A December To Remember

Six and he’d lost an arm. And he understood her language. A well of tears threatened, which was so unprofessional. Do that and Louise would be putting her back on that train. Gulping hard, she turned to the next child. But seriously? She really had nothing to complain about.

The next half hour sped by with Ellie sitting and chatting with each child. Not all of them understood her words but they must’ve picked up on her empathy and her teasing because soon they all crowded around touching her, pointing at themselves and laughing a lot. Over the next few days she’d get to know them better as she changed dressings and helped with rehab, but this first meeting was unbelievable. She filed away each name and face so that she’d never have to ask them again. They deserved her utmost respect and she’d make sure they got it.

‘Ellie? Ellie Baldwin, is that really you?’ The male voice coming from across the room was filled with surprise and pleasure.

She snapped her head up and stared into a familiar pair of grey eyes she hadn’t seen in four years. Mind you, they’d been angry grey then, like deep, wild ocean grey. ‘Luca?’ Her heart pounded loud in her ears. ‘Luca, I don’t believe this.’

‘It’s me, El.’ No one else dared call her that. Ever.

As she stepped forward Louise was prattling an explanation about why she was here, but Ellie cut her out and concentrated on her old friend and housemate. Concentrated hard to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Checking this truly was Luca Chirsky, even when she knew it was the man she’d shared notes and rosters with at med school, and more than a few beers at the pub or in the house they’d lived in with Renee and another trainee doctor. Time hadn’t altered his good looks. Though he did appear more muscular than she remembered, which only enhanced the package. Bet the ladies still plagued him. Some plagues were okay, he’d once joked.

Finally she said, ‘I haven’t seen you in forever.’ Wow, this was a fantastic bonus to her trip. A surprise. She shivered. A good surprise, she told herself. ‘Who’d have believed we’d meet up here of all places?’

Then she was being swung up in strong arms and spun in a circle. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’ Those eyes were twinkling at her as they used to before she’d gone off to marry Freddy. This was Luca. He had never hesitated with telling her what he thought of her fiancé, none of it good. The thrill of seeing him again dipped. If only there were some way of keeping her marriage bust-up from Luca.

Not a chance. ‘Didn’t you say your name was Thompson?’ Louise asked from somewhere beside them. ‘I’m not going deaf as well as forgetful, am I?’

Luca almost dropped Ellie to her feet. His finger lifted her chin so he could eyeball her. ‘You’ve gone back to Thompson, eh?’ Then he deliberately looked at her left hand, which was still gripping his arm, her ring finger bare of a wedding band, and then back to lock his gaze on hers. ‘So you’re single again.’ He didn’t need to say, ‘I warned you.’ It was there in the slow burn of his eyes, changing his pleasure at seeing her to caution.

Ice-like fingers of disappointment skittered across her arms. So much for being excited to see Luca. She’d had a momentary brain fade. Having a few of them today. After all this time without any contact between them he’d gone for the jugular straight up. Guess that put their friendship where it belonged—in the past. She didn’t understand why. They’d been so close nothing should’ve affected their friendship. The last person on the planet she’d expected to find here was Luca, and he knew too much about her for these weeks to now be a quiet time. She could do without playing catch-up, or the shake of his head every time he said her surname. Luca would cloud her thinking and bring back memories of where she’d planned on being by now if she hadn’t gone and got married. Plans she’d sat up late at night discussing endlessly with him until she’d started dating Freddy.

Even now Luca’s head moved from side to side as he said, ‘Seems you’re right, Louise. Ellie Thompson she is.’

Fatigue combined with annoyance and a sense of let-down to come out as anger. ‘Are Mrs Chirsky and your child here? Or are they back in New Zealand awaiting your return?’

The expression on his face instantly became unreadable as he took a step back from her. ‘Don’t go there, Ellie,’ he warned.

So he could give her a hard time and she should remain all sweetness and light. Too bad she’d forgotten how to do that since that fateful morning she’d found Freddy in bed with more than a pillow. ‘Or what?’ she snapped. Last time they’d talked he’d been gearing up for his wedding. More like girding up. There’d been a pregnancy involved that he definitely hadn’t been happy about. Nor would he talk to her about it, or anything going on in his life then. He’d clammed up tighter than a rock oyster. Kind of said where their friendship had got to.

