French Fling To Forever

‘Dr Roberts.’ He gave a slight nod of his head, that lopsided grin never leaving him.

Shame flushed through Lola’s system, bringing tension to every muscle as she withdrew into herself. With as much dignity as was available to her in the circumstances, she unhooked her legs and swivelled around to sit in a more civilised pose.

Without the cover of her fellow juniors she had an unimpeded view of her uninvited guest’s handsome looks. There was no denying that the strong smooth jaw and the slightly too-long black hair curling around his ears, along with that accent, gave him all the ingredients for the ultimate heartthrob. But not for her. In her experience good looks tended to hide cruel hearts, and thus far he’d proved no exception.

This little performance simply provided him with more ammo against her. As if it was needed.

‘So this is how you spend your time off?’ he asked.

Lola got the impression that he thought she would be better employed brushing up on her medical know-how.

The injustice of being caught out on her one night of respite and the sticky heat of embarrassment at her compromising situation crept along her body and made her snap. ‘It is no one’s business but mine what I do outside hospital hours. So if you’ll excuse me…?’

She thought her heart would pound out of her chest as she retaliated. Normally she wouldn’t dream of speaking to her superior in such a fashion, but she felt trapped, vulnerable beneath his stare, and she’d learned to fight back whenever she was placed in that situation. She pulled off the suffocating feather boa and made to get up from her chair.

Angelique appeared at her side and placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Stay where you are. Henri’s just leaving—aren’t you, dear?’

She batted her false lashes and shooed him away—much to Lola’s relief.

Henri slunk to the back of the room to take a seat, shaking his head in bewilderment. The familiar scene that had met him behind the studio doors—cackling females sticking their asses out—usually didn’t impress him at all. But tonight, seeing one of his staff in Ange’s ragtag bunch, had caught him totally off guard.

Lola—that was her name. It really didn’t suit her. ‘Lola’ conjured up images of a showgirl, confident and sure of her every move. The opposite of what she’d shown today. As her supervisor, it now fell to him to draw those qualities from her. One more responsibility to add to his load, and certainly one he could do without.

She obviously had the book smarts to have got this far in her career, but as first appearances went…he was not impressed. He didn’t tolerate slacking in his department. Not when he’d already stood by and watched his sister let her medical career slip away without a fight.

Even now Lola appeared to have separated herself from the rest of the group, hiding away in the corner. Although the assertive nature he’d witnessed when he’d walked in and her feisty tone when she’d put him in his place was a complete departure from the hesitant junior doctor he’d encountered earlier.

Relegated to the role of peeping Tom, watching her from the shadows, he was mesmerised by her body-rolls. Every move of her hips showed off the lace-topped stockings under that minuscule skirt and called to his basest needs. Clearly it had been too long since his last hook-up with the opposite sex if the sultry fashion in which Lola straddled the chair seat was making him envy the damn thing!

It wasn’t a good idea to be thinking about his new recruit with her bouncy little blonde ponytail and ridiculous pink stethoscope this way. She’d already distracted him from the small matter of his niece’s apparent truancy, which he’d come to discuss with Angelique.

Ange stalked over to his corner to wag a finger at him. ‘I can’t afford to have you scaring off my customers, Henri.’

His older sister gave him that withering look guaranteed to make him regress back into the role of reprimanded teenager. Given the years he’d spent under her wing, he’d had many a rap on the knuckles from her—but he still respected her, and would never purposely do anything to make her regret the sacrifices she had made for him.

‘I only said hello,’ he muttered, still unable to take his eyes off the performance behind her.

‘Well, you shouldn’t be in here anyway,’ she huffed.

Angelique saved him the trouble of leaving by turning her back on him and ending the session with a round of applause for her trainee dancers.

‘Très bien. Great stuff, guys. I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight. I hope you’ve had fun.’

The flushed, smiling faces staring back at her said it all. Never one to miss an opportunity, she left him to go and hand out her business cards.

‘I know this lesson was probably intended as a one-off, but if you want to join us I run classes most evenings. It’s a great way to stay in shape and keep the man in your life very happy.’

The girls tittered. Henri groaned. He still couldn’t quite come to terms with her line of work. Especially when it was his fault she’d traded in a proper career to earn money dancing half naked. If their parents hadn’t been killed in that car crash, if Angelique hadn’t had to raise a teenage boy on her own, she might have been a respected medical professional by now.

