Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret (2 page)

‘I have to go now,’ he said. ‘And, yes, that’s five words if you’re still counting.’

She lifted her chin. ‘I am.’

Sam looked into those bluer than blue eyes and felt as if he had just dived into the deepest, most refreshing ocean after walking through the driest, hottest desert for years. Her softly pouting mouth was one of those mouths that just begged to be kissed. He could recall the dewy soft contours under his own just by looking at her. He could even remember the feel of the sexy dart of her tongue as it played catch-me-if-you-can with his. Her platinum-blonde hair was in its usual disarray that somehow managed to look perfectly coiffed and just-out-of-bed-after-marathon-sex at the same time. He felt the rocket blast to his groin as he remembered having her in his bed, up against the wall, over his desk, on a picnic blanket under the stars …

Stop it, buddy
, he remonstrated with himself.

She had been too young for him before, and in spite of the years a world of experience separated them now. She was still a spoilt, rich kid who thought partying was a full-time occupation. He was on a mission to save lives that were dependent on transplant surgery.

Other people had to die in order for him to give life to others. He was
always
aware of that. Someone lost their life and by doing so he was given the opportunity to save another. He didn’t take his responsibility lightly. He had worked long and hard for his career. It had defined his life. He had given up everything to get where he was now. He could not afford, at this crucial time in his journey, to be distracted by a party girl whose biggest decision in life was whether to have floating candles or helium balloons at a function.

He had to walk away, just as he had before, but at least this would be his choice, made of his own free will.

‘You dented my car.’ It was not the best line he could have come up with but he had just taken delivery of the damned vehicle. To him it just showed how irresponsible she was. She hadn’t even looked as she’d flung open her door. It was just so typical of her and her privileged background. She had no idea how hard people had to work to get things she took for granted. She had been driven around in luxury cars all of her life. She didn’t know what it felt like to be dirt poor with no funds available for extras, let alone the essentials.

Just take his mother, for instance. Stuck on a long transplant list and living way out in the bush to boot, his mother had died waiting for a kidney. His working-class parents hadn’t had the money to pay for private health cover. They hadn’t even had the money to afford another child after him. He knew what it felt like to want things that were so out of your reach it was like grasping at bubbles, hoping they wouldn’t burst when your fingers touched them. In his experience they always burst.

Lexi was another bubble that had burst.

‘You call that a dent?’ Lexi bent over to examine the mark on the door.

Sam couldn’t stop his gaze drinking in the gorgeous curve of her tiny bottom. She was all legs and arms, coltish, even though she was now twenty-four. It didn’t seem to matter what she wore, she always looked like she had just stepped off a catwalk. Her legs were encased in skin-tight black pants that followed the long lines of her legs down to her racehorse-delicate ankles. She was wearing ridiculously high heels but he still
had a few inches on her. The hot-pink top she had on skimmed her small but perfectly shaped breasts and the ruby-and-diamond pendant she was wearing around her neck looked like it could have paid off his entire university tuition loan.

She smelled fabulous. He felt his nostrils flaring to breathe more of her fragrance in. Flowers, spring flowers with a grace note of sexy sandalwood, or was it patchouli?

She suddenly straightened and met his eyes. ‘It’s barely made a mark,’ she said. ‘But if you want to be so pedantic I’ll pay for it to be fixed.’

Sam elevated one of his brows mockingly. ‘Don’t you mean Daddy will pay for it?’ he asked.

She pursed her mouth at him and he had to stop himself from bending down and covering it with his own. ‘I’ll have you know I earn my own money,’ she said with a haughty look.

‘Doing what?’ he shot back. ‘Painting your nails?’

She narrowed her blue eyes and her full mouth flattened. ‘I’m Head of Events at SHH,’ she said. ‘I’m in charge of fundraising, including the gala masked ball to be held next month.’

Sam rocked back on his heels. ‘Impressive.’

She gave him a hot little glare. ‘My father gave me the job because I’m good at what I do.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ he said.
After all, partying was her favourite hobby
. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to.’

