CAROL MARINELLI - The Socialite's Secret

Scarlet was seriously shaken; her legs felt as if they were made only of liquid.

She was about to be told that her mother was dead, Scarlet was quite sure of that.

‘This way,’ Luke said, and down another corridor they went, and when she needed him to take her arm, instead he walked on briskly.

Luke opened the door to his office and she could see his grim expression.

She was dead, Scarlet was sure.

Luke was here.

Scarlet was very used to feeling conflicted but it was immeasurable now.

She stepped into his office and the first thing that hit her was that it was so quiet.

So completely quiet and calm that after the chaos of that morning the stillness hit her like a wall.

For the first time since she had found her mother, there was, apart from her own rapid breathing, the sound of silence.

Stepping into her mother’s hotel bedroom had been something she would never forget.

‘Mom?’

She had crept in quietly and seen her mother lying in her bed, face down. ‘Mom?’

She had tried to turn her over but Scarlet was of slight build and she hadn’t been able to.

She had screamed for help and after a couple of moments a shocked butler had arrived.

From then on it had been chaos. Hotel staff had started to appear. Vince, her mother’s physician, had arrived dressed, wearing trousers and a shirt, and Scarlet couldn’t understand why he had taken a moment to get dressed.

She had stood back, sobbing, watching chaos unfold, and finally had picked up her cell phone and dialled the UK emergency number.

She shouldn’t have rung it, she had been told.

There was already a private ambulance on the way.

Scarlet opened her mouth to ask the inevitable question—’Is she …?’ But her throat had been dry and scratched from screaming and no words had come out.

Luke could see her confusion and anguish.

‘Take a seat,’ Luke said, and he turned the engaged light on above his door that warned people he was not to be disturbed.

Still Scarlet stood there.

She was going to hell for all that she’d done, Scarlet knew. In fact, she was going to hell twice because, instead of asking how her mother was, instead of begging him to tell her the news, she blurted out what was now at the forefront on her mind.

‘I’m sorry …’

‘Just take a seat,’ Luke said.

She went to take a seat, but the chair seemed a very long way off and Luke’s hand went on her shoulder to guide her towards his desk, but then he changed his mind.

His hand slid from the nearest shoulder to the farthest arm and he turned her into him. Luke’s arms wrapped around her and he pulled her right into his chest and he held her so tightly that for a moment nothing remained but them.

There was the scent she had missed, the body she had craved and the understanding that Scarlet had never known till him.

It was an embrace she had been absolutely sure she would never, ever feel again.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Scarlet wept.

‘It’s okay, Scarlet.’ That lovely deep, calm voice hushed her. Luke’s chest was such a wonderful place to lean. To feel his breath on her cheek and his hand stroke the back of her hair was a solace Scarlet had never thought she might know again. ‘I think she’s going to be okay,’ Luke said.

He was talking about her mother.

While she was sobbing for them, for their beautiful, painful past and all that they had lost.

CALM, PROFESSIONAL AND DETACHED.

That was how Luke had intended to be with Scarlet as he updated her on her mother’s condition. The entire walk from the staffroom, right the way to his office, Luke had been telling himself that he was more than capable of being just that.

Luke had learnt a long time ago to push emotions aside—with patients and their relatives, with his own relatives too.

He had just never quite mastered objectivity when Scarlet was around.

It was something he knew he had better start working on.

Just not today.

Now the very last thing Scarlet needed was calm, professional and detached, but more to the point the impact of actually seeing her again meant that Luke could be none of those things.

Just yet.

As he pulled her into his arms, the embrace was as necessary for Luke as it was for Scarlet. There was so much anger and pain inside both of them. Their traumatic past was perhaps insurmountable but he dealt with the present now.

She was here. Not by the method he would have preferred—Luke had hoped Scarlet would contact him before she’d left for America today—but, yes, she was here, and so Luke held her in his arms and smelt again her hair, fighting not to kiss her salty tears away.

How messed up was that? Luke thought to himself.

He’d had a few months to prepare for the possibility of seeing her again. Since Anya’s UK tour had been announced late last year, the thought that their paths might cross had been constantly on his mind. Since Anya and her entourage had touched down in England he had been wondering if Scarlet would call, if their history meant as much to Scarlet as it did to him. And, since seven this morning, when the news had broken that Anya was in an ambulance, being blue-lighted towards the Royal, he had dealt with the knowledge that he’d face Scarlet today.

Every preconceived response to her that he’d had crumbled.

Yes, there was an awful lot that needed to be discussed but Luke knew that Anya wasn’t the only vulnerable, critical casualty that had been bought into his department today. Scarlet was another and, at a very personal level, he cared about her so very much more. Luke didn’t want to let her go because, when he did so, back to her world Scarlet would return and so Luke took another moment to hold her.

Scarlet held him too.

She didn’t just lean on him, she had slipped her hands into his jacket and wrapped her arms around his solid waist and just breathed in the delicious scent of him. Tangy, musky, male. It was a scent that she had yearned for and never forgotten and one that had been made familiar again now.