Louise tapped her arm. ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room so you can unpack and take a shower.’

It was the worried look Louise kept flicking between her and Luca that dampened down Ellie’s temper; nothing that Luca had said. ‘I’m sorry. I must sound very ungrateful. I’d really like to see where I’m staying.’ She didn’t want Louise thinking her and Luca couldn’t work together, because they could. It would just be a matter of remaining professional and ignoring the past. Easy as.

Luca picked up her bag before she could make a move. ‘I’ll take that.’

Louise scowled. ‘Maybe you could catch up with Ellie later when she’s had some sleep.’

To lighten the atmosphere that she’d created just by being here, Ellie forced a laugh. ‘Trust me, there won’t be any talking about anything past, present or future for the next twenty-four hours. I’m all but comatose on my feet. The sooner I can lie down, the better. I got no sleep at all on the train from Bangkok. The carriage was too noisy and stuffy.’

Luca draped an arm over her shoulders. ‘That’s what planes are for, El. They’re comfortable and fast, and the cabin crew even feeds you.’ Back to being less antagonistic, then. His use of El was a clue.

‘Remind me of that later when I come up with some other hare-brained scheme for getting home.’ She’d left booking flights as she had no idea what she might want to do next, where she might go to fill in the weeks between this job and the position she was taking up early in January. Following Louise, Luca’s arm still on her shoulders and feeling heavy, yet strong and familiar, she sucked in on her confusion. Maybe she did need familiar right now. Maybe her old friend could help her by going back over that time when she’d made the monumental error of thinking she loved Freddy more than her future and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Now she wanted to reroute her life and, if she stopped being so defensive, talking to Luca might turn out to be the fix she needed. If he didn’t rub her nose in what had happened, they should be able to get along just fine. Surely their past friendship counted for something?

Then heat prickled Ellie’s skin. Damn, but she needed a shower. She probably smelled worse than roadkill that had been left in the sun for days. Except this heat felt different from what she’d been experiencing all morning.

She shrugged away from Luca’s arm and straightened up the sags in her body. ‘I’m looking forward to catching up.’ She smiled at Luca. The heat intensified when he smiled back. Most unusual. Had to be excitement over seeing him again, despite the shaky start. ‘But not today.’

Might as well go for friendly; after all they used to be very good at it. There’d been a time, when they were sharing that house, that there was little they didn’t know about each other. At one point just before they’d finished their first year as junior doctors she’d wondered if they might’ve had a fling. They’d seemed attracted to each other in a way they’d never been before, and then she’d met Freddy and that had been that. Eventually she’d moved to Wellington and lost contact with Luca and the others she’d lived with for so long, until the beginning of the year when she’d caught up with Renee and now shared an apartment with her. Ellie had presumed Luca had married and become a father. Seemed she’d been wrong.

Thankfully today she could categorically state she felt no attraction for Luca at all. Not a drop. That heat had been something out of the blue. Hell, today she was struggling with the friendship thing after the way he’d looked at her with that ‘I told you so’ in his sharp eyes. It made her want to grind her teeth and kick him in the shin. It reminded her how he used to be so positive about diagnoses when they were junior doctors. That was ‘the look’ he’d become known for. Unfortunately he was more often right than wrong about everything.

Just like his prediction about her ex. Except not even Luca had got it as bad or humiliating as the demise of her marriage had turned out to be.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_87ec051c-c577-5d69-baeb-d8cda8234cc1)

‘KNOCK ME OVER,’ Luca muttered as he stood back for Ellie and Louise to enter the small room that would be El’s home for the next month. Ellie Thompson had popped up out of nowhere in full splendour, if a little bedraggled around the edges. All that thick, dark blonde hair still long and gleaming, while her eyes watched everything and everyone, though now there was a wariness he’d never seen before. ‘Your smile’s missing.’ Did he really say that out loud?

