The Socialite's Secret Read online

  Heather nodded. ‘I’ll get onto it now. Luke, will you speak to the press?’

  Luke hated how normal policy seemed to have been thrown out of the window. He was certain, quite certain, without checking, that the department would have seen several drug overdoses overnight. He just loathed how everything had changed simply because of who Anya was.

  ‘I’ll speak with Anya’s family first,’ Luke said in response to her request.

  Even Heather had the grace to blush. ‘I’ve put them all in the staffroom.’

  ‘Who?’ Luke checked.

  ‘Her manager, the vocal coach, her doctor, her bodyguards. Scarlet’s in there too.’

  ‘Scarlet’s her daughter,’ Paul added, because unless it was rugby or medicine, no doubt Luke wouldn’t have a clue who she was.

  ‘Okay, I’ll speak with her now,’ Luke said, as he binned his gloves and gown.

  He walked out and although the department had grown busy in the hour or so that he had been working on Anya, all eyes were on Luke as he walked past. Everyone wanted to know what was going on and how Anya was.

  Luke didn’t stop to enlighten them.

  Instead, he walked around to the staffroom and saw that Anya’s huge entourage were all there on their phones. As Luke went to go in and speak with the daughter, one of them had the nerve to ask for his ID.

  ‘It’s your ID that I need here,’ Luke responded, and with that line he warned them how any dealings with him would be.

  ‘How is she?’ a frantic woman asked.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for more than an hour for an update,’ another person said.

  Luke just ignored them and walked into the very full staffroom. ‘I’m Luke Edwards, I’ve been taking care of Anya. I’d like to speak with the immediate family.’

  And there, in the midst of it all, she was.

  Scarlet.

  Still beautiful, Luke thought.

  She was sitting, trembling, with her head in her hands. Even her cloud of black ringlets was shaking as her knees bobbed up and down. She seemed oblivious to her surroundings but then she suddenly looked up and her already pale face bleached further in recognition.

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Luke Edwards,’ he said, doing all he could to keep them anonymous, to not let everyone present know the agony this was. ‘I’ve been treating your mother. Are there any other relatives?’ Luke checked.

  Scarlet shook her head and opened her mouth to speak but no words came out so she shook her head again but then managed two words. ‘Just me.’

  ‘Then I’d like to speak to you alone.’

  ‘We need to know what’s going on,’ a woman said. ‘I’m Sonia, Anya’s manager.’

  ‘I’m speaking now with her next of kin.’

  Luke’s stance was not one to be argued with. It wasn’t just that he was tall and broad—after all, there were far more burly bodyguards than he. More it was his implacable expression and cool disdain that had the manager step back and the path cleared for him to leave.

  * * *

  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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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 month
s 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.

  ‘Has your mother been depressed lately?’

  ‘No, no.’ Scarlet shook her head. ‘It’s nothing like that. She just took too much.’

  ‘How, when her physician keeps her pills?’

  ‘She keeps some on her,’ Scarlet said.

  Luke honestly didn’t know if Scarlet was covering up for her mother or simply had no idea how serious the problem was.

  ‘Scarlet.’ Luke tried to meet her gaze. ‘Why did you go in to check on your mum? I’m not going to write anything down. Just tell me.’

  ‘I was worried.’

  ‘More so than usual?’ Luke checked, and she nodded. ‘I need to know why.’

  ‘We had a row.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘
Please don’t ask, Dr Edwards.’ It was Scarlet now who rebuked him, just a little but enough for him to get what she meant—if there were lines that could not be crossed, if he wanted to keep this professional, then, right now, the answer to that question could not be discussed. ‘We had an argument.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘They want my mother to be moved to another hospital,’ Scarlet said.

  Luke had guessed that they might. ‘Well, as of now, the only place your mother is being moved to is Intensive Care. Here.’

  ‘They think that she needs to be somewhere more used to dealing with...’ Scarlet stopped what she had about been to say. Luke loathed the word ‘celebrity’.

  ‘She’s in the best place and in no condition to be moved,’ Luke said. ‘As her daughter, you get to make that call.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Scarlet gave a worried shake of her head.

  ‘I know so,’ Luke responded.

  ‘But she has Vince. He deals with all that type of thing.’

  ‘Yes, well, Vince is going to be a bit busy for the foreseeable future. After I’ve spoken with you, believe me, I’m going to be speaking with him and getting a far more accurate history than the one he gave me earlier. I may also be speaking with the police so trust me when I say that I’ll back your call if you want your mother kept here.’

  ‘Luke, please, don’t bring the police into this.’ Scarlet started to cry and not very quietly.

  He sat and watched unmoved. Those tears did not move him and certainly he would not be swayed by hype and celebrity status when he made his decisions.

  He just needed more facts but few were forthcoming.

  His pager trilled and Luke checked it. Seeing that it was Heather, he made a phone call and rolled his eyes as she told him that the press were becoming more insistent. ‘Just say no comment,’ Luke responded tartly. ‘How hard is it to say that?’ He let out a tense breath. ‘Unless there is a change in Anya’s condition, or you need me for another patient, you’re not to disturb me. I’m speaking with a relative now.’

  He looked over and saw that in the couple of minutes it had taken to speak with Heather, Scarlet had stopped crying long enough to take out her phone. Luke watched with mounting irritation. They were speaking about her mother’s near-death and yet Scarlet was checking the news reports and quickly scrolling through social media!