Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret (8 page)

Lexi felt her heart give an almighty stumble. Could it be true? Had her father threatened him? Was that why he had disappeared without a trace, without even saying goodbye to her? She thought of how furious her father had been with her when he had discovered she had been involved with Sam. It had been the first time she had been on the receiving end of his wrath and it had totally crushed her. She had always been the one
who pleased him. It was her role in the family: Daddy’s little girl.

Evie was the academically gifted one, the mother substitute who had taken on all the responsibility of looking after the family after their mother had left. The nannies and au pairs their father had organised had had nothing on Evie. She was the go-to sister, the one who had always made sure they got everything they needed.

Bella was the middle one, the chronically sick and incredibly shy child who had not been expected to live past her early twenties, if that. Their father had made it more than clear that he felt repulsed by Bella’s sickness and her shyness was another strike against her. He thought it brought shame to the family name to have a daughter who blushed and could barely string two words together in the company of anyone outside the family.

Growing up without a mother on hand, Lexi had idolised her father. She had come to realise that deep down she was terrified he too might leave if she didn’t please him. Being a social butterfly was her way of feeling needed. She loved being surrounded by people, and parties were a perfect place to showcase her talent at working a room. Even as young as five she had been able to pass around plates of canapés like an accomplished hostess four times her age. And it had only got better as she’d grown into young womanhood. She had lapped up her father’s approval with every event or party she had helped him organise. His praise had been like an elixir she’d needed to survive. It had been the only way to feel close to him.

Maybe Sam was making it up, maybe it wasn’t true. Her father would never have gone that far, would he? The memories, long buried deep inside her, bubbled to
the surface—her father’s fury, how long it had taken her to get back into his good books, what she’d had to do to prevent him finding out about the baby … Suddenly, it felt like she had been betrayed by him in the most devastating way.

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she looked up at Sam’s face. She had to know. ‘Did my father really threaten to end your career?’ she asked.

Sam’s expression was impossible to read. ‘It’s not important now, Alexis,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out between us anyway. I was too career-oriented to give you the time and attention you needed. It was just a crazy lust-driven fling. I should’ve had better control.’

Lexi felt a choked-up feeling at the back of her throat as she looked up at him. If only she had known what had been at stake for him. If only she had known he hadn’t really had a choice but to leave. It was so heartbreaking to think about what could have been if only she had known what had gone on between him and her father.

Her chest rippled with a spasm of pain. Would their baby have had his dark brown eyes and light brown hair, or would it have had her blue eyes and blonde tresses? Would it have been a girl or a boy? If things had been different, their baby would be in preschool now. He or she would be learning to recognise letters, making friends, finger painting, making things with Play-Doh: all the innocent things of childhood.

Lexi had made her decision based on what she had known at the time and it had been the hardest thing she had ever done. She had been so frightened of her father’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy. She had felt so unprepared for the responsibilities of motherhood. She hadn’t been able to talk to anyone about it. She had
hidden it from everybody. She hadn’t even told her sisters. Not even Evie, who would have surely helped her and guided her. Instead, she had booked herself into a clinic, miles away in the outer suburbs where her name wouldn’t be connected with the powerful and influential Lockheart name. She had stoically faced the impersonal removal of Sam’s baby, but on the inside she was devastated that she’d had to make such a harrowing decision. The bottomless well of sadness over that time never seemed to ease, no matter how hard she tried to put it behind her.

Lexi was aware that they were still in the bar surrounded by people but she had never felt so utterly alone. It was like a glass wall was around her, a thick impenetrable wall that had locked her inside with her sorrow.

‘Why do you keep calling me Alexis?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t call me Lexi like you used to do.’

An irritated frown carved deep into his forehead. ‘You know why,’ he said. ‘We need some distance.’

‘How much distance do you want?’ she asked. ‘I’m based at the hospital and I’m not leaving just because you’ve flown back into town. You can’t pretend it never happened, Sam. It did and nothing you do or say will ever change that.’