All her studying had gone to waste, her bright future gone in a puff of smoke, in order for her to put food on the table for her little brother. They’d both been handed a life sentence that cold winter’s day which had robbed them of their mother and father. And where Angelique seemed to have made peace with the outcome, Henri knew he never would. He’d only managed to follow his dreams at the price of his sister’s.

The one consolation was that Ange’s audience these days mainly consisted of fun-loving females who wanted to learn burlesque, rather than inebriated leering men. If it hadn’t been for one of those men in particular, neither Henri nor Angelique would ever have left Paris for the rain-soaked streets of Northern Ireland. Then again, without the beau who’d enticed his sister to Belfast they wouldn’t have Gabrielle and Bastien in their lives—and that was unthinkable, even on the most trying of days.

Henri was forced to wait until Angelique’s students had heaped their praises and thanks upon her before he could get a word in.

His patience was wearing thin. They had much more important things to be doing—like trying to figure out why Gabrielle had decided to start skipping school. With Angelique’s ex-husband out of the picture, Henri felt even more obligated to his sibling. So much so that he’d undertaken a lot of parental responsibility for the children whose father had long since abandoned them. They needed to get to the bottom of Gabrielle’s recent behaviour, but it wasn’t a conversation he wished to have with an audience.

‘Can we go now? I’m not comfortable as the only eligible male in the company of so many desperate women.’

Angelique turned to him, and only then did Henri realise she wasn’t alone. The highlight of his evening stood open-mouthed behind her, emerald eyes now glittering with contempt.

Hands on hips, Lola took a step forward. ‘Funny—I didn’t get the memo that said we “desperate women” were dancing for anyone else’s benefit other than our own.’

Henri cursed himself for the overheard harsh words that had caused Lola’s soft pink lips to draw into a tight line.

Her features only softened when she addressed her instructor again. ‘Thanks for an enjoyable night and it was lovely to meet you.’

Lola tossed her golden mane of hair over her shoulder and, with self-righteous grace, made her exit, Henri put firmly in his place. The woman definitely had bite, and that had succeeded in piquing his interest. If only he could get her to show that passion and spirit in the workplace…

‘Idiot!’

Ange brought him back into the room. With half their lives having been spent living and working in Northern Ireland their native tongue had almost been rendered a distant memory, but her accent increased when she was angry—and, boy, was she angry.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just—’

‘I know you don’t like what I do, Henri, but this is how I make my living and you can’t be rude to my customers. Maybe it’s better if you stay away from now on.’

Ange didn’t give him a chance to explain his irritability as she threw props back into the box with a ferocity Henri knew she wanted to direct at him.

‘I won’t say another word. Promise. I’ll help you get locked up and then I’ll take you home.’

Where they could both confront his niece about what was going on. The only reason he hadn’t said anything to Gabrielle himself since the phone call from her headmistress was because he didn’t want to step on Angelique’s toes. It was her daughter they were dealing with, after all.

‘Thanks, but I’ll walk.’ She pulled on a mac over her scant outfit and flicked off the lights.

‘You can’t go out there like that!’

Henri forgot himself and once again voiced his concern about her fashion sense, regardless that she’d reminded him time and time again that he wasn’t her father. He couldn’t help himself. It didn’t bear thinking about that something should happen to the only important woman in his life and he hadn’t attempted to prevent it.

‘I’m an adult, Henri. I can look after myself, and sooner or later you’re going to have to realise that.’

She all but shoved him out through the door, and Henri was given the brush-off by a second woman in as many minutes.

Lola kept her back ramrod-straight until she reached her car and crumpled into the front seat. She had taken the opportunity to have a private word with Angelique when Jules and the others had gone on to the pub, toying with the idea of continuing the lessons in an effort to kick-start her self-esteem.

Textbooks were great for swotting up, but they didn’t help her deal with people face-to-face—and, for her, that remained the most daunting element of her job. For every model citizen she encountered, there were going to be times when she was alone with aggressive patients, or cocky men who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. She knew that, and accepted it, but she also knew she needed to get into the right frame of mind to deal with it effectively.

The protocol for those situations probably wasn’t to burst into tears and curl into a ball. It would take even more bravery than she’d mustered to leave home and go through medical school, to tell potential troublemakers to back off with any authority.