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Reunited With Her Parisian Surgeon
Annie O'Neil
Raphael’s heart was lost…Until he found Maggie again!Brooding surgeon Dr Raphael Boucher finds his way to Sydney and the one woman he has never been able to forget. As they work together, it’s clear that Maggie Louis is the only person who can make him feel alive again. But Raphael must return to Paris and resolve his past before they can finally be together…
Raphael’s heart was lost...
Until he found Maggie again!
Brooding surgeon Dr. Raphael Boucher finds his way to Sydney and the one woman he could never forget. Working together it’s clear Maggie Louis is the only one who can make him feel alive again. But first Raphael must return to Paris and resolve his past before they can finally be together.
ANNIE O’NEIL spent most of her childhood with her leg draped over the family rocking chair and a book in her hand. Novels, baking, and writing too much teenage angst poetry ate up most of her youth. Now Annie splits her time between corralling her husband into helping her with their cows, baking, reading, barrel racing (not really!) and spending some very happy hours at her computer, writing.
Also by Annie O’Neil
One Night, Twin Consequences
The Nightshift Before Christmas
Santiago’s Convenient Fiancée
Her Hot Highland Doc
Healing the Sheikh’s Heart
Her Knight Under the Mistletoe
Italian Royals miniseries
Tempted by the Bridesmaid
Claiming His Pregnant Princess
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Reunited with Her Parisian Surgeon
Annie O’Neil
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07490-2
REUNITED WITH HER PARISIAN SURGEON
© 2018 Annie O’Neil
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one definitely goes out to my readers. Without you this book literally could not have been made. You are the ones who built this hero and heroine... I hope you enjoy their story.
Annie O xx
Contents
Cover (#u30d5857a-7f0d-53ce-a3b3-9868e42c0900)
Back Cover Text (#uc4f33f65-59b5-56be-97a8-ca26746ed589)
About the Author (#u2753557e-3d94-53d8-9609-55a554dc475b)
Booklist (#uda9e8a5b-10ed-59c6-bb73-5d73b46a4d33)
Title Page (#u81101fa9-116b-5679-ad13-c63733c51606)
Copyright (#ud35799bd-2f32-5ae3-85f3-065e81bb7c19)
Dedication (#u1b0b4596-9873-5e38-a64a-51f87869b06e)
CHAPTER ONE (#u783082b5-ddc4-5ba8-875d-c1fcb16195d0)
CHAPTER TWO (#u0b64ae09-47fb-555e-ad08-6174c83c98fb)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc992cf8d-e084-5e1d-a93a-98612fac0ee1)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u512006d9-fc85-5339-aa7f-1d3e1ff78f9b)
SCENT. SOUND. TASTE. Even the air felt different in Australia; so did the sea water he was ploughing through. But as the days had bled into weeks, then months, Raphael had come to know that travelling halfway round the world hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. He was still carrying the same hollowed-out heart, weighted with an anvil’s worth of guilt. Leaving Paris hadn’t done a damn thing towards relieving the burden.
Volunteering had done nothing. Neither had working in conflict zones. Nor donating blood and platelets. He would have pulled his heart right out of his chest if he’d thought it would help. Working all day and all night hadn’t helped. And then there was money. Heaven knew he’d tried to throw enough of that at the situation, only to make a bad situation worse.
Jean-Luc didn’t want any of his money. Not anymore.
The truth was a simple one. Nothing could change the fact that his best friend’s daughter had died on his operating table.
He’d known he was too close to her. He’d known he shouldn’t have raised so much as a scalpel when he’d seen who the patient was. The injuries she’d suffered. But there had been no one more qualified. And Jean-Luc had begged him. Begged him to save his daughter’s life.
Raphael thought through each excruciatingly long minute they’d been in surgery for the millionth time.
Clamps. Suction. Closing the massive traumatic aortic rupture only to have another present itself. Clamps. More suction. Stiches. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. He could see his fingers knotting each one in place. Ensuring blood flow returned to her kidneys. Her heart.
