Marie shook her head. ‘You were very tactful. I hardly even noticed what you were doing most of the time. And you were my friend and you helped me. That’s something that goes both ways.’
He knew that. But he couldn’t talk to Marie about this. ‘I’m fine. Really. And I appreciate your concern.’
‘Just as long as you know that I’m always here for you.’
She reached out, touching his arm, and Alex almost flinched. All his senses were crying out for comfort, and yet he just couldn’t bring himself to ask. Was this the way she’d felt, despite all her self-sufficiency?
‘I know. Thank you.’
He’d meant to give her a basic friendly hug, the kind he’d given her so many times before. But when he felt her body against his he couldn’t let her go. Marie seemed to be the one thing in his life that wasn’t tainted right now.
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. But she turned her head and his lips brushed hers. Before he could tear himself away her gaze met his, her eyes midnight-blue in the darkness.
What if...?
What if...?
What if he could turn his back on the vision of his parents’ unhappy marriage and sustain a relationship for more than a few months? What if he could trust himself to get involved with the one person he cared about the most, even knowing he might break her heart and his? And what if everything he’d sought to escape hadn’t just caught him again in its iron clutches?
They were all serious questions that needed to be asked and answered before he took the step of kissing her. But then he felt her lips touch his and he was lost. Or maybe this was exactly what it was like to find himself. Alex wasn’t sure.
She was soft and sweet, and when he kissed her again she responded. Maybe it lasted a moment and maybe an hour. All Alex knew was that it was impossible to attach a time frame to something that was complete and perfect.
Even the way she drew away from him was perfect. A little sigh of regret, her eyes masked by her eyelashes.
He’d always supposed that kissing Marie was the one thing he mustn’t do. The one thing he wouldn’t be able to come back from. But in a sudden moment of clarity he realised that kissing her had only made him more determined that he couldn’t do it. Marie wasn’t just another pretty face he could walk away from without looking back. She was his friend, and he wanted her for a lifetime, not just a few months.
‘Do you want to go back in?’ If it meant keeping her then he had to let her go.
She still wouldn’t look at him. ‘Yes...’
He felt her move in his arms and let her go. Marie looked up at him for a moment, and he almost forgot that this had been a very bad idea that had the power to spoil something that had been good for years. Then suddenly she was gone, back into the restaurant to take her seat at the table again.
Alex waited, knowing the group always swapped places between courses, so everyone got to speak to everyone else. When he went back inside there was a free seat for him at the other end of the table from Marie. Alex sat down without looking at her, and was immediately involved in the heated debate about football which was going on between Emily and Will.
She didn’t meet his gaze until the restaurant closed and a waitress pointedly fetched everyone’s coats. Then, suddenly, he found himself standing next to her. He automatically helped her on with her coat and Marie smiled up at him.
‘I’ll see you next year. Be well, Alex.’
‘Yes. Next year...’
He’d scarcely got the words out before she was gone. Marie had made her meaning clear. They were friends, and nothing was going to spoil that. Not fire, nor flood, nor even an amazing, heart-shaking kiss. By next year it would be forgotten, and he and Marie would continue the way they always had.
The thought that he wouldn’t see her again until next February seemed more heart-rending than any of the other challenges he’d faced in the last six months.
CHAPTER TWO
The first Friday in May
IT WAS ONLY four stops on the Tube from the central London hospital where Marie worked, but shining architecture and trendy bars had given way to high-rise flats, corner shops and families with every kind of problem imaginable.
Marie knew about some of those problems first-hand. She’d grown up fifteen minutes’ walk away from the address that Alex had given her. Her father had left when she was ten, and her mother had retreated into a world of her own. Four miserable months in foster care had seen Marie separated from her three younger brothers, and when the family had got back together again she’d resolved that she’d keep it that way.
It had cost Marie her childhood. Looking after her brothers while her mother had worked long hours to keep them afloat financially. She’d learned how to shop and cook, and at the weekends she’d helped out by taking her brothers to the park, reading her schoolbooks while they played.
It had been hard. And lonely. After she’d left home she’d had a few relationships, but knowing exactly what it meant to be abandoned had made her cautious. She’d never found the kind of love that struck like a bolt of lightning, dispelling all doubts and fears, and the continuing need to look after her family didn’t give her too much time for regrets.
When she reached the Victorian building it looked just as ominous as she remembered it, its bricks stained with grime and three floors towering above her like a dark shadow in the evening sunshine. The high cast-iron gates creaked as Marie pulled them open, leaving flakes of paint on her hands.
‘This had better not be a joke...’
It wasn’t a joke. Alex’s practical jokes were usually a lot more imaginative than this. And when he’d called her it had sounded important. He’d made a coded reference to their kiss, saying that he wanted her to come as a professional favour to a friend, which told Marie that he’d done exactly as she’d hoped and moved past it. That was both a relief and a disappointment.
