Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret Read Free

mockingquiver 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 voicepurring 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