Her young body had responded incredibly well to the surgery. A miracle really, considering the massive trauma she’d suffered when the car had slammed into hers. All that had been left to do when he’d been called to the adjacent operating theatre was close her up.
No matter how many times he went through it, he stalled at the critical moment. There’d been two choices. He’d taken one path. He should’ve chosen the other. His one fatal error had built to that leaden silence when he’d returned to the operating theatre to see his junior lifting his hands up and away from her small, lifeless body.
They’d looked to him to call the time of death.
Raphael swam to the edge of the pool, blinking away the sea water, almost surprised to see that the sun was beginning to set. He pulled himself up and out of the pool in one fluid move, vaguely aware of how the exertion came easily now that he was trying to burn away the memories with lap after lap.
He was tired now. Exhausted, if he was being truly honest. Coming here to Sydney was his last-ditch attempt to find the man he had once been. The man buried beneath a grief he feared would haunt him until his dying day. He was driving himself to swim harder than he ever had before—churning the seaside pool into a boiling froth around him as he hit one side, dove, twisted, and then started again to see how soon he could hit the other—but his burning lungs did nothing to assuage the heaviness of his heart.
Love could.
And forgiveness could do so much more.
In fewer than twenty-four hours he’d see Maggie...
The years since he’d seen her last seemed incalculable. He remembered her vividly. A clear-eyed, open-hearted exchange student from Australia. Apart from Jean-Luc there had been no one in his life who had ever known him so well, who had seen straight through to his soul.
If, when they met again, she could see a glimmer of the man she’d known all those years ago he’d know there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
After toweling off in the disappearing rays of the sun, he tugged on a long-sleeved T-shirt and headed for the exit, already conditioned to look toward the white fence on the right, leading out of the baths towards the coastal path.
Le petit monstre de la mer.
He was still there. The cock-eared mutt that had been following him from his rented accommodation, along the coastal path to the Bronte Baths and back since he’d arrived in Sydney a week ago.
A reject from former tenants?
There were no tags, no chips. Nothing to identify him or his owners.
It shocked him that he’d cared enough to take the dog to a vet the day before.
At least it proved there was still a heart thumping away in his chest, doing more than was mechanically required.
He huffed out a mirthless laugh.
Or was it just proof that he desperately needed one soul in his life who wasn’t judging him? Who still wanted his company?
He winced away the thought. That wasn’t fair. After over a decade of virtually no contact, Maggie hadn’t merely agreed to meet up with him tomorrow night. She’d found him a job at her paramedic station. She’d gone above and beyond the call of a long-ago friendship.
The memory of her bright green eyes softened the hard set of his jaw.
From what she’d said in her emails, the under-staffed ambulance station sounded like a non-stop grind. Perhaps, at long last, this would be the beginning of the healing he’d been seeking, after eighteen months on the run from the pain he’d caused.
He certainly didn’t trust himself on a surgical ward. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps never.
“Allons-y, Monster.” He tipped his head towards the street and the dog quickly met his long-stride pace. “Let’s see if we can find you some supper.”
CHAPTER TWO (#u512006d9-fc85-5339-aa7f-1d3e1ff78f9b)
TICK-TOCK. TICK-TOCK.
Why had she brought him to a movie?
Raphael was going to think she hated him. But, no, she was just socially inept. And she wasn’t quite ready for him to meet the “real” Maggie.
Maggie’s phone buzzed in her backpack, adding to her mortification. She dragged the bag out from under her seat and fished around until she found it. Working in the emergency services meant checking your phone every time it beeped or buzzed, whether or not you were sitting next to your teenage crush from the most perfect year you’d ever had.
A year in Paris.
Raphael Bouchon.
Match. Made. In. Heaven.
Not that there’d been any romance. Just a one-sided crush that had come to an abrupt end when she’d boarded the plane back to Australia.
She pushed the button on her phone to read the message.
Dags, Dad needs more of those hyper-socks next time you come.
She speed-typed back.
They’re compression socks, you dill.
Her expression softened. Her brothers were doing their best in the face of their father’s ever-changing blood pressure. They were mechanics, not medics.
She glanced across at Raphael. I could’ve been a surgeon, like you.
