shadows crossed his clear azure irises more often than not...

As if feeling the heat in her gaze, Raphael looked away from the flickering screen, giving her a quick glance and a gentle smile as she accidentally swooshed her out-of-control hair against his arm. The most outlandish hair in Oz, she called it. If she wanted it curly it went straight. Straight? It went into coils. Why she didn’t just chop it all off, as her brothers regularly suggested, was beyond her.

Again she stared at the half-moons her nails had pressed into her hands. After her mum passed it had seemed as if her hair was the one thing she had left in her life that was genuinely feminine. So she’d vowed to keep it—no matter how thick and wild it became.

“So!” Raphael turned to her, with that soft, barely there smile of his that never quite made it to a full-blown grin playing upon his lips. “Did you have anything else in mind?”

Maggie threw a panicked look over her shoulder.

Like holding hands underneath the starlit sky?

Gazing adoringly into one another’s eyes in between soul-quenching kisses?

She glanced at the screen and to her horror realized the credits were running. Sitting beside him and not making a complete fool of herself had been hard enough, but—Oh, crikey. She hoped he didn’t expect her to conduct an actual conversation in French. It had been hard enough when she was in her teens, but now that she hadn’t spoken a word in over thirteen years...

All of her tingly, flirty feelings began to dissolve in an ever-growing pool of insecurity.

“Sheesh. Sorry, mate... Raphael. Sorry, sorry...”

She stumbled over a few more apologies. Years of being “one of the guys” at work and growing up as the tomboy kid sister in a house full of blokey blokes had rendered her more delicate turns of phrase—if she had ever had them—utterly obsolete.

She puffed up her cheeks and blew out a big breath, trying to figure out what would be best. A meat pie and a pint?

She took in a few more blinks’ worth of Raphael, patiently waiting for her to get a grip, and dismissed the idea. French people didn’t go out for meat pies and pints! Why had her brain chosen this exact moment to block out everything she could remember about France?

Oysters? Caviar? More champagne?

Crêpes! French people loved them. Sydneysiders did, too.

There was a mobile crêpe caravan she’d visited a couple of times when she was in between patients. She grabbed her backpack and began pawing around for her mobile to try and find out where it might be parked up tonight.

What was it called? Suzettes? Flo’s Flaming Pancakes?

“Actually...” Raphael put his hand on Maggie’s forearm to stop her frantic excavation. “As I am starting work tomorrow morning, perhaps we’ll take a rain check?”

Maggie nodded along as he continued speaking. Something about heartfelt thanks for her help in getting him the job. The stacks of paperwork she’d breezed through on his behalf.

In truth, it was far easier to stand and smile while she let herself be swept away with the rhythm and musical cadence of each word coming out of Raphael’s mouth than to actually pay attention to what he was saying. Each word presented itself as a beautiful little stand-alone poem—distinctly unlike the slang-heavy lingo she’d brought with her from her small-town upbringing.

That year in Paris had been her mother’s last gift to her. A glimpse of what the rest of the world had to offer.

She’d found out, all right. In spades.

A glimpse of Raphael’s world, more like. And she wasn’t just talking about trips to a museum.

For her there was only one Raphael and he was standing right here, speaking perfectly fluent English, his mouth caressing each vowel and cherishing each consonant so that when his throat collaborated with his tongue and the words hit the ether each word was like an individually wrapped sweet.

A bon mot.

She smiled to herself. Of course the French had a phrase for it. In a country that old they had a beautiful phrase for everything. Including the exquisite pain of unrequited love.

La douleur exquise. And, wow, was she feeling that right about now. Why had she been so useful when he’d written to her a couple of months ago from...? Where was it? Vietnam? Or was it Mozambique? Both?

Regardless, his email hadn’t suggested he was intent on coming to Australia. Just “considering a change.”

Typical Maggie. She’d just picked up the reins and run with it. Filling out forms. Offering to get the right information to the right people on the right date at the right time.

“Best little helper this side of the equator,” as her mother had always said.

And now that he was here...

Total. Stage. Fright.

She’d been an idiot to think—

Nothing. You’re friends. Just like Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart.