She pushed the thought of his touch to the back of her mind and made her way across the cracked asphalt in front of the building. There was a notice taped to the main door that advertised that this was the ‘Living Well Clinic’. Marie made a face at the incongruous nature of the name and pressed the buzzer, wondering if it was going to work.
The door creaked open almost immediately.
‘Hi. Thanks so much for coming.’ Alex was looking unusually tense.
‘My pleasure. What’s all this about, Alex?’
‘Come and see.’ He stood back from the doorway and Marie stepped inside, trying not to flinch as the door banged shut behind them.
‘Oh! This is a bit different from how I remember it.’
At the other end of the small lobby was an arch, which had been sandblasted back to the original brick, its colour and texture contrasting with the two glass doors that now filled the arch. As Marie approached them they swished back, allowing her into a large bright reception space, which had once been dingy cloakrooms.
And it wasn’t finished yet. Cabling hung from the ceiling and the walls had obviously been re-plastered recently, with dark spots showing where they were still drying out. One of the curved-top windows had been replaced, and the many layers of paint on the others had been sanded back, leaving the space ready for new decoration.
‘You know this place?’
‘Yes, I went to school here.’
‘Did you?’ He grinned awkwardly. ‘I wish I’d known. I would have looked for your name carved on one of the desks.’
‘You wouldn’t have found it.’
‘Too busy studying?’
‘Something like that.’
Leaving her name in this place might have signified that she would look back on her schooldays with a measure of nostalgia, when they’d been no more than a means to an end. They’d been something she’d had to do so she could move on and leave them behind. Just like she’d left that kiss behind. The one she couldn’t stop thin
king about...
‘What’s going on, Alex? Are you working here now or is this something you’re involved with in your spare time?’
‘I don’t have spare time any more. I’m here full-time; I gave up working with the practice.’
Alex had always said he’d do something like this, and now he’d actually done it. The next logical step from his job as a GP in a leafy London suburb would have been to go into private practice, and Alex had the contacts and the reputation to make the transition easy. But he’d given all that up to come and work here, in a community where his expertise was most sorely needed.
‘And you’ll be seeing patients here?’
‘As soon as we don’t have to supply them with hard hats.’ He bent, picking up two safety helmets and handing her one. ‘Come and see what’s been going on.’
As he showed her around, the scale of the project became obvious. Some of the classrooms had been divided into two to make treatment rooms, with high ceilings and plenty of light from the arched windows. A state-of-the-art exercise suite was planned for the ground floor, which would be staffed by physiotherapists and personal trainers, and the old school hall was being converted into a coffee shop and communal area. Upstairs there was provision for dieticians and other health advisors, along with a counselling suite and rooms for self-help groups of all kinds.
‘We’ll have facilities for DEXA scanning in here...’ He opened the door of one of the old science labs, which had now been reduced to a shell. ‘Along with other diagnostic equipment. There’s a space for the mobile breast-screening unit to park at the side of the building, and when the clinic’s finished it’ll be part of its regular route. We’ll be able to undertake general health screening as well.’
‘It’s wonderful, Alex. Everything under one roof.’
The project was ambitious and imaginative, and would be of huge benefit to the local community.
‘That’s the idea. It’s a kind of one-stop shop, and although it’ll cater for complex medical needs it’s also going to be for people who just want a healthier lifestyle.’
‘What’s going to happen with the courtyards?’
They were walking along a corridor that looked out onto one of the two central light wells. They were one of the few things that remained unchanged, and the dingy concrete floors were a reminder of what this place had once been like.
Alex shrugged. ‘There are no plans for them just yet. Some planting might be nice.’
‘And what about the old gym?’ The annexe at the back of the school was enormous, and it seemed a waste not to use it for something.
‘We made a discovery. Come and see.’
He led the way to the large double doors that opened onto the gym and Marie gasped. The folding seats had been taken out and light from windows on three sides flooded into the space. Instead of sprung wooden floors there was a large concrete-sided hole.
‘That’s not...not a swimming pool, is it?’
He nodded. ‘When we looked at the plans we found that this annexe was built in the nineteen-thirties as a full-sized swimming pool. Later on it was made into a gym, but when we took up the floors we found that the pool had just been filled in with hardcore and the foundations were still there and solid enough to use. There’s room for a hydrotherapy pool, as well as the main pool.’
Alex seemed less excited about this than he should be. Maybe he was about to tell her that they’d run out of money, or had found some catastrophic problem with the building’s structure and it was all about to fall down.
‘This is marvellous. Are the pool and gym just for patients or are they available to the whole community?’
‘There’ll be a nominal charge, well below the usual rates. Anyone who’s referred by a doctor or one of the medical staff here won’t have to pay anything.’ Alex was suddenly still, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘What about you? Would you be interested in being part of it all?’
