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HEART AT RISK

Helen Shelton

Cardiologist Dr. Annabel Stuart really enjoys her job, but when her ex-husband, Luke Geddes, is appointed as Consultant Cardiologist and Medical Director, her hard-won veneer of contentment looks like being disrupted. As for Luke, he’s astonished that the vibrant, sexy girl he remembers now looks like a frump! He’s also deeply upset to realize that what he remembers as a mutual parting was anything but for Annie. Yet the problems that drove them apart still exist…

In the
pale light filtering through the grimed and narrow window above the cubicle's chipped basin Annabel looked fragile and timid. Her hair shimmered like a copper halo around her head but the shadows under her cheek-bones had turned into great caverns and her pale-fringed grey eyes looked like huge, frightened pools in a stark white face.

Disgusted with her pathetic appearance, she rubbed the heels of her hands roughly across her cheeks to draw some colour then tried narrowing her eyes a little. Since that wasn't that much better she lifted a hand back to her face and cupped her chin and the side of her cheek, supporting her elbow with her opposite hand. If she couldn't manage robust and confident she could at least strive for intellectual rather than waif-like.

'Hello,
Lake. Hello!
Hello!' She grimaced. She sounded like a chicken with a sore throat. She took a step back then tried that again with a lower pitch and a more formal address. 'Hello, Professor. Welcome to St Peter's.' She lowered her arm slowly and put her hand out to shake it, then withdrew it jerkily and returned to her previous position. 'Me?' She lifted one of her shoulders. 'Oh, I'm fine,' she murmured. 'Yes, fine. Just fine. Yes, only six years. Can you believe it? It seems like an infinity ago.'

The sound of the outer door to the restroom swinging open sent her spinning away from the basin, and by the time the inner door was shoved wide she was wiping her dry hands on a paper towel, a fixed smile in place.

'Oh, hi, Dr Stuart!' Hannah, her registrar, came rushing in, her colour high. 'You're late for the reception. Are there problems on the wards?'

'None I've been told about,' Annabel said unsteadily. She held the door open. 'I'm on my way to meet Professor Geddes now.' She noted the flushed animation illuminating the younger doctor's normally placid face. 'I take it he hasn't left yet.'

'Oh, no, he's still there,' Hannah told her breathlessly.
'Mmm.'

Annabel studied her briefly, then turned away. 'I'd best get along then.'

The seminar room where the welcoming reception was being held was twenty yards off the main hospital corridor in the direction of the administrative offices and Annabel could hear the buzz of excited conversation from outside the closed doors. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door, accepted the unwanted polystyrene cup of orange juice someone shoved into her hand, looked quickly around the gathered crowd, then managed a tense smile for the elderly consultant who immediately started making his way through the throng towards her.

'Annabel!' Harry exclaimed. 'Where've you been hiding? You must be the only doctor in the place who hasn't rushed up to be introduced to your new boss yet.'

Tempted, for what felt like the hundredth time, to flee, Annabel started to mutter some brief excuse, only Harry's hand curved around to the small of her back and he propelled her firmly forward when what she really wanted was to make her own way in her own time. Like perhaps in another six years. Or maybe in twelve. Or, better, given the goose-bumps already breaking out all the way from her arms to her ankles as she felt Luke's attention swing to her, in a couple of decades or more.

She'd assumed that time would have granted her some degree of immunity to him, but her hope that the years might have thickened his middle or thinned his hair had been forlorn. His hair, although shorter than he used to wear it, was still thick and dark and the superb fit of the expensive-looking, moss-coloured suit he wore told her that, however hard he'd worked during his years in Boston, he'd still found time for his squash.

Not, though, that she'd needed to see him herself to know he hadn't exactly grown ordinary. The frenetic excitement of at least half the hospital's staff these past four days had served as an unpleasant reminder of Luke's effect on women.

Good looks and an athletic body combined with intelligence and power, was always attractive in a man, she conceded. But Luke's appeal was heightened by his cold indifference to his own attractions and the fascination they provoked. His priority in his life was his career, and women who were challenged by that and brave enough to go after him regardless invariably ended up with singed wings and emotions in tatters.

And Annabel knew how it felt to be driven to pursue Luke. Remembering how brazenly she'd once chased him, it could make her skin burn.

'You're just about the only female member of staff who hasn't been trying to bribe me to let her jump the queue to meet him.' Harry, murmuring close to her ear, sounded proud and she realised he was taking personal credit for Luke's popularity. 'Even the clerical staff have been falling over themselves.'

Annabel sent him a quick, dry look. Poor Harry, she thought weakly. Did he think the secretarial staff were flocking to admire Luke's distinguished
academic
achievements?

With all the time she'd spent lately practising neutral greetings and looking composed in front of mirrors she'd thought she had a good chance of handling this first meeting without actually making an idiot of herself, but when she lifted guarded grey eyes and met Luke's enigmatic green regard head on for the first time, the impact of him, the total, disconcerting
familiarity
of him, slammed into her brain like a lorry into a twig.

She faltered, momentarily broadsided, but thankfully Harry seemed not to notice. 'Annabel Stuart, this is Luke Geddes,' he pronounced, although, of course, there'd never been any doubt about the identity of the man waiting silently beside him.
'Professor
Luke Geddes, that is,' Harry added with a beam, pushing his spectacles a little higher on his rounded nose and stressing the title with such characteristic pomposity that Annabel, despite her numbness, was aware of a surge of fondness for the elderly physician.