How could it be that he felt the same to her hands?

After all that had gone on, how, on this day, could Luke’s arms be the ones that were holding her up?

As she was in England she had hoped that they might meet, but she had expected harsh, accusing words to be hurled at her. Words that he had every right to deliver, but instead of that he held her and made the horrible world go away for a moment.

As she had sat in the staffroom, waiting for news, Scarlet had blocked out the sounds of the people around her. Vince had been trying to speak with her, telling her what to say, insisting that her version of events wasn’t quite correct. Her mother’s manager, Sonia, had demanded to know where Scarlet had got to yesterday and why she hadn’t been there to see her mother go on stage.

None of them knew about the row she’d had with her mother in the early hours and Scarlet had sat revisiting that as she’d done the best to block everyone else out.

And then in the midst of the madness she had heard the calm deepness of Luke’s voice.

Her frantic heart seemed to have stopped beating for a second.

Oh, she had known that Luke was a doctor but she hadn’t known he worked in London. When they had met he had been here for an interview but had been unsure if he’d take the job.

It had never entered her head that Luke might be here in the hospital and be the doctor fighting to save her mother’s life.

Yet he was.

When Scarlet had looked up she had felt the very same jolt that had run through her the night he had walked into the club and their worlds had changed for ever.

He’d been wearing a suit that night and he was wearing one now.

It was the little things she noticed and remembered.

The other stuff was way too insurmountable for now.

And, as Luke had the first night they had met, when she clung to him he pulled back.

‘Tell me.’ Scarlet held him tighter, not ready to let go. If the news was bad, and given the morning’s events she expected it to be, it was like this she wanted to hear it.

‘She’s doing better.’

Scarlet held her breath.

‘Your mother briefly opened her eyes,’ Luke explained. ‘And she was fighting the breathing tube. That’s good. For now she’s been placed in an induced coma.’

‘Is she going to die?’ Scarlet asked.

‘I don’t think so but she came very close.’

‘I know,’ Scarlet said. ‘I called an ambulance.’

‘That’s good.’

‘You told me the number.’

She took a splinter of their time and they both examined it for a moment. A little shard of conversation that, had it come from another, would have been swept away, never to be examined again, but both now recalled that tiny memory with absolute clarity.

Scarlet looked up but not into his eyes.

Never again, Scarlet knew, would she be able to meet that deep, chocolate-brown gaze. There was just too much regret and shame for that. Instead, she looked at that lovely unshaven jaw and the deep red of his mouth that had once delivered paradise.

And Luke, feeling her eyes scan his mouth, despite the circumstance of this meeting, wanted to lower his to meet hers.

It was as simple as that.

But those days were gone and so, because he had to, he let her go. ‘Have a seat,’ Luke said in his best doctor’s voice.

Calm, professional, detached.

If he was going to do this properly then he could be no other way.

Scarlet remained standing as Luke took off his jacket, threw it onto a chair and then went around the desk and sat down, waiting for her to do the same.

‘Tell me what happened.’ Luke kicked the interview off.

‘I told you,’ Scarlet said. ‘I called an ambulance. Vince had called for backup but they were taking for ever and—’

‘Scarlet,’ Luke interrupted, ‘we need to start at the beginning. Before this morning when did you last see your mother?’

‘Last night,’ Scarlet said, and watched as Luke picked up a pen and jotted something down. ‘There was a party to celebrate the end of her tour and …’ Scarlet shrugged but didn’t finish.

‘And how was she?’ Luke asked.

‘I didn’t make it to the party,’ Scarlet said. ‘I saw her back at the hotel.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About midnight.’

‘And how was she?’

‘Tired.’

‘Who was the last person to see her?’

‘Me,’ Scarlet said. ‘I think.’

‘Around midnight?’

‘Around one. Can you stop taking notes?’ Scarlet asked. ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re writing things down.’

‘Scarlet, these details are important,’ Luke said, but he did put down his pen.

He’d been using it as a distraction.

Not a word of this conversation would he ever forget.

‘You found her?’ Luke checked, and Scarlet gave a tense nod.

‘What time was that?’

‘Just before six.’

‘Were the two of you sharing a room?’

‘No.’ Scarlet frowned.

‘Were you staying in the same suite?’

‘No.’

‘So why were you in your mother’s room at six a.m.?’

‘I just went in to check on her.’

‘Why?’ Luke persisted.

‘Because I was worried about her.’

‘Why?’ Luke pushed, but Scarlet did not elaborate. ‘Come on, Scarlet. I can’t help if you don’t tell me.’

‘You can’t help me.’

‘I’m talking about your mother!’ Luke’s voice rose, just a fraction. It had to if they were going to stay on track. That little pull back served to remind not just Scarlet but himself that this was work. He watched her eyes fill with tears at the slight reprimand but he had to push through. When no further information was forthcoming he chose to be direct.