“Yeah, you’re right. Early to bed sounds good. In fact...” she glanced at her watch “...time’s a-tickin’. Best get cracking!”

An image of Raphael tangled up in her sheets flashed across her mind’s eye as the rest of her barely functioning brain played a quick game of catch-up.

“Wait a minute. Did you say you were coming to work tomorrow?”

“Oui. Didn’t I tell you?” His brows cinched together in concern.

Again the nervous laughter burbled up, scratching and becoming distorted as it passed through her tight throat. “Well, yeah, I knew you were coming. My boss told us about it the other day. But I didn’t—” She stopped herself.

She’d thought she’d have more time to prepare. To become more immune to the emotional ramifications of working with the one man she’d imagined having a future with. In Paris. On a surgical ward. In a marital bed. Together.

“Maggie, if you do not want me working at your station...”

Raphael pulled out the vowels in her name, making it sound as if she were some sort of exotic bird or a beautiful length of stretchy caramel.

Quit staring at the gorgeous man and respond, Mags.

“No. That’s not it at all. I’m totally on board with it. You’ll be amazing. Everyone will love you. I must’ve gotten muddled. It’ll be nice for you. To hit the ground running, I mean.”

“Absolutement.” Raphael nodded. “I am completely ready to be a true Australian.”

Maggie couldn’t help herself. She sniggered. Then laughed. Then outright guffawed. “Raphael, I don’t think you could be a ‘true Australian’ even if you paddled backwards on a surfboard, dropped snags down your throat and chased them up with a slab of stubbies, all with a school of sharks circling round you. You’re just too...” She held her hands open in front of him, as if it was completely obvious.

“Oui?” Raphael looked straight down that Gallic nose of his, giving her a supercilious look.

Had she taken the mick a bit too hard and fast?

“What is it that I am too much of, Maggie?”

“Um...well... French.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “You know... You’re just too French to be Australian.”

The warm evening air grew thick. Whether it was an impending rainstorm or the tightening of the invisible tension that had snapped taut between them, she wasn’t sure. Her body ached to step in closer. To put her hands on his chest.

“I suppose I will have to rely on you to help me,” he said.

Whether he meant it or not was hard to tell.

“No wuckers, Raph,” she joked, giving him a jesty poke in the ribs with her elbow, trying to defuse the tension. “I’ll give you training lessons on Aussie slang and you can help me with my...um...”

Her vocabulary deserted her as her eyes met and locked with Raphael’s.

“Francais?”

It would be so easy to kiss you right now.

“Maggie?”

Oh, God. She was staring. Those eyes of his...

But, again, the bright blue was shadowed with something dark.

What’s happened to you since we last met?

Something about the slight tension in his shoulders told her not to push. He had his reasons for giving up his surgical career and zig-zagging around the world, only to land here in Oz. The last thing she was going to do was dig. Everyone had their “cupboard of woes,” her mother had often said. And no one had the right to open them up and air them.

Just chill, Mags.

He’d spill his guts when he felt good and ready. Listening to people’s “gut-spills” was one of her specialties. But when it came to spilling her own guts...there was no way she was going to unleash that pack of writhing serpents on anyone.

When they reached the aisle and began walking side by side the backs of their hands lightly brushed. Another rush of goose pimples shimmied up her arms, ultimately swirling and falling like a warm glitter mist in her tummy.

She was really going to have to train her body to calm the heck down if she was going to be his shoulder to cry on. Not that he looked even close to crying. Far from it.

Had she stuck her foot in it with the whole “you’re too French” thing?

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I really enjoy working on the ambos, and the fact you have extra language skills is great. Work is different every day. And it was an amazing way for me to get my bearings when I moved to Sydney.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be at the wheel. I haven’t qualified for driving yet. All I know is I’m going to be working on an MIC Ambulance.”

Luckily Raphael missed her wide-eyed No! That’s what I do! response as he scanned the area, then turned towards the main bus stop outside the Botanical Gardens as if he’d been doing it every day of his life. He’d been born and bred in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities—acclimatizing to another must be a piece of cake.