The strong column of his throat moved up and down as if he was trying to swallow a boulder. ‘Don’t do this, Alexis,’ he said. ‘Don’t try and pretend our fling was something it wasn’t. You only got involved with me to get back at your father. An act of rebellion, he called it.’

Lexi looked at him with tears burning like acid at the back of her eyes but only sheer willpower prevented
them from appearing, let alone falling. Could this possibly get any worse? As if her father’s threats against Sam hadn’t been enough. Had her father really said that, lied like that? How could the parent she had adored for as long as she could remember deliberately sabotage her relationship with the man she had thought might be the only one for her? It was a devastating blow to see her father in such a light. He had put his own interests ahead of her happiness. What sort of parent did that to their child? ‘Is
that
what he told you?’ she asked.

He closed his eyes briefly as if this was all a horrible dream and she would disappear when he opened them again. ‘I don’t want to cause trouble between you and your father,’ he said. ‘Our relationship wouldn’t have lasted either way. We had nothing in common. We were on completely different pathways.’

‘You being Mr Ambitious and me being an empty-headed social butterfly with no aspirations beyond shopping and partying?’ she asked, emotion bubbling up inside her like scalding lava.

He raked a hand through his hair in a distracted manner. ‘Alexis …’ He caught her glacial look and amended on an out breath, ‘Lexi …’

‘You think I didn’t have aspirations?’ Lexi said bitterly. ‘You have no idea. Do you think I didn’t want to do well at school and go to university? I could have achieved way more than I did but how could I do that to Bella? Tell me that, country boy. I had a sister two years older than me who ended up in the same class as me at school. She had to stay back because of her illness. How could I outshine her? How do you think that would have made her feel? I had to play down my talents so she could feel good about herself for just a few moments each day. I wanted to do well but she was
more important. So don’t talk to me about my lack of ambition. Sometimes there are situations that require sacrifice, not ambition at the cost of those you love. I chose the former, so shoot me.’

It was a great exit line and Lexi used it. She pushed past the knot of people blocking the exit and stumbled out into the street. But home was the last place she wanted to be. She wasn’t ready to face her father after this evening’s revelations.

Right now she desperately needed to be alone.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
AM
was walking along the corridor after finishing a ward round on the following Monday afternoon when he saw Lexi coming towards him. As soon as she saw him she swiftly turned on her heel and started walking quickly back the way she had come.

‘Lexi, wait,’ he said, increasing his strides to catch up. ‘Can I have a quick word?’

She stopped and turned, sending him a hard little glare. ‘I’m on my way to visit Bella.’

‘Bella’s resting,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been in to see her. She’s having some oxygen to boost her levels. Just give me a couple of minutes, OK?’

She let out a long hissing breath. ‘All right, if you insist.’

‘I insist,’ Sam said. ‘But not here in the corridor.’ He pushed open the door of the on-call room and waited for her to go in.

Lexi brushed past him with her head at a haughty angle. ‘This had better not take long,’ she said.

‘It won’t, I promise.’

Sam closed the door and allowed himself the luxury of sweeping his gaze over her. She was breathtakingly beautiful, dressed in corporate wear that on another woman could have looked conservative and boring
but on her looked absolutely stunning. The prim white blouse hugged her breasts and the narrow skirt teamed with high heels gave her a sexy secretary look that was distinctly distracting. Her perfume drifted towards him as she folded her arms across her body and a tendril of hair escaped from the neat chignon she had fashioned at the back of her swan-like neck. Everything about her fired his blood to fever pitch. It was impossible to be in the same room as her and not want to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless.

His body remembered every contour and curve of hers: her sensual mouth and the way it had fed so hungrily off his; her soft hands with their dancing fingertips that had set his skin on fire; the way her long, slim legs had wrapped around his waist as he’d plunged into her hot moistness; the way her body had gripped him tightly as if she’d never wanted to let go; the way her hips had moved in time with his, her breathing just as frantic as his own gasps; the way her platinum-blonde hair had spread like a halo around her head in the throes of passion; and the way she had gasped his name, her body convulsing in ultimate pleasure, triggering his own cataclysmic release. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t remove the memory of her touch from his mind, much less his body. She wore another man’s ring but, heaven help him, he still wanted her.

