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CHAPTER ONE

Two months later

QUINN WISHED THEY did an easy-to-read, step-by-step guide for anxious foster mums going through these operations too. It was difficult to know what to do for the best when Simon resisted all attempts to comfort him pre-op.

He turned his face away when she produced the well-worn kids’ book the hospital had provided to explain the surgical process.

She sighed and closed the book.

‘I suppose you know this off by heart now.’ Not that it made this any easier. After the countless hours he’d spent on the operating table they both knew what they were in for—pain, tears and a huge dollop of guilt on her part.

She hadn’t caused the fire or his injuries but neither had she been able to save him from this suffering. Given the choice she’d have swapped places with the mite and offered herself up for this seemingly endless torture rather than watch him go through it.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked the back of his head, wishing there was something she could do other than stand here feeling inadequate.

The pillow rustled as he shook his head and she had to suppress the urge to try and swamp him into a big hug the way her mother always had when she’d been having a hard time. Simon didn’t like to be hugged. In fact, he resisted any attempt to comfort him. That should’ve been his real mother’s job but then apparently she’d never shown affection for anything other than her next fix. His too-young, too-addicted parents were out of the picture, their neglect so severe the courts had stripped them of any rights.

Quinn and Simon had barely got to know each other before the fire had happened so she couldn’t tell if his withdrawal was a symptom of his recent trauma or the usual reaction of a foster child afraid to get attached to his latest care giver. She wasn’t his parent, nor one of the efficient medical staff, confident in what they were doing. For all she knew he’d already figured out she was out of her depth and simply didn’t want to endure her feeble overtures. Maybe he just didn’t like her. Whatever was causing the chasm between them it was vital she closed it, and fast.

As if on cue, their favourite surgeon stepped into the room. ‘Back again? I’m sure you two are sick of the sight of me.’

That velvety Irish accent immediately caught her attention. She frowned as goose bumps popped up across her skin. At the age of thirty-two she should really have better self-control over an ill-conceived crush on her foster son’s doctor.

‘Hi, Matt.’ An also enchanted Simon sat upright in bed.

It was amazing how much they both seemed to look forward to these appointments and hate them at the same time. Although the skin grafts were a vital part of recovery, they were traumatic and led to more night terrors once they returned home as Simon relived the events of the fire in his sleep. He’d been one of the most seriously burned children, having been trapped in his classroom by falling debris. Although the emergency services had thankfully rescued him, no one had been able to save him from the memories or the residual pain.

Matt, as he’d insisted they call him, was the one constant during this whole nightmare. The one person Simon seemed to believe when he said things would work out. Probably because he had more confidence in himself and his abilities than she did in herself, when every dressing change made her feel like a failure.

The poor child’s face was still scarred, even after the so-called revolutionary treatment, and his arm was a patchwork quilt of pieced together skin. Technically his injuries had occurred in school but that didn’t stop her beating herself up that it had happened on her watch. Especially when the fragile bond they’d had in those early days had disintegrated in the aftermath of the fire. Unlike the one he’d forged with the handsome surgeon.

Matt moved to the opposite side of the bed from Quinn and pulled out some sort of plastic slide from his pocket. ‘I’ve got a new one for you, Simon. The disappearing coin trick!’ he said with flare, plucking a ten pence piece from the air.

‘Cool!’

Of course it was. Magic was a long way away from the realities of life with second-and third-degree burns. Fun time with Matt before surgery offered an escape whilst she was always going to be the authority figure telling him not to scratch and slathering cream over him when he just wanted to be left alone.

Somehow Simon was able to separate his friend who performed magic tricks from the surgeon who performed these painful procedures, whereas she was the one he associated with his pain. It was frustrating, especially seeing him so engaged when she’d spent all day trying to coax a few words from him.

‘I need you to place the coin in here.’ He gave Simon the coin and pulled out a tray with a hole cut out of the centre from the plastic slide.

Concentration was etched on his face as he followed instructions and once Quinn set aside her petty jealousy she appreciated the distraction from the impending surgery. After all, that’s what she wanted for him—to be the same as any other inquisitive five-year-old, fascinated by the world around him. Not hiding away, fearful of the unknown, the way he was at home.

‘Okay, so we push it back in here—’ he slid the tray back inside the case ‘—and this is the important bit. We need a magic word.’