“I was actually surprised by how easy it was to get my working papers. Something about a shortage of Mobile Intensive Care paramedics?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Maggie nodded, her brain more at ease in work mode. “They’ve really been struggling over in Victoria. Well, everywhere, I think. The most skilled mobile intensive care paramedics seem to be running off to the Middle East, where the pay is better. Well, not all of them. And it’s not because working here is horrible or anything... I mean it’s actually pretty great, when you consider the range of services we provide to the community—and of course to the whole of New South Wales when they need it. Like when there are forest fires. Or big crashes out in the back of beyond.”

She was rambling now. And in serious danger of sending Raphael packing.

He was one of the only people in her life who had known her before her mum had passed. There was something about that link that felt precious. Like a tiny priceless jewel she’d do everything in her power to protect.

Maggie looked up, her eyes widening as Raphael’s expression softened into an inquisitive smile. The trees behind him were laced with fairy lights and the buzz and whoosh of the city faded into a gentle murmur as her eyes met with his.

A flash of pure, undiluted longing flooded her chest so powerfully that she had to pull in a deep breath to stave off the dizzying effect of being the sole object of those beautiful blue eyes of his. The ache twisting in her lungs tightened into a yearning for something deeper. How mad would the world have to become for him to feel the same way?

Slowly he reached out his hands and placed them on her shoulders. The heat from his fingers seared straight through her light top, sending out a spray of response along her collarbone that gathered in sensual tingles along the soft curves of her breasts. He tipped his chin to one side as he parted his lips.

Was Raphael Bouchon, man of her dreams, going to kiss her?

“I think this is where I catch my bus.” Raphael pointed up to the sign above them. “I am afraid I will need my jacket back if we are going to part ways here. Will you be all right?”

“Of course!” she answered, too loudly, tugging off his jacket and checking her volume as she continued. “I’m the one who should be asking you that, anyway. Where was it you got a place again?”

It was the one thing she hadn’t helped with. Finding him a place. He’d told her it was already sorted, but that didn’t stop a case of The Guilts from settling in.

She should’ve offered him a bed...well, a sofa...while he sorted something out. Played tour guide. Called estate agents. Cleared the ever-accruing mess off of her countertops and made him dinner.

Not invited him to a movie and then scarpered.

But that level of support would have been slipping straight into the mode she was still trying to release herself from with her family.

The girl who did all the chores no one else wanted to do.

Besides, her home was her castle and there wasn’t a chance on God’s green earth that she would be inviting him round—or anyone, for that matter. She’d had almost seven years of looking after her brothers and father—enough housekeeping, laundry and “When’s the tucker gunna hit the table, Daggie?” to last a lifetime.

“It’s a place I found on the internet, near Bondi Beach. I thought it sounded...” he paused for effect “...Australian.”

Maggie laughed good-naturedly and leant forward to punch him on the arm. At the same time he leant down to kiss her on the cheek. Their lips collided and skidded off of each other’s—but not before Maggie caught the most perfect essence of what it would be like to actually kiss him.

Pure magic.

Raphael caught the sides of her arms with his hands, as if to steady them both, and this time when their eyes met there was something new shining straight at her. That glint. The shiny spark in Raphael’s almond-shaped eyes that erased every single thought from her harried brain except for one: I could spend the rest of my life with you.

The fear that followed in its wake chilled her to the bone.

* * *

An hour later Maggie held a staring contest with herself in her poorly lit bathroom mirror. Red-haired, freckle-faced, and every bit as unsure whether she was a country mouse or a city mouse as she had been thirteen years ago.

Closing her eyes, she traced her fingers along her lips, trying to relive the brush of Raphael’s mouth against hers. It came easily. Too easily. Especially when she had been in love with him for almost half her life.

Her eyes flickered open and there in the mirror was the same ol’ Maggie. The one who would never live in Paris. The one barely making a go of it in the big smoke. The girl born and raised and most likely to return to a town so far from Sydney it had its own time zone. In other words, she could dream all she wanted, but a future with Raphael Bouchon was never going to be a reality.

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.