That sounded a bit like the stuff that fairy tales were made of. A gloomy old castle brought to life and transformed. Alex would fit in there quite nicely as the handsome Prince. But something about the quiet certainty in his manner stopped Marie from brushing the suggestion off.
‘You’d put in a good word with the boss for me?’
‘It’s more a matter of putting a good word in with you. We’d be lucky to get you.’
Excitement trickled down Marie’s spine. This was real. In that case, Marie needed to ask a few real questions.
‘What exactly is your role here, Alex?’
He frowned, as if that might be a problem. ‘It’s rather a long story... Why don’t you come to my office and we’ll have some coffee?’
Marie followed him to a small suite of offices situated at the front of the building, off the main reception area. From here it would be possible to see all the comings and goings, and Marie guessed that Alex would have had a hand in the location of his office. He always liked to be in the thick of things.
His office was one of the few rooms in the building that was finished, but it didn’t seem much like the kind of place the Alex she remembered would like. The cream walls and tall windows lent themselves to minimalism, but Alex didn’t.
‘How long have you been here, Alex?’
‘A couple of months.’ He looked around at the sleek wooden desk that stood at one end of the room and the comfortable easy chairs grouped around a coffee table at the other end. ‘Why?’
Alex had been here for two months? And he hadn’t yet covered the walls with pictures and stamped his own personality on the space? That wasn’t like him at all. Perhaps the clinic had some kind of rule about that.
‘It just seems a bit...unlived-in.’ Marie looked around for something, anything, to comment on, instead of asking whether all that light and clear space hurt his eyes. She nodded towards the stylish chair behind his desk. ‘I like your chair.’
‘I reckoned I’d be sitting in it for enough hours, so I wanted something that was comfortable. Give it a try.’
He walked over to the wood-framed cupboards that lined one wall, opening one of the doors to reveal a coffee machine and a small sink unit.
The chair was great—comfortable and supportive—and when Marie leaned back the backrest tipped gently with her movement. She started to work her way around all the levers and knobs under the seat.
‘I love this. It’s got more controls than my first car.’
She got to her feet as Alex brought the coffee and he motioned her to sit again, smiling as if it hurt his face to do so.
‘You’ve missed a few of the adjustments. The knob on the left lets you tip the seat forward.’ He sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.
‘Oh!’ Marie tried it, almost skinning her knuckles on the stiff lever. ‘Nice one. I’m glad to see the clinic practises what it preaches and looks after its staff.’
She was just talking. Saying things that might fill the space between them and hoping to provoke a reaction. She’d never seen Alex look so worried before.
Not worried...
Burdened.
It was time to grasp the nettle and find out what was going on. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk as if she were about to interview him. ‘So what’s the story then, Alex? I’m intrigued, so start right at the beginning.’
He paused, staring into his mug, as if that would tell him exactly where the beginning was.
‘A hundred and ten years ago...’
‘What? Really?’
He gave her a strained smile and Marie regretted the interruption. Whatever had happened a hundred and ten years ago must be more important than it sounded.
‘You said start at the beginning.’
‘I did. Sorry...’ She waved him on and there was silence for a moment. Then he spoke again.
‘A hundred and ten years ago the
King of Belkraine was deposed and his family fled to London. They brought with them a lot of very valuable jewels, the title deeds to property in this country, and what was literally a king’s ransom in investments. His eldest son was my grandfather.’
Marie stared at him.
She’d thought that she and Alex had shared most of their secrets over the years but he’d obviously been holding back. Marie wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that.
‘So you’re...a prince?’
He gave her a pained look. ‘Belkraine no longer exists as a separate country. I’m not sure how you can be a prince of something that doesn’t exist.’
He was missing the point. The role of many monarchies had changed in the last hundred years, but privilege and money was something that didn’t change.
‘A prince in exile, then?’
‘Strictly speaking a king...in exile. My father died in June last year.’
‘Alex, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you. But it’s... We’d been estranged for some years. Ever since I first went to medical school.’
‘But—’
Marie bit her tongue. He’d never spoken much about his family, but she knew that he was an only child and that his parents lived in a big house in the country somewhere. There hadn’t ever been any mention of an estrangement, and Marie had always assumed he came from a normal happy family.
Now wasn’t the time to mention that this was what Alex had allowed everyone to believe. He had no chance to make things right with his father now.
‘That must have hurt you a great deal.’
He shrugged. ‘That door closed a long time ago. I came to terms with it.’
There were too many questions, piling up on top of each other like grains of sand in an hourglass. What was Alex doing here? Why had he never said anything about this before?
Maybe she should just stay silent and listen.
Alex glanced at her uncertainly and Marie motioned for him to keep talking.
‘I didn’t expect that my father would leave me anything, let alone his whole estate. But he did. I find that I have more money than I know what to do with.’
Best Friend to Royal Bride Page 2