‘Smelly pants!’ Simon had the mischievous twinkle of a child who knew he could get away with being naughty on this occasion.

‘I was thinking along the more traditional abracadabra line but I guess that works too.’ Matt exchanged a grin across the bed with her. It was a brief moment which made her forget the whole parent/doctor divide and react as any other woman who’d had a good-looking man smile at her.

That jittery, girlish excitement took her by surprise as he made eye contact with her and sent her heart rate sky high. Since Darryl left her she hadn’t given any thought to the opposite sex. At least not in any ‘You’re hot and I want you’ way. More of a ‘You’re a man and I can’t trust you’ association. She wasn’t prepared to give away any more of herself—of her time or her heart—to anyone who wouldn’t appreciate the gift. All of her time and energy these days was directed into the fostering process, trying to make up for the lack of two parents in Simon’s life. Harbouring any form of romantic ideas was self-indulgent and, most likely, self-destructive.

She put this sudden attraction down to the lack of adult interaction. Since leaving her teaching post to tutor from home and raise Simon, apart from the drive-by parents of her students, and her elderly neighbour, Mrs Johns, the medical staff were the only grown-ups she got to talk to. Very few of them were men, and even fewer had cheekbones hand-carved by the gods. It was no wonder she’d overreacted to a little male attention. The attraction had been there since day one and she’d fought it with good reason when her last romantic interlude had crashed her world around her. Everything she’d believed in her partner had turned out to be a lie, making it difficult for her to trust a word anyone told her any more. She kept everyone at a distance now, but Matt was such a key figure in their days that he was nigh on impossible to ignore. As the weeks had gone on she found herself getting into more arguments with him, forcing him to take the brunt of her fears for Simon and the annoyance she should have directed at herself.

Matt waved his hand over the simple piece of plastic which had transformed Simon’s body language in mere seconds.

‘Smelly pants!’ he shouted, echoed by his tiny assistant.

The magician-cum-surgeon frowned at her. Which apparently was equally as stimulating as a smile.

‘It’ll only work if we all say the magic words together. Let’s try this again.’

Quinn rolled her eyes but she’d go along with anything to take Simon’s mind off what was coming next.

‘Smelly pants!’ they all chorused as Matt pulled out the now empty tray.

‘Wow! How did you do that?’ Simon inspected the magic chamber, suitably impressed by the trick.

‘Magic.’ Matt gave her a secret wink and started her tachycardia again.

Didn’t he have theatre prep or intensive hand-scrubbing to do rather than showing off here and disturbing people’s already delicate equilibrium?

‘I wish I could make my scars disappear like that.’ Simon’s sudden sad eyes and lapse back into melancholy made Quinn’s heart ache for him.

‘I’m working on it, kiddo. That’s why all of these operations are necessary even though they suck big-time. It might take a few waves of my magic wand but I’ll do my very best to make them disappear.’

Quinn folded her arms, binding her temper inside her chest. He might mean well but he shouldn’t be giving the child false hope. Simon’s body was a chequered, vivid mess of dead and new flesh. He was never going to have blemish-free skin again, regardless of the super-confident surgeon’s skills, and she was the one who’d have to pick up the pieces when the promises came to nothing. Again.

‘You said that the last time.’ Not even Simon was convinced, lying back on the bed, distraction over.

‘I also said it would take time. Good things come to those who wait, right?’ It was a mantra he’d used since day one but he clearly wasn’t au fait with the limited patience of five-year-olds. Unlike Quinn, who’d had a crash course in tantrums and tears while waiting for the miraculous recovery to happen before her very eyes. Her patience had been stretched to the limit too.

‘Right,’ Simon echoed without any conviction.

‘I’ll tell you what, once you’re back from theatre and wide awake, I’ll come back and show you how to do a few tricks of your own. Deal?’

Quinn couldn’t tell if it was bravado or ego preventing the doctor from admitting defeat as he stood with his hand held out to make the bargain. Either way, she didn’t think it was healthy for him to get close to Simon only to let him down. He’d had enough of that from his birth parents, who’d given up any rights to him in favour of drugs, foster parents, who’d started the adoption process then abandoned him when they’d fallen pregnant themselves, and her, who’d sent him to get burned up in school. It might have failed her once but that protective streak was back with a vengeance.