She tapped her foot on the floor impatiently. ‘Well?’

Sam let out a long breath. ‘Lexi, I owe you an apology. I should’ve come to see you before I left for the States. It was wrong of me to just up and leave like that. I didn’t think about your end of things at all. I just believed what your father said about you and left it at that. I realise now that I should’ve at least listened to your side.’

Her blue eyes were still hostile, the set of her shoulders stiff with tension. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, it’s not all,’ Sam said. ‘I took on board what you said about the sacrifices you’ve made to protect Bella.’

She didn’t move or speak, just stood there watching him silently, accusingly.

Sam took another breath and slowly released it. ‘I should’ve realised the adjustments you’ve had to make,’ he said. ‘I know more than most how the squeaky wheel gets the oil in families and how other siblings can feel left out or isolated as a result.’

‘Fine,’ Lexi said. ‘Can I go now?’

Sam frowned. ‘You’re not making this easy on me.’

Her eyes hit his like blue diamonds. ‘Why should I?’

‘You’re right,’ Sam said, letting his shoulders down on a sigh. ‘Why should you?’

He was still trying to get his head around this new Lexi. Not the party girl but the young woman who loved her sister so much that she put her own interests to one side. It went against everything she had told him about herself back then. During their short fling she had laughed off his comments about her lack of ambition. She had said how much she loved the social circuit, how all she had time for was fun, not boring old stuffy studying. Those had been her exact words. He had thought at the time it was such a waste given that he’d had to work so hard to get to medical school.

Unlike Lexi, he hadn’t gone to a fee-paying school with the best resources on hand. He had toughed it out in the bush in between helping his father run their drought-ravaged sheep property. He had missed days, sometimes weeks of school to help nurse his mother through the last stages of her kidney disease. Catching up with his studies had been an added burden eclipsed
by worry about his mother’s declining health and the quiet desperation he’d seen in his father’s sun-weathered face whenever he’d looked at his wife lying listlessly in the bedroom of the rundown homestead.

Hearing Lexi say she had deliberately sabotaged her educational achievements to protect her sister was something that had touched Sam deeply. It had made him take pause. He had not realised what a compassionate person she was. Her shallow party-girl persona was a clever artifice for a sensitive young woman who clearly suffered a lot of survival guilt. She had thrown herself into fundraising for SHH, but what else would she have secretly loved to have done? What dreams and aspirations had she put to one side in order to protect her sister from feeling inadequate?

It was part of his job to deal with the families of transplant patients. He understood the dynamics, the sometimes tricky family situations that fed into the patients’ outcomes, whether they liked it or not. He wanted to do a good job on Bella, not just because she was Lexi’s older sister but because she was a deserving recipient of a lung donation. But even more than that he wanted to make sure Lexi got her chance to shine. Operating on her sister could well be the most important transplant he had ever performed.

Sam looked at her standing there with a mutinous expression on her beautiful face. Anyone seeing her now would assume she was a sulky spoilt brat but he felt like the scales had been removed from his eyes. He could see the hint of vulnerability in her ocean-blue gaze and the almost imperceptible quiver of her bottom lip, as if she was holding back a storm of emotions. ‘Why did you get involved with me?’ he asked. ‘Why me and not someone else?’

‘It wasn’t an act of rebellion,’ she said. ‘It was nothing like that.’

‘Then what was it?’

She unfolded her arms and used one of her hands to brush back her hair. ‘I can’t explain why,’ she said. ‘It just … it just happened.’

Sam watched as she moved restlessly to the other side of the room, her arms folded protectively across her body. Her cheeks were a delicate shade of pink as if the memory of their time together unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. Her saw her beautiful white teeth sink into the soft fullness of her bottom lip. It was one of her most engaging habits, one he suspected she was largely unaware of. It gave her a look of innocence and guilelessness; the potent mix of sexy woman and innocent girl was totally captivating.