Ellie lifted those eyes to him and he saw her weariness. ‘It’s probably back in the third carriage of the overnight train I was on.’

Somehow Luca didn’t believe her exhaustion was all to do with her trip. It appeared ingrained in her bones and muscles as well as deep in those hazel eyes, even in her soul. So not the Ellie he used to know and had had a lot of fun with. What had Baldwin done to her? Played around behind her back? That had always been on the cards. The guy had never been able to keep his pants zipped, even when he’d first started dating Ellie. It had broken Luca’s heart when Ellie had told him the guy loved her and was over being the playboy since he’d asked her to marry him. The old ‘leopard and its spots’ story. But she hadn’t wanted to hear what he could’ve told her. Then his own problems had exploded in his face and he’d been too caught up dealing with Gaylene’s lies and conniving to notice Ellie’s departure.

Placing her bag on the desk, he turned for the door. ‘We’ll catch up when you’ve had forty winks.’

‘Make that a thousand and forty.’

‘You okay, El? Like, really deep down okay?’ he asked, worry latching on to him. They might’ve been out of touch but she used to be his closest friend. He’d never replaced her and would still do anything for her—if only she ever asked.

Her eyes were slits as that hazel shade glittered at him. ‘Never been better,’ she growled. ‘Now, can you leave me to settle in?’

‘On my way. Or do you want me to show you where the showers are?’

‘I’ll do that.’ Louise stepped between them. Putting a hand on his arm, she pushed lightly. ‘Go check up on little Hoppy.’ Then her phone rang and she stepped away. After listening for a few seconds she said, ‘Hang on. Sorry, Ellie, I’ll be a couple of minutes. Aaron left the shopping list in the kitchen.’

Ellie’s shoulders slumped as she watched Louise bustle away. ‘All I want is a shower and some sleep.’

Luca’s heart rolled over for her so he reached out for her hand and gently tugged her close. ‘Come on, grab your toiletries and that towel and I’ll show you where to go.’

She did as he said, silently. What had that man done? Or was this truly just jet lag and a sleepless night on the train making her like this? ‘El, while you’re showering I’ll make you a sandwich and grab a bottle of water. You must be starving.’

‘You still call me El.’ Now there was a glimmer of a smile touching her lips. ‘I’m fractionally shorter and nowhere near as beautiful as the model you wanted to compare me with. I’m fatter too.’

‘The hell you are. You’re thinner than I’ve ever seen you.’ And he didn’t like it.

The smile fell away, and she shivered. ‘I needed to lose weight.’

‘I’ll have to start calling you stick insect.’ He grinned to show he was teasing, something he’d never had to do before when they’d spent a lot of time together. But he needed to know what was going on. Something had happened to her. He’d swear it.

‘I’ve been called worse.’ Distress blinked out at him.

He opened his mouth without thinking about what he’d say. ‘Who by?’ When she winced he draped an arm over her shoulders to hold her in against him as they walked along the path to the ablutions block. ‘What did that scumbag do to you?’ he asked next, struggling to hold onto a rare anger.

Just like that, crabby Ellie returned. Her back straightened as she yanked her shoulders free of his arm. The face she turned on his was red and tight, her eyes sparking like a live wire. A dangerous live wire. ‘You haven’t told me if your wife’s living over here with you.’

She fought dirty, he’d give her that. Her being Ellie, that meant she was hiding something. Stepping farther away from her, he waved along the path. ‘Third door down are the showers. I’ll get one of the kids to put that sandwich and water in your room.’ He spun away to stride towards the clinic, where he could bury himself in patients’ problems and not worry about what might’ve happened to Ellie. Strange, but for a long time he hadn’t thought about what Gaylene had tried to do to him all those years ago, certainly not since he’d arrived here. It wasn’t as though Ellie and Gaylene went hand in hand, but the friendship he’d had with El had gone belly up at that time.

‘Luca.’ A soft hand touched his biceps. ‘Luca, stop, please.’

He turned midstride to face Ellie, and instantly his anger dissipated. It wasn’t her fault that he’d been made a fool of way back then. ‘I’m sorry.’