‘Is this your first day at SHH?’ Lexi asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you living?’

‘I’m renting an apartment in Kirribilli,’ he said. ‘I want to have a look around before I buy.’

A small frown puckered her smooth brow. ‘So you’re back for good?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Sam said. ‘My father’s getting on and I want to spend some time with him.’

‘Is he still living in Broken Hill?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s retired to the Central Coast.’

Sam was surprised she remembered anything about his father. It didn’t sit well with his image of her as a shallow, spoilt little upstart who had only jumped into bed with him as an act of rebellion against her overbearing father.

That had really rankled.

Damn it, it
still
rankled.

Their red-hot affair had only lasted a couple of weeks before her father Richard Lockheart had stepped in and told him what would happen to his career if he didn’t stop messing with his baby girl. To top it all off, it turned out she was six years younger than she had told him. It had been a jolting shock to find the young woman he had been sleeping with had only left high school the year before. Nineteen years old and yet she had looked and acted as streetwise and poised as any twenty-five-year old.

Sam had told her things during that short affair he had told no one else. Things about his mother’s death, like how hard it had been to watch her die, feeling so helpless, his father’s endless grieving, his own dreams of making a difference so no one had to go through what his family had suffered. For once in his life his emotional guard had come down and it had backfired on him. Lexi had used him like she used her social standing to get what she wanted. He had almost lost everything because of her puerile, attention-seeking little game.

When it came down to it, it had been a choice between relocating or sitting back and watching his career implode. To a working-class trainee who had lived on Struggle Street for most of his life, Sam knew that the well-connected and powerful Richard Lockheart could have done some serious damage to his career. He hadn’t taken those threats lightly. He had been lucky enough to be able to switch to the US training programme, and while it had cost him a packet, it had been the best thing he’d ever done. He had worked with some of the world’s leading transplant surgeons and now he was considered one of the best heart-lung surgeons on the planet. Everyone back home had believed he had transferred on a scholarship and he hadn’t said anything to contradict the rumour. Interestingly, neither, it seemed, had Richard Lockheart.

The appointment to SHH had been timely because he had been keen to come home for a couple of years. He missed his homeland and his father. The man was the only family he had. It was time to come home and put the past behind him.

Lexi was a part of his past but she had no place in his future. He had been captivated by her beauty and her alluring sensuality. But her party-girl mentality had been at odds with his career-focussed determination back then—just as much as it was at odds with it now. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by her. Even though the eleven-year age gap was no longer such an issue he didn’t want anything or anyone—particularly not red-hot little Lexi Lockheart—derailing his career plans.

Lexi flicked a strand of hair away that had drifted across her face. ‘How will I contact you?’ she asked.

Sam’s brows snapped together. ‘About what?’

‘About your car,’ she said, with another little mocking
quiver of her eyelids. ‘About the dent you need a magnifying glass to see.’

‘Forget about it,’ he said.

‘No, I insist,’ she said, taking out her mobile. ‘I’ll put you in my contacts.’ Her slim, beautifully manicured fingers poised over the data entry key.

And that’s when he saw it.

The diamond engagement ring on her finger seemed to be glinting at him like an evil eye, mocking him, taunting him.

Engaged
.

He felt his throat seize up.

Lexi was engaged
.

His mouth was suddenly so dry he couldn’t speak. His chest felt as if someone had backed over it with a steamroller. He couldn’t inflate his lungs enough to draw in a breath. His reaction surprised him. No, damn it, it shocked the hell out of him. She was nothing to him. What did it matter if she was engaged? It wasn’t as if he had any claim on her, certainly not an emotional one. He didn’t do emotion. He didn’t even like her, for goodness’ sake. She was an attention-seeking little tramp who thought bedding a boy from the bush was something to giggle about with her vacuous, equally shallow socialite girlfriends. Good luck to the man who was fool enough to tie himself to her.