'Naturally we're thrilled to have him now on staff,' Harry burbled on. 'Luke, you'll remember I've mentioned Annabel to you already. She might be young but she's one of our finest cardiologists. Of course, since your spheres of clinical work are similar, the two of you will be working closely together from now on. I'm sure Annabel's keen to show you around the place, Luke. She'll be eager to help you settle in.'

I'd rather eat worms, Annabel thought numbly, but she confined her greeting to a strictly conventional, practised, if husky, 'Hello, Professor Geddes. Hello. Welcome to St Peter's.'

Determined to avoid alerting her colleagues to their previous relationship, she'd decided in advance to use Luke's formal title. Although Harry had murmured an apology and turned away to talk to one of the senior surgeons, meaning he probably couldn't hear her, her brain wasn't working well enough yet to allow any deviation from her plan. Shifting her orange juice into her left hand, she extended her right. The last thing she wanted was physical contact with Luke, but they were surrounded by people and she was determined to be seen to be doing the right thing.

'Annie.' Luke's shrewdly observant eyes narrowed fractionally but he shook the hand she'd offered him without hesitation. His grip was steady and dry and firm enough for her to be overwhelmingly aware of his strength, without him actually crushing her hand. Proof that her own palm was heated and damp, her grip too weakly tentative to be pleasant, came with the swift way he released her again.

'It's been a long time,' he added, the attractive deepness of his voice emphasising the strengthening of the American accent he'd always possessed, even when he'd lived in Britain, courtesy of his Minnesota childhood and American mother. 'You look...very different. I barely recognised you.' His regard where it dropped to assess her fell far short of approving and she felt herself beginning to bristle the way only Luke could make her bristle. 'How have you been?'

She sent another nervous look towards Harry, reassuring herself, since Luke clearly didn't share her determination to keep their knowledge of each other private, that he was still otherwise occupied, before responding tightly, 'Fine.' She knew, and his critical inspection reminded her again, that she had changed these past years. However, unlike Luke, she considered her carefully groomed short hairstyle and her respectable-length beige dress a vast improvement on the tousled tresses and provocative outfits she'd favoured when she'd been young and confident enough to carry them off.

'I'm very well, in fact,' she added unevenly. 'I think better than I've ever been at any time in my life before.'

He tilted his head, his green eyes narrowing again. 'Really?'

'Really,' she confirmed stiffly. 'You seem to find that surprising, Luke. Are you disappointed? Did you expect to find me dressed in black and still in mourning for you?'

'Still
in mourning for me?' He stared her down. 'That's an odd thing to say, Annie. Are you trying to tell me you did once mourn?'

'Annie?'
Harry turned back to them unexpectedly and to her despair he'd caught Luke's disturbing shortening of her name. 'Have you and Annabel met already, Luke? Sorry. I didn't realise.'

Luke met Annabel's panicked look with a bland smile. 'Annabel and I go way back,' he said smoothly.

'You didn't mention that, Annabel.' Harry, she saw, when she tore her eyes away from Luke's dry regard, looked astonished. 'I'm sure you've never said—'

'We haven't seen each other in years,' Annabel interrupted, desperate to divert him before Luke told him any more. 'Luke and I both trained at the Free,' she added, referring to another London teaching hospital in what she hoped was a suitably offhand way. 'Of course he was a few years ahead of me—'

'More than a few,' Luke contributed pleasantly. 'Annabel and I met when I was a senior medical registrar at the Free and I lectured her class, Harry. She was a final-year medical student at the time.'

Harry's normally benign expression had turned from surprise to frank accusation. 'But you've never said anything, Annabel. Even when you knew I was flying to Boston to interview Luke you didn't tell me you were friends.'

Friends?
Annabel strove for what she hoped looked like a dismissive smile. 'We
used
to know each other, Harry.

We don't know each other now. It's six years since Luke and I last met. I didn't realise it was necessary to say anything.'

She knew that Harry, despite the fact that as of this week he was passing the reins of his command on to Luke and taking partial retirement, liked to think he was up with all the happenings at the hospital and with her. In his self-proclaimed position as benevolent mentor to her career, he took a keen interest in her and her life and she was sorry if her reticence about Luke had offended him.

The truth was, she'd had enough to cope with just coming to terms with Luke's appointment, without the added burden of trying to work out how best to explain their past relationship to the rest of the staff. Explain it, that was, in a way that wouldn't set them both up for months of unpleasant gossip.

She loved working at St Peter's. It was one of the finest specialist heart hospitals in the world and she felt wonderfully at home here. But in small hospitals, and in this small hospital in particular, practically everyone on staff knew everyone else. It wasn't easy to keep secrets. Especially one as juicy as this one.

'It really was a long, long time ago,' she added quietly, directing another pointed look towards Luke. 'I was surprised when I heard you were returning to London, Luke. I assumed you'd decided to make your career permanently in the US.'

'I've been considering coming back to London for a year.' He glanced at Harry. 'I've been away too long. I made enquiries when this job was advertised and Harry made me a good offer.'