Read Online The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle by Alison Roberts - Free Book Online

taken a huge risk. She was banking on Luke Harrington’s sense of duty being stronger than his desire to escape. She was also banking on nothing more than intuition, in the hope that she hadn’t been wrong in sensing that he not only understood but was trustworthy.
    She was forcing him to spend just a little more time in her household. Maybe enough time for him to think about what he intended to do and reflect on the effect it could have on the children he was—temporarily—responsible for.
    But what if she was wrong?
    What if he contacted Social Services or the police and reported a house full of abandoned children? A house that had sustained a small fire already that evening? Amy might arrive home to find they’d all been lifted from their beds and taken to places where they would be under more appropriate supervision.
    She was good at texting as she moved. She fished her cellphone from the depths of her red bag.
    ‘Zoe? U ok?’
    ‘Al gud,’ came the response. ‘Talkin to G2.’
    G2? Oh, God! Amy stopped on the landing between the first and second floors. She meant ‘G squared’. Luke’s nickname at Lizzie’s. It stood for ‘Grumpy Guts’. It hadn’t occurred to Amy that the teenager would remember that, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
    With a groan, Amy pushed up the last flight of stairs. She could only hope that Zoe wouldn’t reveal her indiscretion to the head of Lizzie’s cardiothoracic surgical unit.
     
    ‘Do you know what they call you?’ the girl said to Luke. ‘“G squared”. It stands for “Grumpy Guts”.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Grumpy Guts,’ Zoe repeated with relish. ‘Nobody likes you. Not even Monty, and he likes everybody.’
    Sure enough, the extraordinarily tall dog, who was now sitting on a patched old blanket, was giving Luke a steady glare that could only be described as menacing. If it started growling, Luke was out of there.
    Zoe was watching him just as intently. Disconcertingly, only one eye was visible due to her strange, asymmetric fringe. ‘Why don’t you just go home?’ she demanded.
    Luke wasn’t used to social interaction with teenagers and he had never been this close to one who looked quite like this. Was she a member of some cult? The absurdly immature response of ‘ This is my home’ occurred to Luke and he actually felt the corner of his mouth twitch. Instead, he shrugged off his coat, hung it over the back of a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.
    ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said calmly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving a houseful of children with no adequate supervision.’
    ‘Whaddya mean by that?’
    ‘You’re no older than the children you’re supposed to be looking after.’
    ‘I am so! I’m sixteen !’ The single eye narrowed. ‘Are you saying I’m stupid or something?’
    Behind the aggressive response, Luke saw the fear that Zoe believed that might be true. Had somebody suggested it already or was this just the normal kind of low self-esteem teenagers could struggle with?
    ‘Not at all.’ Luke held her gaze. ‘You’ve demonstrated you can cope very well. There’s not many people that would rescue a wolf. Twice!’
    Zoe was silent for a moment and then her mouth twisted into a grin that lit up her face. The delight was rapidly stifled, however.
    ‘I still don’t like you.’
    Luke nodded. ‘Because I made Amy cry.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    He frowned. ‘I don’t remember seeing her cry.’
    ‘’Course you didn’t. She did it in the loo. She told me about it ’cos I was crying about something this chick at school said. Amy said it was good to cry but then you had to suck it up and get on with your life. You couldn’t let mean things people said pull you down.’
    ‘Mean things?’ Luke was racking his memory. ‘I don’t say mean things to people.’
    ‘You did. You told Amy she was stupid.’
    ‘No.’ The head shake was decisive. ‘I would never say that.’
    ‘You did!’ Zoe insisted.