‘We couldn’t ask you to do that. I’m sure you have other patients to see and we’ve already taken up so much of your time.’ She knew these extra little visits weren’t necessary. They had highly skilled nurses and play specialists to make these transitions easier for the children. These informal chats and games made her feel singled out. As if he was trying to suss out her capability to look after Simon outside of the hospital. The nurses had noticed too, remarking how much extra time he’d devoted to Simon’s recovery and she didn’t appreciate it as much as they probably thought she should. He wasn’t going to sneak his way into her affections the way Darryl had, then use her fostering against her; she’d learned that lesson the hard way. She could do this. Alone.

‘Not at all. I’m always willing to pass on my secrets to a budding apprentice.’ He held out his hand again and Simon shook it with his good arm, bypassing her concerns.

‘I just mean perhaps you should be concentrating on the surgery rather than performing for us.’ The barb was enough to furrow that brow again but he had a knack for getting her back up. Handsome or not, she wouldn’t let him cause Simon any more pain than necessary.

The wounded look in his usually sparkling green eyes instantly made her regret being such a cow to him when he’d been nothing but kind to Simon since the accident. His smile was quickly back in place but it no longer reached anywhere past his mouth.

‘It’s no problem. I can do both. I’ll see you soon, kiddo.’ He ruffled Simon’s hair and turned to leave. ‘Can I have a word outside, Ms Grady?’

As he brushed past her, close enough to whisper into her ear, Quinn’s whole body shivered with awareness. A combination of nerves and physical attraction. Neither of which she had control over any longer.

‘Sure,’ she said although she suspected he wasn’t giving her a choice; she felt as though she was being called into the headmaster’s office for misbehaving. A very hot headmaster who wasn’t particularly happy with her. Unsurprising, really, when she’d basically just insulted him on a professional level.

She promised Simon she’d be back soon and took a deep breath before she followed Matt out the door.

‘I know you’re having a tough time at the moment but I’d really appreciate it if you stopped questioning my dedication to my job in front of my patient.’

It was the first time Quinn had seen him riled in all of these weeks. He was always so calm in the face of her occasional hysteria, so unflappable through every hurdle of Simon’s treatment. Although it was unsettling to see the change in him, that intense passion, albeit for his work, sent tingles winding through her body until her toes curled, knowing she was the one who’d brought it to the fore. She found herself wondering how deep his passions lay and how else they might manifest…

He cleared his throat and reminded her she was supposed to speak, to argue back. She questioned what he was doing, he pulled her up on it and claimed rank when it came to Simon’s health care—that was the way this went. It kept her from going completely round the bend imagining the worst that could happen when she’d be the one left dealing with the consequences on her own. She was supposed to be the overprotective mother voicing her concerns that everything being done was in her son’s best interests, just as he was the one to insist he knew what he was doing. Fantasising about Matt in any other capacity, or his emotions getting the better of him, definitely wasn’t in their well-rehearsed script.

‘Yeah…well…I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give Simon false hope that everything will go back to normal. We’ve both had enough of people letting us down.’ Not that she knew what normal was, but although he deserved a break, they had to be realistic too.

‘I’m not in the habit of lying to my patients…’

‘No? What about this miracle spray-on skin which was supposed to fast-track his recovery? It’s been two months and his burns are still very much visible. I should’ve known it was too good to be true when you would only use it to treat his facial burns and not the ones on his arm. I mean, if it was such a wonder cure it would make sense to use it everywhere and not make him go through these skin grafts anyway.’ She was aware her voice had gone up a few decibels and yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself when something good she’d believed was going to happen hadn’t. This time it wasn’t only her hopes that were being dashed.

Matt simply sighed when Quinn would’ve understood if he’d thrown his hands up and walked away. Deep down she knew he’d done his best, and yet, they were still here going through the same painful process.

‘I can only reiterate what I told you at the start. It will take time. Perhaps the progress we have made isn’t as noticeable to you because you see him every day, but the scars are beginning to fade. It’s as much as we can hope for at this stage. As I explained, this is a new treatment, not readily available everywhere in the UK, and funding is hard to come by. The burns on Simon’s arm are full thickness, not suitable for the trial, otherwise I’d have fought tooth and nail to make it happen. But he’s young—his skin will heal quicker than yours or mine. Besides, I’m good at what I do.’ There wasn’t any obvious arrogance in his words or stance. It was simply a statement of fact. Which did nothing to pull her mind out of the gutter.