Lexi looked up at him with an expectant expression. ‘Your number?’ she prompted.

Sam reluctantly rattled it off in a monotone he hardly recognised as his own voice. He had changed his number five years ago as a way of completely cutting all ties. He hadn’t wanted her calling him or texting him or emailing him. He didn’t want that soft sexy voice
purring in his ear. It had taken years to get the sound of her voice out of his head.

Engaged
.

Sam wondered what her fiancé was like. No, on second thought he didn’t want to know. He’d bet he was a preppy sort, probably hadn’t done a decent day’s work in his life.

Lexi was engaged. Engaged!

It was a two-sentence chant he couldn’t get out of his head. Cruel words he didn’t want to hear.

‘Do you want mine?’ she asked, tucking another wayward strand of platinum-blonde hair away from her face with her free hand. It had snagged on her shiny lip gloss. He guessed it was strawberry flavoured. He hadn’t eaten a strawberry in five years without thinking of the taste of her mouth.

He blinked. ‘Your … er what?’

‘My number,’ she said. ‘In case you want to contact me about the repairs?’

Sam swallowed the walnut-sized restriction in his throat. ‘Your car isn’t damaged.’

She looked at him for a moment before she closed her phone and popped it back in her bag. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s made of much tougher stuff, apparently.’

Sam’s gaze kept tracking to her ring. It was like a magnet he had no power to resist. He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to think about her planning a future with some other nameless, faceless man.

He didn’t want to think about her in that nameless, faceless man’s bed, her arms around his neck and her lips on his.

‘You’re engaged.’

He hadn’t realised he had spoken the words out loud until she answered, ‘Yes.’

‘Congratulations,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

Sam’s gaze tracked back to the ring. It was expensive. It suited her hand. It was a perfect fit. It looked like it had been there a while.

His chest cramped again, harder this time.

He brought his eyes back to hers, forcing his voice to sound just mildly interested. ‘So, when’s the wedding?’

‘November,’ she said, a flicker of something moving over her face like a shadow. ‘We’ve booked the cathedral for the tenth.’

The silence crawled from the dark corners of the basement, slowly but surely surrounding them.

Sam heard the scrape of one of her heels as she took a step backwards. ‘Well, I’d better let you get to work,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t be good to be late for your first day on the job.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That might not go down so well.’

The silence crept up to his knees again before he added, ‘It was nice to see you again, Alexis.’

She gave a tight smile by way of answer and walked off towards the lift, the sound of her heels click-clacking on the concrete floor striking totally unexpected and equally inexplicable hammer blows of regret in Sam’s heart.

CHAPTER TWO

L
EXI
got out on the medical ward floor with her heart still racing. She had to control her spiralling emotions, but how? How was she supposed to act as if nothing was wrong?

Sam was back
.

The shock was still reverberating through her like a dinner gong struck too hard. Her head was aching from the tattoo beating inside her brain.

Sam was back
.

She drew in a calming breath. She would have to act as if nothing was wrong. It wouldn’t do to reveal to everyone how shocked she was by his appointment. Had no one told her because they were worried how she would react or because they thought she wouldn’t even remember him? And how could she ask without drawing attention to feelings she didn’t want—
shouldn’t want
—to examine?

‘Hi, Lexi,’ one of the nurses called out to her. ‘I just bought my tickets for the ball. I can’t wait. You should see the mask I bought online. It’s fabulous.’

Lexi’s face felt like she was cracking half-dry paint when she smiled. ‘Great!’

The ball was the thing she was supposed to be focussed on, not Sam Bailey. It was the event of the year
and she was solely responsible for it. It was no secret that some people at SHH were sceptical over whether she would be up to the task. Rumours of nepotism abounded, which made her all the more determined to prove everyone wrong. The proceeds she raised would go to the transplant unit for the purchase of a new state-of-the-art heart-lung bypass machine. Government funding was never enough. It took the hard work of her and her fundraising team to bring to the unit those extras that made all the difference for a patient’s outcome.