Maybe he’d had a difficult childhood, one where his family had rowed all the time and Christmas just made things worse—people being forced together for longer periods of time than they could stand each other. The Emergency Department was testament to how bad Christmas tensions could get. Add alcohol to the mix, and it was often explosive and painful.
But it would be rude and intrusive to ask.
She switched the conversation to something lighter. ‘There’s a team football thing in the park next weekend. Partners and children included, if you’d all like to come along.’
‘No children and no partner,’ he said, and the bleakness in his eyes shocked her.
Maybe he was divorced, and his former partner had moved away so he never got to see the children. In which case it was no wonder that he didn’t like Christmas. The festive season was a time for children, and not being able to see your kids at Christmas must be like rubbing salt into a very raw wound.
‘Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry. Or to come on to you,’ she added, realising that he might have taken her words the wrong way.
And she really wasn’t trying to come on to him. Yes, Jamie Thurston was gorgeous; he reminded her of the actor in one of her favourite historical dramas, all dark and brooding and with those amazing cornflower-blue eyes. But she wasn’t risking her heart again. Johnny had made it very clear that nobody would want to tie themselves down to her, not once they knew the truth about her. She was pretty sure he’d said it to make himself feel better; the man she’d fallen in love with had been one of the good guys, but the shock of learning that they couldn’t have a family without a lot of medical intervention had changed him. It had made him look elsewhere; and then the guilt of knowing how badly he’d treated Anna had pushed him into saying unforgivable things that had hurt her even more than his betrayal.
‘I’m just not very good at social things,’ Jamie said.
‘Though the football isn’t a Christmassy thing.’ She winced even as the words spilled out of her mouth. Oh, for pity’s sake. The poor man had made it quite clear that he didn’t want to do the team thing next week. Why didn’t she take the hint and just get off his case?
Thankfully then their session on the bowling lanes started again, and she had to concentrate on trying to make the ball go straight. Not that she managed it. And this time she only knocked down one pin from each end. How pathetic was that?
Jamie said to her, ‘It’s your follow-through.’
‘Follow-through?’ she asked, mystified.
‘Where your hand points, that’s where the ball ends up.’
She laughed wryly. ‘Straight in the gutter, if I didn’t have the bumper bars up. But I guess my zig-zag approach is a bit too haphazard.’
‘Keep your arm straight and let the ball go when your hand’s pointing to the middle of the pins,’ he said. ‘Watch me.’
She did. ‘Wow. You got a strike.’
‘Because I aimed for the middle.’
‘I aim for the middle,’ she protested.
‘But you let the ball go too late,’ he said. ‘I take it you don’t go ten-pin bowling with your partner?’
Johnny hadn’t really been into ten-pin bowling. ‘No partner,’ she said.
He winced. ‘That wasn’t a come-on.’
‘I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘You sounded like someone who wants to help. A friend. And I appreciate that.’
He stilled, and she wondered if she’d gone too far.
But then he smiled. The kind of smile that lit up the whole room, and it transformed him utterly. It was as if he’d stepped out of the shadows he seemed to keep round him. When he smiled, Jamie Maskell was breathtakingly handsome.
‘I’ll help you with the next frame,’ he said.
‘Whatever you do, I’m still going to come last on our lane,’ she warned. ‘But it would be nice to actually do this right, for once.’
‘I can help you do that.’
She looked at him. ‘You’re like me, aren’t you? A fixer at heart.’
‘It’s kind of the definition of a surgeon, fixing things,’ he said dryly.
It was more than that, she thought. He was a fixer who wasn’t going to admit it.
Whatever had made Jamie Thurston put distance between himself and the world—and between himself and Christmas—maybe she could help him with that, the way he was helping her with the bowling.
She thought about it while they chatted with the others in their lane.
She stopped thinking for a little while when Jamie helped her with the bowling, standing close to her but not close enough to be sleazy or awkward. Because then he slid his arm along hers, showing her how to angle the ball correctly. The touch of his skin against his flustered her so much that she nearly forgot to let the ball go.
‘You went slightly to the left,’ he said when she’d knocked six pins down. ‘So this time you need to go slightly to the right.’
Again, he guided her through the procedure. And this time her ball hit the four pins in the middle, and they all went down.
‘There you go. You got a half-strike.’
‘That’s amazing.’ She flung her arms round him and hugged him.
When was the last time anyone had hugged him? When he’d actually let a woman hug him, because he’d pushed his mum and his sisters away, not to mention Hestia’s family and her best friend?
Probably at the funeral.
And now Anna Maskell had ignored all his usual barriers and hugged him. Briefly, because she stepped back almost immediately and said, ‘Sorry. That was a bit over the top. But I don’t think I’ve ever managed to get all the pins down like that before and I got a bit overexcited.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let me be more appropriate. Thank you for your help, Mr Thurston,’ she said more formally.
‘You’re most welcome, Dr Maskell,’ he replied, equally formally. Though he could feel himself withdrawing again. Going back into the dark little hole where he’d lived for the last three years. But that hug had made him feel odd. As if there was a little flare of light, far in the distance. A light that drew him and beckoned him—if he had the courage to go and find it.
It took enough courage for him simply to exist from day to day. Going in search of a new life still felt too hard. But now he knew it was out there, and the little light wasn’t going to let itself hide again. It stayed put, telling him it would still be there when he was ready to look for it properly.
He managed to focus on the bowling for the rest of the evening. But then it was over, everyone was spilling outside, and his new colleagues all seemed to be heading off in different directions.
He’d walked a few steps when he realised that Anna was beside him. ‘It looks as if we’re going the same way,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Thank you for the bowling lesson,’ she said.
‘Pleasure.’ The word was polite and automatic, but Jamie was shocked to realise that he actually meant it. He’d enjoyed helping Anna, seeing her confidence grow along with her ability.
She’d said that she thought he was a fixer at heart.
He had been, once. Before the thing had happened that he