Meredith Webber - Hearts of Gold - The Children's Heart Surgeon

‘It’s all very well for you,’ he grumbled. ‘You probably cook delicious sauces every day of the week. Once I’m past curry, it’s steak or steak. Not that you don’t have great steak out here in Australia, but it gets a bit boring after a while.’

‘You can buy prepared sauces then all you have to do is boil the pasta and heat the sauce and voila` , an Italian meal.’

‘Voila`’s French,’ he said, still grumbling, but now because Annie had slipped off the jacket of her suit, revealing a dark green blouse that made her eyes seem greener. And just as he was comparing the colour of the eyes to her blouse the top button popped, revealing a glimpse of a deep shadow between her breasts, so lust replaced the gladness in his heart, while an inner voice—a mean-spirited voice, sharp with jealousy—wondered if she’d had her jacket on or off at the meeting that morning.

‘The waitress asked if you’d decided,’ Annie said, indicating a young woman who’d materialised by his side.

‘I’ll have the Matriciana,’ he said, and silently congratulated himself on his recovery.

‘It’s about the only pasta sauce not on the menu. How about you try the Alfredo?’

Annie was just being helpful, but he glowered at her anyway, knowing he couldn’t ask what she’d had on at the meeting, suspecting he might be seriously love-struck to be thinking this way, and, as the wine waiter approached, wondering if it would be totally improper behaviour if he reached across the table and did up the wayward button.

He didn’t, asking Annie instead if she had a preference in wine, and when she settled on a glass of the house Chianti, he told the waiter he’d have the same. Thankfully, the man departed.

Which left him with Annie, and the revealing neckline of her shirt, which kept drawing his attention as surely as seagulls were drawn to fries at a picnic.

His silence must have stretched a fraction too long.

‘You’re frowning again. Is it Jamie, or are you still worried about Amy?’

Annie’s question—so work-oriented when his mind had been so far away—made him smile.

‘If I confess I was thinking of seagulls…’ not entirely true but close enough ‘…would you think I was totally mad?’

‘Not totally,’ she said, a smile lighting up her face and twinkling in her green-today eyes.

She sat back, obviously waiting for him to explain, but of course he couldn’t. Neither could he think of any logical thoughts he might have been having about seagulls.

Apart from them liking fries!

‘Jamie came through really well,’ he said, reverting to work as an escape from dangerous territory. ‘It’s hard to tell how older children will react. I think because they understand the concept of an operation, and have some knowledge of what’s happening to them, they can be more fearful. I don’t know of any studies that have been done to see how that affects recovery, but it would be interesting to test the theory. I had a teenage patient once, and though he was used to having catheters stuck up an artery or vein from his groin, and knew all the process, and watched the screen to see the tube travel to his heart, he told me, years later, how much he’d hated it and how he’d far rather have been knocked out before the procedure took place.’

‘Why wasn’t it an option?’ Annie asked, and Alex smiled to himself. He’d mentioned the case as a diversionary tactic but Annie was so eager to know things he enjoyed these discussions nearly as much as—

Boy! He’d nearly thought ‘the popped button’ and pulled himself up just in time.

‘A lot of older children enjoy being part of their treatment, and we’d assumed that was the case with this youth. However, him telling me how much he hated it was a wakeup call for me, because I’d made an assumption on his behalf. Early on, we did all catheterisations for testing and small ops while the patient was sedated slightly but not out of it, mainly because we didn’t have the mild, short-acting anaesthesia we have today. And though we knock the infants out, we’d continued doing the older children with just sedation.’

‘Until someone protested?’

Alex nodded. ‘Bad medicine, that!’ he recalled. ‘We should have asked. I always do now, and I make sure the cardiologists—they do most of the caths these days—know how I feel about it. I even gave a paper on it once.’

And as he said the words he remembered where and when he’d given that paper. At the congress at Traders Rest five years ago…

ANNIE knew from the way he looked at her exactly where and when he’d given that paper. And suddenly it was the right time to say something. Not a lot, but enough for Alex to decide if he wanted to keep seeing her or not.

Though it shouldn’t be his choice. She should decide. And she knew what that decision should be!

But her heart longed for the love she felt might be on offer, while her mind reached out for companionship and her body—well, her body just plain lusted after his!

So she had to say something!

She reached out and placed her hand over his, so they both rested on the table. Gave his fingers a squeeze because this could well be the last time she touched him.

Then she withdrew her hand and used it to grip her other one—tightly—in her lap beneath the table so no one could see them twisting anxiously.

She looked at Alex, at the grey eyes that seemed to see right into her soul, and with a heavy heart blurted out the words that needed to be said.

‘You’ve probably guessed I was with someone at the congress. My husband. I left him that night. I haven’t seen him since. I started divorce proceedings eighteen months ago, but as I haven’t heard from the lawyers I don’t know if it’s gone through so I could, technically, still be married.’

Alex seemed to be waiting for more, his eyes fixed on her face, then he smiled.

‘Are you telling me this in case I have strong feelings about dating married women? Believe me, Annie, if you haven’t lived with the guy for five years, I don’t think you count as married any more, so you can’t escape me that way.’

The teasing tone in his voice warmed all the cold places in her body that thinking about Dennis had produced, but as she replayed all the words—both hers and his—in her head, she realised she was still a long way from explaining exactly where things now stood between her and Dennis.

Not that she knew for certain…

Alex was talking again and she shut away the sudden tremor of fear.

‘Annie,’ he said gently, ‘you must know there are plenty of places in the States where divorce is cheap and easy. Maybe he’s divorced you.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, though she doubted it. When the first of the private investigators had called her father—only two days after she’d left Traders Rest—her father had said Annie was in the US and as far as he knew still with Dennis. Her father had also supplied the man with the name and contact details of the family’s solicitors and asked that all contact be made through the firm, which meant there’d always been an address available for the service of papers or for information about a ‘quickie’ divorce.

‘Well, as I said, it doesn’t matter,’ Alex reiterated. ‘Now, would you like to put your hand back on the table? I think on a first date, even in Australia, we’d be allowed to hold hands.’

Annie smiled at the weak joke, but as her fingers were now icy from remembering, she was happy to rest her hand back on the table, appreciating the warmth of his when he placed it on top of hers.

He gave her fingers a squeeze, thanked the waiter who’d brought their wine and then said, ‘My mother always said to show interest in one’s companions—ask about their jobs and so on. But I know all about your job and you know about mine, and we’ve already talked about the pets and the food, so I guess we might be up to families. Is it just you and your father in yours? Having had my sister visit last year, I can only see that as a blessing, although I suppose it’s been fun having her around. She was an afterthought, my sister. Three boys, then when the youngest was eight along came Frances. I was thirteen, old enough to understand the basic sex education we’d had at school, so you can imagine how horrified I was to realise my mother and father must have done that to have produced Frances! Totally grossed me out for a long time!’